To The Eagle:

The assault upon the seat of our government last Wednesday was an insurrection of the affluent. As key figures who invaded the Capitol have been steadily identified over the last five or six days, it’s remarkable how many had traveled from upscale zip codes. Trump’s insurgents could afford to fly in to join the rebellion. That explains a lot. It explains why the Republican Party, locked in its long downward moral spiral, lost its mind when America elected its first Black president. It explains why so many people look for conspiracies like QAnon to explain a society that no longer makes sense for them. It explains why so many reasonably well-off folks tried to shut down American democracy, not because they feared losing their paycheck, but because they feared losing their white privilege.

Racist-In-Chief Trump had promised that “I alone can fix it” — that he’d protect them in a society where Black and brown essential workers were turning out to vote in ever larger numbers and who were demanding that police stop killing them. In their changing world, just being white no longer guaranteed them upper caste status in America’s racial hierarchy. They truly believed that Biden, Harris, and the 82 million were going to end their white power, and they saw the 6th of January as their last chance to save it. The Capitol still stands, but once again the Democrats are left to clean up the shambles Republicans have left behind.

JB Bouchard

Puget Island