It was “wild,” just as the Trumpus himself tweeted it would be (when he could tweet).
To give it some perspective: On July 14, 1789, a mob of angry Frenchmen stormed the Bastille to depose their King. On January 6, 2021, a mob of angry Americans stormed the Capitol to try to impose their wannabe King.
The French mob lynched the Governor. The American mob set out to lynch various government officials. One of them even brought their own gallows for the occasion.
Of course, these weren’t just any Americans; they were all rabid tRump supporters—MAGAts, Trumpocalyptic QAnon’ers, White Power Incels, Dominionist cuckolds, raging ammosexuals, White Sharia crusaders, Cosplay “Patriots,” emboldened Neo-Nazis, “Daddy”-worshiping Proud Boys (though Daddy tRump’s temperament is closer to an adult baby requiring a stern Dominatrix into golden showers than any kind of parent), LARPing Confederate clowns and Jokers—storming the iconic citadel of American governance, shouting “Stop the Steal,” “USA!” and “The President Sent Us,” in a vain but very violent attempt to stop the perfunctory certification of electoral votes for President-Elect Joe Biden.
They did not succeed, thank God and the Goddess.
Amen and Awomen… with a hat tip to U.S. Representative Emanuel Cleaver for his stupidly-maligned gesture of “inclusivity,” though I’ve been singing “Awomen” to my Womb Roomcongregation since 1997.
The Charlie Manson of Politics
Despite its abject failure and clownish style, at least five people died and many were viciously assaulted or trampled in tRrump’s torrential siege that metaphorically raped, pillaged and literally shit all over “The People’s House.”
It was an attempted coup d’état, putsch, attack, riot, revolt, act of intimidation, invasion or insurrection (take your pick of terms, none of which quite sum it up), spurred on by the Sore Loser-in-Chief himself, gaslighting his cult supporters like a souped-up Charlie Manson directing his little cult, a.k.a. the “Family,” to commit their massacres. Like the Trumpus, Manson never pulled a trigger, wielded a knife or was even present at the scenes of his crimes, but he masterminded and was held responsible for the Tate/Labianca murders.
In that Mansonian sense, tRump is largely responsible for the seditious insurrection of January 6, 2021, aided and abetted by a coked-up Don Jr., Rudy “Let’s have Trial by Combat” Ghouliani, fist-pumping Senator Josh Hawley, Proud Boy liaison (and lousy cuckold) Roger Stone, ass-kicking Mo Brooks, Raving Rush Limbaugh, the histrionically hypocritical Lady G and many more far-right pols, pundits and Jokers spewing whopper lies and thoroughly debunked theories of widespread voter fraud. Falsely shouting “Fire” in the proverbial “crowded theater,” they incited the motley mob to “fight like hell” and “never surrender,” and off they marched down Pennsylvania Avenue to deliver the assault that stunned the world.
Such a “Sacking” of the U.S. Capitol (as Counterpunch publisher Jeffrey St. Clair calls it, harkening to the Visigoth Sacking of Rome) hasn’t been seen since the War of 1812, led by Sir George Cockburn, who happens to be an ancestor of another Counterpunch publisher, the late great Alexander Cockburn…
However you spin it—and there are some certifiably insane spins—everyone is talking about Trumpty Dumpty’s Big Siege, and so am I, but unlike most people, I have a slightly different perspective, a bonoboësque point of view.
What’s Up with the Capitol Police?
Like many, I keep wondering why the most militarily powerful country in the world couldn’t defend America’s seat of government from a long advertised, badly organized, home-grown invasion.
While peaceful Black Lives Matter, anti-tRump, antiwar and other social justices protesters have always been pushed back, often with horrendous brutality, many of the Capitol Police welcomedthe mangy MAGAts into the “sacred temple of democracy” like honored guests, tourists or old friends.
Though some of the Capitol Police fought valiantly and were beaten viciously, at least one dying of his wounds (another committing suicide within days), many others moved barriers to let the Trumpers tromp right in, took selfies with them and showed them around, even as destruction reigned.
Were some of these cops in on the plot? Are they part of the cult? Were they scared stupid? Were they in cahoots with tRump’s new Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller, Department of the Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy or Lt. Gen. Walter E. Piatt, director of the Army Staff who all seemed to stall sending in National Guard or any kind of reinforcements?
Or were they just plain racist—welcoming the MAGAts because they were white? Or because they too support the Narcissist-in-Chief’s *vision* of a fascistic Caucasian-supremacist dictatorial U.S.A?
