One of the curious things, as Sherlock Holmes might say, is that there are two different and competing stories of what happened at the Capitol on 6 January 2021. On the one hand, you have a narrative of total violence and mayhem, while on the other hand, you have a partially peaceful narrative. What accounts for the difference?
There are apparently tens of thousands of hours of video both inside and outside the Capitol on that January day. The Democrat run J6 Committee biased their analysis and report to the point that it is more a Hollywood production than a factually believable narrative. The Tucker Carlson show on Fox News debunked a couple of the salient points of the J6 Committee report but is accused of bias in the choice of the video shown. Significantly, the House Majority leader, Representative McCarthy, has stated that he will release all the unedited videos to the public.
I am interested in the differences in the actions of the crowd. Wouldn’t a crowd with similar interests generally tend to act the same?
One obvious conclusion is that certain areas of violence were set aside and staged to provide political optics. Who goaded the crowd? – deliberate provocateurs? Who would an incited crowd benefit? Is the damage to the Capitol localized? Were the police, or elements thereof, given differing instructions and by whom? Did politicians or their staff participate in the violence? How about the timing of the assault vis-à-vis the Trump rally?
One alternative but obvious conclusion is that the peaceful activity was of no political interest. Who wanted to show a peaceful crowd merely milling around and inside the Capitol? Who wanted to show the police interacting peacefully and respectfully with the mainly compliant crowd? How did the police handle the peaceful aspects of the situation so successfully? (Were these questions deliberately buried?)
One of the moral lessons of the novel “A Tale of Two cities” is that things are not always as they seem to be. A person who appears to be evil can become the most righteous of people. Individuals who appear to seek justice may end up being bloodthirsty and vengeful. The Tale of Two Capitols seems to follow such a narrative.
Note: Two names are prominently mentioned. On the one hand, you have Ray Epps who may or may not have been a provocateur but was involved in the violence at the Capitol. On the other hand, you have the Qanon Shaman, Jacob Chansley, who was escorted around inside the Capitol by the police. Epps received no punishment. Chansley, who had relevant video evidence withheld by the government, was given a 41-month prison sentence.
