Here’s a joke.
A woman in a hot-air balloon is lost, so she shouts to a
man below, "Excuse me. I promised a friend I would meet him, but I don't
know where I am."
"You're at 31 degrees, 14.57 minutes north latitude
and 100 degrees, 49.09 minutes west longitude," he replies.
"You must be a _____________."
"I am. How did you know?"
"Because everything you told me is technically
correct, but the information is useless, and I'm still lost. Frankly, you've
been no help."
"You must be a _____________."
"Yes. How did you know?"
"You've risen to where you are due to a lot of hot
air, you made a promise you couldn't keep, and you expect me to solve your
problem. You're in exactly the same position you were in before we met, but
somehow, now it's my fault."
The blanks in that joke can be filled by whichever party,
ideology, philosophy, belief system, approach, affiliation – whatever – you
happen to be most aggravated with at the time.
It is just humble enough to allow you the feeling that you are also
making fun of “both sides” without leaving much doubt as to who the ultimate
villain in the piece is.
We find ourselves at much the same position in American
politics at the moment, with each party claiming the other is unjustly blaming
them for the current state of affairs.
“What aboutism” is the language of the day. “The storming of the Capitol is inexcusable”.
– “Oh yeah – what about Black Lives Matter”?
“Well, what about the need to respect law enforcement?” “What about the
sacred right to protest?”; “What about being the “law and order” party”; “What
about “causing good trouble?”.
What about shutting the hell up?
I say that as an avowed “radical moderate” acting in the
role of moderator. I don’t say it
because there is no “right or wrong” in the various positions being taken in
the ongoing debate – I have very strong opinions about what happened at the
Capitol, Donald Trump’s tenure as President, the failure of the Democratic
leadership to, you know, “lead”, the political opportunism of the likes of Ted Cruz,
the lack of basic knowledge on the part of those who espouse certainty
concerning all of the above – yes, I’ve got lots of opinions. But I also have, I hope, an even more
important, overriding opinion about what is really important for the country right
now, what is the most politically astute and valuable path to follow in a time
of great danger (and opportunity).
That would mean taking the hard choice to actually be
moderate in approach and not just call oneself moderate. This is a time in our history that invites,
indeed almost seems to demand, that you shout from the mountaintop, loudly
proclaim that “the other guy” is (choose one) (a) a traitor, (b) a seditionist,
(c) a hypocrite, (d) a censorious oaf, (e) anti-democratic, (f) a fascist, (g)
a communist (h) – look, you can keep going until you run out of alphabet. It
seems that we have been given carte blanche to finally proclaim our various
positions with a bullhorn, without fear of contradiction. How can one argue against calling mobs
mobs? How can one argue against calling
the people who are now calling mobs mobs hypocrites for not calling mobs mobs
when they were mobbing during the summer? Huh?
How can you not do that? What is
the matter with you? Why aren’t you
shouting? What do YOU propose to do?
OK – how about “shutting the hell up”?
Believe me – I would LOVE to call a few names right
now. I would LOVE to take up massive
amounts of time pointing out that “yes, that guy who dressed in the Viking hat
and fur coat is really a Trump supporter and not a member of ANTIFA” or “no,
the Capitol police didn’t set people up by opening the doors – they tried to
act as reasonably as possible under the circumstances which is why one ended up
dead and others can be seen being beaten over the head with a flagpole”. After you do that you feel like you’ve scored
a few points, done some good work for your “team” – maybe helped out just a
bit.
Get over yourself.
This doesn’t help and there are more important things to do. Like trying to actually unify a country that
is losing all perspective. Like trying
to understand how things actually got to this point. Like trying to walk a mile in the other guys
shoes instead of trying to beat them over the head with it. So, in that spirit, here are a few things that
I think actually show moderation, which, as the title says, ain’t easy.
IMPEACHMENT 2.0
This was, and is, a bad idea. Don’t get me wrong - the legal, moral and
evidentiary justification for impeachment exists, and those who pursued it were
well within their rights. What doesn’t
exist is the political justification for making this a priority right now. The smarter, and far more astute move to make
would have been to feint towards impeachment and propose censure. As Kevin McCarthy had already indicated a
willingness to support this approach the result would have been to force House
Republicans to either oppose a measure their leadership had already endorsed as
“reasonable” or go on record as supporting a President who was acknowledged as
having incited a riot. Instead, other
than the 10 dissident votes received (not an insignificant number, by the way)
the House GOP was able to vote as a bloc.
