Trump’s Fault
Published at 09:31 on 7 January 2021
I will start with a premise: an insurrection of the sort we just saw can be a valid tactic.
I am not going to get sucked into a lengthy digression on the legitimacy of political violence, and I appreciate that many reading this will disagree with me on this subject. Peter Gelderloos makes makes many of the arguments that motivate my beliefs, and I direct you to those for now. Maybe I will go into details of my own beliefs, and where they differ from Gelderloos’, sometime in the future here.
For now, however, I will stick with the point I made above. Whether or not you personally believe it, I believe it, and I am not alone. I am not alone, and such beliefs are not limited to those on the radical left. In fact, they are more common on the political right than on the left. Also note that I said can be above; my statement was not a blanket endorsement for casually engaging in political violence for any reason whatsoever.
Suppose, for sake of argument, the election really was being stolen by a cabal of Castro fans who wanted to implement a USSR-style dictatorship in the USA. It’s a preposterous assertion, given the current reality, but just give it a whirl. Suppose Congress was about to finalize the whole process by certifying a fraudulent election. Keep in mind how brutal and violent the Soviet system often was. Could it not be reasonable to then use a little force to stop that whole process?
None of the above actually is the case, of course. The rub is, many believe it to be the case. And for those who believe such things, actions like those which took place yesterday are only reasonable and to be expected.
Why do so many people believe those untrue things? Because the president, and his enablers in Congress, and his enablers in the media, keep saying them!
Therefore, yes, Trump (and his many enablers) are very much responsible for yesterday’s attempted putsch.