Day 310…
There are three layers of fencing around the US Capitol in Washington D.C. now - an 8-foot fence on the outside, a 12-foot fence based in concrete within that and then within that another fence topped with razor wire.
5,000 more National Guardsmen have been deployed to the capital with another 1,000 authorized by the Army Secretary bringing the total up to 21,000.
State Capitols around the country are also blockading themselves.
In Harrisburg, PA, the streets are being closed surrounding the Capitol and 450 National Guard troops are being deployed. The Capitol in Richmond, Virginia has been boarded up and a perimeter erected.
In Lansing, Michigan where armed militias stormed the Capitol in April, a 6-foot tall fence has been put in place surrounding the building. On Monday, legislators passed a law banning the open carry of weapons on Capitol grounds, but concealed weapons are still allowed to be brought onto them.
The concern that some States have is that with the increased security around the US Capitol local militias may choose to target places closer to home instead.
Retired Lieutenant General Russel Honoré, who was largely responsible for coordinating relief efforts in Louisiana after hurricane Katrina, has been enlisted by Congress to lead a commission to review security measures and determine whether or not they are adequate to keep our elected officials safe from domestic terrorists.
I look back over the paragraphs I’ve just written, and I am amazed.
We have had four years of a President who has encouraged and supported white supremacist groups from the very beginning of his term in office.
“Very fine people on both sides,” is what he said about a violent rally of neo-Nazis in Charlottesville, Virginia in August of his first year in office.
“We love you. You’re very special,” is what he said to the violent mostly-white insurgents who, last week, overran our national Capitol building.
In the first year of his term, a white gunman in Las Vegas murdered 58 people and wounded 850 others in the deadliest mass-shooting in US history.
A month later another white man shot and killed 26 people in Texas while they were at worship in their church.
The following year, a white former student shot and murdered 17 students and adults at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.
In 2019, a fourth white man, opened fire at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas and took the lives of 23 people.
Four of the deadliest mass-shootings in our history have happened during this President’s watch. After the shooting in Parkland, the President met with a bipartisan group of legislators who were proposing a system of universal background checks for people attempting to buy guns.
At the time, the President nodded and smiled, but later, after meeting with the National Rifle Association, he, instead, passed the Fix NICS act. This appropriations act, instead of creating a federal level mandate, set up a structure by which individual states had to, instead, report what they were doing on their own.
In 2018, he recommended that instead of trying to curb gun sales, that teachers and school staff be armed, themselves.
Throughout his term, this President has firmly resisted attempts to strengthen gun control legislation. Is it any wonder that we are where we are?
It is now known that some of the rioters during last week’s insurrection were planning to “capture and assassinate” some of our elected officials.
Putting together a timeline, it has been revealed that the Vice-President was taken from one area in the Capitol to another less than a minute before invaders broke through into it. The President had, essentially, put a target on the Vice President’s back by questioning his courage in his refusal to discount the Electoral College votes.
The inauguration of Joseph R. Biden and Kamala D. Harris is going to take place on Wednesday on the steps of the Capitol. The Mall, which lies between the Capitol and the Lincoln Memorial will be kept clear. It is already off limits, now. We will be able to watch the proceedings on TV or on our computers, but only a very tightly controlled group of people will be allowed to be there in person.
The FBI is doing what they can to monitor online chatter among the particularly virulent militia groups, but with so many platforms shutdown or restricted, much of that chatter has been forced onto fringe encrypted sites that are harder for outsiders to get into.
Thomas Fuller was a seventeenth century English theologian and historian. He wrote a religious travelogue called ‘A Pisgah-Sight of Palestine And the Confines Thereof’. Within that, he is credited with expressing a now-common idea for the first time.
“It is always darkest just before the Day dawneth.”
The waiting for all of this to be over seems to get more and more difficult with each passing day. Regardless, our lives go on. The mundane minutia of everyday living continues to be accomplished, but over it all seems to loom this impending sense of coming doom.
As all of these security preparations get more and more intricate and overwhelming, we should take comfort just in the fact that they are happening. As opposed to what transpired during the insurrection last week where rioters were met with little or no resistance as they breached the Capitol’s perimeter, we are now seeing law enforcement prepare to meet any comers with full force. As terrifying as some of this looks, the fact that it is being done so openly and publicly will hopefully deter any sort of similar attack. Over 200 of last week’s marauders have been arrested. Their ranks have been diminished.
TV news stations on all sides are doing everything that they can to build the suspense and anxiety before Wednesday’s swearing-in ceremony. That’s how they make their money. They want us to keep watching and the more that they can terrify us, the more likely we are to stay riveted to our screens.
Turn them off. Truly.
Law enforcement is taking unprecedented measures to protect the President and Vice-President-elect, and, indeed, the entire transfer of power from danger. Let them. If we are worried about things like whether or not police officer ranks have been infiltrated by domestic terrorists, you can be sure that people within those ranks are too.
We can take care of ourselves by staying close to home. They don’t need our help. What they need is for us to keep safe and keep away.
There was a great report yesterday of somebody on the site Bumble who changed their profile to say that they were MAGA and supported the President. As a result, they received all sorts of pictures from insurrectionists bragging about what they had done. The Bumble user then forwarded all those pictures along with the rioters’ Bumble handles to the FBI.
I think that we are going to stay home all day on Wednesday. On my daily walks until then, I am probably going to veer away from visible New York City landmarks. I hate that I feel that way.
Earlier, I said that was amazed. What I am most amazed about is that all of these threats are coming from my fellow Americans. We are not under attack by a foreign power. No, this attack is coming from within. Like it or not, these people are us.
It’s getting darker, but it will get lighter again soon. Having passed the solstice, our days are now getting incrementally longer and incrementally brighter. Winter is certainly here, but spring is coming.
Keep warm.
I admire your optimism 😙. Not quite there yet. Trying times to say the least. Spoke to friends in DC this morning- it’s a fortress downtown. Just praying for a safe inauguration and never having to mention that shumuck again.
On another note, I’m well into season 5 of A French Village- maybe not the best thing to be watching this week but am getting confused with some of the history- give me a call when you can please
❤️🙏🌞