The Metropolitan Spirit: Fill & Download for Free

Because that’s highly ineffective.Before the advent of the welfare state in Britain, the provision for the poor was essentially this: those who cared would give money through charities, and would attempt to persuade the apathetic to do likewise. Whatever was gathered, whether it be money, food, shelter, etc, would be distributed by charity groups. The charities were “highly localised, amateur, voluntaristic and intimate in scale;”[1] not much could be done outside a local area, and outside the basic provision of alms, medicine, or shelter. Think of A Christmas Carol:This lunatic, in letting Scrooge’s nephew out, had let two other people in. They were portly gentlemen, pleasant to behold, and now stood, with their hats off, in Scrooge’s office. They had books and papers in their hands, and bowed to him. “Scrooge and Marley’s, I believe,” said one of the gentlemen, referring to his list. “Have I the pleasure of addressing Mr. Scrooge, or Mr. Marley?” “Mr. Marley has been dead these seven years,” Scrooge replied. “He died seven years ago, this very night.” “We have no doubt his liberality is well represented by his surviving partner,” said the gentleman, presenting his credentials. It certainly was; for they had been two kindred spirits. At the ominous word “liberality,” Scrooge frowned, and shook his head, and handed the credentials back. “At this festive season of the year, Mr. Scrooge,” said the gentleman, taking up a pen, “it is more than usually desirable that we should make some slight provision for the Poor and destitute, who suffer greatly at the present time. Many thousands are in want of common necessaries; hundreds of thousands are in want of common comforts, sir.”[2]Unfortunately, Scrooge in this case was a caricature of an archetype, not just of an individual. Many of the more wealthy were distanced from the poor, from the images of suffering, and from the obstacles, evident to those facing them, to the obvious fixes to the situations.This is to say that, despite the best efforts of the well meaning, when this method was tried and tested in the days of Dickens it was failing. By the end of the 1800s, around 25% of the population of the UK were impoverished.[3] This is despite the genuine prevalence of charities:The nineteenth century, with its spectacular growth in the number of voluntary organizations, was undoubtedly a great philanthropic age. A letter to the editor of The Times, in 1884, reflected upon the ‘immense ocean of charity’ at work in the metropolis. Indeed, the periodical The Philanthropist suggested that the metropolis could be better named ‘Philanthropis’. Various charitable directories, such as The Classified Directory to the Metropolitan Charities and Herbert Fry’s Royal Guide to the London Charities, detailed the millions of pounds raised annually by charities at work in metropolis; the 1885 edition of The Classified Directory to the Metropolitan Charities reported that the 1103 charities operating in the city had an annual income of £4,447,436.4 The Times, in reporting this fact, asserted that the income of these London charities was greater than the national budgets of the Swiss Confederation, Denmark, Portugal and Sweden. Whether or not this claim was true, it is certain that charity was a pervasive force in the nineteenth century. [4]Mutual aid associations, essentially localised collectivism, were also extremely common:When national insurance was first enacted in Britain in 1911 […] whereas mutual aid associations provided social security and even medical services for far more people than did charities. […] (some nine million out of 12 million) were already members of mutual aid associations. The nine million includes unregistered societies. At the time, there were about 3.4 million members of registered and unregistered trade unions.[5]From David Green’s “The Friendly Societies and Adam-Smith Liberalism.”And yet that 25% sat staring these ragged-trousered philanthropists dead in the face.I ask you: can you honestly say that you believe that today’s society will do better?I think the key to the question is this:The charities were “highly localised, amateur, voluntaristic and intimate in scale.”The distribution necessary to deal with the widespread problem just isn’t available through private alms: the scale doesn’t allow for it. Charities are focused by nature, because their size doesn’t allow for comprehensive assessment, provision, distribution, advertising, etc., and it’s naive to assume that enough will pop up to cover everything — not even an “immense ocean of charity” could do what a governmental welfare state can.I won’t even address the more literal reading of the question — liberals literally handing cash to the poor. It’s ludicrous.In conclusion: liberals ‘use’ the government to organise charity because it is comprehensive and practical, and ensures that care for fellow humans starts at the highest level, rather than being deigned to grow like a corner of mould which will never, can never, encompass the entire loaf of bread.Perhaps we wouldn’t have to, if the urge of the citizenry as a whole tended towards love and care for their fellow sojourners, rather than avarice at their expense.Footnotes[1] http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cw47.pdf[2] https://www.ibiblio.org/ebooks/Dickens/Carol/Dickens_Carol.pdf[3] http://www.localhistories.org/povhist.html -- the link takes it's information from the surveys of Booth and Rowntree.[4] http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/61080/1/Flew_Unveiling_the_Anonymous_Philanthropist.pdf[5] http://www.civitas.org.uk/pdf/cw47.pdf

