Just What the Doctor Ordered: An "Insurrection"

 

Just What the Doctor Ordered: An “Insurrection”

Peter Schultz

 

            There is a marvelously revealing book about American politics entitled The Counterrevolution: How Our Government Went To War Against Its Own Citizens,” authored by Bernard E. Harcourt of Columbia University. In it, early on, he makes the following observations:

 

“We are now witnessing the triumph of a counterinsurgency model of government on American soil in the absence of an insurgency or uprising or rebellion. The perfected logic of counterinsurgency now applies regardless of whether there is a domestic insurrection. We now face a counterinsurgency without an insurgency. A counterrevolution without a revolution. The pure form of counterrevolution, without a revolution, as a simple modality of governing at home – what could be called “The Counterrevolution.” [p. 12, emphasis in the original]

 

            Harcourt published his book in 2018, obviously much before the “insurrection” that took place on 1/6/2021. But it is fair to say that given the creation by our government of a counterrevolution, of a counterinsurgency model of government, even in the absence of a domestic insurrection, the claim that the 1/6 protests, involving the “occupation” of the Capitol, constituted an “insurrection” was to be expected. Not only was it to be expected, it was even to be almost welcomed insofar as this “insurrection” fortified the counterrevolution our elites had already embraced. “The counterinsurgency model of government on American soil” no longer wanted an “insurrection,” a “revolution,” an “insurgency” to justify itself. For those who have embraced the counterinsurgency model of government on American soil, the 1/6 “insurrection” was almost like manna from heaven.

 

            So of course that those embracing the counterinsurgency model of government would exaggerate the violence of the 1/6 “insurrection,” claiming that it was an attack on law enforcement personnel that targeted and proved to be deadly for at least one law enforcement officer, should come as no surprise. Moreover, that those embracing this model of government would move against Trump based on the Fourteenth Amendment is in no way surprising, because in that way they could equate the events of 1/6 with the insurrection created when several slave states seceded from the union, thereby leading to the Civil War. Such are the fantasies that now support and fortify the counterinsurgency model of government.

 

            So even if there were no actions taken or not taken by our elites that facilitated the events of 1/6, it can be said with certainty that those elites saw those events as almost perfectly suited for fortifying their counterrevolution. And, of course, that Nancy Pelosi and others want a 9/11-type commission to “investigate” the events of 1/6 should not be surprising either. And you can bet that this commission will do all in can to paint as dark a picture of those events as is possible, just as the 9/11 commission painted a picture that allowed Dick Cheney to assert, almost without objection, the US needed “to go to the dark side.” That many are recommending the waging of a war on domestic terrorism confirms this. The lights are going out all over the US and it’s anyone’s guess how the nation will fare in the coming darkness.