With the events of yesterday, I have felt compelled to write a number of blog articles. In fact, excluding this one I have started three others so far, but one must prioritize. This is a rant that I need to get off my chest first.
Like everybody else, I watched in disbelief as rioters were able to easily push past capitol police barricades and enter the Capitol Building while Congress was in session and while the Vice President of the United States was officiating as president of the Senate. It was hard to accept that the mob was able to violently break through windows and doors, vandalize congressional property, and take pictures of themselves in the office of Nancy Pelosi and while sitting in the very chair Mike Pence occupied in the Senate chamber just a few minutes before. How is something like that allowed to happen?
What amazed me even more is how gently the rioters were treated once there was sufficient police presence to evict them from the building. It certainly didn’t appear that any arrests were being made. I understand the desire to end the episode without excessive violence and to do it as swiftly as possible. However, at that point the rioters who were still in the building and on the grounds were the probably the hard core of the mob that broke into and vandalized one of the symbols of our government and our democracy. Why weren’t all of the remaining rioters surrounded by thousands of police and national guard troops and taken into custody?
It is too late for that now, but there are a large number of photos and videos of the event, some of them posted on social media by the rioters themselves. These can be used to identify hundreds of the rioters and prove that they were among those who broke into the Capitol Building and roamed its halls and offices with impunity, threatening the lives of congressmen, staffers, and media personnel. In many cases the photographs and videos depict individuals committing wanton acts of destruction and vandalism. There are other videos of rioters attacking media personnel outside of the building and damaging their equipment.
In most cases we are talking about the violations of federal laws. The FBI should be tasked with identifying and arresting not only the leaders of the mob, but also to the extent possible every individual who took part in this embarrassing travesty. Sufficient manpower should be applied to the task to get this done quickly. I am sure that federal prosecutors should be able to convict many of the participants with multiple federal crimes and send them away to a federal penitentiary for some time to come.
If there is not enough incentive for this to happen before Trump leaves office, it should become one of the first priorities of the Biden administration. We need to show the people of the United States, and the rest of the world, that insurrection on our soil, especially in one of the symbols of our democracy, will not be tolerated.
Cajun (Rick Guilbeau) 1/7/2021