Before going into the recent Ukrainian dispute, I might give a little background first. People familiar with how the Orthodox Church works can skip the first section.Bishops & How they workThe Eastern Orthodox Church is governed via episcopacy. That means, land is divided into provinces called bishoprics or episcopates, the original set of which was derived from late Roman administrative boundaries. Virtually all power in the church is held by bishops or episcopes (Gr. ‘overseers’), who are chosen centrally from the ranks of unmarried priests, and oversee their bishopric as the effective governors of the Church in that region.The Church is doctrinally defined as Catholic [universal] Orthodox [correctly believing] and Apostolic, meaning every bishop has been ordained by three other bishops, establishing a chain going back to Christ’s 12 apostles (lit. missionaries). Bishops collectively continue the apostolic oversight of the Church, establishing its legitimacy with regards to these criteria.Bishops acting alone have no say in matters of doctrine; all essential questions can only be answered by (Ecumenical/Universal) Synods, meaning assemblies of all Christian bishops from all provinces, deciding collectively and with divine inspiration. These synods determined, for example, what texts went into the Bible. For practical purposes, and due to institutional inertia, such synods are no longer held, although there was a partly-boycotted attempt in 2016. All bishops are de jure equal, although some have special duties and obligations remitted them through the consensus of past Synods and ecclesiastical tradition.The historical formation of the episcopate emerged around major urban centres, then still thriving under the Pax Romana. Generally, the bishop would live in the provincial capital, receive petitions and issue directives to churches operating in the countryside. In time, a de facto hierarchy of bishops emerged. Bishops proper came under the oversight of Metropolitan bishops, i.e. the bishops seated in a major urban centre or Metropolis, a ‘Mother-City.’ At the highest level, the bishops of the three largest cities - Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria - came to be called Patriarchs or Popes, each overseeing a galaxy of bishops around him. The inability of these head bishops, and others, to reach a power-sharing arrangement led to the schisms between Orthodox, Catholic, and Coptic churches over the 1st millenium AD.Great differences emerged as Christianity spread to Slavic lands. Typically, a pagan prince would ask to receive a bishop to Christianize his people; the bishop sent would remain immediately subordinate to Constantinople. He would typically be an ethnic Greek, and be sent as part of the foreign service of the Roman empire. Whereas Roman lands had many cities and many metropolitan bishops, the less civilized Slavic lands would have one ‘metropolitan’ staying near the ruler, and many lesser bishops where needed.The Greeks & the SlavsIn other words, for most of its history the Greek Church was as centralized as the Latin Church. An international network of bishops answerable directly to Constantinople spread over most Slavic lands.This began to change in the early modern period. With the Emperor weak or nonexistent, independent Slavic princes wanted to elevate their Metropolitans to Patriarchs, i.e. independent religious heads (autocephalies) similar to that in Constantinople.The Ottomans put a temporary stop to that in the former Greek lands, forcibly integrating Slavic proto-states into the Rum millet. We now turn to how this affected the development of Russian and Ukrainian Christianity.Old Russia“Russia” is a Greek term meaning “land of the Vikings.” The Norsemen, fierce warriors and traders from Scandinavia, moved to occupy the riverine trade routes cutting through the Slavic lands of eastern Europe, to raid and trade with the wealthy Islamic and Roman lands. In the process, they extracted tribute from the Slavic tribes around their fortresses; and the Norse elite had been culturally Slavicized by the late 10th century AD.The Russian lands were then the largest state(-ish) region of Europe, including the better part of modern Ukraine, Belarus and European Russia. The ‘great king’ (veliky knyaz, later translated to ‘Grand Prince’) dominating the lesser chiefs dispersed throughout this region was Vladimir ‘the Great’ ruling from Kiev, the main trading centre of the Rus’. The Russians were themselves generally hostile to the Greeks, sometimes raiding deep into the