I didn’t send an email yesterday because I was focused on writing this, my own piece of reporting from the attack on the Capitol. One week into this blog, which was created as a vessel for my distractions and a way to share personal anecdotes, I lived through the most disturbing event I’ve ever seen. Only because I was taking notes to remember what time I saw what atrocity, I realize I was on the west lawn of the Capitol, watching rioters climb up and invade it, for two hours and ten minutes.
Plenty of what I saw made the newsletter. Some of it is fresh in my memory but unformed. I don’t know quite what to do with the woman who screamed at me to leave - this was long before the violence - and balked at my answer when she asked what I thought of the Proud Boys’ leader being arrested.
”I support our police. Don’t you?”
It was as nimble a dunk as I’ve ever pulled off in a situation like that. But minutes later I was watching people scream at cops to join them, and “honor your oath.” And hours later I was seeing video of them fighting with police.
There’s a lot to work through here, but I wondered all day if the rioters reckoned with what would happen if they didn’t succeed. It was the impunity, the people walking maskless surrounded by cameras, that haunted me. They genuinely thought they’d stop the presidential election certification, and winning would let them crush any backlash. Now that they’ve lost, do they realize: If there was a deep state, this is the sort of incident that would precipitate a crackdown with popular support?
I think they’ll there. A successful coup becomes a revolution; a failure becomes, in their imagination, a false flag.
Just a longtime reader of yours. Why? I honestly can't say except, I like your style. Please keep posting here.
Thank goodness you survived. From what I saw in coverage (and from reading The Trailer), I know there was a lot of anti-journo rhetoric and violence (don't know how ITV embedded with the insurrectionists inside the Capitol). The genie is out of the bottle; democracy has to be a lived value now... not just a buzzword.
Shine on, you crazy diamond.