I wonder if it is time to revisit Richard's "Samson - Trump Parallels" ?
Specifically, Richard said:
in more contemporary parlance this can be stated as Samson desired to 'trump' up charges, or to create a pretext against the Philistines from which he could incite further actions, which posthumously would lead to the destruction of the Israelite temple at Shiloh - and the rise of the Davidic monarchy - a new age.
The 'pretext against the Philistines' would now be revealed as the 'stolen election'. And this would seem to be Trump's darkest hour, when he has been delivered into the hands of his enemies. He has been forced to concede to the Democrats (socialists, foreigners, 'Philistines') and it appears he will be subject to their rule.
But of course the Biblical story doesn't end here, with Samson in chains. The Philistines bring him to the temple and he tears it down, bringing it down on everyone.
The coup attempt of Jan. 6th is widely viewed as a poorly planned fiasco.
Caitlin Johnson ridiculed it, saying
"You cannot take over the US government with a small squadron of wingnuts. That’s not a thing." Moon of Alabama dismissed it as follows:
Those rabbles were in no way terrorists. They were not even a mob. Most of them were out-of-town rednecks who felt that they had been wronged. They wanted to express that. They were surprised when they found how easy it was to enter the Capitol and they apparently took more time to take pictures than to rearrange the furniture.
This was not a coup attempt either. These folks had no weapons, no training and, most importantly, they had no plan of what to do except to maybe enter to then leave...
Along with the ridicule, however,
MoA noted the parallels to the Vandal Sack of Rome, 455 AD, an event whose historic significance is still celebrated today.
In this same post, MoA notes (along with many others) that the Capitol Police essentially stood down and allowed the riot to happen, if indeed they didn't actively encourage it. The complaint about a "lack of planning" is missing the context: Trump's proclaimed plan was for a coup "under color of law". To carry this off, Trump was, crucially, counting on support from at least Mike Pence and/or his recently hand-chosen Defense Secretary, Christopher Miller. Instead, Pence refused to create any fig leaf of legislative credibility for Trump's insurrection, while Pence and Miller eventually arranged to bring in the National Guard to put an end to the invasion. If Pence and Miller had been loyal to Trump's coup, it certainly would have gotten much further, and might well have succeeded.
But given the fact of the failure, it's a reasonable question to ask whether this was literally planned to fail. That is, whether Trump, Pence, and Miller acted together, perhaps under direction from a hidden authority, to intentionally create the fiasco. But even if the coup attempt was a complete fake from start to finish, the optics are unchanged. It still represents the appearance of a frontal attack on government institutions.
Are the historical and typological parallels close enough to permit a prediction here? If Richard were here with us, perhaps he would say "No Shit, Sherlock!"
Samson, even in chains, is going to bring down the Temple. Rome is going to fall.
What Caitlin Johnstone and MoA are missing, is that this "squadron of wingnuts" was able to literally terrorize the entire US Senate and House of Representatives, many of whom were genuinely in fear of their lives. As
WSWS reports:
New details are also coming to light showing how close Wednesday’s riot came to ending in a massacre or mass kidnapping event. PBS Newshour correspondent Lisa Desjardins told NPR yesterday that she realized the danger she was in when she noticed police had abandoned their posts inside the Capitol building. She was barricaded in a room with several congressional representatives who held hands and prayed, worried that they were about to be killed.
An aide close to Vice President Mike Pence also told CNN yesterday that the Trump administration did not contact Pence or take any measures to ensure his safety. Pence was with his wife, daughter and brother in the Capitol building Wednesday as he presided over the electoral vote certification. CNN wrote:
Several of the violent Trump supporters who were rampaging the US Capitol were heard screaming ‘where’s Mike Pence,’ the source said, frightening the vice president and his family. Yet, the President and his top aides barely lifted a finger to check in on Pence to make sure he and his family were unharmed, the source added.
Those "wingnuts" are still at large, and with a renewed sense of urgency and a sense of their own power. For Jan. 6th, they mostly left their weapons home in compliance with DC gun regulations. But, the WSWS continues, there are signs that a 2nd uprising attempt is being planned for Jan. 20th.
Online, fascist militias are now preparing for an even larger event on Inauguration Day. Hampton Stall, the founder of MilitiaWatch and an expert on the US far-right, told the World Socialist Web Site:
There’s a lot of really cryptic chatter and overt discussions of violence around the January 6 event, but a lot of inauguration-related organizing is related to a few different dynamics that have been planned for at least a month’s time. One that stands out is the Million Militia March apparently organized for 20 January at the Capitol. Propaganda and event fliers have been circulating around militia chat groups.
Militia members are also making plans for protests at various state capitols in the days leading up to the inauguration. Stall added that while Wednesday’s demonstration in Washington DC was largely unarmed, this may change on January 20:
There are also multiple state capital events organized for the 17th, 18, 19th and 20th. Fliers for these events have been quite mixed as far as indications as to the specific ideological tendencies of those organizing, whether it be ‘2A’ activism, overt militia organizing, Boogaloo, or something else entirely. The one commonality is that all are expressly right-wing in nature and often point to a militant or armed gathering.
Exactly one year before the date of the scheduled inauguration, on January 20, 2020, the largest armed demonstration in US history took place in Richmond, Virginia involving roughly 10,000 fascists. In December, Trump’s fascist adviser Stephen Miller said, “The only date in the Constitution is January 20,” adding that this was the “deadline” for action to protect Trump’s presidency.
Some of the Trumpists are just as angry with Trump as anyone else at this point, perceiving that he's thrown them under the bus. Other commentators believe that he's still playing high-dimensional chess (such as, disappointingly,
James Kunstler.)
At any rate, if the 'million militia' with their AR-15's are able to show up on Inauguration Day and kill a bunch of politicians, what will be left of the US constitutional system? Maybe Joe Biden and Kamala Harris's true role in this drama will turn out to be as cannon fodder, or crushed under the falling temple.
