TRUMP's RIOT. How Could It Have Been Anything Else?

You see that shining city on the hill? The one that conservative icon Ronald

Reagan made glowing reference to? The city that emanated the light of

democratic hope and opportunity to the rest of the world? Guess what? It’s

not shining. It’s on fire. And Donald Trump is the arsonist-in-chief.

After the stomach-wrenching sight of hordes of fascists, and let’s call them for

what they are, storming the Capitol, Donald Trump has incited not only a riot,

but a seditious insurrection. His four-year long campaign against American

democracy, which was far from perfect in the first place, has brought the

country to its political knees. The rest of the world looks on, and if it isn’t

horrified, it guffaws with laughter.

Let’s not forget, the US championed itself as the post-War arsenal of an ideal

democracy, despite frequently bombing and / or covertly undermining any

number of other sovereign states to comply with “Western (aka American)

values.” And now, if what had happened in the Capitol had happened in another

country on another continent, the State Department would be issuing

condemnations galore and the country would rightly be designated as a failed

state.

After four years of Trump, the United States standing in the world has now

changed irreversibly for the worse.

Geo-political ramifications of Trump aside, let’s focus internally, on the MAGA

and authorities boots on the ground when the riot took place. The United

States spends over a trillion dollars a year on its military and intelligence. So

how the hell did they not spot the storming of the Capitol coming? Right-wing

conspiratorial social media was dripping with all sorts of threats and malice as

to what was going to happen on January 6 th . That’s low hanging fruit by anyone’s

standards. Yet nobody seemed to pick it.

Days before the chaos, it was widely reported that 7,000 National Guard had

been drafted into DC in anticipation of the pro-Trump protests. So where were

they when the rioters began to breach the outer security perimeters of the

Capitol? Surely they should have been on site and, if not, at least within close

distance to respond to any emergency situation. But they were not. They were

ridiculously conspicuous by their absence.

Now that alone is wholly unacceptable. However, it becomes a travesty when

one considers the Black Lives Matter (BLM) march through DC back in the

summer. The police and National Guard were out in force – armed and ready.

They cast an intimidating shadow of menace over the whole event, an event that

was simply about real, genuine social justice and genuinely liberating non-white

people from the shackles of twenty-first century American pseudo-slavery,

intimidation and injustice.

Or how about Trump’s staged photo-op when he walked from the grounds of the

White House, through Lafayette Square, to hold a Bible up (upside down) in

front of St. John’s Church after he had pre-emptively deployed heavily armed,

tear-gas wielding security forces to disperse peaceful protestors?

It is blatantly obvious that the security apparatus of this country, no matter

what it is labelled and at whatever level it functions, is skewed heavily in favor

of the white privilege establishment. Love him or hate him, or somewhere in

between, at least Biden quickly flagged up that there is enormous gulf between

the way the MAGA insurrection at the Capitol was handled and any number of

BLM or progressive marches or protests are marshalled in comparison.

Be under no illusions. Donald Trump never made one single person in the US a

racist. That’s because they already were, by the millions. No, what Trump’s

God-awful tenure did was allow them to come out of their stinking woodwork and

from underneath their putrid rocks and be openly brazen about their hatred.

Trump is an epic failure and has been at so many things in his nasty, bile-filled

existence. However, one thing he is very good at? Enabling others. And in this

case, those “others” are the racists, the fascists, the bigots, the KKK and a

huge swathe of those that stormed the Capitol.

Now we have gotten to this desperate nadir in US history, here cometh the GOP

pearl clutching and howls of indignation against Trump. Ok, so where the hell

were you all for the last four years? You didn’t have to be a fortune-teller to

see this one coming. More damningly, why does it always need the white

establishment to be rocked by an event before anything meaningful gets done?

The black and non-white community have been howling in anguish for centuries

and still they are singled out and told to shut up, don’t kneel and stop resisting

(unlawful) arrest and lethal restraint.

Finally, Trump’s days are coming to an end. His legacy however will not be

disappearing any time soon. The white supremacist genie is well and truly out of

the bottle. The only chance to try and get that damn thing back in the bottle is

genuine social and economic reform outside of the tired and stale two-party

system – which is essentially a play-thing of the billionaire class in this country

in any event.

It was never going to be anything else other than this with a dangerous buffoon

such as Trump. We have to, absolutely have to, now seize the moment, re-

double, then re-triple our efforts, organize, resist and fight on so that not only

the nightmare of Trump never happens again, but so that non-white people in

the US can finally be free.