The Blood of Patriots

 The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. 

-- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

The cartoonist Ben Garrison has drawn the "Tree of Liberty" a few times. He declared that it was "thirsty" in one cartoon.

And then recently:

Yesterday a woman named Ashli Babbit, a Q follower, it appears was shot and killed inside the Capitol building. While she was not a patriot, as the dupe of a would-be fascist she may have fit into the "tyrant" category. Will the "tree" be "refreshed" by her blood?

Maybe--The Blood of Patriots Scenario

The Omnivore privately told his friends, when asked "how do we get out of this" (:: gestures generally at everything ::) that the only way might be "the blood of patriots scenario." After 9/11 world opinion was so against Al Qaeda that even other terrorist organizations were afraid to associate with them. They said, Intel people told us, that other terrorists looked at the 9/11 attack as sort of an institutional "martyrdom operation" where what they did was so bad that they were never coming back from it.

ISIS: "Hold my beer."

However, that turned out to be true. Although the organization still technically exists and is still dangerous, they are nothing like they were and Bin Laden, although he had a decent run, was hunted and killed by Navy SEALS in a moment of American exceptionalism.

Yesterday team Trump may have done the same thing.

Or, Maybe Not

A flash poll shows that 20% of voters (45% of republicans) approve of storming the capitol. From an organizational standpoint, those are not good numbers. From an American civics standpoint those are appalling. The event has had some tectonic impacts, however.

1. Most of the objection to the election by Senators has been quashed. A few are still holding out but doing it quietly.
2. Last night the Senate certified Biden's win in an orderly fashion and the impact of the incursion was limited.
3. The press has described this as either domestic terrorism or some kind of attempted coup. While there's a lot more to say about this, that's key: they didn't "both sides it."
4. It was highly associated with Trump. The RNC spoke out against it. Even spineless senators like Rubio spoke out against it. The condemnation is pretty universal.

We also know that pro-Trump people marched on several state houses yesterday leading to evacuations and concern about escalation. This may be the crest of the wave. It might not: we'll see.

However--This Wasn't Popular

The key thing here is that Trump told his people to do this, they did it, it accomplished nothing, and the optics? The optics were bad. Immediately right-wingers not directly at the riot spread the theory that the stormers were Antifa and were bussed in to make Trumpers look bad.

That alone tells you much about the thought quality of the conspiracy mill.

On sites like TheDonald.win, there was temporary jubilation--and then despair--as the votes were counted and the senators, both left and right, stood together against a common enemy: Trump.

People who claimed that pundits had long over-reacted to the threat of Trump ate their words as the Capitol was trashed and some culture warriors like Rod Dreher looked on in horror at the desecration of our state house.

In the eyes of Americans and the world, this was humiliating. It was a view of Trump's most faithful as vandals, confederates, and weirdos. If you voted for Trump in 2016--or worse, 2020, The Omnivore hopes you're proud of this.