Saturday morning, January 9th. I am bewildered by the insurrection that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday. It seems at once both completely bonkers and also the logical apotheosis of Trump’s political trajectory. That this was always going to happen doesn’t make it any less shameful.
From the images, articles, tweets, sounds, video, there is a paradoxical portrait of the day. It seems absurd, a kind of playacting. I myself previously compared the QAnon folks to Live Action Role Playing participants. There was an aura of a video game come to life, but at some point during the march to the police-lined fences around the Capitol, the actions crossed the Rubicon from online and peer group projection to actual crime, seditious action, destruction of property, assault, etc. They crossed into reality. And as more details manifest, the insurrection appears less like a camp gesture of disaffected whites and more like what it was: a failed but nearly successful domestic terrorist event. Both elements were present. There was the shirtless Daniel Boone Viking helmet guy and the Delta Force extra, kitted out with his zip-tie handcuffs. The event is both revolutionary kitsch and violent putsch.
Jamelle Bouie has helpfully pointed out that this bothness is often present in white supremacist groups. The Ku Klux Klan wear the ridiculous, pointy hoods and use the designation “wizard” unironically. It’s almost as if extremist efforts must begin as practical jokes that go too far, begin to take themselves seriously. And as others have pointed out online, these domestic terrorists reaped the benefit of not being taken seriously as a general rule.
Sunday afternoon. The relentless gaslighting has begun. Turns out, seeing is not believing. The believers themselves crossed into reality on Wednesday, and their reality and the apostate reality was briefly shared. But now that reality is being transformed into something else, a complicated mass hallucination. Only the blind can truly see: Antifa, cancel culture, big tech monopolies quashing free speech. The believers call for unity but not for responsibility.