Comments of the Day: Capitol Police Officer is killed by a blow to the head with a fire extinguisher– delivered by a supporter of the current president.

Here are some comments from a New York Times article about the death of Brian D. Sicknick, a Capitol Police officer who was murdered while trying to defend the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021 from a mob of more than ten thousand mostly young, overwhelmingly white, overwhelmingly male people who had been infected with a “brainworm.”

The term “brainworm” comes from a reference by a commentator on MSNBC today who described the people who were convinced by the lies from the current president about the election held last November. To recap, the current president claimed that he had won the election “by a landslide” when in fact, in a free and fair election, he had lost by a margin of more than seven million votes and an Electoral College score of 306-232 (I looked this up on archives.gov/electoral-college/2020 so I’m pretty sure it’s correct and our current government says our current president lost the election officially.) The people who believed him were also deluded by a number of other lies, but the main lie was the actual, not fraudulent, results of the election.

Anyway, “brainworm” it is– the term for being overcome by a barrage of “big lies”, conspiracy theories and just plain “gaslighting” (another recently popular term.)

Here are a selection of most-liked comments to the article:

Northernd Toronto Jan. 8

Times Pick

We can not judge the capital police too harshly who were on ground [who] were there and don’t know what was going through their minds re: selfies, moving aside and letting people pass. [And] I’m certain most of those officers were doing their jobs. But we certainly can judge the lack of preparation by the chief and the lack of involvement by other security forces. On the other hand the world cannot judge Trump harshly enough. It is truly unbelievable and unfair if that man doesn’t end up in prison. He has had a hand in the four deaths at the Capital building and countless other deaths from his mishandling the Covid-19 crisis. I say mishandling but it was worst than that – he just didn’t care. Time for Trump to face justice. If Trump doesn’t pay a price of his freedom then there will never be justice.

Dotconnector New York Jan. 8

Times Pick

Beyond Jan. 20, let us never forget the names of the complicit, starting with Hawley and Cruz. Meanwhile, they’re raising funds from the fires of deadly insurrection that they fueled. Such so-called politicians are unfit to hold any political power. Ever.

EPMD MA Jan. 8

Times Pick

The willingness to tolerate this white mob lead to the death of this officer. I am astonished that the Capitol Police force did not use deadly force to stop these rioters from entering federal property where national secrets are kept. None of them should have been allowed to cross the threshold of the Capitol buildings and the officers should have shot anyone who crossed it. Any foreign or domestic terrorist, could have entered with that mob and possible killed dozens of these members of the Congress and Senate and possibly the VP or stolen national secrets. Senator Warnock was arrested in 2017, as part of a peaceful protest, in the same Capitol Building and lead away in handcuffs. How much of a threat was he compared to armed rioters? The police should never have been allowed them to cross the threshold. The same way I would expect them to use deadly force against a possible foreign terrorist forcibly trying to enter any one of our most secure government buildings.

VMG NJ Jan. 8 [reply to EPMD]

@EPMD I agree, there was a joint assembly of Congress in process and a well placed bomb could have wiped out our government in a single stroke. Many more heads need to [roll] for the catastrophe.

esox lucius Jan. 8

I have entered my ninth decade as a citizen of this country, and I will not likely be around long enough to see it repaired of the damage done by Donald Trump and the man who prepared the ground for him, Rupert Murdoch. We all struggle against our darker impulses, hopefully prevailing most of the time. But for 25 years, Fox News, and its online imitators, have glorified and legitimized those impulses, fertilizing and tilling the soil for the poisonous growth that became the Trump presidency. My deepest sympathy to the family of Brian Sicknick, and God help us all.

Some readers have also pointed out that the literal pipe bombs that were found at the Democratic National Committee and Republican National Committee offices a few blocks from the Capitol were intended to distract police from the mayhem taking place in and around the Capitol.

These bombs suggest that there was a group or groups who intended to make the disaster even worse by preventing the police from effectively responding to the invasion of the Capitol building. What role did these groups have in the planning and execution of the gathering at the Capitol? Did they intend to actually take hostages?– Clearly, even if they did, they had few or no people on the ground in the front of the crowd.

There is also another threat that could disperse the National Guard: demonstrations at the State Capitol buildings, similar to what happened on January 6. There were demonstrations and threats of similar violence at many State Capitols on the same day the whole nation was watching Washington, DC. This could force the National Guard to mobilize to protect the States as well as the national capitol. It is time to provide active duty military forces to protect the entire country– activate them now, because it takes time for them to get together and prepare their equipment.

At a time when the pandemic has worsened to the point where an average of a quarter of a million new positive tests are reported every day and the death rate has exceeded 4,000 people on some days, this is the threat that could turn our country into a disaster area. Experts are saying that the riot on January 6 represented a “super spreader” event– with many asymptomatic, unmasked people getting together from around the country, shouting and screaming for hours, then getting on planes and going back home. An untold number of new infections will be started all over the country; no-one will be able to count them accurately because they are so spread out. The only thing that we will be able to see is that the overall, country-wide new case rate will go up, again.

Whose fault is it? You know his name. Just don’t say it because that’s what he wants– more publicity.

(photo courtesy of pixabay.com)