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Oh sure, they had already lost faith in the symbology, for sure, they had already looked down so to speak. And on a personal scale you are correct attacking a symbol is much less severe than a person.
On a civilizational scale though, people are replaceable, shared symbols are not (though their physical representations can be). Very few people are as individually important as a shared belief system to the stability of a polity.
It feels very much like blaming a whistleblower for the crimes they uncover.
Or the toxic relationship equivalent of a guy calling his ex-fiancee "crazy" for throwing away the engagement ring when she caught him cheating. Yes, I get it dude, it was a $5000 ring, but maybe its your fault for cheating and ruining the relationship in the first place?
What people tend to forget is that a symbol being destroyed only really matters when the thing it symbolized has been hollowed out and rendered useless. If there had been a freak accident and the capital building was rendered unuseable on that day in January 6th, would democracy have been in danger? No, obviously not. They would have just reconvened and done the thing again. If that $5000 ring had been lost but they were a happy loving couple, its not like they would have called the wedding off. Even when the Capital buildings were burned down in the war of 1812 it was not a real threat to "democracy" or republican rule. Those institutions were strong at the time, and it meant they just put the symbol right back up and it continued to have meaning. And the fresh coat of white paint to cover up the burnt sections just became a fun new little tradition.
Sure, we're looking at a meta standpoint here. At this level we're not looking to blame individuals. At this level their behaviors are outcomes of society wide events and situations. Jan 6th is a symptom, and part of a cascade.
If you want to arrest the cascade (ie, you think the illusion is still worth propping up) you might need to take action against individuals/groups. But at this level they aren't specifically to blame, more agents of what social events are going on.
Is prosecuting Jan 6th protestors going to be the white coat of paint? Or the catalyst for further symbol failing.
Is the guy prosecuting his ex-fiancee for theft of the $5000 ring really hoping to have a harmonious marriage with her in the future?
If they were hoping to repair the broken symbology Harris should have made a point to pardon the most obviously peaceful protestors. Then she should have launched an investigation into the timing of the vaccine news release. Then launched an investigation into the people at the FBI responsible for suppressing the story about the former president's son and his corrupt dealings with Ukraine. Another large investigation would have been launched into the handling of the security at the event.
The outcome should have been a massive reform of the FBI, specifically making sure they get rid of all their "setup the retards to do terrorism" campaigns. An explicit expectation of non-partisanship, and a removal of the FBI and CIA from all internal political disputes.
And invite Trump to speak at Biden's funeral. The president passed peacefully in the night, two months into his presidency. Trump can hopefully be trusted to say a few nice things. He then is forced to retire from politics as the new old age restriction is added to the constitution. Trump goes back to being a cultural icon, and talking shit about how he is healthier than the young guys currently running.
That is the alternate history where I see things sorta kinda working out. The actual history we got looks like the American people saying "fuck it, lets try this again until you learn the lesson or we break this country apart".
All of that is pulling the curtain back further. Remember truth will not help. Truth is the opposite of what is needed, symbols were built on myth not truth. Which isn't to say doubling down will work, but you can't look down. If more people start to look down, you're done, the only possible option for success is to convince everyone else those people telling you to look down are wrong/crazy/lying/evil. That's pretty much been the tack we've taken in the past.
The guy prosecuting his fiancee for theft isn't going to have a marriage with her, but he might with his new fiancee, depending on the story he tells her. Though what works in interpersonal relationships is not the same as what works in society, so I am not sure the analogy holds. A relationship built on a myth is unlikely to succeed. A society built on a myth might be a requirement for success.
The new myth would have been something like Biden and the deep state geriatrics conspiring to ruin the country, with cooler heads prevailing and deciding that hey we need to get the old fogies out and let the hot young people run stuff. This would have also been a myth. I don't Biden is to blame for getting his pants on straight in the morning, much less some coup.
I said it elsewhere, I don't think the government is overall that important to American Society. Our culture and marketplace matter more, and government is somewhat downstream of those things. If government is broken it doesn't mean we all fall off the cliff. It will just increasingly get in the way of the good things like culture and the marketplace, and things won't get better as fast as they used to. But we are a long way off from the pain of government outweighing the pain of switching governments violently. Or at least that is the case from where I'm sitting. However, people reach that tradeoff threshold at different points.
That's not the kind of myth you can build anything on. If Trump had been able to declare the results null and void and had himself installed then you could spin that I think, a myth has to have a big positive thing to get excited about. But more importantly these kind of myths come from victory not defeat.
That your government is representative of, "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.” is a rebuilt myth after victory. But these myths are built on the winners. Trump didn't win, Jan 6th protestors didn't win. Therefore you can't build a myth on that.
At the level we are looking at they myths are not being written, they are emergent belief sets that coalesce around something. Maybe if Harris has been able to give a speech about the changing of the guard or something and that resonated enough perhaps that could have been the seed. But I don't think she is young enough or firebrand enough to pull it off. It's not dramatic enough.
Trump winning the next election, could be a trigger, whether you like him or not, he can certainly make people passionate about him (positively or negatively). If he can frame that victory in a particular way, and can actually make real differences, then he might have a shot. I don't think Harris can do that. If Trump can convince enough people he really is a man of the people then that myth can be regrafted once more. But he has to win first.
You don't engineer myth changes, they are catalysed, largely without direction, based on something that resonates. By definition anything small enough that it can be quashed by the immune system of a current myth isn't going to cut the mustard.
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Now I want to watch a film Don't Look Down that parodies Don't Look Up based on this Looney Tunes premise.
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