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What Do We Call It?
Was it a coup? An insurrection? Sedition? A lark? Some suggestions.
Wednesday, as the joint House and Senate was about to meet in congress to tally and to certify the votes of the several states, a Trump rally turned into, first a march, then a protest, then a melee and, finally, a rout of the DC police. For the first time ever, the Confederate Flag was openly taken into the Capitol Building of the Union. Windows were broken. People were injured and some died.
A foolhardy band of, mostly, men — acting on the loosest of conspiracies — broke windows, faced off against police, looted various office buildings, defecated on the floor and then calmly filed out to plan hijinks for the inauguration. DC police apparently had their skin color meters on, when deciding whether or no to arrest anybody.
Nobody knows how to describe what happened and, therefore, what to call it. It wasn’t quite an insurrection. It wasn’t really sedition. Most of the people who undertook it seemed to be having a mildly astonished, somewhat smug, laugh over the whole affair. What was it?
That’s why I’m here.
With a modicum of humility and barely any trepidation whatsoever, I present some possible nomenclature for the events of Wednesday, the 38th of December, the last horror of 2020.
