This isn’t about politics. It’s not about tax policy or education spending or deficits. These people don’t care about policy or government. This was an attempted coup of the US government, an attempt to burn or steal the legal ballots of the Electoral College because some people didn't like the outcome of the election. And it was all promoted by criminal president, supported by his enablers and co-conspirators - those who voted for him.

I cannot let the melodious tones of NPR newscasters lull me into thinking this will be Ok. It wil not be Ok. This is not over. We are already hearing the defense that this was aggrieved, middle class Americans just “making their voices heard.’’

No. This was a crime that makes the worst window-breaking of the Black Lives Matter protests look like a tea party. The Confederate flag tore through the Capitol buiding. A woman was shot and killed. At best it looked like a juvenile frat bro party. At worst is was white nationalist terrorism. And without the fast thinking of those federal employees conservatives love to hate, the legal ballots of the election would have stolen and burned.

This was about racism. If those rioters had been black, they would have been shot, tear gassed and hauled off to jail by federal troops and called terrorists on Fox News.

This was about incompetence. The Capitol police were not ready. Nor was the Metro DC Police. The National Guard, despite pleas from the mayor of DC, was not deployed. This is what happens when the White House, the cabinet and the government is incompetent and not serious.

This was about inequality and unfairness. Like the pandemic, this riot pulled back the curtain on a society fundamentally broken, unfair and unequal, no matter our aspirations.

This was about cowardice. These rioters and their ilk are tools of an oligarchical class that empowered them. We all know these people. They thought Trump was dangerous but they just really hated Hilary Clinton. They hide behind their privilege, cheering quietly for tax cuts and a capital gains tax rate of 20 percent for their unearned income. The fools that went to Washington were the tip of their spear, carrying out the work of the Reagan revolution, the Tea Party and now the Trump/Fox/Facebook cabal. They think they are fighting for something. Little do they know that their ruling class controllers despise them and will throw them on the scrap heap when they are no longer usefeul.

This was about Germany in 1930s. That’s when Hitler’s Brownshirts created an enemy, the Jews, upon which they could take out their frustrations after World War I. Trump created the media enemy, the government enemy, the enemy of anyone who has read a book or God forbid the Constitution.

It was about the failure of the poltiical system. The Founders knew about people like Trump and Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz. They did their best to create the checks and balances to keep vermin like them under ground. But they didn’t anticipate the perfect storm of the Internet, Fox News, Facebook and their like. These people care about nothing. They are traitors and they need to be named. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz.

Let’s hope this insurrection wakes up Congress. There IS a political message from this. It will be hard to hear for months. But Joe Biden and the Democratic party had best hear it. People on all sides are angry at being left out of the economy and its benefits. They don’t know who to blame. So when Trump tells them who to blame, they follow. And now they are storming the gates because our system has let them down. The good paying jobs their fathers had are gone; gone to Clinton’s NAFTA and Bush’s tax cuts and Trump’s traiffs.

We all knew this was coming. Trump and his 74 million told us many times. Many sounded the alarm. Even Mitt Romney at the last minute. General Mattis waited until this week! Colin Powell was on CNN Thursday in outrage. Where has he been for the past four years?

People who knew better turned a blind eye and they need to be named. After the investigations, we will find that the Secretary of Defense knew this was happening and did nothing; that Trump was asked to call out the National Guard and refused; that the Metro DC Police Department wasn’t prepared and all the federal troops that were used against black demonstrators in front of the White House for a photo op were off doing other things because their leaders turned away.

This is about the society we have created. A dog eat dog, racist, capitalist system with little regulation that rewards wealth creation over community building. Our heroes are Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg and the CEOs who create massive wealth at the expense of the public good. And starting in 1980 with Reagan, we stopped demanding that these wealth machines play fair and at least consider the impact of their actions. All we wanted was growth. We stopped reading the newspaper or caring about the Constitution.

And now we are left with traitors and thieves. People like Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump who care only about themselves.

We got what we deserved.