It’s complicated

Below is a comment of mine to a friend, Geoffrey Jacques, who has been warning that we shouldn’t underestimate the movement that stormed the capital building this week. To think that we won this momentous clash and the other side lost and, as a result, will move to the margins of U.S. politics and crawl into the woodwork, never to be heard from again, (if I understand him right) is mistaken, dangerous and ahistorical. In fact, the insurrectionists, Geoffrey says, returned home feeling not defeated, not a spent force, but victorious and emboldened. They will now claim their own martyrs and a “day” when they dared to “storm heaven.” In other words, what happened in our nation’s capital (again if I understand Geoffrey right) wasn’t a day that will go down in infamy in the imagery and thinking of the insurrectionists, but a moment of glory inspiring for years to come and a day that heralds their certain victory in the future.

Here’s my comment: I agree with you that we shouldn’t assume that we won and the losers are exiting stage right, never to be heard from again. I take your point seriously not to understand the events of this week one sidely and incompletely, as a unalloyed victory for our side and an abject, total, and humiliating defeat for their side. You make an invaluable point that the storming of the capital for them is a beginning, not an end, not a defeat, but a victory that they could only imagine earlier. If social media is to be believed, we will see them en masse on Inauguration Day. As for the formation of antifa squads as a few suggest, let’s hope people have more sense than to go down that road.