Miami Brooks Brother Riot: precursor for January 6th Insurrection.
This is a reflection of the things that have occurred in my lifetime, where Republicans would not rely on a fair process because they knew or feared they would lose. So they relied on the one strategy that is slowly killing this country: Division and mob incitement.
I start with the Brooks Brother Riot because I see a clear tie-in to current events. I'm sure others have seen it too, but I'm taking time to connect the dots because I don't think we give Republicans enough credit for their transparent and obtuse strategies.
What was the Brooks Brother storming about? It was a group of Washington D.C. GOP operatives flying down to Miami to storm the narrow halls of a building where election counting was taking place. So, people from outside of this State managed to interfere with the State's election count. And they succeeded.
It created a situation for a lawsuit to be filed to the Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court did their best to hand the election over to Bush.
So, in my opinion, 2000 was just the first successful election interference by Republicans.
It's funny the things that stick in your mind. I don't know who said it, but in the early stages of the Florida voting mess, when Florida was going through its recount at the bequest of Gore, some bitter Republican said that Florida was not unique and that Republicans could do the same thing in other states to reverse the results.
I realize now, that was more a threat than a premonition.
And now we're at present day where the Jan 6th Insurrection Committee is doing a great job of connecting dots to show just how concerted and planned it was with all the pieces moving together for one desired goal. It started with the very same elements that were used for the Brooks Brother Riot. It required a mob creating chaos to stop a fair election process. Tomorrow we'll learn from the committee how they stepped it up by trying to force the votes of a fake electorate.
Here is where I throw a word of caution regarding policy by mob rule: I have seen this rallying the troops and storming the Bastille methodology since the nineties. On a local level it happened over a land dispute. The community I lived in was overrun with misinformation, forcing everyone's focus, energy and ire on a developer. And while the public supported the community leaders who most promised to achieve the desired objectives, from my pov, these leaders were opportunists. Not selfless humanitarians. They were people who would have found ways to profit from takings of the developer's property or community common grounds. Some would later find profitable positions in the government or private real estate sector.
I saw this forced policy-by-mob-rule again after 9/11. Most of us know what it was like being ridiculed and bullied by people who were more interested in the flag pin, than they were about following the truth. My husband lost his nephew in the Twin Towers attack so, afterwards, I spent a great deal of time on the online newspaper articles to try to find out what happened. I read a great many articles, especially from the Washington Post. I determined within weeks that the attack came from Saudi Arabia and I told my sister-in-law. She was so despondent that it didn't register. I again mentioned it a few years later, when I thought it was clear that Bush attacked the wrong country and her response was, "At least Bush did something." I didn't have the heart to remind her that Bush put the sons and daughters of many American mothers in harms way. Mothers who unjustifiably lost their soldier children and now shared the same pain that she did. No. I didn't say it, but I hope that others who subscribe to these faux-patriotic mob risings at least think about the possibility that they're being used as useful idiots.
I think it's important to talk about mob rule. And important to show how Republicans rely on confusing people in order to get their way. Sure, there will be people who are lost forever. But right now we're after the undecideds, the middle of the roads. And, as I see it, we're in a Civil War where the bullets are information and bandwidth. We need to keep blasting them with facts and the truth in a war that has no foreseeable end.
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