These GOP lawmakers trying to backtrack like “I was NOT voting to overturn the election with a lie I fed my white supremacist base, I was simply amplifying concerns that challenge the legitimacy of Black electorates in Philadelphia and Detroit and Latino electorates in Arizona” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOCUS Representative, NY-14 (BX & Queens). In a modern, moral, & wealthy society, no American should be too poor to live. % People-Funded, no lobbyist. She/her.Bronx + Queens, NYC ocasiocortez.com

Still trying to wrap my head around the fact that a bunch of people who think Bill Gates is going to inject them with a chip stormed the US Capitol with their cell phones’ location data enabled. Daniel Foster @DanFoster TypePrincipal at Roderigue Hortalez & Co. Multi award-winning chili chef.

In the early 70s, the leftist United Federated Forces of the Symbionese Liberation Army were the most wanted group gang – organization may be too grandiose – bad guys in the United States. They were led by a Black man who called himself Field Marshal Cinque and who had escaped from prison and they supported themselves by robbing banks. Partially by accident, the authorities, which eventually included the FBI, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, the LAPD, the California Highway Patrol, and the Los Angeles Fire Department trapped the SLA in a house in Los Angeles. Five thousand rounds later, the surrounded terrorists were dead. The system worked and they were no longer a threat to the body politic. Today is different.

Today, the most wanted terrorists, the rioters who took over the Capitol, are not outsiders, they are almost overwhelmingly white and they are from the right. Many of them are police officers and quite a few are prosperous small business owners. They will not be surrounded in a house and shot down but they will still have to be separated from the general population and jailed if we are going to stop worrying about them. That might not be easy. They are embedded insurgents and separating them from the general population will be hard. Yes, many of the insurgents have been arrested but most are out of jail without bail. White juries do not like jailing white cops or White small business owners.

BTW, several BTWs actually, some of the insurrectionists are rich enough to have taken private planes to the Capitol to demonstrate about how mistreated they are.

BTW, I keep reading that many Republican Congresspeople say they only voted against the election because their lives had been threatened and they were afraid (one dude, who did vote to certify, even bought body armor). I’m sure it is true that they are afraid and they know their fellow travelers better than I do, but I still find it fascinating that their defense for lying about the election is that they are cowards. Congresspeople, Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ortigia Cortez get threatened almost every day and, every day, they get up and do what they think is the right thing. After years of complaining about being harassed, and being called snowflakes for it, it is becoming increasingly obvious that the bravest people in our country are minority women.

If you don’t believe that, you may be confusing a violent temperament and macho with bravery. Contrary to what we are told both subtly and overtly, white men are way more violent than anybody else. As our military switches its focus from conventional warfare – think grunts in Vietnam, tanks on the Polish Plain, or the overwhelming firepower we brought to both Iraq wars – to unconventional war fought with advisors and drones, Special Forces become more important. Special Forces are almost always professionals, the people who like war or think they like war, who want to be there, and they are overwhelmingly white. Let that sink in, White men make up a huge percentage of our most violent and honored units, the Seals, Delta Force, almost any Marine.

BTW, another way to look at the seriousness of the mob attack is to look at how the military has reacted, According to the Pentagon, there are currently 2,500 service members in Iraq, 2,500 in Afghanistan, about 25,000 in Washington DC.

It seems to me that there are people in America who would rather not have Democracy than see Black people join in.

Lastly, on a positive note, Marrit Garland, Biden’s nominee for Attorney General, has a great background in fighting Domestic Terrorism. He was the lead government attorney on the Oklahoma bombing case, the Unabomber case, and the Atlanta Olympics bombings.