Facing the Beast, page 19
That situation is anomalous.
There is always a security chain of command in the Capitol, at the Rayburn Building, at the White House of course, and so on, which is part of a rock-solid “security plan.”12
There are usually, indeed, multiple snipers standing on the steps of the Capitol, facing outward. I made note of this when I was researching and writing The End of America. There is never improvisation, or any confusion in security practices or in what is expected of “the security plan,” involving “principals” such as Members of Congress, or staff at the White House. I know this as a former political consultant and former White House spouse.
The reason for a tightly scripted chain of command and an absolutely ironclad security plan in these buildings, is so that security crises such as the events of January 6 can never happen.
The fact that so much confusion in security practice took place on January 6, is hard to understand.
There is no way to not see that among the violent and terrifying scenes of that day, all clearly illegal, there were also scenes of officers with the United States Capitol Police, as the footage aired by Mr. Carlson showed, accompanying one protester who would become iconic, the “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Chansley—and escorting him peaceably through the hallways of our nation’s legislative center.13
I was oddly unsurprised to see the “QAnon Shaman” being ushered through the hallways by Capitol Police; he was ready for the cameras in full makeup, horned fur hat, his tattooed chest bare (on a freezing day), and adorned in other highly cinematic regalia. I don’t know what Mr. Chansley thought he was doing there that day, but so many subsequent legacy media images of the event put him so dramatically front and center—and the barbaric nature of his appearance was so illustrative of exactly the message that Democrats in leadership wished to send about the event—that I am not surprised to see that his path to the center of events was not blocked but was apparently facilitated by Capitol Police.
A point I have made over and over since 9/11 is that many events in history are both real and hyped. Many actors in historic events have their agendas but are also at times used by other people with their own agendas, in ways of which the former are unaware. Terrorists and terrorism in the Bush era constitute an example. This issue was both real and hyped.
“Patriots” or “insurgents” (depending on who you are) entering the Capitol can be part of a real event that is also exploited or manipulated by others. We don’t know yet if this is the case in relation to the events of January 6, or to what extent it may be the case. That is where a real investigation must come in.
But as someone who has studied history, and the theatrics of history, for decades, I was not surprised to see, on Mr. Carlson’s security camera footage, the person who was to become the most memorable face of the “insurrection” (or the riot, or the Capitol breach)—escorted to the beating heart of the action, where his image could be memorialized by a battery of cameras forever.
There are other aspects of the January 6 breach that from the start seemed anomalous to me. I study the relationship in history of buildings such as the White House and the Capitol to the US public; I follow the way in which the public is either welcomed into or barred from these structures.
Civic violence is always wrong, and interfering with elections unlawfully is always wrong. I restate this so that my points here will not be taken out of context.
However the story of January 6, as it was told and retold via the Democrats in leadership, is a departure from our history (and from our Constitution) in that it drummed into the awareness of the nation the message that the American public is categorically forbidden to enter the Capitol, and that the Capitol is the province of legislators alone.
This is false.
* * *
The media furor around January 6 erased from memory the fact that the White House itself and the Capitol too—including its interior—have always been open to US citizens and foreign visitors. These are public buildings.
The US government website, Visitthecapital.gov, explains that anyone can watch Congress in session; tickets to the gallery are available from one’s Representative.14 You can also enter the Capitol, show ID, and visit the Exhibition Hall. Passes to the gallery are issued to foreign visitors right when they walk in.15
The right to mass peacefully at the Capitol and at other public buildings, and indeed to enter the Capitol to observe the legislators at work, is part of our inheritance as citizens. This use of our First Amendment right to assemble has a long history.
The Gallery—the upper balcony that surrounds the legislative action—was constructed in 1857 in order to allow the public to watch their legislators and to listen to debates. Even before they had a vote, women had access to a “Ladies’ Gallery.” After Reconstruction, African American citizens also joined observers in the gallery.16
In 1876 and 1877, massive, raucous public crowds thronged the Gallery to observe the outcome of the contested election between Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel J. Tilden. A painting (shown on the website of the Constitution Center) depicts crowds almost spilling out of the observer’s gallery, as they watched the 1876 Electoral Commission deliberate on who would have won the Presidential election.17
The Capitol is not a sealed space exclusively for legislators, but it is one that is supposed to, and indeed was constructed to, welcome and host the public, in an orderly way.18
Our leaders should not be encouraging us to forget this.
Indeed, inaugurations themselves have been open public events in which the US citizenry simply entered the building for the celebration; this tradition lasted from President Jefferson’s inauguration, in 1801, to 1885.
Things got very chaotic indeed in 1829. The editors of History.com described the scene:
On March 4, 1829, Andrew Jackson upholds an inaugural tradition begun by Thomas Jefferson and hosts an open house at the White House.
