The Washington Post has a long piece looking at these regular folks who took a break from their regular folks' life to storm the U.S. Capitol, attack the police officers who defended it, and contribute to an attempt to overthrow the government. What it doesn't have is much in the way of actual explanations.
That's a bit of a disappointment, considering that we know quite a bit about how the crowd was radicalized. Then again, if it were The New York Times we were talking about we'd have three reporters all tag-teaming us to show that each Biff and Mary Jane in the crowd were just trying to be "real Americans" who flew into Washington D.C. directly on the wings of an airborne diner and were only wandering through the haze of tear gas because somebody told them there was another diner just off the Senate cloakroom. We'll take what we can get.
Still, though, the facts remain. While many of those who took place in an orchestrated attempt to intimidate Congress into nullifying a Republican election loss were "were an array of everyday Americans that included community leaders, small-business owners, teachers, and yoga instructors," and while "about 573" of those facing prosecution "have no known affiliation with an extremist group," Ma and Pa America came to town specifically to answer a call from Donald Trump asking for warm bodies to come "march" on the U.S. Capitol as plan to overturn a democratic election.
They're affiliated with an extremist group, all right. It's the extremist group known as "people propagandized into believing democracy had collapsed because a delusional narcissist who—backed by a majority of the Republican Party, conservative media, and the dregs of Facebook—insisted without evidence that he—a man who oversaw a half million pandemic deaths, was impeached for corruption, cratered the U.S. economy and is now widely known as a rapist and tax cheat—could not possibly have lost a U.S. election unless the liberals and the socialists stole it from him."
We're working on a shorter identifier. "Seditionists" will work fine, however.
Despite the wide representation of lifestyles represented by those who responded to Trump calls— featuring everyone from white conservative real estate agents who believed themselves too important to go to jail to white conservative yoga instructors who believed themselves too important to go to jail—everyone in the crowd shared a common belief that they acted on well before they partnered with violent militia members to storm the Capitol by force. Each were there that day because:
• They were furious that Donald Trump had not won the election.
• They were willing to believe, based solely on Republican propaganda claims, that he had not won the election because their political enemies had "stolen" it from their rightful winner.
• They were willing to respond to a call to come to Washington, D.C., for a "rally" or "march" specifically sold as an attempt to intimidate Congress into overturning the results of the election so that Trump could retain power.
They agreed to take part in an attempted coup not when they turned violent and caused the certification of the election results to be temporarily halted as lawmakers fled from the mob. They agreed to take part in an attempted coup when they responded to Trump's call to assemble in Washington for the explicit purpose of challenging the election. Each in the crowd was of the belief, in that moment, that their own personal feelings were reason enough to challenge the peaceful transfer of power that marks our democracy.
Whether they believed the lies justifying the attempt or did not is irrelevant; even if they did, their proposed solution was to demand that Congress ignore the Constitution and erase the election's results. They did not care that none of the supposed legal experts on the case were able to provide proof compelling enough to convince a single federal court of their claim. They did not care that, of the uncountable number of officials whose jobs center on protecting the integrity of their elections, none were stepping forward to provide evidence of such corruptions.
They came to the conclusion that because nobody else inside or outside their movement had been successful in validating Republican claims of fraud, they would use their own bodies to assist an effort to erase the election loss regardless. They knew what Trump had called them there to do. They knew that it was timed to coincide, exactly, with the official acknowledgment of the election's results by a joint session of Congress. They knew that their purpose was to assemble to help foil that constitutional task.
If the crowd was self-selected for those willing to quickly descend into violence to get what they demanded, it is not a surprise. The crowd consisted of those in America who were specifically willing to challenge the Constitution and the election both, rather than abide a loss. It was a crowd of those both eager to believe conspiracies and convinced that they themselves were the tools that would set things right. If those real estate agents or yoga instructors were only haphazard in their violence, compared to the professional militants who more methodically attacked police and went hunting for lawmakers, it was due to their inexperience.
I do not think we need to have much sympathy for Trump supporters whose first acts of political violence were in support of an American insurrection that threatened, however incompetently and implausibly, the peaceful transfer of democratic power. Attempting to erase an election through the use of physical intimidation is an unforgivable crime against the country, whether or not the resulting violence was premeditated or only opportunistic. It is absolutely the sort of crime that should ruin a person's career and social status, and the sort of crime that suggests the perpetrator values the grievances bouncing around in their own head far more than they value the society and laws that look to constrain them.
Yes, a number are sorry now that they understand that Republican leaders fed them a series of absolute lies in order to goad them into action. But they were still goaded into action. Even if the lies they believed had been true, it was this crowd that decided the appropriate response was to ignore the elections officials, courtroom rulings, and law, taking it upon themselves to erase it all and declare themselves the final arbiters of which elections are valid and which are not.