Fortunately, they weren’t all in on it, and some of them stopped the mob before they broke into the chambers where congresspeople crouched like students during a school shooting, but their initial response was remarkably lax.
U.S. Airforce veteran and caped QAnon’er, Ashli Babbitt, was shot and killed as she was breaking through a door. I can’t call her innocent, but I don’t condone her killing, or any killing except in self-defense. I wonder if the cops could have stopped her without killing her, and why just her?
If this was a Black Lives Matter insurrection or an Anti-War insurrection, you can bet there would have been a hundred Ashli Babbitts.
As “Wichita Kid” Devontae Harris put it, “We’re not asking you to shoot them like you shoot us. We’re asking you to NOT shoot us like you don’t shoot them.”
Creepy Cruz’ Crumby “Compromise”
Even as the Capitol was under siege, toxic Texas Senator Ted Cruz was trying to implement his last ditch effort to crown the guy who insulted him, his wife and his dad by replicating the Compromise of 1877 when Rutherford B. Hayes was anointed President, though his opponent, Samuel Tilden, actually won the election. Even as the barbarians were battering down the gates, the Grifter-in-Chief and Oozy Rudy were dialing Senators to get them on board with Dickhead Ted.
Surely, the smarmy Senator was counting on no one having heard of U.S. President Rutherford B. Hayes, let alone knowing anything about the calamitous Compromise of 1877. As it happens that I did a report on the notorious R.B.H. in the 6th grade, so let me just tell you that (though Hayes was a pretty cool abolitionist) it was a disastrous deal that spawned a denigrated Presidency, the North’s abandonment of the South’s newly freed slaves which led to ghastly Jim Crow laws, among other collateral damage.
Then again, maybe Creepy Cruz doesn’t see Jim Crow as a bad thing.
I am so NOT Susan Allan Block!
On a personal note: Just as all the insurrection news was storming our brains last week, someone (and then someone else, and then 20 people) asked me if I was “Susan Block,” an unhinged Trumper millionaire in Ohio who was forced to resign from the board of the Ohio Arts Council because she’d just posted this gem on Facebook:
“NO PEACE! NO UNITY! NO CONCESSION! NO LEGITIMACY TO A STOLEN ELECTION. THER [sic] ARE 70 MILLION TRUMP SUPPORTERS WHO WILL NOT FALL IN LINE. THERE WILL BE NO ‘HEALING.’ WE WILL DRAG THIS ILLEGITIMATE PRESIDENT, HIS WHORE VP AND ALL OF THE DEMOCRATS THROUGH THE SAME SHIT THEY DRAGGED PRESIDENT TRUMP & HIS SUPPORTERS THROUGH FOR THE LAST 5 YEARS!”
Yikes! The fact that the writer of this toxic trash bears my name makes me feel like a victim of identity theft.
I guess it could be worse, like if my name was “Suzy Mussolini.”
As it was, I spent half of last week trying to explain to various social media stalkers that I was Susan Block, the bonobo-loving, anti-Trump sexologist, not the hate-spewing millionaire MAGAt.
Fortunately, the MAGAt’s full name is “Susan Allan Block,” and mine is “Susan Marilyn Block,” so that gives me a bit of breathing space. But not much; Susan Allan Block is married to Allan Block who owns the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette and the ultra-conservative Toledo Blade, which are edited by Allan’s twin brother, John Block, who happens to be a member of my class at Yale. In fact, I just saw John at my 2017 Yale reunion and shared a laugh over us being “cousins,” which we’re not… that I know of. Though how many Blocks are out there? Hopefully, no more embarrassing Block MAGAts.
As a sex therapist, I imagine that Susan Allan Block (and probably the entire Block Communications Family) hasn’t had a good orgasm in several decades. She seems one of “Da Rich” who really need to “get F*cked,” Still, that’s no excuse.
Knowing that someone with my name (and a brother-in-law who was in my college class) is a raging Trump Daddy-fetishizing maniac makes the problem of Trumpism uncomfortably close-to-home.
Yo, Susan Allan Block, stop messing up my brand!
MAGAt Mary Says “Hitler Was Right”
Speaking of female MAGAts who have a way with words, last week’s pugnacious reality show also featured Illinois politician Mary Miller proclaiming, “Hitler was right about one thing: whoever has the youth has the future.”
There is just so much to unpack in that dumbest-of-dumb statements. First, “whoever has the youth has the future” is such an obvious cliché, you could attribute it to anybody, so why Hitler?
Why tRump?