After Jackson’s swearing-in ceremony and address to Congress, the new president returned to the White House to meet and greet a flock of politicians, celebrities and citizens. Very shortly, the crowd swelled to more than 20,000, turning the usually dignified White House into a boisterous mob scene. Some guests stood on furniture in muddy shoes while others rummaged through rooms looking for the president—breaking dishes, crystal and grinding food into the carpet along the way. . . .
The White House open-house tradition continued until several assassination attempts heightened security concerns. The trend ended in 1885 when Grover Cleveland opted instead to host a parade, which he viewed in safety from a grandstand set up in front of the White House.”19
And inaugurations were not the only occasions in which US citizens approached or entered their public buildings in Washington.
The Bonus Army, which massed in the summer of 1932, during the Depression, to claim the financial “bonus” promised to veterans who had served in World War I, was made up of thousands of angry citizens assembling peaceably at the Capitol. When I was an undergraduate, we were taught that the Bonus Army sat on the steps of the Capitol and lobbied the legislators who were entering and leaving the building. I remember, from my history textbook, images of crowds seated on the Capitol steps in 1932. Historian Paul Dickson described the events of that day:
More than 25,000 veterans and their families traveled to Washington, DC, to petition Congress and President Herbert Hoover to award them their bonus immediately. Fortunately for the marchers, Pelham Glassford, the local police chief and a veteran of the war himself, made accommodations for this influx, including the creation of an enormous camp in the Anacostia Flats. . . . Glassford understood that Americans had an inherent right to assemble in Washington and petition the government for the “redress of grievances” without fear of punishment or reprisals. . . . On June 15, the House of Representatives passed the new bonus bill by a vote of 211 to 176. Two days later, some 8,000 veterans massed in front of the Capitol as the Senate prepared to vote, while another 10,000 assembled before the raised Anacostia drawbridge.20
The dominant narrative from the Democratic leadership around January 6 often implies that it is an act of violence or of “insurrection” simply to march en masse peacefully, let alone angrily, as the Bonus Army did, to the Capitol. But we should be wary of a history rewritten so as to criminalize peaceful, Constitutionally protected assembly at “The People’s House.”
The violence that did take place on January 6, and its subsequent use as a talking point by the Democrats’ leadership, threatens us with its being used to justify the closing off of our public buildings from US citizens altogether.
This would be convenient for tyrants of any party.
Leaving aside the release of the additional, complicating January 6 footage and how it may or may not change our view of US history—I must say that I am sorry for believing the dominant legacy-media “narrative” pretty completely from the time it was rolled out, without asking questions.
Those who violently entered the Capitol or who engaged in violence inside of it, must of course be held fully accountable. (As must violent protesters of every political stripe anywhere.)
But in addition, anyone in leadership who misrepresented to the public the events of that day so as to distort the complexity of its actual history—must also be held accountable.
January 6 has become, as the DNC intended it to become, after the fact, a “third rail”; a shorthand used to dismiss or criminalize an entire population and political point of view.
Peaceful Republicans and conservatives as a whole have been demonized by the story told by Democrats in leadership of what happened that day.
As a result, half of the country has been tarred by association, and is now in many quarters presumed to consist of chaotic berserkers, anti-democratic rabble, and violent upstarts, whose sole goal is the murder of our democracy.
Republicans, conservatives, I am sorry.
I also believed wholesale so much else that has since turned out not to be as I was told it was by NPR, MSNBC, and the New York Times.
I believed that stories about Hunter Biden’s laptop were Russian propaganda. Dozens of former intel officials said so. Johns Hopkins University said so.21
“Trump specifically cited a ‘laptop’ that contained emails allegedly belonging to Hunter Biden,” said “CNN Fact-Check,” with plenty of double quote marks.22
I believed this all—until it was debunked.
I believed that President Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia—until that assertion was dropped.23
I believed that President Trump was a Russian asset, because the legacy media I read, said so.24
I believed that President Trump instigated the riot at the Capitol—because I did not know that his admonition to his supporters to assemble “peacefully and patriotically” had been deleted from all of the news coverage that I read or heard.25
I believed in the entire Steele dossier, until I didn’t, because it all fell apart.26
Because of lies such as these in legacy media—lies which I and millions of others believed—half of our nation’s electorate was smeared and delegitimized, and I myself was misled.
It damages our nation when legacy media put words in the mouths of Presidents and former Presidents and call them traitors or criminals without evidence.
It damages our country when we cannot tell truth from lies. This is exactly what tyrants seek—an electorate that cannot know what truth is, and what is falsehood.
Through lies, half of the electorate was denied a fair run for its preferred candidate.
Again, I hate violence. I do believe our nation’s capital must be treated as a sacred space.
I don’t like President Trump. (Do I not? Who knows? I have been lied to about him so much for so long, I can’t tell whether my instinctive aversion is simply the habituated residue of years of being on the receiving end of lies.)
But I like the liars who are our current gatekeepers even less.
The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time—and who thus damaged our nation, distorted our history, and deprived half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion, and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors—deserve our disgust.
