Al Jazeera Sees the Faint Echo of 9/11 in 1/6 and Shines a Light on Canada

Al Jazeera sees the 1/6 insurrection on Capitol Hill as a perhaps unwitting effort to complete the job begun by a different gaggle of fanatics on 9/11. Canada also takes a blast for the "sensible centrists" in our media (and government) who appeased the Mango Mussolini.

It is worth recalling that the terrorists who attacked the US on [9/11] may have been plotting to destroy the Capitol as well. They were thwarted by brave passengers and crew on board United Flight 93 who, ironically, organised another type of insurrection to save lives (possibly) at the Capitol at the expense of their own.

So, arguably, on January 6, 2021, Trump and his band of fanatical allies in Congress and at the White House helped finish the job begun by a band of fanatics on 9/11. Instead of a plane, the MAGA mob ransacked and overwhelmed the seat of US “democracy” by virtue of their rampaging numbers and with any weapon at hand.

Trump’s crass revisionism about what happened this time last year on Capitol Hill and why it happened has been taken up by the usual – and some unusual – suspects.

 
The usual suspects, like Trump, feed their viewers and readers a geyser of lies about what happened and why it happened for the same rank reasons as their dear, delusional leader – money, notoriety and to disfigure history.

They have no shame. Hence, they cannot be shamed.

It is the unusual suspects, including several lapsed “progressive” writers, who should be ashamed of belittling the Trump-led insurrection simply as a gathering of aggrieved Americans gone slightly awry or giving sustenance to the crackpot claim that the FBI secretly fomented the furious mayhem as part of a “false flag” operation.

Like smug conspiracy-mongers, they cling to minor discrepancies to challenge the “official story” in their fantastical effort to dismiss the seriousness of a calculated and determined attempt to prevent the certification of a new president elected by a healthy plurality of voters. 

Meanwhile, a gaggle of centrist columnists outside the US, has penned their de rigueur commemorative missives that contemplate – with varying degrees of apocalyptic horror – the lasting significance and consequences of the traumatic bedlam of 1/6.

Canada's belated change of heart.

In Canada, a number of pundits have suddenly experienced remarkable epiphanies and now recognise the existential threat that Trump and his legion of frothing, AK-47-toting disciples pose to the institutional framework of America’s constitutional republic.

Despite Trump’s litany of outrages that confirmed, again and again, his odious character and sinister designs, these sensible centrists insisted that this crude, but capable, authoritarian should be treated with grudging deference and respect lest he scuttle lucrative cross-border commerce or, worse, trigger a “trade war”.

These days, the sensible centrists have done a stunning volte-face and lament that conditions are ripe for the imminent “collapse of American democracy” and that, “by 2030, if not sooner, the country could be governed by a right-wing dictatorship.”

...The sensible centrists in Canada and elsewhere chose wilfully and willingly to ignore it to mollify Trump.

They have, it appears, forgotten this, prompting a Royal Roads University professor to pen this astonishing paragraph: “But now we must focus on the urgent problem of what to do about the likely unraveling of democracy in the United States. We need to start by fully recognising the magnitude of the danger.”

Scores of wise, concerned people were focused on the “urgent problem” and recognised “the magnitude of the danger” prior to and immediately after Trump rode down a golden escalator to announce his candidacy for president in 2015.

They were ignored or ridiculed as naïve idealists who did not understand how the “real world” works.