Lcttcus to tec caitou

Disgrace in D.C.

There’s a familiar adage that, if you’re going to tell a lie, you shouldn’t waste your time with an innocuous fib; instead, throw out something big, bloated, and outrageous, and that is what people are more likely to believe.

The proof of that statement could be seen on Wednesday, as Donald Trump lit a fire under his followers and dispatched them, suitably inflamed, to storm the U.S. Capitol building with the shameful intent of vandalization and desecration.

One aspect of their actions is extremely puzzling: As this ragtag crowd of muleskinners and raw meat eaters rushed up the steps, smashing windows and breaking down doors with one hand, many were holding the U.S. flag in their other hand. What does that mean? Usually, a person carries the stars and stripes to display his patriotism and his love for America. But if he beats down doors, breaks windows, trashes offices, and terrorizes the building’s occupants, then clearly he is motivated by other issues. So, how to explain vandals waving flags?

When the North Vietnamese tanks rolled into Saigon in 1975; when the Nazis burned the German Reichstag in 1933; when the Bolsheviks stormed the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg in 1917; and when the French peasants destroyed the Bastille in 1789, in none of those instances were the attackers waving the flag of the very power structure they were trying to bring down.

There’s another familiar adage, attributed to Abraham Lincoln, that you can fool some of the people all of the time.

The proof of that statement can be seen in the attack on the U.S. Capitol, as carried out by the army of full-time fools.

— J. F. Dacey

Lowell