Everything you wanted to project was done through your ensemble. When you were poor or, let’s say, “lacking resources,” this was impossible to ignore. These people were not precisely that… they embodied more than just “blue collar” sensibilities. They were the sort you imagined finding in Middle-earth. They weren’t human, per se, so much as “humanoid.” In an animal skin cap with horns and his face painted in the pattern and colors of the American flag, not projecting an image would have been impossible. Luckily, one supposes, he wanted to. Or maybe it was overestimating to assume that he put any great level of thought into the costuming, let alone the “plan.” Which, apart from seeing “where the crowd flow would take them,” didn’t seem to amount to much else. Other than simply showing up. That was the thing about most Caucasians (and especially the male ones)–they wanted the acknowledgement of greatness merely for “being there.”

Managing to enter the Capitol seemed only like a fluke rather than a grand pièce de résistance in keeping with a carefully orchestrated coup. It was more like “good fortune” for the “protesters” (read: insurgents) that police officers, so unaccustomed to that many white people in one area breaking the law so blatantly, seemed to short a circuit within themselves–their minds being programmed only to attack black skin and all. They were rendered impotent, useless (more than usual). Utterly incapable of stopping these very slow-witted white people from entering the building, it would seem. What other explanation was there? Apart from the extremely obvious racism at play. The “bots” had simply blown a fuse. Robocop could not compute harming white people, that was the bottom line. It was the invisible “fourth directive” he was given. In any case, law enforcement’s hesitancy was the “militia’s” boon. The flow of the crowd had taken them to the “bum rush” phase they didn’t know they had planned. They chalked it up to the “divine power” of the Orange One.

Once inside, they seemed to wander around like children who knew they shouldn’t be there but also wanted to take advantage of this rare opportunity to be in a “hallowed” place they could defile with their elfin whimsies (again, these were the folk of Middle-earth). 

While there was no clear leader, the man in the horned furskin cap was the one who stood out the most in the media photographs and videos. He would be among the key “figureheads” apprehended and punished for being at the forefront of the “movement” for so long (on a side note, it had to be said that he looked a lot like someone you would see in Brooklyn roaming the streets around six a.m. after a night of God knows what). They wouldn’t detain him for more than twenty-four hours of course, what with the bail funds available that the mob of missing links had contributed to for this very reason. They could be surprisingly crafty despite an ostensible lack of brain cells. But who needs a brain when you’re blanco? Skin tone is all the “clout” you need.

As police gingerly started to escort some people out (little by little, mind you–for we wouldn’t want to “scare” any white folk with police brutality), the furskin guy, who we will call Bob for the purposes of this strange and nightmarish tale, swore up and down that he had been invited. The President had invited all of them there. Well, that, and they claimed Benjamin Franklin Gates had told them to steal the Declaration of Independence. The easily rattled septua- and octogenarians of Congress looked like they might shit their pants from inside the confines of the second floor gallery. They didn’t seem to understand that none of these people had the so-called “gumption” to take their extremism somewhere truly extreme (you know, like mass murder or assassinating the candidates slated to usurp their precious “leader”). That if someone really wanted to threaten Congressional leaders’ lives, it would have been done with more than just a pipe bomb and some flag-waving. More than just hanging like monkeys from the proverbial rafters and displaying the manners of swamp creatures as they infiltrated offices of Democrats and left them notes reading such sweet nothings as, “Nancy, Bigo was here you bitch.” 

“Q” sent them, the “President” sent them–but more than anything the United States itself had sent them. This eruption had for so long been fomenting, spurred by a society that led such ilk to believe this type of behavior or worldview was not only acceptable, but normal. Or, if not normal, then at least not branded completely and utterly batshit crazy. Which, though it should go without saying, is. Totally cuckoo. So far flown over the cuckoo’s nest that you can’t even see it anymore. And why shouldn’t that be the case when the man pulling the strings of these oddly stuffed puppets (the kind with buttons for eyes that are partially missing or altogether gone) is himself not playing with a full deck of cards–or even any cards at all? One cannot expect anything short of insane behavior when the person orchestrating it is himself a basket case (without even the credibility of having ever gone to war).

Maybe the word “cuckoo” had been dormant in all their heads for so long that they finally had to do something with it. Couldn’t let it keep kicking around in their feeble minds like a throbbing soccer ball (“Soccer? That’s some Euro fag bullshit! You mean football!”) of a headache. It had to be unleashed in some way. Only they had misunderstood the spelling as “coup coup”–which was odd when taking into account that the demographic involved didn’t have much “affinity” toward anything French (too “anti-American”–despite France being heavily involved in the early settlement of the U.S. and the shape it would take). So maybe it’s better that the white supremacist types do stick to their “own language.” Otherwise misinterpretation becomes cause for rampant madness. And madness, as you might know, is a contagion as fast-spreading as the current “new strain” of virus itself.

Expectedly, like the Cheshire Cat (and just as fat), the orange-toned (which, surprisingly, still counts as white enough to the white supremacists) master manipulator could only say the following day, well, nothing at all. It was as though the ticking time bomb that went off had never happened. That was just as effective as saying, “We’re all mad here.” In America.