What I've heard is that they removed the barriers because they were clearly overwhelmed and couldn't resist a crowd of that size. Obviously investigations are taking place, but the original explanation at least seems pretty plausible. It isn't a very big force. It can deal with a few freaks causing trouble. It's not equipped to deal with hundreds or thousands of people causing trouble all at once. They need backup (such as the National Guard) to deal with that.
My guess is that Capitol security will be dramatically beefed up after this. I don't think the current deployment of several thousand troops will be long term. In fact, I think most of them have already gone home. (I think about 5,000 remain after a high of about 25,000 during the inauguration.) However, I could see a big, permanent increase in the number of officers with plans put in place to be able to very quickly deploy a huge force if something like this happens again and have no problem with all that.
I don't buy the narrative that "we were close to losing our democracy." That's hyperbolic ********* designed to drive a political point and to stroke the egos of politicians with delusions of grandeur. We've had presidential assassinations, and we didn't lose our democracy. Flight 93 could have been successful (meaning struck the Capitol and killed the entire US Congress), and we wouldn't have lost our democracy. President Bush would have ordered the military to go after the bad guys. We would have very quickly held 435 special elections for the House to fill the vacancies, and our states would have appointed senators to fill those vacancies. Within a month, we'd have a fully-functioning US Congress meeting in a temporary capitol building, and we would have built a new permanent one within a few years. It would have been horrible, but our democracy would be OK. Our democracy isn't secured by a bunch of self-important politicians with fancy offices in a fancy building. It's secured by the brave people in uniform willing to take a bullet to protect it overseas and by a people and a culture willing to demand it at home. Having said that, it is pretty absurd that these yahoos got as far as they did, and we should take big measures to keep it from happening again.
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Agree x 1
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Winner x 1
Last edited: Feb 12, 2021