There were planned protests or demonstrations or gatherings in Washington, DC and other places across the United States yesterday in favor of Donald Trump's claims that he won the election in November, and it was stolen from him. He called it a "sacred landslide", which must mean losing badly and is kind of opposite to a normal landslide outcome in an election. He also encouraged protesters to keep fighting.
The occasion was that Congress was meeting in joint session to certify the votes of the Electoral College. Trump and his ilk have been disparaging the results of the election since before the election, making claims of illegal votes and illegal counts, and all sorts of other unsupported claims about how his campaign was mistreated in the election, but when given chances in court, never even attempted to show any evidence. The whole effort was pathetic and sad, because it had no substance.
His supporters decided to try something to stop the certification. They marched on the Capital building, and pushed their way in. They took a few pictures, made a few messes, stole a couple of things, and then looked around, wondering what to do next, or so it seems. The Capital was sort of occupied by protesters for an hour or two, I guess, and in some places, outside, I think, there were injuries and four deaths. One protester, a Air Force veteran, was shot by police and died. more than a dozen police officers were injured, some seriously, in the clashes. In the end, though, the protesters had no plan, and so all they accomplished, other than an unsuccessful and very short insurrection against the United States, was a few hours' delay in the certification. The actual process, including the debate periods for the two states that both congressional representatives and at least one senator objected to, took longer than the entire insurrection.
It would be nice if I could just think about the historical nature of the objections. They were not based in substance. There were claims of possible fraud, but no evidence of any. The main idea put forth by the objectors was that "millions of Americans think there may have been problems with this election." So said the people spreading the lies, many originating with President Trump, that there were problems with the election. So let's go around saying that the election was screwed up, and then when people believe us because we shouted so much, we can say, "Hey, let's now count the votes from this election because so many people think it was screwed up." Not because there was actually any problem with the election; only because we got people to say they weren't sure there were no problems with the election.
Fortunately, only seven senators supported the objections to the electoral votes in Pennsylvania and only six for Arizona. A bunch of Republican representatives did, but the objections still lost badly in the House votes, and only two states instead of five or six even went through the charade of objection. It was a crass political exercise that probably did great harm to American democracy, and caused all of Congress to stay up late, but should still be discussed and reviewed so people understand how it completely lacked legitimacy. We need people to demand substance in allegations. We need standards of evidence, and standards of behavior, and we need accountability for those who don't meet those standards.
But now we have the distraction of an insurrection, incited by the president of the United States. A useless, pathetic gesture that will be remembered in history just because it happened at the United States Capital. Incompetent, uninformed people with unfocused anger and no direction or vision felt compelled to do something, so they did something stupid and destructive, and now probably just want to be left alone. I hope they aren't. I hope they are prosecuted for insurrection and every other law they broke. I hope at least some of them spend decades in prison, and that their lives are ruined. And I hope everyone is frequently reminded of their fate, and how much they deserved it, so no one will ever do something so stupid again.
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