IDK what he means for sure- I watched a couple minutes of that clip but honestly I hate YouTube and I never watch it. I can listen without watching but there were these long pauses where presumably people live were writing questions and comments and I just don't have the patience for that. Attention span probs or whatever.

But if he's referring to the military formation then the whole idea is that you attack out from all sides around you so metaphorically I guess that would mean both the right and the left flanks. That makes total sense to me, and again I'm not saying this is what Matt means, but it seems so obvious to me that I can't imagine any other interpretation.

The GOP uses extremists as a vehicle for their program which is basically an Ancap program. I'm not saying they are wholly united on this as there is some tension between the religious right and the more libertarian side plus that doesn't jive with their antiimmigration policies and there's also the federalist / states right element (which I personally thing is just bs towards the larger ancap program of destroying ALL government). So they use extremists, right wing stuff, as a vehicle for this, but they don't actually want them to take power. They don't actually want a populist revolt, right wing or not, because it's not good for capitalism. That's why you'll see they work with these groups but then turn on them- for example see the Proud Boys and some of the arrests recently even though they've been working with the cops and the feds all this time. Likewise the older militias and the cops, etc.

You got to remember that the ruling class, the people actually in charge of this country, again let's call it the "deep state" or the "washington consensus" or whatever you want- the private industries, financial/energy sector interests, weapons traders, intelligence agencies, mainstream politicians- these people didn't know Trump would win, didn't want Trump to win, immediately started that whole Russiagate thing to make sure he wouldn't be able to do anything different regarding Ukraine for example than what Nuland and Blinken (and the other Bush-era PNAC neocons who then ended up in the Obama administration and expected to carry on in the Hillary admin and are now back in power under Biden) had planned to do. It's a straight line- Trump was a divergence from that and I think the first four months or so of his presidency when he still had real nutty outsiders in his admin (Gorka, Bannon, etc) really did freak the establishment out.

So from their side, it makes sense- you let these nutty people do what they are going to do, then you can throw them to the wolves. Let them go far enough to have a place to channel their energy and make a spectacle, alienate more moderate Republicans, solidify the fear in others that we absolutely must protect our democracy by voting for grown ups and outsiders, etc.

Then from the other side (hence pincer movement) you have to remember this is coming just six months after the largest and longest string of urban protests and riots in decades from the wider left, and it was all about the police. I don't believe for a second that the "deep state" (again whatever you want to call it, ruling class, establishment, etc) wasn't quaking in their boots- it's the main thing they are afraid of. So you got real discussion about defunding or abolishing the police- even though it never went beyond half-ridicule discussion on cable news, people were still talking about it, being zoomed into the bedrooms of millions of people every night. And even though I don't think the protests were linked that much to the Bernie campaign, Bernie did get close to winning and probably would have done if they hadn't gotten the other candidates to drop out. I think Nevada primary really terrified a lot of people- some of the only positive political feelings I've ever had in the US was watching those news anchors talk about being afraid they'd be executed in the park if working class people took power, ha ha ha ha.

From that perspective, you got a great explanation to double down on law and order. Now you have all these liberals who could've been swayed by this more leftwing talk immediately doubling down on how we need to throw these people in jail for trying to overthrow the government. It's a great excuse to increase the security state, especially around the ruling class. I don't know how old you are, but a similar thing happened after 911, the police state we are in now is massively larger than what it was before 911. They are making Jan 6 similar to that, and it's no accident that there's been a push in the media and among certain liberals to compare the two. See how quickly they acted on getting protection for those supreme court justices when the protests at their houses started up.

Also even though there isn't much of a left in the US (really non existent if we're honest) it is true that any sort of actual anticapitalist left project is revolutionary, by definition. If you just want some soc dem reform then you probably don't understand global economics and imperialism because where is that money for social safety nets going to come from under a capitalist system? You can't have it both ways, and of course the bulk of the soft left in the US hasn't really thought about this. But the ruling class sure as hell understands this. So you have a whole slew of soc dem soft-left liberal types who want a series of reforms but they will stop short of revolution or uprising. Now they are the same talking about vote harder and how they want to throw insurgents in prison and increase the police state to defend the ruling class, and if you think through this for a bit then you can see who that serves.

As for being crybabies or being interested in the hearings, I'm not following any of that because I literally do not care. When it's all over, I'll read an article about it but I see no reason to follow it as it happens. I'm not saying no one should or that you are being a crybaby for doing so, but I can tell you why I feel that way. In the first place, I do not believe that anyone in any position of power (no one from the ruling class) will ever be held accountable or go to jail for any of it. It will not affect them at all and will not change anything about how politics or the ruling class operate in the country at all. It's completely irrelevant to any of that. So why should I care? As for the second reason, I know that ending capitalism is an international revolutionary project and that no one can make any gains towards that so long as you have the most power and widely armed and technologically advanced police state in all of human history increasing its power at every step. I have no idea what to do about about- if I did I wouldn't be wasting my time online. And anyway, I'm a historical materialist so I don't believe we have to bring anything down, they will destroy themselves and we need to put our energy into taking care of each other and organizing alternatives to survive and build power when that happens. So I know that insurgency is a fool's dream- coming from the right or the left- and that the more immediate threat to the left comes from the expanding police state and power of the ruling class.