Saturday, July 24, 2021

"What's The Frequency, Kenneth?"

I'm not much for the triumphalism framing that first tweet. I just wanted to post the view from inside the jail cell. Not exactly the stirring rhetoric of Dr. King, eh? As for the second, it's not just Trump who lives in a world of his own delusion. I'd like to see this guy try this logic on a federal courthouse that requires you enter through a metal detector, and controls access to certain rooms. Or a military base. Or, say, CIA headquarters at Langley.

"Government building" does not mean "open to the public, come on in and trash the place."  It never has.  Besides, if I invite you to my house but the door is locked, that doesn't mean go ahead, smash out a window.

I don't dance for joy that these people are facing the consequences of their actions.  But I don't weep for them, either.

Mentioning Dr. King raises another matter. Dr. King taught his followers to get arrested. It was the active part of his civil disobedience, what John Lewis later called “making good trouble.” You can’t accuse the Capitol rioters of that. They didn’t want to be arrested; they thought they were above the law. King and his followers wanted to change the law. The rioters want the law to be set aside in their favor, especially now that they are in jail.

The extreme right has taken up many of the tactics of the extreme left from decades ago; but they haven’t taken up this one. They haven’t taken up this one, and that has made all the difference. That is all the difference in the world.

1 comment:

  1. I'd started researching a post on the fascist use of The Anarchists Cookbook which led me to researching the fascist use of Rules For Radicals which led to me getting distracted from my research. Maybe I should go back to it.
    I do have to say it's pretty gratifying to find out what a bunch of whiny-ass crybabies these big tough street fightnin' types are. Imagine if he were innocent.

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