Balkans — although the great victories detailed in Russian chronicles are not corroborated by Greek sources.The laudatory Russian histories say Vladimir took Christianity by the sword, threatening the Greek emperor with loss of his Crimean province unless given an imperial marriage and a metropolitan’s seat in his capital. Less partisan Arab accounts say his conversion and marriage were negotiated with (failed) Greek rebels with designs on the throne of Constantinople. Whatever the case, by the end of his reign he had a metropolitan in Kiev, appointed by the Patriarch of Constantinople New Rome, and Russia would gradually convert to Christianity over the next couple centuries.The Division of the Russian ChurchThe Russian princes kept on feuding with each for the next couple centuries, competing for the title of supreme ruler of the Rus’, until collectively brought under Mongol/Tartar suzerainty in the 13th century. Over centuries, Russian colonization of the deep European forests spread, creating new lands like Muscovy in what had once been wilderness; while the Mongol sack of Kiev, and later shift of the Russian imperial centre to the Horde itself, saw the terminal decline of Kiev as a city or principality.The Mongols practiced “tax-farming”; the Russian princes were issued yarliqs, feudal contracts, for their lands, and then charged with sending its taxes to the Horde - keeping a considerable percentage for themselves. Internal wars ensued for who would become the supreme tax-collector, and by implication occupy the ‘seat of the father’ among Russian princes.The metropolitan “of Kiev” followed the political wind; when the city/principality of Vladimir emerged as the Grand Principality, he moved there in 1299, and to Moscow in 1325. For the time being, his official title remained the Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus' despite ruling from Moscow.Meanwhile, the still-pagan kings (or, ‘princes’) of Lithuania conquered eastwards, conquering Kiev and most old Russian lands.. They, too, received yarliqs for their taxes from the declining Great Horde, and eventually converted to Catholicism.The Russian lands under Lithuanian rule, would develop into modern Belarus (White* Russia) and Ukraine (Little** Russia).*White Russia: Mongol territorial unit encompassing the western end of their empire.**Little Russia: The ‘inner’ or old Russian lands, contrasted with ‘greater’ or new Russia - the land of Moscow.Union with Rome & the Second Division of the Russian ChurchAt this time - mid-15th century - Constantinople itself formally united with Rome in 1439. The already established Metropolitan of Kiev, residing in Moscow, was among the most ardent supporters of Union and present at the Synod which established it. When he returned to Moscow in 1441, he was imprisoned for his heresy by the ruling Prince, escaping years later to flee back to Roman lands. The Russians never admitted union with Rome. In 1448, they elected their own Metropolitan of Moscow and all Rus’ without consulting Constantinople.The Union in Constantinople didn’t take, after it was violently rejected by the crowds of Constantinople - “better the Turkish sarik than the Papal tiara”, one man who would be executed by Mehmed Fatih said - and it was effectively forgotten after the Conquest. The pro-Union Greeks all fled to Italy, and fiercely Schismatic elements dominated the Ottoman-era Patriarchate.Meanwhile, in 1458 the Lithuanians appointed a close associate of the former Orthodox Metropolitan of Kiev as Uniate Metropolitan of Kiev and all Rus’ in Communion with Rome. This institution would grow to form the centre of the modern Greek Catholic Church in Ukraine.Much later - ironically enough, early in the Time of Troubles (1584–1613) and the devastation of Russia in a Polish-Lithuanian invasion - the Russians secured the advancement of their religious head to Patriarch from Constantinople in 1589. The resulting Patriarchate would go on to often dominate the government, and Patriarch Filaret Romanov - himself of the ruling dynasty - became de facto ruler of Russia.Until the late 17th century, the Moscovite Church had remained distant from the rest of Orthodoxy, retaining archaic usages not current in the Greek and Ukrainian lands. The violent reforms of the Patriarch Nikon brought Great Russians in line with Greek & Ukrainian Orthodoxy, in turn causing an internal schism with the noncomformist Old Believers, which remains to this day. Nikon’s reforms were in fact motivated by Russia’s outward expansion, which in the 1660s took Kiev from the Polish-Lithuanians, reopening a direct route to Greece (and so, indirectly, making the different Russian practices obvious).Meanwhile in KievAlready in 1620, while Kiev was still under Polish-Lithuanian rule, the Patriarch of Constantinople had again begun appointing Orthodox, non-Uniate prelates in Kiev - as before Moscow’s de facto autocephaly in 1448, subject to the Ecumenical Patriarchate directly.When Russia took Kiev, there was no question of these Metropolitans still being appointed by the Ottoman Patriarchate. In 1686 the Ecumenical