Can we talk (loudly and clearly)? Can we start by acknowledging that AZ secretary of state Adrian Fontes hits the center of the bullseye (see today’s “Top Arizona Dem: Biden’s DOJ Is Failing to Protect Election Workers From ‘Domestic Terrorism,’” Rolling Stone)?
But wait. Let’s not get rash. Just because we’re down to one non-despotic major party, let’s not grow so gauche as to as to stand up and scream bloody murder (on Lady Liberty’s and Uncle Sam’s behalf). Let’s keep playing nice. Think happy thoughts. And refrain from seeing/hearing/speaking too much about the depths of the GOP’s pure, distilled evil.
That is to say, why not “triangulate” (as ever)? In this case, why not split the difference between the Trump-aligned militant Zach Rehl’s candid admission that Trump’s troop has launched a “war,” and the GOP’s official stance that the stuff of J6 was and is “legitimate...discourse?” Why not smarm and bray along with Big News (which almost always soft-pedals the Capitol coup-cum-lynch-mob as a “riot”)?
According to the New Oxford American Dictionary, “riot” can mean “a vivid or varied display.” “Intense revelry.” An “emotional outburst” (shades of Trump, daily). An “uproar.” Or even a “highly entertaining...person or thing.”
Of course, its most common usage is “a violent disturbance of the peace by a crowd.” Here’s the thing. In this country, such events have not been uncommon; America’s “Red Summer” of 1919 alone saw at least some 26 (some say 40) of them. None, of course, came close to trashing our transfer of vote-legitimized power (and hence our nation).
You might say a barely failed push for a putsch is a “riot” in the same way a Cat 5 cyclone is a “storm.” Or an aircraft carrier, supertanker, or nuke-launching sub, a “ship.” (In all such cases, we understate at our peril.)
With our future in the pot, Trump must be stopped. Aptly enough, Secretary Fontes effectively bemoans President Biden’s shyness vis a vis the bloody-mouthed sharks who can be counted on to return as long as we sweetly and pliantly let them.
The J6 search-and-destroy mission just a “riot?” If only. Oh, well. As Hemingway writes (in The Sun Also Rises, apropos of self-delusion in general), “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”