There's no real need to sum anything up pithily or economically. Like the way filmmakers can indulge themselves to their heart's content with full days of Kubrick LARPing with a million million fussy-ass takes and re-takes because digital storage has eliminated the material limitation of something as gauche and proletarian as actual film, the virtual pages of The Great Online means we don't need pithy economy of words any more than anyone needs actual newsprint anymore. Say all the things you want to say! Although ironically, at the exact same time, twitter has trained us that everything that needs saying can probably be done in 140 characters.
But if I did have to sum up the last week or so in a single expression, I can't think of anything better than: ball don't lie.
Normally that's an expression from basketball, used when I player embellishes a foul on them or is the beneficiary of a dubious call, but then misses the ensuing ill-gotten free-throw attempt. Then it's appropriate to be like the dad in the stands (back when my kids still did things like play basketball and people could do stuff like be in stands), no one around him for five rows, crowing to himself as a foul shot would rim out, "BALL DON'T LIIIIIIIE!... ball doooon't lie...."
As I get older and the very important associations between the fate of my favorite sporting clubs and my total value as a human being ossify and crumble,* I've been coming to the depersonalized, complicated, insightful conclusion that a team's win-loss record is usually a pretty decent indicator for how good they are. It's insane, I know! But it seems less and less likely that the refs were out to get us or the league fixed the outcome for a better TV matchup (all my teams are LA-based, so that one died early) or the other team cheated or we were unlucky with injuries... OK, injuries can be legit evidence of a curse typical of old-school Olympian gods, but even then, all teams suffer injuries, especially in a sport designed to maximize human violence. They're painful to watch (probably moreso for the dude whose ankle now goes 360 degrees), but from a competitive standpoint, they generally even out.
The result reflects the fundamentals in a pretty consistent way. If you can score a lot of points, but your defense is bad, you're probably looking at 8-8. That pass interference call or whatever in the middle of the second quarter of, like Week 4 isn't the thing that kept your team from going 16-0. If American public school has taught us anything, mediocrity will out.
Or if your country produces a loud, uncouth, violence-first, paranoiac mob shouting blood-and-soil slogans and informed exclusively by coordinated misinformation campaigns best suited to the educationally hostile, I mean... ball don't lie.
After shit like the time last week when a bunch of economically anxious white supremacists tried to stop the legal acceptance of the state-certified votes in Congress, unironically directly attacking things they scream loudly about loving and supporting like the Constitution, the police and Mike fucking Pence, you get a lot of statements like "this is not who we are." Or "this is a noisy minority." Or "these criminals do not represent the average American." I mean... ball don't lie.
Domestic terror groups like this aren't manufactured or conjured. They grow organically from rich, long-tended soil, forcing out shoots and thriving to poisonous maturity in conditions that if one factor here or there were out of alignment, would wither and fail.** The riot at the Capitol was undeniably an American riot, and a very specific expression of Who We Actually Are. It's not all that we are obviously, but kinda who gives a shit? They're the thing that needs all the attention at the moment. Very particularly through the next six days.
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*Just like all the soft bits in my knees!
**Because then you're talking about Canada.
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