Tag Archives: populism

Stirring Footage From Inside Jan 6 Capitol Protest

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Watch this footage taken by New Yorker reporter Luke Mogelson and ask yourself if, given the circumstances,  there’s anything at all to be ashamed about in the overall behavior of this crowd of anywhere from half a million to over a million.

I couldn’t have felt prouder watching this honest, courageous, self-restrained ground-swell of patriotic feeling and righteous indignation.

If this be insurrection, make the most of it. And count me right in as an insurrectionist.


The protestors for the most part are dressed in ordinary street wear, some wearing masks of the US flag, others carrying US or Trump flags. Inside the halls of Congress they chant, Protect your liberty, Protect the constitution and tell the guards they are there because Trump, the guards’ boss, wants them there. They thank the guards for letting them in. They chant “Whose house? Our house,” “It’s the people’s house, let the people in,” and similar stuff.

“Defend the constitution against enemies, foreign and domestic,” shouts another. They talk about it being a war.

They march through the halls, look around and ask where everyone is because there’s no one but police. The brave Congress critters are skulking under desks in safe spaces, instead of meeting their constituents.

When someone sits in the vice president’s chair, one of the leaders tells him he cannot and it is disrespectful. The fellow in the chair then asks, with splendid logic, why THEY can steal an election, but HE cannot sit in a chair. But he does get up.

The officers who let them in are thanked repeatedly and told that they are only doing their job and it’s appreciated. A leader calls out that this is hallowed ground, sacred, and deserves respect. Another protestor says, Now that we’re here, we might as well form a government.

One guy’s looking for anything in the papers left behind that can be used against these “scumbags,” a sentiment probably shared by around 100 million people, including this blogger.

Someone tells the rest to watch what they do, because it’s a PR war…there’s talk of an information operation.

The guy with the horns on his head, Qanon Shaman, bellows in the background high above the paper hunters at the desks. Someone says they’ve found papers showing that Cruz was going to object to Arizona’s objection…he was going to sell us out anyway..Then he seems to retract. Another person says, Cruz and Hawley would have wanted us to do this. Someone says, There are 4 million people coming, some have just not got there. Another refers to a million people.

Several men get up and invoke Jesus Christ’s name, asking for light and protection from heaven, thanking Him for giving them the opportunity to be heard in this place and for being able to take back the country from communists, globalists, and traitors.

Before leaving, one of the leaders wants a picture taken and asks permission from the guards to do it.

Then they leave through one entrance while Mogelson leaves through another, where he takes more footage, this showing a more boisterous side of things. People are scaling the walls, tearing off fabric high up, but are largely nonviolent, with lots of chanting: USA, USA, and I think, We want Trump.

The police start tasering and throwing smoke bombs and people shout, Is that all you’ve got? We’re coming for you…

Someone builds a gallows and starts shouting, We’re going to hunt each and everyone of you down. There are calls to fight at home, to protest in the state capitols and to organize. Better to die a free man, shouts one man, than on your knees. Someone uses a flagpole to smash what looks like suitcases or boxes and shouts about how the media wouldn’t be able to record that. Another man says CNN is hiding behind Union Station.

People shout Treason, treason, treason.

Liberals Love to Hate Sarah Palin

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Update: This piece is now up as a full-length article at Lew Rockwell.. Reader responses will be below in the Comments, as usual…

In an August 3 piece in Salon magazine, even the usually well-modulated voice of Professor Juan Cole, shot up a few octaves. He compared Sarah Palin to President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran, and came out in Ahmadinejad’s favor. Now, according to some people, Ahmadinejad stands guilty of anti-Semitism. I don’t know if that’s true or not. But that’s what the establishment media seems to think. So, if the same media thinks Palin is worse than Ahmadinejad, then what it’s saying is that to liberals, being a conservative small-town mother is more dangerous than being anti-Semitic.

Palin and the Iranian president are both dangerous populists, writes Cole. They blame their failures not on their own loose lips (Palin’s stutterings on the Katy Couric show and Ahmadinejad’s alleged anti-Semitism), but on media conspiracies against them.

Of course, there’s no real reason why both things couldn’t be true. Palin could have her short-comings, and she could still be the victim of a hatchet-job by the media. But measured logic is not the style of the Sarah-phobics:

Here’s Cole again on the Irani-Alaskan Axis-of-Medieval:

“Both politicians ‘encourage a political style of exhibitionism, disregard for the facts as understood by the mainstream media, and exaltation of the values of people who feel themselves marginalized by the political system….’

Dear me. Tut-tut. Political exhibitionism, eh? And that wouldn’t be something ever committed by Barack Obama now, would it – he with the near-halo on many a magazine cover, who dubbed himself a voice for people marginalized by the system – or so I recall – in his celebrated Getty- er- pre-election speech on race?

As for “facts as understood by the mainstream media,” since when are facts determined by how journalists understand them? Isn’t that just what some guy called Donald Rumsfeld said not so long ago and got these very same journalists lathered up at his solipsism?

I’m no fan of Sarah Palin.

Anyone who has five children at home and hankers for high office has her priorities confused. If a real feminist was needed on McCain’s team, Todd was the Palin they should have picked. And no, the photogenic governor doesn’t have the experience needed to take on DC. No more than our genial President himself.

But by trashing Sarah Palin in such a rancid, racial, and bigoted way, the media did itself no good, and turned her into an instant symbol of the double-standards practiced by this country’s political elites toward outsiders.

Whatever you think of the moose-hunting mayor, she isn’t an insider, and it was insiders who dragged America through the mud over the last two decades.That makes her – one way or other – a voice for ordinary people, one of us. The persistent trashing of Sarah Palin is a trashing of ordinary Americans.