Mob Rule in the Capitol by Evan Osnos

The day had begun with another indistinguishable rant from the President—a dejected, deluded improvisation about a stolen election at a rally on the park south of the White House.

 But then it had turned. “We’re going to the Capitol,” he told the crowd, a maskless confederacy of the rebellious, the devout, the bored, and the bitter. “We’re going to try and give our Republicans . . . the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.” In other circumstances, it might have passed as his usual taunt, but, in this case, it was received as a call to arms. 

 For anyone who has been to the U.S. Capitol, the scenes that followed were so unhinged that they took a moment to absorb. In the two decades since September 11th, much of the grounds of Congress have been encircled by rings of security. Now any sense of control was gone.

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