[petejh]

But, it’s already obvious that those officers were set up, by their own leaders, all that remains to be discovered is whether that set up was one of pure incompetence or pure corruption.

As someone else said yesterday, I always prefer to apply Occam's razor when looking at causes and explanations - which pretty much rules out anything smacking of a conspiracy theory. But this particular fish is beginning to stink to high heaven.

As I mentioned yesterday it smells to me like a third option, even though it's the most complicated, so seemingly the least likely. Which is that yes, the storming of Capitol was anticipated by the intelligence services, yes it was tacitly enabled by federal authorities, but it was enabled in order to destroy Trump and his family's legacy by their own actions, not to keep him in power. 'Hoist by his own petard' will be his legacy.

Look how utterly pathetic he's been made to look. He's a weaker more pathetic figure now than at any time in his political career and parts of his party are disowning him where previously they hadn't the nerve. Foreign leaders did the same the day after. They'll likely have been briefed on their intelligence services' view of the situation. As Matt alludes to, the protestors were just morons not focussed revolutionaries with a plan. Also looks to have been little orchestration in other areas of the US, just a potential tinder box of similar morons awaiting a spark which never came.

edit: also, it would have been relatively easy (relative to many other parts of the US that is) to control the carriage of firearms among that protest group in DC. Intelligence services could therefore risk assess the potential loss of life from that mob storming Capitol, and conclude that - providing law enforcement didn't panic and start shooting - the potential for loss of life would be 'relatively' low and the mob would be easily dispersed once support in numbers arrived.
It seems highly distasteful to suggest that tacitly allowing the trashing Capitol, loss of life, symbolism of white supremacists carrying flags through congress etc. may have been used to destroy Trump, but that's how it looks to me.

[Oldmanmatt]

I don't know if that's remotely fair, Matt.

I understand your argument but at what point does societal blame stop and personal responsibility/agency begin? I appreciate that this is a group of people who have been lied to for many years, systematically underfunded, fed bullshit by Fox etc. But they still have agency don't they? They are still responsible for their own actions.

They are dumb enough to wear they’re id badge to a riot with their face uncovered and actually pose for photos.

If we insist on focusing on the “programmed” and not the “programmers” or, to put it another way, fail to address the system that created these monsters. There will just be more monsters.
You say you have agency (so do I). Do you recognise when your agency is constrained? When your hand is forced?
Probably, I think (hope) I tend to.
But, and I suspect this applies to any poster on this forum, for a variety of reasons, we have learned, developed and discovered the tools that allow us to question our internal narrative and that of those around us.
I see the “they were lied to” and “they didn’t know what they were voting for” arguments advanced, repeatedly, by Brexit opponents. The insistence that people were fooled into their position and their vote manipulated. This is a commonly accepted view in many quarters, along with the accompanying ethos of “not blaming the voters”, of “blame the leaders”. Somehow, though, the same people advancing such arguments, simultaneously delineate (magically) between the “deceived”  and the “Dyed in the woad, xenophobic, racist, nationalists” that, like that fucking physicists cat, seem to occupy the same phase space.

I think, using those tools I’ve learned and developed, that the “manipulated” and “ lied to” are not mutually exclusive from, to or with “ nationalist” or “ racist” or “ xenophobic”.
That and every position in between.
I don’t think that it takes much effort to show, that a substantial number of people, are prone to manipulation by smarter sections of the population. That their agency is proscribed by both circumstance and their broader “societal” education. They are who they were taught to be.
Both history and fiction is replete with tales of those trapped or even doomed by their adherence to the codes and systems they were raised to believe in.
Jesus, take a total fiction, a story that is a story, because it represents an unusual, unthinkable, break from the accepted norm. Billy Elliot.
People able to break their program, are a minority, not the norm.

[tomtom]

Day 2 of reflection - having read and watched a few things about this process:

The level of belief that the Trump/Supremicist demonstrators had for this protest - that they would not get punished - that they felt that they could do this, it might work, and that they could get away with it is a really scary takeaway for me.

Its indicative of how empowered and legitimised these people now feel under trump - and with retrospect how they were/have been allowed to get away with it! Especially when compared with the BLM protests.

Shocking. And the message thats sent from this too... 

[andy popp]

Totally agree TT.