That's a bit of a disappointment, considering that we know quite a bit about how the crowd was radicalized. Then again, if it were The New York Times we were talking about we'd have three reporters all tag-teaming us to show that each Biff and Mary Jane in the crowd were just trying to be "real Americans" who flew into Washington D.C. directly on the wings of an airborne diner and were only wandering through the haze of tear gas because somebody told them there was another diner just off the Senate cloakroom. We'll take what we can get.
Still, though, the facts remain. While many of those who took place in an orchestrated attempt to intimidate Congress into nullifying a Republican election loss were "were an array of everyday Americans that included community leaders, small-business owners, teachers, and yoga instructors," and while "about 573" of those facing prosecution "have no known affiliation with an extremist group," Ma and Pa America came to town specifically to answer a call from Donald Trump asking for warm bodies to come "march" on the U.S. Capitol as plan to overturn a democratic election.
They're affiliated with an extremist group, all right. It's the extremist group known as "people propagandized into believing democracy had collapsed because a delusional narcissist who—backed by a majority of the Republican Party, conservative media, and the dregs of Facebook—insisted without evidence that he—a man who oversaw a half million pandemic deaths, was impeached for corruption, cratered the U.S. economy and is now widely known as a rapist and tax cheat—could not possibly have lost a U.S. election unless the liberals and the socialists stole it from him."
We're working on a shorter identifier. "Seditionists" will work fine, however.
Despite the wide representation of lifestyles represented by those who responded to Trump calls— featuring everyone from white conservative real estate agents who believed themselves too important to go to jail to white conservative yoga instructors who believed themselves too important to go to jail—everyone in the crowd shared a common belief that they acted on well before they partnered with violent militia members to storm the Capitol by force. Each were there that day because:
• They were furious that Donald Trump had not won the election.
• They were willing to believe, based solely on Republican propaganda claims, that he had not won the election because their political enemies had "stolen" it from their rightful winner.
• They were willing to respond to a call to come to Washington, D.C., for a "rally" or "march" specifically sold as an attempt to intimidate Congress into overturning the results of the election so that Trump could retain power.
They agreed to take part in an attempted coup not when they turned violent and caused the certification of the election results to be temporarily halted as lawmakers fled from the mob. They agreed to take part in an attempted coup when they responded to Trump's call to assemble in Washington for the explicit purpose of challenging the election. Each in the crowd was of the belief, in that moment, that their own personal feelings were reason enough to challenge the peaceful transfer of power that marks our democracy.
Whether they believed the lies justifying the attempt or did not is irrelevant; even if they did, their proposed solution was to demand that Congress ignore the Constitution and erase the election's results. They did not care that none of the supposed legal experts on the case were able to provide proof compelling enough to convince a single federal court of their claim. They did not care that, of the uncountable number of officials whose jobs center on protecting the integrity of their elections, none were stepping forward to provide evidence of such corruptions.
They came to the conclusion that because nobody else inside or outside their movement had been successful in validating Republican claims of fraud, they would use their own bodies to assist an effort to erase the election loss regardless. They knew what Trump had called them there to do. They knew that it was timed to coincide, exactly, with the official acknowledgment of the election's results by a joint session of Congress. They knew that their purpose was to assemble to help foil that constitutional task.
If the crowd was self-selected for those willing to quickly descend into violence to get what they demanded, it is not a surprise. The crowd consisted of those in America who were specifically willing to challenge the Constitution and the election both, rather than abide a loss. It was a crowd of those both eager to believe conspiracies and convinced that they themselves were the tools that would set things right. If those real estate agents or yoga instructors were only haphazard in their violence, compared to the professional militants who more methodically attacked police and went hunting for lawmakers, it was due to their inexperience.
I do not think we need to have much sympathy for Trump supporters whose first acts of political violence were in support of an American insurrection that threatened, however incompetently and implausibly, the peaceful transfer of democratic power. Attempting to erase an election through the use of physical intimidation is an unforgivable crime against the country, whether or not the resulting violence was premeditated or only opportunistic. It is absolutely the sort of crime that should ruin a person's career and social status, and the sort of crime that suggests the perpetrator values the grievances bouncing around in their own head far more than they value the society and laws that look to constrain them.
Yes, a number are sorry now that they understand that Republican leaders fed them a series of absolute lies in order to goad them into action. But they were still goaded into action. Even if the lies they believed had been true, it was this crowd that decided the appropriate response was to ignore the elections officials, courtroom rulings, and law, taking it upon themselves to erase it all and declare themselves the final arbiters of which elections are valid and which are not.