The Capitol Falls: A New Democratic Reality In The United States
One of the most striking characters in the storming of the Capitol. Source: telegraph.co.uk
The election that was stolen from Trump
The start of the new year was marked by a shocking event - on January 6, a crowd of excited supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol. A few months earlier, it would have seemed a figment of the wild fantasy of exalted analysts, but now the Internet is filled with photo and video evidence of atrocities in Washington. Five casualties among the defenders of the Capitol and the discovery of two fully operational explosive devices in government buildings made the events particularly dramatic.
The Capitol has fallen! Photo: Tyler Merbler / flickr.com
Passions began to heat up with the openly provocative statements of the incumbent President Donald Trump regarding the counting of votes. Shortly before the riots, the incumbent president once again refused to recognize the results of the November 3 elections:
We will never give up, we will never give up. This will not happen. You cannot admit defeat when it comes to theft.
The rhetoric, as usual, was paradoxical - Trump does not recognize the election of Biden, but guarantees a peaceful transfer of power.
Since January 4, supporters of the incumbent president have flocked to Washington, outraged by this state of affairs in American democracy. The goal was the Freedom March, scheduled for January 6, the day that the US Senate and House of Representatives were to finally confirm Biden as the new president. And here Trump acted like a cornered beast. On the square, a few hours before the approval, he utters a provocative:
We're going to come to the Capitol. We are going to support our courageous senators, members of Congress ... You can never take back our country if you are weak, you must demonstrate strength and you must be strong.
Can this be regarded as a call for an anti-constitutional coup? Be that as it may, Trump himself did not participate in the upcoming pogroms, sat in the armored "Beast" and left for his residence. Donald made one fatal mistake - he actually designated for the supporters the main culprit of his defeat. Vice President Michael Pence on the Constitution may at the last moment interrupt the process of the transfer of presidential power in connection with massive fraud. When Trump actually personalized the goal of storming the Capitol, the outcome of the Freedom March was a foregone conclusion.
Shame on all democracy
Further events developed rapidly. Some of the demonstrators officially entered the territory of the Capitol under the guise of peaceful tourists. And then, sweeping away everything in their path, the assailants broke through the outer perimeter of the security of government buildings. It is noteworthy that the flimsy fences were used by Trump's most marginal supporters as storm ladders. The chronology of the assault revealed a lot of oddities. The police present were clearly not enough and, most likely, no reinforcement was provided. By the way, Stephen Sand, the capitol police chief, intends to resign on January 16. Some of the guards not only did not resist the storming of government buildings, but even cleared the way for the attackers. Obviously, sympathy for the Republicans and personally for Trump turned out to be above the call of duty. The rest of the police did not dare to use a firearm weaponlimiting ourselves to flashbang grenades and tear gas. This only angered the attackers - fourteen policemen were beaten and one was fatally injured. Exalted media outlets later commented on the leniency of the police on a small proportion of African Americans among the attackers. Say, against the storming of the Capitol of blacks, the defenders would not hesitate to use automatic weapons.
US Secret Service counter-assault units are on the defensive. Photo: Olivier Douliery / AFP via Getty Images
Another oddity on January 6 was the unanswered call of the Washington City Hall to urgently bring the National Guard into the city. The Pentagon did not react, obviously, because such decisions are made by the president of the country.
In the crisis, the secret service initially had no time to counter the attackers - at 14:30 it was announced that the most important persons of the government were evacuating. In particular, Vice President Michael Pence, Speaker of the Congress Nancy Palosi and Republican Majority Leader in the Senate Mitch McConnell were removed from the building of Congress. The assaults at that time smashed and plundered the offices of congressmen, broke glass and took pictures against the background of destroyed furniture. Private video filming allowed to capture the moment of assassination of an ardent supporter of the incumbent President Ashley Bebbit in one of the corridors of Congress. Secret Service personnel were on the defensive behind a barricaded door when Babbitt, a 14-year veteran of the United States Air Force, climbed into the gap. As a result, a shot to kill, after which the woman no longer recovered and died in intensive care. The goal was achieved - none of Bebbit's associates went to check the seriousness of the intentions of the Secret Service employees. The video from Washington was very reminiscent in this situation of footage from the storming of some residence of the Middle Eastern tyrant during the color revolutions. The question remains open about the legality of the use of firearms in this situation. Maybe a simple traumatic pistol would be enough? Moreover, the attackers did not have small arms, but only plastic handcuffs and a strong desire to hang Pence.
