The fear that despite having 20,000 armed soldiers at the inauguration the insurrectionists who besieged Congress on January 6, 2021 will be back on January 20.
Even more insidious is the concern not voiced in the mainstream media that those who stormed Washington DC in their abortive Coup D’Etat have active support within law enforcement.
This is a concern which is understandably NOT where the American political Establishment wants to go. Its end game is terrifying.
Excerpted from The Nation 1.13.2021 – Elie Mystal
If we protected Black people from racist cops on the street, we wouldn’t have to worry about protecting presidents from their own Secret Service details. Maybe now, white people will get that. But I’m not willing to bet the continuity of the US government on it.
Joe Biden will be inaugurated as the 46th President of the United States on January 20. He could choose to observe this ritual in a bunker or on a plane or in a box with a fox. Instead, however, he will do it on an open-air platform erected just outside the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
Biden is taking what precautions he can. Reports indicate that he is changing his Secret Service detail to bring on agents who served him while he was vice president. It’s a wise move, but how in the hell does that help Kamala Harris?
Biden has to be there, but Kamala Harris does not. Nor does Nancy Pelosi. The principle of protecting the continuity of the government suggests that Harris and Pelosi, who are respectively the first and second in line to assume the presidency should something happen to Biden, must be shielded at all costs during Biden’s big day.
The problem is, even more than a celebration, we deserve Harris alive.
I don’t think the MAGA crowd can overcome the United States paramilitary apparatus that is set to be deployed to defend our government. I don’t think law enforcement can be overpowered in a repeat of its January 6 failures—unless, that is, its members want to be overpowered. We still haven’t wrestled with the fact that the people who stormed the Capitol clearly benefited from inside help—or at least from permissiveness from members of the Capitol Police.
Ayanna Pressley reports that the panic buttons had been ripped out of her office. Women of color like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Cori Bush all recount harrowing experiences. Jim Clyburn says the mob found his private, unmarked office—not the one with his name on the door. Nobody knows if people of color in Congress are safe from their own law enforcement.
Nor will we have found all the violent white supremacists currently embedded in the National Guard. Or working for the Secret Service.
As it is, the Secret Service is investigating one of its own for posting a pro-Trump meme and praising the rioters who stormed the Capitol. The Washington Post reports that the meme shows Trump shaking hands with himself under the caption, “Here’s to the peaceful transition of power.”
We know, at the very least, that many in law enforcement sympathize with Trump because their unions almost universally endorsed him. Most people reacted to the police union endorsement of Trump as mere politics, but Black people have been trying to tell the rest of you for years that the police are aligned with white supremacist forces in this country.
Some of the people who participated in and incited the insurrection have already blended back in with the rest of society. That’s because they were allowed to just walk away—because the cops didn’t make mass arrests at the scene of the violence. And so, we might never catch all of the law enforcement personnel who breached the Capitol. We certainly won’t catch all the law enforcement personnel who stayed outside but cheered them on.
https://www.thenation.com/article/politics/biden-inauguration-safety/
Lee's Perspective 