The storming of the US Capitol by a rowdy gang of irreverent domestic terrorists, comprising The Proud Boys, QANON, the Confederate fringe, the Kú Klux Klan, and other ragamuffins, is not the exact equivalent of the 1789 storming of The Bastille in Paris, led by a band of public intellectuals, the Jacobins.
The MAGA, or Make America Great Again, movement, mostly redneck neo-fascists, came in weird costumes, some like the Vikings, Confederate and Trump-centric flags. A couple of handguns, assault rifles, Molotov cocktails, and napalm used in bombs and flame throwers, were found on the invaders.
They forced their way into the Capitol by pushing the Congress policemen, breaking down barriers, doors and glass windows and scaling the walls. Inside the building, they took selfies, stole symbolic artifacts, like the lectern of the Speaker, sat on the seat of the President of the Senate and rested their feet on the table in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office.
While the US Capitol houses the Congress, the legislative arm of America’s democratic government, The Bastille, a symbol of tyranny and oppression, was an old fortress and state prison in 18th-century Paris.
The two insurrectional sorties intended to change the course of history, though the former was to subvert the will of 152 million Americans who chose Joe Biden over incumbent Donald Trump as President, while the latter sought to replace the tyrannical Bourbon monarchy of France with the will of the people.
But the freeing of prison inmates in Benin, capital city of Edo State, by hoodlums who hijacked Nigeria’s #EndSARS protest, was equal to the freeing of prisoners inside The Bastille on that fateful day in June 1789.
President Trump claims that America’s November 3, 2020 presidential election was rigged against him through mail-in ballots that were almost overwhelmingly cast for Biden, now confirmed as President-elect.
He has protested with countless inciting tweets and 62 baseless lawsuits that his bevy of lawyers, led by Rudy Guiliani, a former Mayor of New York City, took to several law courts across America. They got no reliefs because the allegations of vote malpractices could not be substantiated.
But edging on the mob to break into The Capitol when Article 2 of America’s Constitution, which provides that “The President of the Senate, in the Presence of the Senate and the House of Representatives, (shall) open all the Certificates, and the Votes shall then be counted, (and) the Person having the greatest Number of Votes shall be the President” was being consummated, belies the image of a “Law and Order” President that Trump professes.
There is a gunsmoking photograph of Trump swirling on the Internet. German newspaper, Der Spiegel, has the President sitting in the Oval Office, with a flaming cigarette lighter in his hand, while he looked non-plussed, in front of a backdrop of billows of fire and smoke that can be seen through the window behind him.
To his left is the Coat-of-Arms of the Commander-in-Chief of America’s military, the officer who promised: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of the President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.” Trump wasn’t honourable enough to live up to this pledge that he freely made.
At the end of the day of the siege, five American citizens had been shot and killed within the grounds of The Capitol. The first person to be killed was a woman, shot inside the hallowed Capitol building, by the police, for breach of security protocol. Security reports suspect armed protests are planned for Inauguration Day.
But you must commend Republican Vice President Mike Pence, and a bunch of “benign turncoat Republicans,” like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Senator Lindsay Graham of Arizona, and others, who eventually decided to do right by the Constitution and the people of America.
Senator McConnell swore, “I will not pretend (that) such a vote (against the certification of the votes) would be a harmless protest gesture.” He also doesn’t think the American Congress should unconstitutionally transform into an electoral commission, in the manner of Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission that conducts state and federal elections.
There will be no point in giving free publicity to those Republican senators and members of the House of Representatives who wanted the will of the American people upturned even after the domestic terrorists tried to stage a coup d’etat against an arm of the American government. The last assault on the Congress was in 1814.
At the end of the reconvened session that held under a palpable pall of fear and panic, 282 members of the House of Representatives voted to reject the objection raised against Arizona and Pennsylvania Electoral College votes. Also, 92 of the senators voted against the objection. It looks like Vice President-elect Senator Kamala Harris, chose to abstain from the votes– for obvious reasons.
Thus, Biden’s election as President, and that of Harris as first female, Black and Asian Vice President of America, all rolled into one, were confirmed. Interestingly, the tally of Electoral College votes of 306 in favour of Biden, and 232 for President Trump, was exactly the same as what won the presidency for Trump over former First Lady and former Secretary of State Hilary Clinton in 2016.
This is a clear situation where both physics and politics agree that action and reaction are always equal and opposite. The figures were equal, and the Republicans are now on the karma receiving end, just as the Democrats did in 2016.
Political analysts suggest that the American electoral protocols that extend to nearly 80 days to conclude provided the anarchists with the opportunity to think they could disrupt the transition process. In the parliamentary system of Britain, succession from one prime minister to another sometimes takes less than a day.
Following is a summary of the convoluted process of validating an American presidential election as prescribed by Article 2 of America’s Constitution: Each state appoints electors through the popular votes they conduct independent of other states or the Federal Government.
Each state certifies its electors and forwards their names to the American Congress in Washington, DC. The lists containing those names are opened and counted in the presence of Senators and Congressmen, acting merely as ceremonial returning officers.
Three significant sub-plots of the chaos were, breach of security in the Capitol, suspected to be abetted by insiders, and the possible undermining of press freedom as Tweeter and other social media platforms yanked off President Trump’s accounts because he unethically used their platforms to incite his mob to assault the Capitol.
But some wonder if this could encourage Washington Post newspaper, America’s national radio WNBC, America’s national TV network CBS and international TV network CNN to go the way of the social media platforms and black out President Trump.
#BlackLivesMatter sympathisers think if those who invaded the Capitol had been any shade of black, the casualties would have exceeded five, and many of those alive would have been escorted into police patrol vehicles in regulation “wrist-bands” of the Prisons.
But you must commend Americans for standing up to an attempt to breach their democracy as they plan to impeach an irresponsible president.
Twitter @lekansote
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