Patriarch allowed their appointment by the Patriarch of Moscow. We’ll return to this event later.Emperors & SovietsIn brief, the Russian Patriarchate - with its history of antagonizing state power - was abolished in 1721 by Peter the Great, and replaced by a permanent Synod of bishops.After 200 years, a Patriarch was again elected by this Synod during the Russian Civil War (1917). In the 1920s and 30s this Church was heavily persecuted by Soviet authorities; in the 1940s Stalin - to muster extra-ideological support for the Great Patriotic War (WWII) - integrated it into the state apparatus, relaxing persecution but effectively turning it into a branch of the Soviet intelligence services, which many would say it remains to this day.While the CCCP fell apart, and from 1990 to 2018, the Orthodox church of Ukraine split into three groups:Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate (UOC-MP); the only body then enjoying recognition from Constantinople and the rest of the Orthodox world. It maintained, and still maintains, that Ukraine is fully under the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Moscow and all Rus’ as one of its subordinate Metropolitanates. It holds approx. 20% of the religious population of the country.Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church (UAOC); proclaimed in 1990, considered schismatic by everybody else. It claimed to restore a national church for Ukraine that had abortively been established during the Russian Civil War, spiritually continuous with the old Metropolitanate of Kiev.Ukrainian Orthodox Church – Kiev Patriarchate (UOC-KP); originating with a movement from within the Russian Church (UOC-MP) which requested autocephaly for the Ukraine in 1992. Its leader, Filaret, was then excommunicated by Moscow and led to pursue increasing union with the UAOC.In 2018, the Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople withdrew his recognition from the UOC-MP, and sanctioned a ‘synod of union’ between the two schismatic Ukrainian churches, issuing a Tomos or recognition of autocephaly for the resulting Orthodox Church of Ukraine (OCU) headed by the aforementioned Filaret. This effectively annulled the act of 1686.The new, low-key dispute between the recognised OCU and Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew is its status. Bartholomew recognises Filaret as Metropolitan of Kiev, while the latter insists on being an “honorary” Patriarch, equal in honour to Moscow and Constantinople.This was praised by the Ukrainian government. It has also ruffled the feathers of the Serbian Church, which also maintains parallel jurisdictions over much of the former Jugoslavia, which Constantinople avows it will continue to recognise.^ Map of 17th century Europe. Pre-1686 Metropolitan Kiev would only have had jurisdiction over Christians in Lithuania and “Ukraine” [here, the territory Russia took in 1667 - including Kiev].Now I turn to the canonical basis for the Patriarchate’s decision.The Moscow Patriarchate’s case against it is that (a) the centuries-long association of Ukraine with the Russian Church establishes a precedent within ecclesiastical tradition, that the country should remain under the spiritual care of Moscow, and (b) that the act of 1686 was a legal transfer of the Metropolitanate and cannot be revoked.The Ecumenical Patriarchate has published a letter contemporary to the 1686 decision that it claims shows it in a different light. In rough terms, it says that (a) formal jurisdiction over the Metropolitanate was not handed out; it remained under the explicit care of Constantinople, but Moscow was given the right to ordain Metropolitans (b) Moscow forced this concession by coercion, and under protest and (c) Moscow never kept its end of the deal, refused to acknowledge Constantinople’s spiritual jurisdiction over the Metropolitanate, and claimed full jurisdiction over Kiev by arbitrary fiat (as it has until today). Here is the Patriarchate’s statement and a rendition of the document.The parts of the letter I think are relevant, my own glosses in brackets;Wherefore, we declare that, inasmuch as the Eparchy of Kyiv is subjected to the supreme and most holy Ecumenical Throne of Constantinople, it would therefore always have received from this throne the ordination of its hierarch in accordance with the command of the sacred canons; however, inasmuch as this metropolis has been vacant for a number of years now… because of certain battles transpiring between the two vast empires [and because the Adversary takes advantage of this to lure Orthodox Christians from their faith] we have been asked… to grant permission to His Beatitude the Patriarch of Moscovy to ordain the Metropolitan of Kyiv whenever this metropolis is deprived of an authentic hierarch, or in the case where its acting hierarch—duly elected in that eparchy by its own bishops… and others, as is customary—is ever defrocked on reasonable grounds, that this community may not henceforth remain unprotected, [and since] this difficult matter is extremely complicated at this time… our preeminent and mighty sovereign