Very Fine People

 “We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny.” Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

I expected violence on the streets of DC today, but never did I think I would watch a mob of Americans storm and overtake the United States capitol, on the very day the votes of the Electoral College were to be certified by Congress, the people’s representatives. 

My first question is: how did that mob manage to overwhelm the capitol building so easily? Did the security people from all the agencies -- FBI, ATF, Capitol Police, Park Police, National Guard, Metropolitan Police -- not know Trump’s MAGA army was coming? Did they forget that Trump invited them to DC for a “wild” day. Did they not know in advance that Trump was making a speech this morning in the city, at which he was one-hundred percent certain to incite his audience with rambling madness about fraud, stolen elections, victimhood and grievance? Didn’t get the email? Clueless? Just assumed it would be another day in DC? 

Why was the DC security apparatus -- all those federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies so quick to mobilize -- and with such overwhelming force and numbers -- against the Black Lives Matter protesters last June, and so absent today? What accounts for the disparity? 

We must ask many more questions about that, and maybe take a good long look at the racial composition of the security forces. Something tells me we will find many people sympathetic to, and supportive of, white supremacy and white nationalism. Yes, we better look at the people with badges as well as the people in the red hats. 

Mitt Romney can usually be relied on to say the right thing, and he did so again this evening.  

I didn’t expect that January 6, 2021 would go down as a day of infamy in American history.

Around 1:30 eastern time, I checked CNN to see what was happening and saw the bold headline. I was at work, but couldn’t tear myself away, knowing that this was a seminal moment in American history unfolding in real time. The bedrock idea of democratic elections and the peaceful transfer of political and military power was under direct assault, incited by Donald J. Trump. 

Do not call those people protesters. That was a mob of domestic terrorists, of insurrectionists. Do not compare them to peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters. That mob was from the same tribe that stormed the Michigan statehouse and plotted to kidnap the governor. A pack of people who feel aggrieved, almost all of them white. Michigan was a dry run. 

Let’s ask more questions. First, how much of a punk is Josh Hawley from Missouri? Call him Blow-Dried Ted Cruz. What a sniveling, gutless punk. Waste of a fine education at Stanford and Yale. Who is Josh Hawley to question Pennsylvania’s election process? Nobody. How dare he condemn the violence on the one hand, so pious and squeaky clean, and on the other say he’s just innocently bringing questions to the floor of Congress for debate. He’s just a patriotic guy looking out for average Americans, not a shamelessly ambitious politician trying to hitch himself to Trump’s base. Hawley, rot in hell. 

How’s Ted Cruz feeling at this hour? Ron Johnson? Does Kevin McCarthy think his hands are free of blood? What about Jim Jordan? Mark Meadows? Are you fuckers proud of yourselves? All of you, and many more, supported Trump’s election fraud fantasies, fed the beast that escaped its tether today, and now you express shock that the beast went berserk.

Oh, the hypocrisy on display in America’s capitol today. 

If that had been a mob of black people, many would have been shot dead on sight by the authorities. No doubt in my mind. Just like those good old days Trump and his followers so deeply long for, those days and nights in parts of Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, South Carolina and Texas. The good old days when black people could be murdered with even more impunity than they can be today. 

Didn’t Trump call himself the Law & Order president? 

Has Lindsey Graham seen the light? After kneeling before Trump with his mouth wide open for four years? After four years of running interference for Trump? After four years of making excuses for Trump’s idiocy, incompetence, and ignorance? Now, Graham has seen the light? Another punk with blood on his hands. 

I’m sorry for being all over the place, and angry, but I am pissed off tonight. I’ve got CNN on in the background. I’m following the voting and listening to people being interviewed. 

Several weeks ago in this blog I warned of this danger: Trump has the nuclear codes. That’s why, four years too late, there is talk of invoking the 25th amendment. Trump’s ego is melting down and nobody can predict what he’ll do. 

And what will Trump’s MAGA army do next? What’s their next gambit? They had a big day today, off the leash and full of vigor, running amok under Trump’s banner. They were treated gingerly by the authorities, few were arrested, and the majority were allowed to walk away without penalty. White immunity works. 

How many resignations will we see in the next few days? How many will jump the disgraced Trump ship before it crashes? Who will be on the bridge with Trump when it all comes to an end on January 20? Jared and Ivanka? Don Jr. and Eric? Lara and Melania? Rudy Guliani and Kayleigh McEnany?

A Season of Waiting

 “These are dangerous times for democracy. The danger can be seen in rising xenophobia and growing public support for autocratic figures who test the limits of democratic norms.” Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit

For those Americans who see Donald J. Trump and what remains of the Republican Party for the clear danger they pose to America, the past year has been a season of waiting. We waited for the Democrats to nominate their presidential ticket; we waited for the party conventions, and then the debates. We waited for November 3rd, election day, and hoped Joe Biden would win by a margin too big to steal. He did. Then we waited for December 14, when the votes of the Electoral College were certified. We have since waited for January 5th, and the Georgia run-off election which will decide if Mitch McConnell retains his seat atop the smoking heap that is the Trump-owned GOP -- a party that for more than a quarter century has cared about one thing and only one thing: power -- and is now devouring itself, split between Republicans who still believe in ordinary reality and the Constitution, and the Trump wing which believes in fantasy and is ready and willing to trample the Constitution. 

And then there’s January 6th, when a heretofore largely ceremonial process -- the acceptance by Congress of the electoral college votes -- will be turned into a fascist spectacle by Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz on the Senate side, and nearly seventy-five percent of House Republicans, led by the likes of Kevin McCarthy and Louie Gohmert. 

While those of us who care about democracy have waited, and waited, Donald J. Trump and his ragtag cast of enablers have filed bogus lawsuits alleging election fraud, made seditious statements in the media, and called the legitimacy of Biden’s win into question. Some of Trump’s pliant minions, like Cruz and Hawley, are playing along for reasons of ambition and self-promotion; others, like the aforementioned Gohmert, who is simply a nitwit, have contorted themselves to curry favor with Trump’s base, which they see as key to their future political advancement. Cynical? Yes. Dangerous? Absolutely. 

And then we learn of Trump’s hour-long phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State, in which Trump -- two months after the election, and with the vote counts certified and submitted to Congress -- put on his full mob boss act, alternately cajoling, threatening, and pleading for the Secretary of State to “find” 11,780 votes so he, Trump, could be declared the victor in Georgia. This act by Trump was shocking, but in no way surprising. We saw the same gambit with Ukraine. That escapade led to Trump’s impeachment by the House of Representatives, and should have led to his removal from office. 

The only surprising thing is how pathetic and demented Trump sounded on the call, rolling out wild conspiracy theories that have already been debunked. As mob kingpins go, Trump simply isn’t up to the task, he’s too stupid. After his experience with Ukraine and Bob Woodward, what man goes into an hour-long phone call with other people on the line, including legal counsel, and lays out the play as if he’d never heard of audio recording? Answer, a really dumb, desperate man. 

I expect a circus on January 6th, and quite possibly some violence in the streets of DC. The coup plotters will drag out the proceedings as long as possible, but when all their rounds are expended, Biden will be declared the winner, again. And then those of us who believe in democracy will wait for January 20th. We will wait, and we will hope that a desperate, cornered Donald J. Trump will not launch a war against Iran. That two-week span might be the most dangerous time of all. Desperate men commit desperate, destructive acts.

Our season of waiting continues.