TL;DR: it was a failed coup. And we must acknowledge that fact.
I’ve said from the beginning that what happened on January 6th was an attempted coup d’état. (An autogolpe, to be precise.) Not only have I never been fooled by That Shitstain’s bullshit — what he was saying was crystal clear — I’ve also read Luttwak and could plainly see that none of it was spontaneous.
Much had obviously been done to allow the mob every opportunity to overcome security at the Capitol. The claim that what transpired was an “intelligence failure” is weak sauce.
On any other day in DC, a protest rally — or even a children’s event — at The Ellipse would have seen legions of security. Many might not have even been noticed, as is their goal, but security be all over the area. Nobody would be allowed to approach wearing heavy backpacks, or carrying flagpoles (or baseball bats!) in the crowd.
Who ensured that security wasn’t there? That the Secret Service would overlook all that?
Much has been said about the apparent willingness of the Capitol Police to welcome the mob. That may have been so, in a few dismal cases, but it has since become clear that the majority of the Capitol and Metropolitan Police struggled heroically against huge odds. The actions of a shitty few bad cops to aid the mob could not have been counted on by plotters. The overall posture of that force is another matter.
CP Chief Sund was sacked immediately. It’s still not clear whether his actions that day were nefarious but many who were there agree that Sund was at least trying his damndest to get help. More on that later.
Some 50 DHS agents had been assembled, in tactical gear, inside the Ronald Reagan Building several blocks from the Capitol. Closer to The Ellipse, in fact. I suppose that we can assume that they were backup for the tight ring of security around the president.
If so, why were they kept there well after the Capitol had been breached, and the president had gone home to chuckle about it all unfolding before him on television? They knew that the Capitol was under attack, and were hollering for orders to move to its defense. They were denied.
Who kept them in place?
When That Shitstain fired (acting) SecDef Mark Esper — immediately after Joe Biden was pronounced the winner of the election — a bunch of others were shown the door, too. Esper was replaced by Chris Miller; retired General Anthony Tata was made the (acting) undersecretary for policy; Ezra Cohen-Watnick replaced a vice-admiral to become the (acting) undersecretary for intelligence; Kashyap Patel became Miller’s chief of staff; and Michael Ellis was appointed (acting) general counsel at the National Security Agency.
Tata, by all accounts, rubbed people wrongly. That Shitstain had attempted to put Tata in that position earlier last year but the senate wouldn’t even give him a hearing.
Cohen-Watnick had previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency and the Office of Naval Intelligence. At the beginning of Our National Nightmare, he was put on the National Security Council and was Michael Flynn’s protogé. Shortly after Flynn left, his successor, HR McMaster, got rid of him. A few years later he turned up as a deputy assistant secretary at the Pentagon, later becoming the (acting) Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict.
Both Patel and Ellis were top aides to Devin Nunes before they joined the NSC. Ellis is the person who squirrelled away the transcript of the “perfect call” in the double-super-secret filesystem at the NSC. Both went to great lengths to besmirch the Mueller investigation.
Was that Medal of Freedom for Nunes meant to stiffen up his wobbly legs as showtime rapidly approached?
This week we learned that Miller had ordered General Paul Nakosone, the NSA director, to appoint Ellis as general counsel by five pm on Saturday. Apparently, he resisted still beyond that deadline.
Speaker Pelosi spoke to Miller by phone, then produced a scathing letter demanding that the appointment not go forward, CCing the inspector general. Keep in mind that the NSA had been slow-walking this for two months already.
That’s how egregious was this appointment. It’s a position which provides a view on everything that NSA is doing. Not only is it unusual for a president to appoint someone to that role so late, it’s traditionally understood that it is not a position for political appointees, especially not an operator like Michael Ellis.
What were they up to?
I don’t think that this was merely an attempt to burrow them all into Biden’s administration. Ellis, perhaps, given that late order just days ago. He’d be in a position to know whether the NSA was monitoring That Shitstain, after all. That would be handy. But Biden has quickly put Ellis on administrative leave. And the other minions will be rooted out.
I think the goal, though, was to have them in place for that rally, not to carry them over to a coming administration that was rejected out of hand. Them, and others. In the case of Ellis, perhaps, ensuring that nobody was onto their treacherous scheme.
Finally, we come to The Washington Post’s revelation that Michael Flynn’s own brother was in the room, in his capacity of deputy chief of staff for operations for the US Army, when Chief Sund was frantically calling on the Pentagon to send the National Guard to the Capitol yet being rebuffed. He told them that shots had been fired inside the Capitol! And yet, the Pentagon denied him assistance.
Was Charles Flynn in the room when Governors Hogan and Northam (Maryland and Virginia) likewise called on the Pentagon to allow their own NG to enter DC, only to be dicked around for hours?
The Post story made the completely reasonable point that the deputy chief of staff for operations would be involved.
It makes sense that Flynn, as the Army’s deputy chief of staff for operations, plans and training, would have been involved in the Pentagon response.
The question i had was, how and when did he come to be in that position?
Well, I’ve since learned that it was just December 20 — shortly after QAnon Mike had been pardoned.
See a pattern here?
One cannot arrange a coup d’état without co-conspirators.
Complaints that The Shitstain is too stupid to pull it off miss the mark. He has always fallen upwards his entire, miserable life by seeking out morally bankrupt individuals1 who he can use to further the crime spree that has been that miserable life.
A coup does not require that the troops are willing conspirators.
What is important is the buy-in from those who control those troops. The Capitol Police were left completely off alert. Those DHS agents were kept in place, against their urgent calls to be put into the fight. The National Guard troops of several states were kept in their barracks by people at the Pentagon.
A coup is do or die.
Participants must have a high expectation of success. (Does delusion count?) Failure to achieve success could be fatal. In some countries, That Shitstain might have received a bullet in the neck by now. A coup is for keeps. Always.
They are receiving a lot of cover now from their cultish propagandists, and we mustn’t allow them to construct the narrative. Nor should we shrink from the fact that it did happen here. They will do everything possible to deny what they most certainly attempted. The propagandists will do everything to cover for them.
And the base will do everything to encourage that narrative. That unquestioning obedience is, after all, what moved thousands of morons to create a mob. Myriad useful idiots, unaware that actors moving among them — the Loud Boys, the “Militias”, and other useful tools set into motion by minor players — have been guiding and encouraging them.
See a pattern here? This is how coups happen.They always contain the same elements.
1. Michael Flynn, the timeline: Many years and 23 days to make a traitor
Saturday, Jan 23, 2021 · 12:23:49 AM +00:00 · subtropolis
Members John in Denver and navkid have pointed out that December 20 is the date that Charles Flynn was promoted, and that he’d become the deputy chief of staff for operations in mid-2019. I’d still like to know more details about the change in his status on the 20th, though.
Apologies for the late update. I’d suddenly had to run out for a few hours shortly after posting this. (When there were still less than ten comments.)