Last time I checked, magicians, pickpockets, and pols have been prone to conjure distractions. With that in mind, let’s make bold to shift our focus from internecine grousing over the House speaker’s gavel to the hard right’s malign, ceaselessly pounding Thor-sized hammer.
Early this past week, I read that speakerless US reps can conduct no real business. And yet, by Tuesday, the party that officially (and ominously) paints J6 as “legitimate political discourse” had managed to push aside the metal detector that for two years had stood guard at the patently vulnerable House entrance.
Hmm. What could go wrong?
On a stage where bravado builds “good optics,” Eric Swalwell (D-CA) dares to cringe. That is, he admits he fears “we could have a workplace violent event.”
If you’re hooting, “We’ve already had one!,” you win both showcases. A lovely parting gift. And an autographed “Captain Obvious” hat.
To his credit, Swalwell points to an 80-ton Godzilla in the Rotunda. Namely, the fact that some “Republicans have...let...insurrectionists in[to] the building” and have shown them around (perhaps pointing out some potentially soft targets, and/or routes to reach them).
Meanwhile, he’s kept mum as to why such inside perps have yet to be shown jail cells.
Here’s the thing. The impact of circumventing or removing magnetometers in DC has not been slight. For instance, on 1/6/21. According to sworn testimony, right before sending his faithful “to the Capitol….to fight like hell,” Lame Duck Donald Trump seethed “I don’t [expletive deleted] care if they [his adoring mobs] have weapons. They’re not here to hurt me. Take the [expletive deleted] mags away. Let my people in [so I can further enrage them]. They can march to the Capitol [spitting nails and armed to the teeth] from here.”
Lest we ‘forget,’ Trump had told them to converge on DC and go “wild” on 1/6/21. Since then, while his maw has kept buzzing like a saw, not much has been done to tame them.
With that in mind, do we really need mags in our halls of Congress? Does a crossing where locomotives have crushed a school bus need lights?
Look. The writing has been on the wall in blood-red caps. Some have presumed to read it. Pretty much without exception, those who foresaw the general thrust (and perhaps some fine details) of the J6 putsch (e.g., Malcolm Nance, Sarah Kendzior, Andrea Chalupa, Ruth Ben-Ghiat, and this writer) have predicted similar (if not worse) domestic terror going forward.
Not that we should heed such alarmists, of course.
But seriously. Let’s face it. On “defense,” this year alone we’re lavishing roughly $816,700,000,000. Meanwhile, we sideline a bought-and-paid-for, sorely needed device that has served to defend our democracy’s beating heart.
Even with it in place, for the foreseeable future our vote-legitimized governance would lie in thrall (to some degree) to ruthless, relentless prior invaders. Without it, we effectively make permanent Trump’s howl to remove such safeguards. Smack on its face, such tyranny-embracing recklessness may rank with some of the most odious and oblivious folly in human history.
At the very least, it must come awfully close.