kingdom directed that, in response to the request of this most serene and profoundly Christian empire to avoid any kind of hurdle in this case.Wherefore, inasmuch as our modesty happens to preside over the Ecumenical Throne and acknowledges that we must demonstrate as much care as possible to those who require such care, we gladly welcomed this petition as being reasonable and right, meriting an address on our part concerning those things that we have been entrusted from God, which is also why we have deemed it worthy of protecting in writing herewith. Thus, in recording this with the hierarchs of our holy synod… we resolve:That the most holy Eparchy of Kyiv should be subjected to the most holy patriarchal throne of the great and God-saved city Moscovy, by which we mean that the Metropolitan of Kyiv should be ordained there, whenever such need arises, by His Beatitude the Patriarch of Moscovy as the one elected by those in that eparchy, namely the right reverend bishops [& monks, clerics, and rulers &] with the permission of the most distinguished great Ataman* there, which has prevailed as the custom in that region, in order to receive from him the said act in writing, while recognizing him as his elder and presiding (hierarch), since he has been ordained by him, rather than by the ecumenical patriarch, as mentioned above, on account of the immense distance and the battles transpiring between the two kingdoms. We adopted [this concession] in accordance with the very old custom and granted to him such permission for reasons of οἰκονομία**.Nevertheless, whenever this Metropolitan of Kyiv [administers Communion] he should commemorate among the first the venerable name of the Ecumenical Patriarch as his source and authority, and as superior to all dioceses and eparchies everywhere, followed by the commemoration of the Patriarch of Moscovy as his elder, without any resistance or refusal whatsoever in this, but accepting it as a reasonable and right act.*Ataman = a Cossack chief, in this case probably the head of the Zaporozhian Host.**οἰκονομία or economy literally means administration or providence. It is often used when meaning to abrogate a formal law for reasons of practicality. In this case, it should be interpreted as “for how to better care for the flock.”I will also refer here to Patriarch Bartholomew’s own explanation of the decision in an interview with the Serb magazine Politika[1]Interviewer: The Ecumenical Patriarchate recently published a document demonstrating that in the 1686 ruling the Church of Constantinople did not give the territory of the Metropolis of Kiev to the Patriarchate of Moscow, but only the permission to ordain the Metropolitan of Kiev. […] does the fact that the Moscow Patriarchate was never given a Tomos in relation to Ukraine set aside more than 300 years of patriarchal care of the Patriarchate of Moscow for this country?Ecumenical Patriarch: It is a fact that there is no regular canon, that is, a Patriarchal Tomos or a Patriarchal and Synodical Act of Concession of the Metropolis of Kiev to the Patriarchate of Moscow. The documents are clear, and the letters of Patriarch Dionysios, sent in 1686, are very clear. Not only do they not grant the Metropolis of Kiev to Moscow, they also set as a basic prerequisite that Kiev will continue to commemorate Constantinople as its canonical authority.[…] Unfortunately, the Patriarchate of Moscow unilaterally abolished this agreement. It ended the commemoration of Constantinople because it knew that this was the visible sign of the normal jurisdictional reference of the Metropolitan of Kiev to Constantinople. It is also known that before the letters of Patriarch Dionysios were sent, our Russian brothers attempted to ordain Metropolitans of Kiev, but they always encountered reactions from the clergy and the people of Little Russia, who in no way wanted Moscow. Indeed, the Patriarch Nikon of Moscow (1652-1658) improperly appropriated the title of the Patriarch “of Great, Little and White Russia,” which demonstrated the expansionist spirit that had overtaken him.However, the texts of 1686 are not the first canonical texts that the Ecumenical Patriarchate presented, as you say in your question. If you look at the Tomos granting autocephaly to your sister Church of Poland in 1924, you will find that special mention is made of the Metropolis of Kiev. The Tomos for Poland specifies in particular that the detachment of the Metropolis of Kiev and its annexation by the Moscow Church was not carried out in accordance with canonical provisions. That is, the Ecumenical Patriarchate, 238 years later, did not cease reminding people of this abnormal occupation of the Metropolis of Kiev by the Patriarch of Moscow.Of course, this status quo has been in place for more than 300 years. But that does not mean that normalization has occurred. There is no law that tells us that sin and uncanonical activity are normalized and healed with the passage of years. As far as we know, “what was groundless in the beginning was attested at the time of the mistake.”For reference, it seems to me the kind of relationship