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September 7, 2022

A fake insurrection (January 6, 2021)

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Chaotic events of January 6th were sold to Americans as “a violent insurrection.”  Because most Americans have experienced so few (read: zero) insurrections, it wasn’t a hard sell.  However, disorderly crowd “parading” in the Capitol, while reprehensible, does not an insurrection make.  What distinguishes a true insurrection from a riot is the end goal. 

An insurrection, by definition, has as a goal of dismantling the ruling government.  Every following investigation proved beyond a reasonable doubt that people who entered the Capitol on January 6, 2020, whether peacefully, or by force, were not there to dismantle the government.  The protestors were not a uniform group, and had various goals, but none of them was there for “a regime change.”

Farther, it was established early on that the Capitol desecrators carried no weapons.  Any uprising against the government which has an army on its side requires a serious weaponry if it is to have any chance of success.  The US government is protected by the strongest army in the world, so confronting it with “sticks and stones” cannot be called “an insurrection” so much as “a suicide mission,” if the media were honest. 

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The media has successfully drilled into the American psyche that colorful and disturbing events of January 6th were a true “insurrection,” even though by every historical definition it was not.  Real insurrections, in many instances, do not include violence, and are often carried far away from government buildings.

A real insurrection (August 19, 1991)

I had just finished my freshman year at Odessa (Ukraine) State University.  I woke up unreasonably early that morning because I wanted to meet my best friend returning from her summer travels.  Her train was late, so I came back home to catch on my sleep. 

When I woke up a couple of hours later, all three TV channels were playing “Swan Lake.”  Having three TV channels was one of the perks we got when Mikhail Gorbachev came to power.  Before, we only had two, one working part time – both run by the state.  But no matter how many TV channels were operational, they all would inevitably play “Swan Lake” wall to wall on one occasion: the death of a “dear leader.”

In the mid-80s, the Soviet Union lost three leaders in quick succession.  However, the death of the current one seemed improbable.  Mikhail Gorbachev was a relatively young leader with no known health problems.   He was in the process of “restructuring” the communist system we all came to know and hate.  Nobody thought Gorbachev was anywhere near death’s door. But that August morning, “Swan Lake” kept playing.  Absent any announcements for several hours, speculation was abundant – a nuclear attack might have been under way, for all we knew. 

I went searching for my friends.  My apartment, as many others, had no telephone, and I had to use a public phone on a street corner.  Most of my friends were out of town visiting family or vacationing, and I had no way of knowing if they were safe.