Violence is coming, whether or not you regard what happened in Washington as some sort of harbinger. From Joe Lauria at consortiumnews.com:
The storming of the Capitol may just be a harbinger of things to come.
With the normalization of mass shootings in the United States it is more than understandable that members of Congress feared for their lives when they learned protestors had forced their way into the Capitol in unknown numbers and were roaming around at will.
But by the time it was over we knew that: only five weapons were seized by police so most of the intruders were probably unarmed; the only shots fired were by police who killed an unarmed female protestor; video and photos showed the demonstrators taking pictures of chambers and art work like they were tourists; and the occupiers were peacefully led out of the Capitol six hours later. (Had they been anti-racism protestors one wonders how differently it would have ended.)
A dramatic event such as this is an old-time reporter’s dream, to just describe the facts and details as they emerged, painting a picture in words in print or on the radio. With so many mobile phone pictures and video as well as TV cameras everywhere, that journalistic function has been greatly diminished if not extinguished. In its place are preaching, partisan, editorialists masquerading as mainstream journalists.
By the time it was over it was clear what had not happened: it wasn’t a “coup,” it wasn’t an “insurrection,” it had nothing to do with Putin, or China or Iran and it wasn’t like Pearl Harbor, as Sen. Chuck Schumer ridiculously tried to call it.