Two anecdotes. I have a friend in PA who took great pleasure yesterday in firing an employee picture climbing the Capitol walls.

I think you're seriously over-egging your argument Matt. I know lots of very progressive Americans who come from one or more of the following backgrounds: working class/blue collar/Fundamentalist Christian/ultra-conservative/gun rights/"redneck" - literally from an uneducated family living for generations in the same "holler" in Virginia. People do have choies.

@Pete - that third option just seems really implausible. It seems very high risk for something that might well not have worked ... and why bother so close to the end of his term? It doesn't add up to.

[petejh]

Implausible and high-risk certainly. The alternatives as mentioned are incompetence, or corruption of Capitol defences by the Trump side. I can also accept either or a combination of those being true.

Just that it looks like the most pathetically feeble coup attempt ever, as if a bunch of dumb animals wanted to storm the building, and when they got there they had nothing to say, no spokesperson and no thought-through agenda. Which is apt given their leader.

[abarro81]

Alex, I think it is semantics. I, and it seems Andy, take truth to have a slightly different meaning to fact. And a quick google suggests this is the generally accepted usage.

It's definitely semantics, but to me it still feels like an appropriation of the word in an attempt to lend extra authority to individual experience. This is what annoys me - for some reason I don't seem to mind it being used where it's clearly an approximation or exaggeration e.g. "the truth of the matter is that BoJo is a knob"

The first thing that I get on google is "in accordance with fact or reality", which would make it very hard to untie truth from fact. Maybe google gives us different results? Beyond the quick definition it looks like it rapidly morphs into a rabbit hole of philosophy. In any case I remain unconvinced that using it in what seems to me to be this "modern liberal" way is useful from the point of view of articulating things clearly, since it muddies the water around facts/"truth" (as I understand it) and opinions/beliefs/experiences. I'm also pretty convinced that it alienates a lot of people with any conservative (small c) leaning. Certainly does for me - if anyone uses truth in a relativist way (e.g. "we should try to understand each others' truths") I just want to kick them in the nuts really hard, and vote for whoever they're not voting for  .

A scientific analogy might be the facts of your research results vs the use of them to endorse your hypothesis as true (and yes I know about null hypotheses).

This is another rabbit hole, since I'd argue that science is largely just models that help us understand how things work, and it's very hard (impossible?) to really be sure that a hypothesis is "true", rather than just "true to the best of our knowledge" (i.e. we've not found something that's broken our model yet)

There are other things like this that wind me up, e.g. "findings of fact" in the legal system, where really they just mean "setting reasonable assumptions"

[ali k]

They are no more (and no less) deluded than a devout Catholic, Muslim or Hindu. Just as many of those “more obvious” groups are prone to radicalism, so too are these “American patriots and Christians”.

It’s a cult.

This is an interesting parallel to me. Why is it that, say, radical Islamism is seen as so much of a threat that there are intervention programs, and any preachers inciting violence can be arrested. Yet for about 6 or 7 years Trump has essentially been able to radicalise his supporters with the assistance of a major TV network, culminating in violence the other night and 5 people dying. Forget the BLM protests - imagine if the people storming the Capitol had been wearing headscarfs and shouting “Allahu Akbar” having just attended a rally with their leader. It didn’t exactly need an undercover surveillance operation to know what was likely to happen the other night.

[mrjonathanr]

Pete, you are suggesting that people who wanted a 'good' outcome deliberately let a 'bad' one develop because they thought they would control it if it escalated, give or take a few unfortunate lives lost. I think that is improbable.

More probable is a culture of connivance and incompetence on the part of decision makers at Capitol Police. But whatever it was, we agree that Trump is seriously diminished. Whether his base think that is another matter.

TT & andy - exactly, it is why people are arguing strongly for action now, rather than crossing fingers and letting two weeks slide by. Since Charlotteville the culture of impunity for the far right has been overtly condoned from the top, no surprise we are here now.

It is where we go to next that may have surprises.

[Bradders]

They are no more (and no less) deluded than a devout Catholic, Muslim or Hindu. Just as many of those “more obvious” groups are prone to radicalism, so too are these “American patriots and Christians”.

It’s a cult.