Constantinople sees that it should have had (not actually had) with Kiev under Russian rule is similar to the one it currently has with the bishops of the ‘New Lands’ of Greece, viz. territory it captured during the Balkan wars. The Greek government has never trusted a Patriarch who is a Turkish citizen to appoint bishops in its territories, and so these ecclesiastical provinces…are nominally and spiritually under the jurisdiction of the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, which retains certain privileges… for example, their bishops have to acknowledge the Patriarch as their own primate during prayers. They are called the "New Lands" (Νέαι Χώραι, or Néai Chōrai)… and are represented by 6 of the 12 bishops of the Standing Synod. A bishop elected to one of the Sees of the New Lands has to be confirmed by the Patriarch of Constantinople before assuming his duties. These… are administered by the Church of Greece "in stewardship" and their bishops retain their right of appeal (the "ékklēton") to the Patriarch.[2]But they remain de facto under the Greek Archbishopric of Athens, which chooses their incumbents and takes their incomes.Footnotes[1] Interview of His All-Holiness Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew by journalist Zivojin Rakocevic for the Serbian newspaper “Politika” - Archon News Article - Order of Saint Andrew the Apostle, Archons of the Ecumenical Patriarchate[2] Church of Greece - Wikipedia

There’s a full story about this in the New York Times that enumerates how many times the Capitol Police were turned down for riot gear and assistance.The president refused to send in the National Guard so Pence finally did.Following the New York Times is The Palmer Report of one officer, a Black man and a hero of the Capitol attack. (Scroll to end for the link and watch how he protects lawmakers against a mob of White Supremacists.)Inside a Deadly Siege: How a String of Failures Led to a Dark Day at the Capitol[Follow our live news on the Capitol Riots.]WASHINGTON — Huddled in a command center on Wednesday afternoon, Mayor Muriel Bowser of Washington and her aides saw a photograph of blood stains on the temporary grandstands at the Capitol, a makeshift structure built for the inauguration of a new president in two weeks.The enormity of the deadly failure sank in.Rioters had broken through the thin police line on the Capitol steps and were descending on hundreds of lawmakers conducting the ceremonial, quadrennial act of certifying the presidential vote — and the mayor and her aides were not able to stop the attack.Ms. Bowser and her police chief called the Pentagon, asking for additional D.C. National Guard troops to be mobilized to support what officials were realizing was inadequate protection at the Capitol. But they were told that the request would first have to come from the Capitol Police.In a call to Chief Steven Sund of the Capitol Police, they learned that his force was under siege, lawmakers were being rushed to safety, and rioters were overrunning anyone in authority. He kept repeating the same phrase: “The situation is dire.”Cutting through the cross talk, one person on the call posed a blunt question: “Chief Sund, are you requesting National Guard troops on the grounds of the Capitol?”There was a pause.“Yes,” Chief Sund replied, “I am.”Yet the Capitol Police and the city’s Metropolitan Police had rebuffed offers days before for more help from the National Guard beyond a relatively modest contingent to provide traffic control, so no additional troops had been placed on standby. It took just over four hours for them to arrive.It was just one failure in a dizzying list that day — and during the weeks leading up to it — that resulted in the first occupation of the United States Capitol since British troops set the building ablaze during the War of 1812. But the death and destruction this time was caused by Americans, rallying behind the inflammatory language of an American president, who refused to accept the will of more than 81 million other Americans who had voted him out of office.President Trump’s call at a rally that day for the crowd to march on the nearby Capitol was surely a spark that helped ignite the deadly riots that left five dead — including a policeman and a woman who stormed the building — injured dozens of others and damaged the country’s reputation for carrying out peaceful transfers of power. But the tinder for the blaze had been gathering for months, with every tweet that the election had been stolen, every refusal by Republican lawmakers to recognize Joseph R. Biden Jr. as the next president, every dog-whistle call that emboldened white supremacist groups to violently strike.A full reckoning will take months or even years, and many lawmakers have called for a formal commission to investigate.But an initial anatomy of the siege by The New York Times revealed numerous failures. The chaos showed that government agencies have no coordinated plan to defend against an attack on the Capitol — especially one specifically aimed at powerful elected officials — though law enforcement