“D.C., especially around the Capitol, contains some of the most overtly armored public spaces in the world. There are little reminders and big ones: signs, barriers, checkpoints, and probably a whole host of weaponry and invisible countermeasures that you don’t see. What you feel the most are those security negs: the bike rack-style barriers and the forever-closed streets and the bollards. Meanwhile, you encounter the people involved with securing spaces. Most of them are fine and some are jerks who seem to take glee in barking out orders at hapless passersby. Eventually you come to accept the whole set-up as necessary, even if you grumble about it while climbing Capitol Hill. You think to yourself, “Sure, this is a pain in the ass, but there’s a good reason for it.
“Like, what if something happens?”
Then it’s Jan. 6, 2021. Something did happen, not just a minor something, but a full-on breach of a purportedly impenetrable building by extremists trying to overturn the results of a presidential election. And you’re left completely shaken and angry, wondering what the point of it all was. You feel like a sucker. The trap didn’t spring.”
I’ve lived in DC for 10 years and I feel this article in my BONES. You just live with tons of security theater in the background, you live with what you’ve been taught, what you’ve heard a million times–what if something HAPPENS? And then something happens, and you realize the system built after 9/11, didn’t take the most dangerous threat of all seriously, the threat everyone has been SAYING was far more prominent than anything else– white supremacist terrorism coming from inside the house.
(via liathepenguinologist)