This Place Rules

This Place Rules is a documentary that tracks the various people and political movements involved with the January 6 Capitol Riot in an effort to uncover who is truly responsible for those events.

On one hand, This Place Rules clearly demonstrates how there’s only ever been two kinds of people on “The Right” in American politics… the evil grifters who profit, and the angry assholes, who are eager to hurt others, but are generally too stupid to realize that they’re not part of the first group…

But on the other hand…

This Place Rules also clearly demonstrates that sadly all too familiar issue that stains almost every attempt by white people to talk about the problem of “The Right,” which is to selfishly “both sides” the issue as much as possible, and for no other reason then to create excuses for the deliberately cruel and entitled actions of not just their fellow white people in general, not just their own friends and family members who are active participants as they gleefully strap on their Red Hat armbands, but for their own complicity too, silent or otherwise.

While the film does show that it was the grifters who stirred the pot, whipping up a frenzy of hatred, cruelty, bigotry, and entitlement, and all for their own profit, what it fails to note is that none of these grifters would have had a pot to stir, or a frenzy to whip, if not for the eager, ready, and willing support of White America.

More than anything, this film is interested in placing the blame directly on the figureheads—who certainly deserve plenty of it—but only so that it can excuse the Trumper Brownshirts at the rallys, the Christian Nationalist homeschoolers in the pews, and the Qanon Simpletons lurking in the dark corners of the internet. The film wants to paint all of these people as innocent victims, devoid of all agency, nothing but naive innocents with the best of intentions who were all led astray, most likely due to something that could never, ever, ever be directly their fault, like economic anxiety, or maybe loneliness, or perhaps deplatforming, or that “The Left” was being mean to them, but whatever the reason is, it’s certainly not for anything like a deeply ingrained cultural belief in white supremacy, it is certainly not due to the fact that these people and their deeply held cultural beliefs have deliberately gravitated towards candidates and pundits who loudly trumpeted these same beliefs, certainly not.

They’re just poor innocent babes, y’see…

Now be quiet and eat Thanksgiving with them.

In the end, This Place Rules is neither surprising nor is it disappointing. There is nothing surprising or disappointing about a privileged child, someone who has the ability to tool around the country with nice camera equipment and film themselves smirking with a bunch of bigots, not recognizing that they’re only allowed to be there because the bigots see them as the same. This is not surprising, nor is it disappointing.

This is America.

This film is nothing but yet another obvious example of the actual problem in this country, which is White America refusing to clean up their own houses, refusing to acknowledge that the call is coming from within the house, and always has been, that the white people who want to be considered as allies, consistently only put their own selfish and entitled concerns first. It’s why nothing ever changes here, and never will. The only true plus in this film’s favor is that its smiling lack of awareness has given us all a clear window into why there is no possible future where this country still exists as one, both due to the evil hordes salivating at the thought of genocide, and the nice ones who happily give them shelter, and then get mad when you ask them why.

But despite that one meager plus in its favor, in the end, This Place Rules is just another exhausting cacophony of privilege, too concerned with finding some reason why all of this (gestures around) has happened, with finding out how it could be that all these “otherwise good people” were tricked, and then pointing to the people who can actually (safely) be blamed, instead of asking itself… “Hey, what if all of these people are just selfish, cruel, and evil assholes?”

Thumbs down.