agencies have for years raised alarms about the growing threat of domestic terrorism. QAnon, an online conspiracy group that was well represented among the crowd, has been labeled a domestic terrorist threat by the F.B.I.Federal agencies and the Capitol Police appeared to issue no serious warnings in the days leading up to the riots that the gathering could turn violent, despite countless posts on right-wing social media sites pledging confrontation and even bloodshed.The Department of Homeland Security invited local law enforcement agencies to its situation room — held online during the pandemic — only the day before the riots, which some security experts said was far too late.Poor planning and communication among a constellation of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies hamstrung the response to the rioting. Once the Capitol building was breached, a patchwork group of reinforcements was forced to try to navigate a labyrinthine complex of unfamiliar passages and byways that would prove dangerous.Above all, the fiasco demonstrated that government agencies were not prepared for a threat that, until recently, seemed unimaginable: when the person inciting the violence is the president of the United States.The Capitol Police and the Metropolitan Police Department did not respond to requests for comment. Ms. Bowser’s chief of staff, John Falcicchio, said that defense officials determined the number of personnel deployed. But Pentagon officials said they made those decisions based on the specific requests they received.The recriminations began almost immediately, and the violence also carried a sobering reality: The country got lucky. Hundreds of rioters carrying weapons breached the seat of American power — some with the clear intent of injuring, holding hostage or even killing federal officials to stop them from certifying the vote. In the end, all of the lawmakers were spirited away to safety.“It was such an embarrassingly bad failure and immediately became an infamous moment in American history,” said R.P. Eddy, a former American counterterrorism official and diplomat who now runs a private intelligence firm. “But it could have been so much worse.”Missed Warnings“The Capitol is our goal. Everything else is a distraction,” announced one post on far-right social media a day before the uprising. “Every corrupt member of Congress locked in one room and surrounded by real Americans is an opportunity that will never present itself again.”That was just one example of how extremists were organizing on social media.In private Facebook groups, activists planning to make the trip to the capital discussed not only logistics like hotels and rideshares, but also sleeping in cars and pitching tents should they need to “occupy” the city. Many comments included photographs of guns and ammunition that they planned to bring.Credit...Erin Schaff/The New York TimesOn smaller social media platforms such as Parler and Gab that became rallying places for the far right, calls for violence were more overt. Dozens of posts in the days leading up to Wednesday listed assault rifles and other weapons that people claimed they were bringing to Washington. People discussed which types of ammunition were best and whether medics would be in place for those potentially injured.Law enforcement and other officials were aware of the chatter and took some steps to try to reduce the chances of violence. Homeland security officials put tactical agents on standby in downtown Washington. The F.B.I. questioned neo-Nazis who were under investigation and planning to attend the demonstrations, prompting some of them to change their plans and skip the trip, officials said.And on Monday, the Metropolitan Police Department arrested Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right group. The police also announced before the rally that anyone who planned to show up to the demonstrations armed, in violation of local firearms laws, would be arrested.But missed opportunities abounded. Despite the ominous social media posts, officials leading intelligence-sharing centers throughout the United States received no warnings from the federal government about the potential threat to the Capitol.“We did not see any federal products related to this,” said Mike Sena, the president of the National Fusion Center Association. Such centers were formed after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to improve communication and planning among federal and local agencies.One senior federal prosecutor in the Midwest said he did not even speak with the top F.B.I. agent in his city about local residents possibly traveling to Washington. What the F.B.I. had been observing online, officials would later say, amounted to First Amendment-protected activity, despite the incendiary language in social media posts.Intelligence experts denounced the inability — or refusal — of government analysts to provide proper warning about impending violence.Inside a Deadly Siege: How a String of Failures Led to a Dark Day at the CapitolOfficer Eugene Goodman is a hero of the U.S. Capitol attack - Palmer Report