This is an interesting parallel to me. Why is it that, say, radical Islamism is seen as so much of a threat that there are intervention programs, and any preachers inciting violence can be arrested. Yet for about 6 or 7 years Trump has essentially been able to radicalise his supporters with the assistance of a major TV network, culminating in violence the other night and 5 people dying. Forget the BLM protests - imagine if the people storming the Capitol had been wearing headscarfs and shouting “Allahu Akbar” having just attended a rally with their leader. It didn’t exactly need an undercover surveillance operation to know what was likely to happen the other night.

Well the difference is simply power, and who holds it. In this instance, the mob were enabled by theoretically the most powerful man on earth.

Imagine if they'd tried to do the same thing in Taliban controlled Afghanistan, for example.

[mrjonathanr]

They are dumb enough to wear they’re id badge to a riot with their face uncovered and actually pose for photos.

If we insist on focusing on the “programmed” and not the “programmers” or, to put it another way, fail to address the system that created these monsters. There will just be more monsters.

Yes, 100%

People able to break their program, are a minority, not the norm.

I think this is exaggerating the situation. For the comfortable and well educated it's easy enough to question things when you are taught how, agreed. Swimming against the cultural tide can be hard, but there is a range of agency out there, it's not impossible for people to take some responsibility. You risk blurring understanding with excusing.

[SA Chris]

 

I like that someone had captioned this along the lines of

" As the acid wore off, Jamiroquai realised the way they were promoting the release of the new album wasn't such a good idea"

[Oldmanmatt]

They are no more (and no less) deluded than a devout Catholic, Muslim or Hindu. Just as many of those “more obvious” groups are prone to radicalism, so too are these “American patriots and Christians”.

It’s a cult.

This is an interesting parallel to me. Why is it that, say, radical Islamism is seen as so much of a threat that there are intervention programs, and any preachers inciting violence can be arrested. Yet for about 6 or 7 years Trump has essentially been able to radicalise his supporters with the assistance of a major TV network, culminating in violence the other night and 5 people dying. Forget the BLM protests - imagine if the people storming the Capitol had been wearing headscarfs and shouting “Allahu Akbar” having just attended a rally with their leader. It didn’t exactly need an undercover surveillance operation to know what was likely to happen the other night.

Exactly, and how many of you that disagree with me, simultaneously recognise the “rescue” of an individual from a given cult, or the “deprograming” of such individuals? The rehabilitation of offenders or addicts?
Anybody had CBT? Did it work? Why?
Who recognises the unconscious bias is a thing? A thing that has to be educated out of yourself, by conscious effort and plagued with slips and relapses into comfortable thought patterns? When did you realise that you have unconscious biases? What made you realise? What made you “choose” them in the first place?
No, sorry, whilst I agree there should be consequences for those people we were originally talking about, and I’m not actually trying to say they are blameless. The mitigation is glaring.
Andy, for every person who escaped that background, how many remain there?
I escaped my background.
I went to chapel, Sunday school. I suppose I always saw it as a chore and ditched as soon as I was allowed to.
But I believed in God and Jesus, I knew it. There wasn’t any point in arguing, because their existence was ineffable to mere mortals, so it didn’t matter that I couldn’t explain it all.
Around the same time I ditched Chapel (13 ish) a girl came to stay with us (actually two, Ruth and Ofra), my age, on exchange (my family was big on exchange programs. Thank fuck). I fell for Ruth big time. She was Jewish, fro, Haifa. I went out to spend a month there. Her family were pretty liberal, they ate “White Beef”, on the quiet, that sizzled in the pan. Went well with eggs. Israel was wonderful, nice people, people of god.
I saw Arabs. I had no idea that Allah and God were the same fella.
On TV, I saw scruffy Arabs, throwing stones and petrol bombs at smartly attired, disciplined ranks of “policemen”. My dad was a policeman. They were throwing petrol bombs at my dad (somebodies dad). I had empathy for the awful tales of holocaust and the relief of homeland. At home, in England, I saw Arabs on TV, often, hijacking airplanes, shooting hostages, blowing things up.
It wasn’t long before I forgot about Ruth. Too far away and there were other, tempting, delights closer to home.
I grew up. I grew old enough for my grandfather to tell me why he hated the Zionists (not the Jews, he was clear about that) and about the things that happened to his mates in British Administered Palestine. I mean, being snatch off the street, castrated and dumped back at the barracks gate with you tackle beside you, can offend a fellow.
I grew up and left the village. I learned, the black and white turned first gray and then a muddy, cloudy, viscous, shit colour.
By the time I returned to Haifa, was deployed to Haifa in a smart blue uniform, in the autumn of 1990; the place and the people looked very different. I no longer believed in god.
I was married, but I looked Ruth up. Met her in a cafe. She was in olive combats, she had a Uzi on one shoulder and a handbag on the other. She was still pretty. Never spoke to her again.
See, I was different, because I learned to be different. I learned to be different because I left my village, my echo chamber, my people.
I can, today, take you to meet the people I was at primary school with, who never left that village, and never learned.
Yes, I know quite a few who left, like me and I’m still friendly with them and they are urbane and sophisticated.
One girl, who never left, fits that description too (artist/photographer).
Nevertheless I can introduce you to many more (note more, not all) who had no reason to leave, and didn’t.
A few years back, long before Brexit, I went home for my grandmother’s funeral. Spent the weekend there, wake, doing the rounds, catching up.
Fuck but I nearly cracked a molar!
I have never ground my teeth so hard or long or choked down a desperate need to tell people to go fuck themselves with porcupine with such difficulty.

