Quote (Black XistenZ @ Jan 9 2021 07:10pm)
Today, I stumbled over a very good (English-language) guest commentary on the Capitol storming in a German newspaper, written by Bari Weiss, the former NYT writer whose reisgnation letter made big waves last summer.
The key sections of her op-ed are the best articulation of my thoughts on the "big picture" behind Wednesday's events that I could find so far:
And just to make this clear: Trump is the worst offender of them all in this regard. No key player put his own power and self-interest above the country and the common good to a larger degree than him. I am a cynic at heart, and therefore was (and still am) willing to tolerate that as long as Trump's self-interest resulted in my preferred policies and ideologies being furthered, or in the policies and ideologies I detest being blocked from power. Perhaps this means that people like me, the (semi-)silent supporters and enablers, are just as guilty for the faltering of society's order and norms. Anyway, now that Trump has entered a nihilistic burn-it-down phase which serves no one but his own wounded ego, he has become a burden and it is time for him to go. He has outlived his usefulness, and even the movement that he created will be better off without him.
Source:
https://www.welt.de/debatte/kommentare/article224025750/Bari-Weiss-America-s-sacred-inheritance-is-under-attack.htmlI'm generally a fan of Bari Weiss and I don't think she's necessarily wrong here. When it comes to BLM, you have to ask yourself why they are protesting. The trigger for the protests & riots was law enforcement. Law enforcement made it even WORSE in several cities due to police brutality (NYPD, DC police, etc.) Frankly, this put law enforcement in a really awkward spot because it was difficult to determine how much you let people run rampant. The media had a less than stellar response because while most protestors were peaceful, they intentionally ignored a fair amount of the destruction. At the end of the day, the message was HEAVILY politicized which distorted reality. Everyone saw what they wanted to see. Many conservatives believe that ENTIRE CITIES were burned to the ground. Many liberals were willing to overlook some pretty horrific crimes because they worried that it would hurt the movement.
Having said all that, to compare BLM to what happened at the Capitol is bat shit insane. Symbols matter. There's a reason Al-Qaeda chose the WTC, Pentagon, and the Capitol for the 9/11 attacks. In addition, more people died at this event than any BLM protest (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Violence_and_controversies_during_the_George_Floyd_protests#Deaths). The genesis for the two is also entirely different. I think a lot of people on the right are trying to create a false equivalence because they don't want to admit fault. If "both sides" do it, you level the playing field from a moral perspective.
Her conclusion at the end is correct but it makes sense why people feel that way. They live in completely separate realities and the opposition is an existential threat to those realities.