Documentary filmmaking is recognized as an artform and we often don’t appreciate that fact, until we see something like this forty minute video compiled and produced by the New York Times.
I can only provide a link here. The New York Times has allowed snippets of the video up on YouTube, but the entire piece is only available on their website. Here’s the link.
The last ten minutes especially are riveting. The Capitol Police commander asks for backup and doesn’t get it. Then he calls out a 10:33 alert, which is their code for may day. He announces that they have lost the line and sends out the last ditch effort alert.
The scenes are horrific. You’ve seen most of this in small snippets, but seeing forty minutes of it cut together gives continuity to the short blasts of violence you’ve witnessed. The sadness of this is that these people were acting under a mass delusion, fomented by Fox News and bolstered by Trump, that they were performing a patriotic duty.
Also today, the sixth month anniversary of January 6, Paul Gosar is doing his best to follow the dark and lawless narrative of the Big Lie, by demanding the name of the Capitol Police officer who shot Ashli Babbitt.
In case you're wondering how Paul Gosar is commemorating the sixth month anniversary of the attack on the Capitol pic.twitter.com/wBlimE3xvO
— Ben Jacobs (@Bencjacobs) July 6, 2021
Paul Gosar has had the opportunity to view this video as well. It’s been out for two weeks now. He can see the context in which all this happened. But that’s not the point. The point is that Gosar, like so many of his GOP brethren, prefer to abuse their positions of power by undermining the government that they swore to protect and serve. Their oaths to the constitution mean nothing. It might as well be, as the old Dubya CT characterized it, “just a piece of paper.”
This is all you need to know about Paul Gosar. This and the fact that his own family thinks he’s unhinged and dangerous and doesn’t belong in office.
Anyone mentioning or retweeting messages from Gosar should note this, please– https://t.co/vmGjkgFVjm
— MoreSkyPlease (@Moreskyplease) July 6, 2021
What was it that Donald Trump said? “Innocent people don’t plead the fifth?” Innocent people don’t ask for presidential preemptive pardons, either. Lawbreakers do.
Paul Gosar is one of the worst Republicans in Congress and in this day and age, that is saying a mouthful.
Gosar looks like he would have fit well in a H****r Youth group. (So do several other Rs, like Cotton and Lankford.)
As far as I’m concerned there’s a good case that Ashli Babbitt committed what’s known as suicide by cop – she wanted to be a MAGA martyr I guess. The officers behind that door had been through hell already, and were badly outnumbered by a crowd out of control. I’m someone who has often questioned the “I was in fear for my life” defense by cops but on this day, in that and other specific instances around the Capitol during the riot that belief was entirely justified. The officers behind that door that had been smashed were about to be overwhelmed but they were still trying to hold the crowd back, and Babbitt started body surfing herself along the top to get at them. I wrote in a comment elsewhere that the only reason we didn’t see footage (after things were over) of a massive collections of firearms and other weapons was that it was planned beforehand by the Trump administration that arrests wouldn’t take place, or that if any happened it would be of people well away from the main fighting and after it was apparent the coup had failed and they could be passed off to someone who could get them out of dodge.
The officer who shot Babbitt had every reason to believe someone that determined to get through the glass might be armed and once through would pull out a handgun and start shooting.
These same assholes defending her and demanding the immediate doxing of the officer (so they can take revenge on him, his family and maybe his friends too!) are the very same assholes who would if a suspect were black or brown and naked in the street with their hands up in the air standing completely still in compliance with cop’s orders defend cops shooting him/her and trotting out the “I was in fear for my life” defense. We’ve seen plenty of situations where that defense is bullshit, and cops get away with it and conservatives LOVE it because some “uppity” black or brown person got summarily executed when non-lethal force could have and should have been used.
But THIS time and in THIS situation? Their attitude is “Who the fuck do these people defending the Capitol think they are fighting back and even shooting when we have them overwhelmingly outnumbered, have committed assaults against them and even shouted and chanted out intent to do them and the people they are protecting harm?”
I guess their support for the “Boys in Blue” is only for when THEY aren’t the ones committing crimes!
There are folks here who poo poo the comparisons to Nazi germany. Idiots. Fire burns down any house that doesn’t stop it early. Same now with 74million+ & one of our two parties supporting neonazis & white supremacists. 6months after the assault on our goddamn capital & these traitors still walk the halls of Congress & are running for office. Wake up. We are in a fight for our democracy, which is worse than WW2, since that lay across the Atlantic Ocean, & this is inside our borders. Time to fight. My two senators office staffers can’t get to spew their lies so they often hang up. However, they do hear the truth. Call. Hassle them to no end. A better deal than my 5 uncles got in Europe & the Pacific 1941-1945. Get off ur collective asses. It’s the only way.
Funny, I’ve never heard any of the right-wing apologists who supposedly back the Blue ask who was responsible for Brian Siknik’s death, or any of the other LEO’s that day, let alone the over 100 of them that were severely injured and traumatized by the ‘tourists’. But the terrorists are all hung up over the 1 person on their side that got killed. They are damned lucky she’s the only one. Given the violence displayed by some of the maniacs, there should have been many more. They should be giving thanks that despite their monumental idiocy and treachery, nearly all of them survived.