Who Framed (and Deified) Ashli Babbitt?

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari.)

“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.”- George Orwell

I think I speak for the majority of us when I say that Ashli Babbitt's shooting death on the afternoon of January 6th, 2021 was a tragedy. It was a tragedy, first and foremost, for her grieving family. However, as with seemingly everything else in this hideously bifurcated nation we laughingly still call the United States, those in Trumpworld/Qanon Land (or what Rachel Maddow calls "Earth Two") and the rest of us see that tragedy through two completely different prisms.

     In Trumpworld/Qanon Land, Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt was a tragic victim of the "deep state" that's committed to assassinating passionate patriots fighting valiantly to reclaim our democracy and nation, somehow, by overthrowing the government.

     The other sixty or seventy per cent of us also see Babbitt's on-camera death as a tragedy but because she was indeed an Air Force veteran who'd somehow allowed herself to get conned into believing the election was stolen from one Donald J. Trump, by one Donald J. Trump, and his mindless minions in the right wing ecosphere. Yes, Babbitt was an Air Force veteran who'd decided to breach the Capitol building with 850 others to disrupt Congress' attempt to honor the Constitution that, as an Air Force veteran, she'd sworn to protect. For reasons we and even her family may never know, she was a mentally vulnerable person. You'd have to be to be taken in so easily by a pack of lies as easily provable as Qanon's.

    Now the hagiographies are cynically and hastily scrawled by those who didn't know her and trying to make her a martyr to their dubious cause are trying to tell us not to believe our lying eyes and grey cells, foremost among them, again, one Donald John Trump, asking cheerleader Maria Bartiromo on Fox last Sunday, "Who was the person who shot an innocent, wonderful, incredible woman?" Later, he said he regretted not flying the flag at half mast in her honor (Not for the cops who'd lost their lives defending the Capitol both during and after the event, and had to be shamed into doing so for the late Sen. John McCain on his passing.). But he didn't fly the flag at half mast for Babbitt because he didn't know she existed until he needed to use her name.

    Of course, if she'd lived to be charged with storming the Capitol building, she would've remained largely nameless and that "innocent, wonderful, incredible woman" would've stood as much chance of getting a presidential pardon as the other insurrectionists, which is to say 0%.

     But it just doesn't stop at Babbitts's stutter-step canonization. Trump, and a growing number of other Republicans, are demanding the name of the Capitol police officer who'd shot Babbitt just as she was about to climb through a broken-out window and onto a hallway leading to the Speaker's lobby, where several lawmakers, presumably of both parties, were sheltering from the same mob of which Babbitt was a part. To put it simply, if Babbitt had gotten through that window, then countless others would've followed. That's how they got into the Capitol building, to begin with. Anyone who's seen a zombie movie or tv show can tell you that.

     I'm not saying Babbitt's death was necessary. After all, the officer who'd fired the fatal bullet shot her in the shoulder instead of taking a higher percentage but more lethal head shot. It's very likely the officer did not intend to kill Babbitt but only to wound her. Considering the small target Babbitt gave him as her body was bunched up in her attempt to climb through the window, the officer had few target options. He may be torn up by it to this day.

     Unfortunately for Babbitt, gunshot wounds to the shoulder can also prove fatal.

 

"No, I Don't Take Responsibility For Anything."

 

The ongoing attempted apotheosis of Ashli Babbitt is, of course, rooted in the most cynical and despicable political opportunism imaginable, regardless of Babbitt's family's thoughts and feelings on the subject. Any fool can see that. But Trump's attempt to expose the officer who'd fired the fatal shot that perhaps saved the lives of countless lawmakers, for which he was cleared of any wrongdoing, exposes a darker side to the right wing's equally shameless attempt to whiteboard history. Trump wants to open up that officer to much more than mere ridicule and verbal calumny.

    Hence Trump's reprise of the alleged lovefest between the Capitol police and Andrew Clyde's "tourists" (Hint to Congressman Clyde: Capitol tours don't often result in 550 prosecutions and body counts.  It also doesn't often result in 140 wounded officers, a dead cop and two suicides). But Babbitt's hagiography and the right wing's inept revisionism of the riots of January 6th are just the tip of the iceberg.

    Dovetailing with impeccable precision is the same right wing's attempt to revise our antebellum history, especially regarding slavery. It began with Trump forming right before he slunk out of office the 1776 Commission in some inept attempt to counter the New York Times' justly-lauded 1619 Project that was developed by Nikole Hannah-Jones. (President Joe Biden was so contemptuous of the 1776 Commission that he'd axed it his first day in office.)

     The derision aimed at the 1619 Project from the invariably white right wing is very much of a piece with that leveled at Critical Race Theory, something taught only at the graduate level or above and even then almost exclusively at law schools. But the right wing would have you believe that it's being taught to our impressionable kindergartners who wouldn't have a prayer of understanding even the broad strokes of CRT, let alone its nuances.

    But just confronting the realities of slavery, a very well-documented part of American history, is verboten because it would mean that white Americans would have to confront their ancestors' past, especially if those ancestors were slave owners. The hysteria has gotten to the point that the more the white right wing talks about it, the more ridiculous it sounds. Earlier this month, Kayleigh McEnany claimed on Fox that most of the Founding Fathers were opposed to slavery, despite history empirically informing us that of the 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence, 41 were slave owners, as were 10 of our first 12 presidents and 18 in total.

     However, admitting these things, that slavery existed, that the racism viciously driving it existed, that lynching happened all over the country, is to admit that our white ancestors were far from perfect and that the living generation's attempt to gloss over those inconvenient unpleasantries qualifies us for equally fallible status. And, like every rioter charged for their actions on January 6, we refuse to take responsibility for crimes against humanity.

     Because that's exactly what the Party of Personal Reponsibility is all about: Evading accountability, however inherited, for crimes of which it's not even guilty.