Today marks the second anniversary of the attack on the Capitol, Insurrection Day, or whatever you want to call it.
It is a day that will forever live in infamy, noted by busloads of angry white mobs who stormed the Capitol and unsuccessfully took over the government because their tyrant-in-chief lost the election. Now they might have to endure governance under an administration that at least pretends to be concerned with individuals who aren’t in the 1%. They went in with the intention of killing government officials in order to get their way. Five people died in connection with the attacks.
On the surface, it just seems like a bunch of hillbillies tried to overthrow the government and failed miserably, but a deeper look really shows that they at least accomplished the goal of keeping the country a little backward.
Sure, Donald Trump is no longer the president and was not reinstated with brute force as intended, but he is also not in prison, nor is he disgraced, and could possibly run for president in the upcoming future. With an audience so galvanized that they are willing to kill for him, there is no telling what they are willing to do in order to get him re-elected. He was essentially the commander-in-chief of a coup, whether he was able to wash his tiny hands of it or not, and has not received anything but a temporary Twitter ban as a punishment.
White rich privilege has prevailed.
The insurrection was not about taking over the government nearly as much as it was taking it back, making it an establishment for white men to continue to have an advantage while simultaneously boasting superiority. With the last election cycle, there was sure to be a red wave.
There wasn’t.
But that doesn’t mean that major elections were not won by the Republican party, Texas, wow, gerrymander much? Republicans have a House majority with a 51/49 split favoring the Democrats in the Senate. If the Republicans happen to control a house in the government in the next election cycle, there is a Republican president who even has a semblance of the bigoted ideologies as Trump has, which shouldn’t be too hard to find; DeSantis enters the chat. It could spell big trouble.
We are also living with the most conservative Supreme Court most of us have seen in our lifetimes. Hell, one of the Supreme Court Justice’s own wives helped finance the coup, and he is still very much in a position of power. There has been a lot of progressive legislation that has been passed that is now again up for repeal with this new conservative court. We have already seen a slashing of reproduction rights, but now Affirmative Action and marriage equality are also potentially on the chopping block, and I would not be surprised that learning about race in school will be a thing of the past but not of the history books.
The insurrection was somewhat a success. Sure, some people went to jail and are never coming back, but every soldier knows there is a risk in battle; as long as their king remains unscathed and lives to fight another day.
Laws which threaten the purity of white Evangelical Christian America are gently being whitewashed from the books. Lawmakers like Greg Abbott and Ted Cruz, who have literally left their constituents to freeze to death, were re-elected.
Far-right racist extremists led the attack that day, and white supremacy still prevails; they came, they saw, they conquered.