If you believe them insincere you missed a chance to unmask that
insincerity. If, like myself, you
believe there is still room for doing the actual work of legislating in the
upcoming term then what was missed was a first chance to provide a bit of cover
for all without insisting on facing people with the starkest of choices every single
time the chance to do so (before the cameras) arises. The House leadership missed an opportunity
here – not the first time Pelosi and the entrenched Democratic managers have
done this. Instead, they have left the
Senate, and to an even greater extent the incoming administration, with a giant
headache. Let’s just check in to hear how enthusiastic that administration is
about having to deal with impeachment as one of its primary first issues, shall
we:
*crickets*
*crickets*
Yup, not a hell of a lot of cheering going on over
there. Now there will need to be a
coordination between the incoming Biden people and the Senate on what the hell
to do about a trial when the true concern of any President in the first 100
days of their administration is how to set up a legislative package (not
necessarily pass it – just get it ready for passage). Now the trial will take over the news cycle
and the political focus, and this at a time when no one really knows whether there
is even jurisdiction to prosecute an out of office President.
That ambiguity should be seized on. Chuck Schumer should simply say the trial is
being referred to counsel and may be revived at a future time when a definitive
opinion is expressed. It should then
hang like a sword of Damocles over Trump and the Senate Republicans who will
not want it revived in time for their own primary season prior to the next
mid-term. Just put the damn thing away
and let it die a quiet and deserved death.
THE REALLY IMPORTANT CASES
The actual focus of those who want a trial over the upcoming
months should be the prosecution of those who breached the Capitol, the
possible State court actions against the Trump organization (which will now
have the cuffs off), the federal case that should be made concerning the phone
call to the Georgia Secretary of State – and, (here is where liberals will
wince) the cases against those who were arrested as part of the Black Lives
Matter riots during the summer. Note I
say “riots” and not “protests”. The
vast, vast majority of protests over the summer were incredibly peaceful. I was there for three weeks and witnessed them
myself. There were a few that were not –
and those who were arrested in connection with the same should, as many
conservatives have noted, face trial and condemnation in the same manner as
those who were violent in other contexts.
By the way – those necessary trials should extend to Kyle Rittenhouse,
who, after having begged people on the internet to send him money (crowd-funding
is really weird sometimes) was most recently sighted under-age drinking (with
his mother) at a bar where he posed for pictures with the Proud Boys while
flashing white-supremacy signs. If I’m
this guy’s lawyer, I’m probably asking him to take a slightly lower profile
right now. Just sayin’.
THE INAUGURAL
Following the events at the Capitol last week the
overwhelming response was to marvel at the “lack of security” present during
the riots. This is both true and untrue
at the same time. I think the better way
of putting it would be “there was a lack of preparedness”. More personnel should have been present, a
wider perimeter should have been established, a stronger chain of command
communication should have been in place – but the myth that the security that
was there simply “got out of the way” or “didn’t act forcefully enough” is
simply, in my view, wrong and grossly unfair.
Here is why I feel that way.
When coverage was limited to long range shots of rioters ascending the
Capitol steps, or fixed cameras showing people filing through Statuary Hall in
the interior of the buildings – it was easy to get the impression that security
must have simply “got out of the way”. I
don’t think people understand just how remote those shots were. I’d say most were at least a quarter mile
back – where it is tough to get an impression of the immediacy of the
situation. In the hours and days since,
with footage released of people breaking windows, chasing police up sets of
stairs, crushing heads with fire extinguishers, beating security with
flagpoles, pinning screaming officers in doorways and overrunning positions
while threatening to kill those in their way – well, it’s become pretty clear
that security didn’t “just get out of the way”, and that where barriers were
opened it was due to strategic and entirely defensible decisions.
So, what about the idea that there wasn’t enough force
used? I’ve heard plenty of people say
that if this had been a Black Lives Matter rally then there would have been a
higher level of violence. I suspect they
are correct in that assessment. I also
think they are completely losing their mind, as well as their values, when they
say that alone without saying a great deal more.
Folks – the idea behind Black Lives Matter is that law
enforcement is too quick to resort to excessive levels of force against blacks –
not that they should expand that tendency to encompass all races. No one was demonstrating in the summer to
encourage police to kneel on the necks of white people too. No one was saying that so long as bullets
were going into the backs of all races equally during routine traffic stops
that things were just hunky-dory. Here
is what I say to people who question whether police applied equal levels of
reaction to the Black Lives Matter and Capitol Hill riots.
