. . .
K “Then I had no doubt. Now I do. A more reasoned and seasoned analysis has slowly supplanted a quick emotional reaction. And I have had time to learn more, talk with many others and give it more thought.”
J “Three years later, I have no doubt. It was an insurrection.”
. . .
K “Someone who voted and will vote for Biden and anyone else foisted on this country by the DNC pulled me aside and confessed that he is deeply troubled that his law enforcement friends on the inside told him they were expressly ordered to stand down and not call for reinforcements in the face of a disorderly group. A piece of uncontroverted evidence from his trusted old home boys shared over coffee still rattles him three years later. He is on the first step on the road to Truth, but he admits that he does not and will not take another step.”
J “No one on the inside forced them to climb the walls and break through the barriers and enter the building. Someone on the outside encouraged them to climb the walls and break through the barriers and enter the building.”
. . .
K “I worked near Jenkins Hill fifty years ago when Washington, D.C. was a sleepy southern town with modest security and muggy summers. In 1974, a few harmless citizens started chanting for a change in our Southeast Asian war policy at the southwest base of the Hill. The area is north of Independence Avenue and just west of First Street, Southwest. I was in the Rayburn Building and saw the walls pivot open and discharge phalanxes of SWAT teams that barged through the crowd and charged outside to confront the citizens. I was asked to and did immediately leave the building and was positioned outside to chronicle the confrontation. The police presence was so overwhelming and the citizens were so well mannered that nothing came of it. The police allowed the citizens to flash signs and chant for change but not enter the building. No one was hurt. No one was arrested. The First Amendment was not bruised. Since those bucolic days, the level of security – visible and largely hidden – has mushroomed and created an impregnable fortress with fluted columns on the Hill.”
J “I vaguely recall getting drafted by someone on a blustery, nasty, rainy and chilly Saturday morning to attend a demonstration to get the country out of Iraq. We walked from the Capitol South Metro station to the same southwest side of the Hill. The police had designated an area to congregate surrounded by a circular ring of blue motor scooters, officers astride horses and two rows of officers equipped for war. A few speakers spoke to the fifty or so folks without incident and then everyone disbanded to go home and get dry and warm. The Metro was dry and warm. The police do know how to put the populace in their place.”
K “I have been charged by one of those phalanxes . . . and felt sympathy for the horses.”
. . .
K “After the riots broke out after King was terminated in 1968, I remember the newspaper picture of members of the 82nd Airborne drilling multiple triangles of holes to bolt tripods to the top of the western wall of the Capitol. The rioters were approaching street by street from the northwest.”
J “They meant business. They need to mean business. It can be a mean business.”
. . .
K “I believe everyone should be required to take off his or her shoes and to wear some more formal attire to enter, so you can put me down as one who does not countenance anyone breaking anything or breaching an entrance without permission.”
J “From what I saw, no one even wiped his or her shoes before entering.”
. . .
K “If I had not been subject to a self-imposed Covid travel embargo, I would have been there in person on the Mall with my reporter’s notebook and Steve Job’s Hasselblad on January 6, 2021 to chronicle the event.”
. . .
K “We need to include a discussion of the Tractorcade events of February 5, 1979 on the agenda. I did not have a camera then. Or a cell phone. That was quite a spectacle. The snow rained on their parade.”
. . .
K “Keep it simple. Occam’s Razor comes into play again yet is applied differently than in your prior application. There is one rule in this situation that has no exception: No one gets into the Capitol unless allowed into the Capitol by those in the Capitol. If you knew nothing about the situation and applied only Occam’s Razor, any plausible explanation must comport with this one fundamental rule. The Capitol is Joint Base House-Senate.”
J “I restate my case. No one on the inside forced them to climb the walls and break through the barriers and enter the building. Someone on the outside encouraged them to climb the walls and break through the barriers and enter the building.”
. . .
K “There is more to the story. For the sake of the country, the country needs to empanel an impartial committee to provide an inquiry into what went on that day. Keep in mind the people we are dealing with up there, Democrats and Republicans. On their best day, they are ruthless and amoral. Many of them could get the Devil to gag. Everything is always more complex than it initially appears.”
J “Or more simple.”
. . .
[See the e-commentary at On Riots And Rampages (January 11, 2021).]
Bumper stickers of the week:
Be skeptical
Be very skeptical
Be profoundly skeptical
The Capitol is Joint Base House-Senate
Near the end of the movie “Rancho Deluxe”, Slim Pickens said to Henry Dean Stanton: “Son, all large-scale crime is always an inside job.”
e-commentary 