You Want to Be in Congress? Really? The Insurrectionists Are Winning. And Waiting.

You want to be in Congress right now? Really?

It's an elite group. Only 535 in the whole country. They all spent a ton of money to get there. There's a lot at stake.

Like their lives. 32 members have now approached Speaker Nancy Pelosi--no question with a target on her back, too--with requests to have additional security when they attend sessions. It's enough that their families have been threatened: They now wonder whether they'll live out their terms. 

That means that the insurrectionists are winning, whether they end up in jail or not. The fence around the Capitol, once deemed temporary, is possibly going to be permanent. Only one reason for that: the increased, in fact probable, possibility of additional attacks, whether collective or personal.

That, alone, would warn people away, rather than invite them in. Lobbying now has a clear measurement of risk.

I used to lobby members of Congress. It used to be easy to get there from NEA: Just hop in a cab. You're there in ten minutes, give or take, according to traffic. You'd walk through security, usually not very busy, ask directions if you need them (the Capitol Police are well-informed and a great source), and off you'd go. Easy. But that was during the Oughts.

I wonder what it's like now. Certainly significant legislation on bailing out the country from the ravages of the Covid virus, and significant infrastructure bills are being crafted and will be debated, if even tokenly. Thousands of people should be descending upon offices the very minute you read this.

If I had the assignment to do so, I wonder if I would hesitate. Any number of these misled jackasses could barge back into the building at any minute. They've been emboldened to do so by their successes of wreckage earlier this month, and the understandable slowness of the justice system to deal with them. After all, they came from all over the country, and that's where they've returned. Even though federal courts and federal marshals are everywhere, it takes time to identify them, time to locate them, time to arrest them and arraign them in court.

They are certainly defiant. The young woman who stole Pelosi's laptop, Riley Williams, and wanted to sell it to the Russians was released to the recognizance of her mother, whereupon she went right back to working for the forces that got her in trouble in the first place. A rioter in Texas threatened to kill his family if they told on him. When are we going to truly get it? They are out to destroy our system. Not disrupt: Destroy. They have certainly undermined it, and they will continue.

Every day the system doesn't quite yet catch up with them is another day they think they got away with it, conceptually if not actually. And thinking you got away with something is getting away with something. It is how legends are born, much like the gangsters of the 1930s, just about all of whom found ignominious ends. Nobody thinks about that, though.

None of which would, or should, make anybody feel better if they work in the Capitol, or if their work finds them needing to be in the Capitol. How can this attract the best and brightest to serve at the top of our government? Why would anybody who might otherwise be attracted to these positions bother to put themselves at unnecessary risk?

And who would want to sit and listen to either Majorie Taylor Greene, a QAnon advocate who's on record as supporting shooting Nancy Pelosi in the head; or Lauren Bobert, who lives in (wait for it) Rifle, Colorado, owns a restaurant in which the waiters carry weapons, and has a gun strapped to her side in a campaign poster? Neither thought it was a big deal to carry a weapon onto the House floor.

There has been violence there before. People's passions have erupted. But that doesn't make it normal or a good idea. Democracy is supposed to raise people's awareness, not quash it. It's not supposed to bring out the devil in us.

But it has, at least for now. Many are now scared even to take their seats. Until that isn't true, the insurrectionists are winning. And waiting for another chance.

Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. One day closer to a vaccine. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark