His comments in the capitol siege thread were reprehensible.
What’d he say?
Basically that Democrats are to blame for Republicans wanting to do this and that if the mob no longer trusts American democracy, our country deserves to be torn down and rebuilt from the ashes. Basically the worst possible fusion of resentment politics and social contract theory.
This was the most egregious part of what he said:
Plus no building is no important than the Capitol. That's just sacred. You don't touch that.
It's great when the neolibs' masks slip just enough that you can plainly see that their true fidelity is to mere physical presentations of state power (i.e., literal buildings) and other objects, lol. Power resides in people, not buildings. If the U.S. Capitol ever becomes a symbol of a system of civil government that does not serve the best interests of the people, then it will deserve to be burned to the ground.
Like I said, if Joe Biden had any balls (like I wish he did), he would be declaring provisional government and martial law tonight. Would he, if successful, destory the system of government that keeps Republicans artifically in power? Probably yes, but that's the price that has to be paid to reconstitute our belief in a government that works for "the majority" (defined however the mob wishes.) This isn't a Republican or Democrat thing, it's a matter of renewing our right to self-determination and refreshing the civil state (which really hasn't been seriously updated since the New Deal/WWII.)
Scott, once again, captures my thoughts on today's happenings almost perfectly:
The system is broken and it needs to be rebuilt from the ground-up. I don't care who sparks it, but this is actually a moment for the disenfranchised and the cynics on both the left and right to retake the country for ourselves.
That the mob, as some sort of reward for their actions, should be allowed to dictate exactly how a new American system of government will work. Saying that a few thousand violent extremists should be allowed to impose their agenda unilaterally on the rest of the country? That’s not clever, sophisticated or intellectual. It’s just straight up moronic.
I will commit one of Atlas' cardinal sins and post in my own "opinion of" thread.
FWIW, the "mob" I was referring to in my post was not
the mob breeching the Capitol but a more abstract "mob" representing the prevailing majoritarian opinion. Last week's aimless, selfie-taking group of rioters never seriously threatened to decapitate our system of Constitutional government. For that to have happened, it would have taken something quite more spectacular: contemporaneous uprisings around the country, a military/LEO "stand down," inaction on the part of our NATO allies, etc. We never even approached that point; not even the same universe, even.
But...play with the thought experiment I posited in the Capitol riot thread.
What if Biden went on national TV after the riots and said "These are dangerous insurrectionists. The current president empowered them. I have a popular mandate. I will assume power immediately. I ask the military, Federal bureaucracies and American people to support me." If the outcome is most Americans and the armed forces recognizing Biden's authority...then who really is "the mob" in that situation?
Political power is an amorphous thing. It cannot inhabit marble columns or 230-year old scraps of paper (which is why all the "
Oh! Not our CaPiToL" pearl-clutching was so off-putting.) Political power can only reside within "the fickle crowd"; our civil institutions only persist because enough people do not try to physically overrun them, if it ever becomes *not enough then these institutions are deserving of being replaced, perhaps even violently.
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