Defenders of American Statehood. Photo: AP Photo / J. Scott Applewhite
The social status of Ashley Bebbit, who was shot in the Congress building, perfectly shows that it was not marginals who stormed the stronghold of democracy, but quite successful people who sincerely believed in fraudulent elections. Along with Ashley Bebbit and the policeman mentioned above, three more people were killed during the storming of the Capitol. According to officials, they died from a situation of failure to provide the necessary emergency medical care.
When the outcome of a further assault would inevitably lead to a lot of blood, the National Guard was nevertheless brought into Washington, and the FBI special forces and several other units were brought into the Capitol building. The main role in this was not played by the incumbent President Trump, but by his recent associate Vice President Pence. It was he who, as best he could, tried to involve the security forces to resolve the situation. Of the crowd of thousands of attackers, only a few dozen people were arrested. The siloviki, frightened by the serious prospects of a civil war in the United States, this time decided to carry out retribution in a noticeably truncated version.
Trump's political suicide
Donald Trump belatedly, but nevertheless condemned the attempt to resolve the issue by force, to which he himself had earlier incited his supporters on the Freedom March. Man is a paradox, what to say. Now the formal president is still getting it from all sides. Domestically, he is threatened with impeachment, dismissal due to mental illness and the transfer of power to the vice president. By the way, Trump doesn't have long to rule in the White House - Congress nevertheless approved the election results and Joe Biden will become the new president on January 20. The international community, moving away from the first culture shock, called the events an attempt on the world lamp of democracy and pinned all the blame on Trump. Russia has modestly indicated that events in Congress are an internal affair of the United States.
Joe Biden, to his credit, was rather restrained about the riots:
Our democracy is now undergoing an unprecedented attack like no other in our time. This is an attack on the citadel of freedom, on the Capitol itself. An attack on the people's representatives and the police, who have vowed to protect them. Let me be clear: the chaos scenes in the Capitol do not reflect the real America. Who we are. What we see is a small bunch of extremists dealing with lawlessness. This is not dissent. It's a mess. It's chaos. And it must end now.
There are no dangerous generalizations in the speech, and there are even no accusations against the main hero of the occasion - the current President of the United States, Donald Trump. History with the president-instigator of the coup is still far from the final, but it is already quite obvious that Trump has become political suicide in her.
Ambiguous results
The history of the storming of the Capitol has many ambiguous consequences. Social networks Facebook, Instagram and Twitch blocked Donald Trump's official account in the first hours of the riots, and Twitter made this restriction indefinite. The current president will not be able to post his appeals on the YouTube video hosting service. The closest associates of the president went “under the knife”, unnecessarily proving in their accounts that the results of the elections on November 3, 2020 were fabricated. Trump has already reacted by threatening to change legislation on freedom of speech in the media. If you have time, of course.
Trump's life will change dramatically after 06.01.2021/XNUMX/XNUMX. Source: Wikimedia Commons
The situation when the media and social networks include censorship for their users, without taking into account the opinion of the supporters of the incumbent president, looks strange. When called for a coup d'etat in Ukraine, Belarus, Syria and many other countries, these resources gave opposition leaders complete freedom of action. And here they block the account of the legally elected president.
In the United States, the reaction to what happened is like a phantasmagoria. And this is another result of what happened in Congress on January 6. In the near future there will be thousands and thousands of reasons for such a shameful development of events for the United States. The Russians have to wait for the hands of American analysts to reach the Kremlin, and accusations will fall on the circle of President Vladimir Putin. Many in the US try to joke the tragedy to hide their shame. It doesn't always work out well. Elon Max on Instagram commented on a photo of a dressed-up Trump supporter in Congress:
This is what happens when you cancel Burning Man.
But the main result of January 6 looks much more serious and tragic. In the United States, the traditional two-party structure and the archaic presidential election system have definitely failed. In a state that is proving the importance of democratic values at every corner, a man has come to power who, in a few phrases, can direct the crowd into battle against his own government. Trump, who came to power quite legally and democratically in 2016, also refused to legally and democratically transfer his powers. The events of January 6 will be included in textbooks and will become an excellent argument for opponents of democratic transformations. If the opinion of the minority is not taken into account, then they may well not take into account the opinion of the majority and by force to prove their case. If it turned out to be possible in Washington, then why not? A simple formula that destroys a democratic institution was vividly demonstrated in the American capital on January 6. And in Churchill's famous definition
Democracy is the worst form of government, with the exception of all others that have been tried from time to time
it's time to leave only the first part.
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