I have not gone back.

People are who they are programmed to be. I am who I was programmed to be.
I did not leave the village because I thought there was something wrong with the village. I left because I had romantic notions of travelling the world (I quite literally “ran away to sea” about nine days after my 18th). I had those notions from reading Tom Sawyer and the like. It’s only looking back and the accident of learning after, that I see the idyllic village of my childhood, warped in Royston Vassey.

I hope you can see the analogy in that.

[petejh]

If I may say Matt, that comes across as pretty patronising. You have to ask what came first - the tendency to open-mindedness and desire to travel and experience diverse cultures? Or the travelling and experiencing diverse cultures? Sure, the second can reinforce the first (or sometimes not!).
 There will be people in your ‘Royston vassey’ village with a spectrum of views, from high to low open-mindedness, more or less accepting of change and diversity. Sure, people who travelled lots and live/work in different areas tend towards more open-mindedness and acceptance of change and diversity. But I believe most people find it a bit tedious to listen to them preaching.
There’s good and bad in people, not in the places they live.
That’s not to completely dismiss the role played by environment.

[Oldmanmatt]

If I may say Matt, that comes across as pretty patronising. You have to ask what came first - the tendency to open-mindedness and desire to travel and experience diverse cultures? Or the travelling and experiencing diverse cultures? Sure, the second can reinforce the first (or sometimes not!).
 There will be people in your ‘Royston vassey’ village with a spectrum of views, from high to low open-mindedness, more or less accepting of change and diversity. Sure, people who travelled lots and live/work in different areas tend towards more open-mindedness and acceptance of change and diversity. But I believe most people find it a bit tedious to listen to them preaching.
There’s good and bad in people, not in the places they live.
That’s not to completely dismiss the role played by environment.

Yes Pete.
There are and the village has grown hugely in recent years and a variety of people, from all over, have moved in. The village of my childhood, no longer exists, but that village, that now exists only in the heads of those who were there, is the village that I described as Royston Vassey.
My point is, many of the people, who lived in that long gone village, metaphorically, still do.
You can find them standing by the swings, in the playing field, pushing their Grandchildren and griping about the ladies doing yoga under the willow tree.
When it was me, sat on the swing, being pushed, it was a different set of Grandparents, griping about my mother running her landscape painting class under the same willow and mentally living in a completely different village again, that also had ceased to exist.

If it seemed patronising, it wasn’t intended to be. The fact (are we allowed to say that? I avoided “truth”) is, plenty of of my old friends are utter bigots. Unthinkingly so, no concept of what I mean when I write that. Frankly, nothing shines a laser on my own, ingrained and innate bigotry and biases, than being shown the things I had forgotten I was (and, worse, how much I still am).
But, with all that said, I’m not saying they are bad people, or that the village was bad. It isn’t/wasn’t and they are/weren’t because they were/are just what their environment and experiences made them.
Sometimes, people are just a bit different or (I think more likely) something happens, that creates a question, that starts a search, that leads them off in an unexpected direction.
Out of the metaphorical village.
Some people, for what ever reason, never feel the itch of the question, or get distracted and forget they ever had any questions.

