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Can we do a confessional? During the insurrection/riot/seige, I was apprehensive about the narrative taking hold that the police officers just kinda welcomed these shitbags into the Capitol. It seemed to reflect some of what I saw, but also not all of what I saw.
But then I made a joke about it, despite the fact that we were in the middle of knowing what happened and I knew I was, of course, getting a very select view of what was happening. I did this for two reasons:
First, because it is absolutely true that the situation would have been very different if those people hadn’t been white. That’s just the case. I knew that then, I know that now. It makes me very angry.
Second, because it felt like everyone else was doing it. And this is the thing, you only see what people are saying on here, you don’t see what people aren’t saying. I thought, “even though I don’t really know what’s going on, I’m not gonna get any hate for this.” Which was true.
And maybe third, because I thought the joke was funny. But, and please let’s all agree to this, just because a joke is funny doesn’t mean it should be tweeted.
Jokes necessarily simplify, but now that we have some space, what it looks like to me (and this may yet change) is that police on the ground fought very hard to keep the rioters out of the Capitol, to slow them down, and also to prevent loss of life.
One of them was killed when a rioter slammed a fire extinguisher into his head. Many others were injured.
All members of Congress were able to get to safety, though it may have been somewhat narrowly done.
And what is extremely clear, is that they were criminally unprepared for the threat, despite a great deal of advanced notice. And members of the Trump administration appear to have actively denied them support. That’s coup shit.
This is a failure of leadership, and it resulted in several preventable deaths. That leadership failure was either just racist (these are white Trump supporters so they aren’t that bad). Or insurrectionist (we don’t want to stop them.)
But the individual officers on the ground did not invite these shits into Capitol. They were overwhelmed, under supported, and placed in extreme and unnecessary danger.
But that wasn’t what my TL looked like. It was the selfie cop and the guys abandoning the barricade that I saw over and over again and the people streaming out of the Capitol unassailed.
And all of those things are indicative of the failure here, as are the deaths. But I hope the narrative we come away with is that the failure was of leadership, whether it was racist or insurrectionist. Not the officers on the ground.
