On the night of Sunday, May 31, I read about the burning of the church near the White House, and, as a Department of Veterans Affairs headquarters employee[i], I received a work email stating that our two HQ buildings next to that church — the main building and the overflow building — had been "vandalized."  On Friday, June 5, I came back to D.C. to see for myself what had happened to the V.A. and surrounding areas.

Keep in mind, the V.A. — for all of its problems, centered on its enormous size and perennial inability to clean out its own rot — is essentially the largest social services and welfare organization in the free world.  That's not a bad thing.  About half of its headquarters staff are African-American.  The V.A. does not oppress anyone and is no one's enemy.  With the exception of some new executives and their "special assistants," it is the same as Obama's V.A.  Anyone assaulting V.A. buildings — even if it's just a feral 18-year-old with nothing better to do during a national lockdown — is a moron.

The Washington Post mentioned the damage to the V.A. and nearby city blocks but did not show much if any of it.  Presumably, the Post did not want to give its readers the wrong idea about the nearly all white, mostly quite privileged "peaceful protestors" in Lafayette Square park, who in some organized fashion tried to storm the White House for several nights in a row and then, failing at that, turned their frustrated aggression in the opposite, northward, direction, where stands the V.A. among other structures.  It's not as if the Post, wholly owned by some West Coast web commerce guy, has a duty to its own city — "Resistance" is a higher calling.

I took some photos; they are below and speak for themselves.  (I didn't capture the burned church, as that has been well reported on Fox already, nor did I have time to cover the whole city, which was trashed and defaced in very many areas.)  This damage could not have happened if D.C.'s mayor, who is angling for the guaranteed female slot on the Biden ticket, had deployed police in the area.

I can confirm based on "unnamed sources" that there were no D.C. police stationed directly on any side of the block just north of Lafayette Square on the eve of May 31, even though that was at least the second night of "peaceful protesters" vandalizing D.C. and federal property and assaulting Secret Service and other Federales in the park.  A patrol might have driven past, or the police might have shown up with the fire crews later, but there were no uniforms posted there to hold positions in advance, other than the V.A.'s own security guards inside the buildings.  It was an invitation to destruction.

On June 4, after it was clear to the deaf and the blind that things had calmed down, D.C.'s genius mayor tweeted that she had never needed any out-of-state National Guard help and that she is looking into legally challenging the deployments.  (Note that D.C. is a federal district and fully subject to federal authority — this woman is grandstanding.)  Then she called off the curfew, which can be reinstated by the feds in a heartbeat.  Then she somehow evicted the Utah National Guard from its D.C.-area hotel rooms.  A true Resistance fighter!

When I came by, most of the graffiti had been pressure-washed away.  Road traffic in D.C. was at its busiest since March, and the sidewalks were full of pedestrians and joggers.  Even with almost everything still closed, the city feels as though it is coming back to life.  The V.A. and other federal agencies are about to reopen their offices (as was the plan just before the riots, though it has obviously been delayed by one or two weeks.)  Without a doubt, none of this would be possible if Mr. Trump had not stopped the snowballing chaos by sending in the National Guard, Military Police, and other federal personnel including Customs and Border Protection agents and a quick reaction force of the 82nd Airborne that fortunately did not have to cross the Rubicon into D.C.

Especially what with all the schools, colleges, nightclubs, pro sports, basketball courts, gyms, pools, movie theaters, bowling alleys, videogame arcades, food courts, etc. closed for two and a half months, the mob, if not dispersed from the park and nearby areas, would have grown to 50,000 or more idle, bored mushy-brains within a week, with tent cities and break-in squatters' communes taking up half or more of downtown, and done much, much greater damage to the city, to federal operations, and to our tradition of peaceful transfer of power.  Anyone who doubts this has not studied history or world affairs.

This is what the Democrats were hoping for.  It was their very last chance for regime change before the election.  Why else would they have brought General Mattis out of oblivion last week specifically?  They banked on things going downhill, and then the brass, fearing another Kent State, would peel off from Mr. Trump.  As with everything else they have tried, it didn't work.

Our president will get no thank you for saving D.C. from the mob.  "Resistance" clearly takes precedence over reopening U.S. government offices and D.C.'s economy.  Don't overlook that the city suffered looting and car torchings even in very well off residential areas in its Northwest quarter.  But don't count on the lawyers and lobbyists who suffered through those nights of terror with their families to do anything other than re-elect their mayor.  This is their psychosis; we can't help them.

What’s left of the outdoor dining area umbrellas of the Sofitel hotel on 15th St, just behind the VA’s overflow building on 811 Vermont Ave.
 

Multiple cars were burned here on the “I” St side of the VA’s main building on 810 Vermont Ave.  The ash and debris have already been cleaned up, leaving just melted-over asphalt.

Broken windows and some residual graffiti on VA’s main building.

Paving bricks were used as projectiles; here are some missing from the sidewalk along the Lafayette Square side of H St.

General Kosciuszko, Lafayette Square; General von Steuben’s pedestal, Lafayette Square.

 Every pane of glass on the first floor of the “Grange Building” on H St. was not just broken but completely beaten out, nothing left.  Presumably the inside on at least the first floor was ransacked as well.

Some dirtbags literally chiseled pieces of asphalt out of H St. to use as projectiles against the defenders of the White House.  Crazy!

 A fire was set in the lobby of the AFL-CIO headquarters (obviously a White Nationalist front group) on the far side of the block from 810 Vermont Ave.  More interestingly, you can see that I St. was used as a safe rear area to support operations in Lafayette Square.

Literally all of downtown DC still looked like this on June 5^th; everything was boarded up.  (The red building is the Office of Management and Budget.)  It’s impossible to know where windows were broken and which establishments were looted, because you can’t see behind the plywood boards, many of which were in fact not installed until after the first or second night of rioting.  I did hear that some places were trashed.  You didn’t see this in any Democrat media outlet.

Damn the graffiti, full steam ahead!  This is likely the only statue of Admiral Farragut in the whole country, whereas MLK has a statue, bust, relief, or mural in every major city and in many small ones, too, not to mention dozens of streets, schools, and libraries named after him.

The VA HQ overflow building, 811 Vermont Ave.  DC’s genius mayor deigned to send in the blues to guard the area after all the damage was already done.  Why even bother?

 Perhaps the last piece of untouched graffiti that I saw in the vicinity of the VA (not including the park.)  The power-washing crews were only just finishing up on Friday, June 5^th, whereas all that paint was sprayed mostly over the prior weekend.  There must have been a lot of it!