America’s moral vacuum

LIKE OUR PANDEMIC RESPONSE, THE U.S. CAPITOL RIOT IS the latest cataclysm to be blamed on a failure of imagination. Who could imagine a virus that crashes the entire global operating system, or an attack that narrowly fails to decapitate the U.S. government?

And the obvious answer? Anyone who was paying attention.

Just as epidemiologists long warned of a pandemic, the insurrectionists helpfully advertised their violent intentions unleashing countless QAnon furies, appeared 100,000 times in the month before the attack, according to Zignal Labs. The President clashed his cymbals and stoked the lie; party leaders largely ignored or pampered him. The day before the attack, an FBI office shared the warnings from online: “Be ready to fight. Congress needs to hear glass breaking, doors being kicked in … Get violent. Stop calling this a march, or rally, or a protest. Go there ready for war.”