Thank God they did not.
Would it have been easy to open fire with their weapons on
the crowds busting the windows of the Capitol?
Sure would have. Would firing at
the people surging up the steps have stopped the breach? Oh, you bet it would have. Would it have kept the criticism of “weakness”
or “prejudice” from arising? Oh yeah, no one would be saying that there was a
double-standard if that had happened. How
about this – knowing what we know – would the use of such force have been
justified? I’m sure there are those who
would argue the case, probably successfully given the tendency to support the
decisions made on the ground in such circumstance. But, thank God for the Capitol Police, who,
despite all of those factors, did not (but for one extreme case) resort to the
level of force they probably could have. Those people don’t deserve criticism
for what they did not do – they deserve accolades for their restraint.
Here is what worries me about the inauguration scheduled for
this week. Multiple police departments, National Guard Units and other security
personnel will have heard the criticism of the Capitol Hill police over the
past week and may take the wrong message from that reporting. Instead of valuing the restraint shown by
that force they may think that they need to project a higher level of
aggression. In truth – by simply being
there they have already addressed the primary shortcoming of the 6th
of January – the lack of preparedness. There
is a good chance they will now be sorely tested by people who are seeking to
provoke a response, or will be trapped by circumstance in to making a
mistake. This is to be avoided at all
cost. The response to all provocations
should always be commensurate to the threat, appropriate to the circumstance
and proportionate to the event. If, for
example, a park has been deemed “off limits” and you have the choice between
retreating and allowing it to be overrun or shooting a bunch of people to save
a patch of ground – retreat. It will
feel awful but it will be the right thing to do.
I can already hear people shouting about “appeasement”. Relax dipshits, I’m not handing over
Czechoslovakia here. The reason you
create a defense perimeter in many instances is to give yourself a cushion, not
to pin yourself against a wall. If you
really want a history lesson consider this fact. In almost all instances where martyrdom has
been created it is due to the lack of appropriate restraint being shown by law
enforcement. That is true of both the
right and the left. Look up and read
about the Kent and Jackson State killings.
Look up and read about Ruby Ridge and Waco. Whether you agree or
disagree with the positions being taken by the protestors in those cases –
their causes were furthered by the lack of restraint shown by the authority
figures arrayed against them. We should
be determined not to let that happen this week.
LAST WEEK’S RESPONSE
A final word then about the Capitol Police. You cannot really be in Washington for any
length of time without running in to the people who guard and patrol the
Capitol grounds. I worked in the Senate
for about 5 months, and since you see the same faces every day, travel the same
hallways, go to the same cafeteria’s – you get to know these guys. They were, in my memory, always smiling,
always helpful, always supportive of the many groups of people they were asked
to deal with in the course of their duties.
So, it is not a criticism when I say of them that, despite having more training than you or I would ever get, this was not the force that should have been tasked with standing up to the mob that descended on the Capitol. These are men and women who have to know how to placate a member who is late for a vote and just wants to dump his or her car in the middle of the street so they can get inside. They are the people who are trained to tell tourists how to get somewhere by reference to landmarks (because, unlike people who work there, tourists won’t know the Senate buildings from the House buildings, or the East front from the West front). Instead, they know to tell people to “walk until you see the big reflecting pool” or “just go down that street until you see a statue of Albert Einstein – the Vietnam Memorial is right across the street – I hope you find your dad’s name, there are people there to help you”. They are good people and they are heroes because of something they did not do, but could have.
They could have created a blood bath last
week, but they didn’t. They could have
panicked. But they didn’t. They could
have got away with escalating a situation and probably would have been praised
for it, instead of criticized for “not being tough enough”. They didn’t do that, instead they just went
ahead and dealt with things as well as could ever be expected. They are the best example I can think of for
why the phrase “defund the police” was the single most asinine slogan ever
created. There is no way these people
should ever be defunded – but they are also the poster children for the idea
that we must re-define the roles of police in our society. We ask way too much of our various forces, to
be tour guides, domestic counselors, hostage negotiators, traffic wardens,
forensic analysts, peace officers, war makers and school teachers (amongst many
other duties). Last week we asked a
group of security personnel who never would have expected to deal with such a situation
to face down a (not so) small army of invaders.
Some would say they failed – I am more minded to say that we will never
know just how well they succeeded.
But let’s not ever put them, or anyone like them, in that
position again.
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