Assassination risk ahead.

Keep the Capitol fence. Protect Senators. There are angry people out there.

They are motivated. They are armed. They think they are justified.

Thirty percent of Americans could not handle losing an election. Think how badly Americans would handle an assassination.

If any one of fifteen Democratic senators dies, we would have a constitutional crisis. 

We are hearing complaints that the Capitol fence and National Guard troops are an over-reaction. Fox News hosts complain Nancy Pelosi is trying to stigmatize Trump supporters by implying the country needs to protect itself from them.

Keep the fence. American democracy is sitting on a powder keg.  A targeted, strategic assassination would trigger a constitutional crisis. The country is too fragile for that right now.

 Long before January 6, Americans saw people plotting the kidnapping and murder of the Michigan governor. The plotters justified it as stopping tyranny in the form of her COVID restrictions. On January 6, we saw political leaders bring a crowd to the seat of government to stop Congress from proceeding with the transfer of power from Trump. People chanted "Hang Mike Pence." Did they mean it literally? Who knows? Some people carried deadly weapons. A policeman received fatal head wounds. A man texted that he wanted to put a bullet in the head of Nancy Pelosi and people hunted for her. There were dangerous people there with a political agenda. Mobs get out of control.

The people breaking barricades and pushing past guards were a small group compared to 74 million people who voted for Trump, but tens of millions of Republicans continue to believe the underlying premise justifying overthrowing the election. They believe Trump when he said he won by a landslide, that a massive fraud had stolen the election from him, and that the consequences of his losing power is a catastrophe for America. Biden and Democratic are gun-stealing, religion-hating, cancel-culture-loving socialists who hate America and God. With Trump out of office, taking back control of the senate is more critical than ever. Trump said so.

The death of any one of fifteen Democratic U.S. senators would flip partisan control of the senate back to Republicans. Nine states have a Republican governor and senators who caucus with Democrats—Arizona, Massachusetts, Maryland, New Hampshire, Georgia, Vermont, Montana, Ohio, and West Virginia. A governor traditionally appoints a replacement from the Governor's own party. An assassin has the power to switch control of the Senate.

(So that I am not accused of speculating that only Republicans benefit from targeted assassinations, eleven Republican senators serve in states with Democratic governors. The death of any one of those would be consequential as well, but it would not shift partisan control. Killing one of those fifteen Democrats would.)

I don’t personally have an up-close and direct contact with gun-carrying militia people on the right—the kind of people who planned the kidnapping/murder of the Michigan governor--but I get lots of communication from upper-middle-class church-going people with nice homes and cars and brokerage accounts, including people enthusiastic at having attended the Stop the Steal rally. These aren't people feeling economic anxiety. They are motivated by belief in what Trump tells them, what Fox tells them, what the InfoWars guy says, and what they get from alternative news sources--friends and email chains. 

Some of them believe crimes and conspiracies so hostile to Biden and Democrats that they justify extreme responses: the Flight 93 nothing-to-lose meme. These crimes include undetectable software vote switches, forged ballots from China, Republican officials being secret Democratic moles, thousands of "sleeper agents" of the left spending years pretending to be Trump supporters so they can run false-flag operations, Bill Gates creating COVID to profit from vaccinations, George Soros running child brothel rings for the benefit of Democratic leaders, Hillary Clinton killing multiple people to cover up crimes, now including skinning-alive children so she can wear their face skin to rejuvenate her own. Who believes this stuff? Millions of people believe some of it and are unsure about the rest.

The crazier stuff that circulates involves stranger-yet conspiracies, whose improbability and lack of confirmation from official sources is evidence implying greater likelihood of truth, since, of course, the real truth cannot be reported by the news media. In the context of conspiratorial rumors, political violence is normalized--even required.

Here is a sample of what circulates, shown below as I received it: 

Send to everyone you can as fast as you can!  Forward “IT'S HAPPENING! Military takedowns and arrests begin this weekend and will continue forward for the next 13 days/nights. Some international raids have already started. Italy has also been found complicit in our election fraud. Everyone will be getting emergency alerts on their phones, tv's, radios & internet. It will override all other broadcasts and could last for several hours at a time. Do not to be scared of what's coming as it is for the safety of our nation for this to unfold. DO NOT travel to any large cities (especially Philadelphia) for the rest of the month. Military operations will be taking place in many of the major corrupt cities. People will start rioting once this intel breaks thinking Trump is a military dictator. He only has 13 days to put this dog down. The implementation of the Insurrection Act began after the raid on the Capitol and was marked by Trump's broadcast to the people to disband and return home. This broadcast wound up being blocked, for the most part, by the media. Nevertheless, his address fulfilled the requirements to initiate the Act. Marines and National Guard troops are being moved as needed for the riots that will start after the national release of the intel. The intel will be dropped for everyone to see and hear in loops that will be several hours long. The system was just checked by the FCC a few days ago alerting ALL media that they cannot block the flow of intel under federal regs. Trump will be moved continuously like a chess piece from now until the 20th in order to avoid any retaliation against him and family. Trump had to exhaust ALL other means legally before this operation could commence. He gave everyone a fair chance to come clean and they refused. His press release of a "smooth transition" did not include the word, "concede" as he has no plans to do so. Rather, there will be a smooth transition of power to his new cabinet, staff and Vice President, General Flynn.