How about quoting Nelson Mandela saying, “Our children are the rock upon which our future will be built” or Gandalf the Grey singing “The future belongs to the children”?
Nah, MAGAt Mary would rather quote Hitler.
I just hope “our children”—none of whom are “mine” as I am child-free—learn that violence is not the answer. Too often, they learn that violence IS the answer—in our movies, in our wars, in our war machine, in our “reality” shows and from our politicians’ violent rhetoric.
That’s what I try to balance out by spreading the Bonobo Way of peace through pleasure.
Georgia On My Mind
The Good News is that just before the Mad King’s Insurrection, the Dems won Georgia!
Go Bonobos for Stacey Abrams who appears to have orchestrated this beautiful flip. Here’s someone I’m proud to share an alma mater with, and somehow this Wonder Woman also manages to be a romance writer in her spare time.
I’m not much for tokenism, but now we have Georgia’s first Black Senator (Reverend Raphael Warnock) and first Jewish son-of-an-immigrant Senator (Jon Ossoff) coming to hopefully pass a more humane and, dare I say, more democratic-socialist, agenda.
Time will tell if they will do that or fall in step with the corporation-fellating, neoliberal war machine, but keeping Georgia on my mind gives me hope for this damaged country.
In a perverse way, so does seeing Lady G, after his about-face on the Senate floor, being confronted in Reagan airport by hordes of MAGAts yelling “Traitor! Traitor!” like Frankenstein being attacked by his own monster.
Rape of the Capitol
Just as viruses mutate, so do political movements. Many say that Trumpism is a mutation of late-stage capitalism—a perverse function of the rich getting richer, the middle class getting poorer (in terms of what they can afford), and the poor getting so poor, they are catastrophically at risk of dying young from Covid, climate change and violence.
Numerous factors helped to create the events of January 6, 2021—economic, rhetorical, racial and sexual. Yes, there are sexual factors.
Those Trumpers—especially the many frustrated incels, twisted “White Sharia” Crusaders and charged-up ammosexuals and pedophilia-obsessed QAnon’ers among them—engaged in a kind of mass rape, the “Rape of the Capitol,” if you will.
Consider the rounded, feminine shape of the Capitol dome with its female Speaker of the House, and how many of the MAGAts forced their way in, breaking down doors, smashing windows and brutalizing anyone who got in their way, and you might appreciate the metaphor.
It was “wild,” all right.
Murder for murder, the Rape of the Capitol was not nearly as bad as the “Rape of Iraq” (I got in trouble for calling it that back in 2003, but I stand by my metaphor!) or numerous other American invasions of foreign lands. But it was bad enough, and you can be sure most of those MAGAts—the mob that was there and others who were watching their Trump Riot Porn (including tRump Daddyhimself) from the safety and comfort of their couches—were “getting off” on it.
Keep in mind that in our sick, violent society, it’s easier and more acceptable to enjoy “riot porn” than regular porn.
To carry the metaphor a bit further, the Rape of the Capitol was a nonconsensual gangbang, an orgyof violence, a cuddle puddle of carnage, hundreds of sweaty, screaming, mostly male bodies packed very closely together (COVID party!), wildly smashing glass, wading through their own poop,whooping, shouting, pushing, shoving, smashing and attacking police, many apparently experiencing a (very sick) sexually ecstatic communal experience in their rapey little riot for tRump Daddy’s love.
A few of the more sinister-looking members of the horde even brought zip tie handcuffs in apparent anticipation of capturing and restraining several Congress members. Perhaps they planned to put Nancy Pelosi on trial along the lines of the Michigan plotters’ Governor Gretchen Whitmer-kidnaping fantasy or tying up Mike Pence (before hanging him), or maybe their twisted political BDSM fantasies involved kidnaping AOC and laying her shackled body at King tRump Daddy’s feet as “booty” to be spanked and forced into servicing his YUGE ego.
I know, it’s disgusting to contemplate, but as a sex therapist, I also know it’s important to confront and handle the problems of violent MAGAt sexuality, just as we need to confront and handle racial, rhetorical and economic problems.
And it will be important to confront and handle long after tRump Daddy himself (now bearing the distinction of being the only United States President to be impeached twice) is gone.
The post Rape of the Capitol appeared first on CounterPunch.org.
Print
Susan Block | Radio Free (2021-01-15T07:36:31+00:00) Rape of the Capitol. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/01/15/rape-of-the-capitol/
Please log in to upload a file.
There are no updates yet.
Click the Upload button above to add an update.