The most striking and least surprising thing about the whole episode is the way it is being treated by official Washington and the larger ruling class. The very same pundits, politicians, professors, and CEOs who, all through spring and summer 2020 had denied, excused, and extolled the mass sacking of some 200 American cities, which cost some $2 billion in damage and three dozen lives, leapt to condemn all the MAGA marchers—the "mostly peaceful" majority as vociferously as the rioting few.
Solons who could muster no outrage, or even concern, about the summer's destruction—Kamala Harris even had lauded the riots and said they should continue—thundered from on high about the "Stop the Steal" march. The new president himself said that the response would have been much harsher had the Capitol been stormed by BLM—apparently forgetting last spring's numerous scenes of cops literally kneeling before mobs, and authorities' literal abandonment of police precincts and even whole neighborhoods.