People live in the villages of their minds. The fact ( sorry) that some outsider can see all the flaws and contradictions, and then wonder why the fuck these people haven’t left to join them in the observer’s obviously better village; is irrelevant. The observed simply has no clue that any other village can exist.
Oh they are aware that there’s another village across the valley, but their mental image of that village is, more or less, the same as their own.
They are probably aware, that there is a village, on an island in the South Pacific (or anywhere too far away to be immediate) but that’s so alien, it’s just “other”.

Now, my experience of the US, was one of insular communities, in a lot of places. Even San Jose, which is really just a southern extension of San Francisco. Ok, that was pre-CNN but there was a single, 24 hr, news channel. It was 24 hrs of Bay area news, midday and evening there was 15-20 minutes of State, National and International news. I was 14, Ken, the guy I was on the exchange with, when he’d been in England and at my school (most of the year before, so 13) couldn’t point out Britain on a map.
Yes, the majority of people in the US live in large, cosmopolitan, mental villages; the popular vote is plenty of evidence for that.
However, in a nation the size and population of a continent, there are (always going to be) a large number of people in very small, metaphorical and literal villages, and they don’t realise it.

No, I have no idea where all this is coming from and I’m sure it’s incredibly boring.
Ultimately, it’s wrong to write off that entire crowd or the movement in it’s entirety as “Nazis”. Some of them are, some, probably more, are not. They’re all kinds of different things and each a product of their own environment and education.
That’s where the failings come in. They have been ignored, glossed over, marginalised. Somebody (or several somebodies) spotted that and has been systematically twisting that environment and eduction into the shit you saw yesterday.
A bit like everything leading up to me, for reasons I don’t quite grasp, spewing a mountain of blather here.

   

[El Mocho]

...the village... ...but that village... ...utter bigots... in the village
   

sorry.

[mrjonathanr]

Matt, if I were mad enough to look on 8chan and Parler I am sure there would be plenty who would seem totally 'down the rabbit'/ 'programmed'/ in a cult etc.

And their environment plays a huge role in that. But it is not totally deterministic, and there are plenty who make choices they have the agency to make differently. This philosophy has been debated plenty down the centuries, but making due allowance for the bad luck to be born who and where they were does not absolve them of resposnibility.

In any case, like you say, the focus should be systemic, that is where the solutions lie.

[andy popp]

...the village... ...but that village... ...utter bigots... in the village
   

sorry.

[Oldmanmatt]

...the village... ...but that village... ...utter bigots... in the village
   

sorry.

Ummm...

Yup. Exactly.

Idles are better though.

Total aside, whilst driving back from the supermarket, I was hit by a memory.
I could remember when I stopped believing in god. Because that was when I left the village, long before I actually went.
It wasn’t the reading, I reckon that would have stayed in my head and I would have been happy lost in a book.

I had a map of Cornwall on my bedroom wall.
That’s what did it.

Anybody remember “Threads”?
BBC mini series. Basically dramatising the utter shit storm that life in Britain would be, post nuclear war.

I lived almost exactly six miles from RAF St Mawgan, then NATO North Atlantic command and home to the Vulcan squadron. The sky would go dark, for a surprisingly long time, when they rehearsed their full squadron scramble. I thought it fucking impressive. The roar was gut twisting.

Anyway, after Threads, I picked up a compass and from a Telegraph article, drew some blast radii for various Soviet missile types and yields around St Mawgan.

Apparently I wouldn’t have to worry too much about life after a nuclear stike.

I lost a fair bit of sleep and religion.

[SA Chris]

https://www.revolt.tv/news/2021/1/7/22219433/man-died-at-us-capitol-tasering-himself

Think the tasering bit is true?

[DAVETHOMAS90]

Just getting up to speed with this.
Some great discussion.

I still think it's remarkably easy to be deceived by the experience, the feeling, of doing the right thing.

I like the concept of "Conceit" in Buddhism:

https://buddhasadvice.wordpress.com/2014/03/31/conceit/

The experience of our "Self" in doing. "I can feel it in my bones" belief.

