Yes, This Is Who We Are. Just Ask Any Queer or POC
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Last week, a mob, a riot, an insurgency of right-wingnuts urged on by our traitorous president and sycophantic members of Congress attacked the Capitol Building of the United States of America. They bloodied and killed police, well, they bloodied the police who weren’t holding the doors for them or taking selfies. They terrorized members of Congress. They destroyed property and stole from The People’s House. They basically acted like right-wingnuts.
All during the terrorist insurrection, people were asking where the cops were. You could only see a few who were actively trying to stop the vandals. Partly this was due to bad planning on the part of the Capitol Police. According to news reports, the police and National Guard didn’t believe that Trump’s rally would turn into a riot despite the weeks of social media posts calling for violence that day. Why did they underestimate the crowd and its ferocity? My guess is it was because the misanthropes were mostly white.
We can all remember the show of force the federal government put on during the Black Lives Matter protests. Thousands of anonymous officers dressed as stormtroopers lined D.C.’s streets to keep the Black people and their allies in check because you know how those people get. But white people threatening violence? “Nah, it won’t turn into anything ugly; they’re white,” seems to be the thought behind that poor planning. (There’s plenty of room to start a conspiracy theory myself, but I decline to reach down into that gutter.)
This poor planning led to the riot we all saw — the destruction in our capitol, the killing of five people, including a Capitol Police officer. On the news, I heard many politicians and pundits say, “This is not who we are.”
Hate to tell you but, yes, yes it is. This is precisely who we are.
Cisgender-heterosexual white people are not familiar with this face of America, but every queer person and person of color in this country knows it.
This is the face of America that riots every time any minority makes social progress. (Trump Jr. was attacking trans athletes before the riot as an example of why the mob needed to “take back the country.”) This is the face of America that bombs churches. This is the face of America that sends cops…