I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.
I am sorry my former “tribe” remains furious at a journalist for engaging in—journalism.
I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.
Though it is no doubt too little, too late—
Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:
I am so sorry.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Red Sparkly Shoes
So we’d witnessed charming, well-educated, “civilized” people all around us—especially from what my husband calls (as others do) “the laptop class”—reveal, during lockdowns and medical tyranny, a side that was nakedly sadistic.
Then, as our stunned society slowly tried to set itself upright from having wallowed for nearly three years in an irrational, animalistic seizure of hatred and cruelty—as it struggles to settle its hat and to brush the dust and mire of the gutter off its suit, and to straighten its necktie—few indeed from that group want to glance back at the Lord of the Flies–type scenes of savagery that these “civilized” people cheered on.
But we who were targeted know what happened and cannot forget it. We click, sometimes ruminatively, on compilations in social media of “respectable” politicians, comedians, talk show hosts, and “thought leaders,” avidly stating that they wished we would just die, that we should be denied medical care, that we should be locked indoors forever, lose our jobs, and so on.
We—the targeted—must reckon with the traumatizing fact that we were on the receiving end of cruelty that the perpetrators seemed really to enjoy.
Remember all of those affluent ladies (so often affluent ladies)—total strangers—who gestured wildly at you to pull your mask up over your nose? What was their energy like? Almost eager, almost erotic, right?
They liked it. They liked the power.
Remember the tone of the society hostess who told you that you can’t come to a private event at a major philanthropist’s penthouse—because “he is being careful”? Was there a bit of a thrill, a sensual savoring, for the hostess, of the words that excluded you, and that included all of them?
Remember the stories of disabled children who came home from schools, weeping, with their masks tied to their faces by their special education teachers? Remember the tone of the elementary school principals who told anguished parents that there was nothing that they could do about the forced masking, or about kids being socially exiled in full view of the class for shamingly structured weekly testing? Remember the Ivy League deans who told distraught parents that there was nothing they could do about mandated mRNA injections that had been tested on only eight mice? Recall the hospital administrators who told miserable adult children that they could not sneak ivermectin to their elders, or even hug them?
They were sorry, but there was nothing they could do. Remember that?
“We are just following CDC guidelines,” all of these gatekeepers parroted, not noticing, or choosing not to notice, the famous phrase, from about eighty-five years ago, that this recalls.
What was the frenzy of 2020 to 2022 but Sigmund Freud’s and Wilhelm Reich’s repressive hysteria?
Early-twentieth-century psychologists, notably Wilhelm Reich in The Mass Psychology of Fascism, presciently published in 1933, believed that when people deny themselves pleasure and meaning, they become ripe for the attractions of sadism and the lures of totalitarianism.1 Reich believed that the repression of German interwar culture resulted in that population’s attraction to Nazism.
Even earlier than Reich, in 1920, Sigmund Freud formulated the “Pleasure Principle.” Freud suggested that in pleasure and joy there is a release of tension, and that hysteria and other neuroses manifest when these instinctive impulses to joy and pleasure are blocked.2
While controversy swirled around Mattias Desmet’s 2022 book The Psychology of Totalitarianism, and its core proposal of “mass formation” as an explanation for the mania of the recent lockdown past, his thesis is far from new, as he himself plaintively had to argue.3 Indeed, Desmet’s is an updating of directly antecedent work from Reich, which he cites, and even more centrally from Hannah Arendt’s classic 1951 book, The Origins of Totalitarianism, which he also cites.4
Though many readers today think Desmet’s thesis is novel and controversial, it truly isn’t; it is far from novel for sociologists, social commentators, and psychologists to speculate about what psychological dynamics cause paroxysms of totalitarian or fascistic behavior in populations behaving hysterically as a mass. They’ve been doing so for a couple of centuries.
Desmet largely bypasses the aspects of Reich’s work that center on the suppression of pleasure for a more mechanistic focus on general thought control.
But could these theories of suppressed pleasure and the hysterical reactiveness that can arise from it—theories from the past—help usefully to explain the mania of the early 2020s?
Many progressive urban elites, especially, while expressing themselves on social media, seemed to like being “locked down”; seemed to boast about how isolated they were, in the depths of our mass incarceration; seemed even to enjoy being scared of “the virus”—seemed to like having something larger than themselves, larger than their $12 green juices and their pilates workouts at Equinox Luxury Fitness Club, larger than their swiping right on dating apps, larger than the “Culture” section of the New York Times, on which to focus, and to which to yield their passions.
They were hungry for a cause, for a way to be part of the collective “greater good,” for a methodology to demonstrate their self-sacrifice; and so the “rules” handed down one after another by what friends of mine are now calling “our overlords,” seemed to stimulate, fulfill, and gratify that longing for greater meaning, that desire to yield to authority and to lose one’s troublesome, bored, neurotic self in the collective “altruistic” hive mind.