Andy P, how many of us allow for the contingency of fact you reference in your post about history?

We (the righteous ones - fucking privileged) are deciding that the actions of others - "the mob" - are wrong. Aren't we in the process of attempting to confirm our own prejudices, as much as anyone?

I agree with OMM, and his question of agency - and if I understand your position well enough Matt, also blame (in and of itself). On the latter, it seems you are balancing benefit and accountability, which doesn't seem unreasonable.

The reference to Brexit, the equivalence of the arguments, seems quite clear. The Axis of Evil is the orchestrated development of prejudice against Muslims.

So often we want to protect the experience of our "Self", to defend it from annihilation. We don't realise what we're trying "to make true".

OMM, agree with you about the total conviction, in belief, of the guy with the work ID.

The question of agency is as difficult (or harder) to wrestle with, as the notion that "someone's in charge" - "someone needs to be blamed for things going wrong".

We can set things up, so that there is greater balance between opposing views, but even that is fraught with difficulty (lazy, need to finish this post, copout phrase).

I remember the "Kettling" in Sheffield, at the time of the Lib Dem conference in 2011:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-south-yorkshire-12722735

For me, that felt as must about silencing a voice, shutting out a belief, as anything.

Do I think of anyone marching into the Capitol building a "moron"? Absolutely not.

I'm inclined Prussia towards Andy's view about the security measures, or lack of - which is why I referenced the above.

That said, consider the importance and symbolism of the occasion, and try to balance that with the numbers "marching". I'll try to check the numbers, if possible, or does anyone have that info/already posted? The (very hard to understand) low key approach to security, could be a reflection of intelligence at the time about the likely scale of protest. Possibly. ?

Seems absurd when compared to the level of policing at protests in the UK - or the resources directed towards a tree felling site in Nether Edge, Sheffield.

Who's to blame? A lot of us probably, for balancing risking what's comfortable, against the risks of doing something to change things for the better.

Sorry if this is a repeat of much of the above.

Edit:

Quote OMM, which I thought:
"However, I think the question of security at the Capitol yesterday is the crucial one." And Andy's stinking fish allusion, which I've referred to.

[mrjonathanr]

 

Looks like Trump booked some redneck Village People tribute for his version M.A.G.A.

[Oldmanmatt]

 

Looks like Trump booked some redneck Village People tribute for his version M.A.G.A.

Yes.
Though this speaks to my take on their “agency”, I’m not quite as generous as Dave, I think some of the people in that were incapable of agency through education and educational ability. I don’t know how to phrase that. Anyone familiar with the Derek Bentley travesty? Or Styllou Christofi (less travesty of justice, but an interesting take on “what’s normal or right , in the village, isn’t outside the village” angle)?

Anyway, Chris beat me with the Tased nuts story, coz I could find the tweets again quickly enough.
Pure “Naked Gun”. You couldn’t make it up:



I dunno, I guess he has agency, I guess he was “making his own choices” but , I’m not convinced he was equipped for the task.
 

[mrjonathanr]

Over-equipped, you might say.

Just read this, on the anger in the bottom half of US society. You may like it:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jan/08/trump-homegrown-fascism-inequality-poverty

[Falling Down]

What about a 4th Option Pete?

Flynn/Prince/GRU etc. with a smaller cadre of conspirators (the ex-military guys with plates, guns and cableties) with a clear mission amongst the largely naive Trump driven herd of ‘protestors’.

It looks to me like there were two distinct groups in the ‘mob’ some of whom with clearer intent than the majority.

The fish really stinks.

[Oldmanmatt]

What about a 4th Option Pete?

Flynn/Prince/GRU etc. with a smaller cadre of conspirators (the ex-military guys with plates, guns and cableties) with a clear mission amongst the largely naive Trump driven herd of ‘protestors’.

It looks to me like there were two distinct groups in the ‘mob’ some of whom with clearer intent than the majority.

The fish really stinks.

The boxes and the Reps were gone when they got there.

It’s the same with the gallows.

Like I said, if a hinge had failed or one of those cabinets in the barricaded door, had fallen; it’s very likely today would have had a very different flavour.

Also,
Highly unlikely that any serious players would have been waving flags or posing for pictures. Or even out in front. They’ll be (if they’re there) in the background.