The Insurrection Was Live Streamed

Huh. Where is the tear gas? Why aren’t the cops beating these MAGA idiots with baton, hitting them with rubber bullets? Weird.

Here we are. Gil Scott Heron was wrong, the revolution, the insurrection really, was televised. The nation, the world saw it happening in real time. In real time we saw a group of speakers whip the crowd up over lies and fantasies of a ‘stolen election’ with the President aiming the angry thousands directly at his own Vice President. It is a stupefying fact that a sitting president of the United states tried to overthrow the government and install himself for another term as president is... well, is there a word to describe this? It's such an overwhelming thing, it beggar’s description.

Seriously, I am so angry, furious, and fascinated at the same time. I find myself pulled in every direction. Furious at Trump and his enablers, who have been building up to this since 2015 with his CYA talk of 'rigged elections' (in case he lost, which he expected to). Yes, something like this has been coming for years with the cynical exploitation of the fear and grievance of his base. But I am fascinated by the passion and anger that drives the 'disenfranchised' Whites to think a grifting 'billionaire' gives a damn about them.

I fully expected something like this insurrection to happen, but not so naked and raw, so exposed and open. It was a river of grievance and anger, flowing from across the country and firehosed by Trump and his enablers right at the seat of American government. We must hold these terrorists accountable, every last one of them to the full extent of the law, but they were following the orders of people like Trump and his sycophantic and cynical enablers. They are every bit as much to blame as the Trump insurrectionists themselves. All need to be dragged blinking into the light of justice, but blame should be apportioned to those who believed the lies and followed, and those who didn't but thought it would look good on their resume. Those who called to overthrow a government with their eyes on 2022, or 2024.

These are resume builders, the cynical enablers, the 'why not-ers' including most of the 147 Republicans who 'objected' to Biden's palpable win (the number went down, slightly, to 138 after the insurrection), to the process of democracy they took an oath to defend.  Yet, here they were, objecting to avoid mean tweets, to position themselves for whatever race was next, ignoring the Constitution to gain the favor of a man who also ignored the Constitution. 

And five people died.

Was it worth it?

The 'base' seems to think so, pledging their soul to Trump and his 'next term' that will never materialize, a phantom 'four more years' the promise of which Trump has used to suck 300 million dollars out of them. They are willing to destroy democracy in order to ‘save’ it, by installing the dictator of their choice. 

This is not who we are!

But really, it is

It's crazy, a plot of a movie review on a 'so-bad-it's-good' youtube channel, not at all the sort of thing you associate with America. But that is because I'm a middle-aged White guy. Black and Brown will tell this is the America they live every day. Angry White people shoeing their ability to do the things that any person not White would be killed for.

They see no irony in this. Angry Whites thinking they have the right to cut in line, say anything they want, do anything without fear of being shot and killed (screaming into a policeman's face, actually pulling them to the ground and beating them into unconsciousness with an American flag), yep, everyday reality to many. I look at this and wonder in horror, they look and nod in affirmation. I see sick aberration, they see nothing new. 

Trump and the GOP know this, and play hard to the fear, the hate, and anger of the dying light, the panic of the waning White power, they mine that fear like the desperate prospector chipping away at a played-out mine, knowing this is all they have. This is why they fall into line with Trump and 'Trumpism', because it has taken over the party.

Without that White anger, the GOP would be nothing.

On my other site (www.tompstewart.com) I write about pop culture, history, comic books, my life as an actor and writer, various odd things. I would like to get back to that, really. I would dearly love to write about 1960s Batman comics, but these are not the times for an in-depth discussion of Batman’s ‘New Look’ of 1964. I can’t look away from this shit-show that is the Trump administration, and neither can history. I have to look, whether I want to or not.

We must evaluate and assign blame, hold the guilty accountable, now, and in future elections.

It’s our duty as Americans.

What the Hell did I Just Watch?

Evita of the Trump Party.

Distorted history, outright lies, a lady angrily screaming into an empty hall, and a speech from Donny Jr, so disjointed and incoherent, that as he spoke, #Cocaine was trending on Twitter. It was supposed to be ‘uplifting, positive, very positive’, Donny Sr. promised! Instead, we got anger, bile, lies, lies and more lies. And yelling, lots of yelling. It was pretty… amazing.

The theme of the night was ‘The Land of Promise’, and they promised light, positivity, optimism, you know, all the good stuff. Right off the bat we had Trump storming in like your drunk uncle who wants to settle who took his favorite skateboard (you now, that one he put the ‘Hanging Ten’ sticker on) back in 1977. He started in attacking Biden, Democrats, China and claimed Democrats were promoting and using ‘voter fraud’, trying to steal the election by saying that votes should, you know, be counted. It was his usual disjointed rambling, a bitter grievance masterpiece. The Qanon cultists were taking notes so they could decipher the ‘breadcrumbs’ for the “real” message later. (When it comes to Qanon, “quote marks” are mandatory.)

Oh, and all the horrible stuff happening under Trump? Be totally worse under Biden. Totally. Fear Biden! Everything that Trump did is actually Biden’s fault!!

So there.

And he’s going to do this stream-of-consciousness ranting EVERY night! That means he’s going to work four whole night in a row. That’s dedication. That’s how desperate he is, he’s coming close to doing his job.

Nikki Haley was there, completely forgetting her trashing of Trump four years ago, trying to present herself as a sort of ‘sane version’ of Trumpism, Trump scrubbed of the overt racism and outright hate; Diet Coke Trumpism. It was a good speech, even if it had to, like most speeches of the night, ignore Trump’s actual record and rhetoric to make its points. Talking of ‘cancel culture’ and political correctness’ Haley claimed the president “knows that political correctness and 'cancel culture' are dangerous and just plain wrong.” This ignores the many times, like just last week with his attack on Goodyear Tires, Trump has put out a ’cancel’ fatwa of his own on journalists, Hollywood celebrities and entire organizations for not praising him enough. Ignore reality and blame whatever is going on in America on anyone but Trump.

As a possible 2024 prospect, she was the one of the calmest people in a night of yelling and arm waving.

There was a lot of that, of ignoring actual reality in favor of what they would like things to be, you know, like praising Trump on the now ruined economy (by time traveling back to December), rewriting his coronavirus response, dismissing his actual racial rhetoric and record. Some circus strongman level bending and twisting of the truth.

The most cringe-worthy moment of the night in the many on display, was when former hostage Andrew Brunson thanked Trump for getting him out of the Turkish prison where he’d been sentenced for 28 years. And Trump replied: “I have to say, that to me, President Erdogan was very good.”

That would be the brutal dictator that threw Brunson in prison in the first place. Brunson just sat there, looking at him while he went on to praise Erdogan some more. It was a version of “Well, sorry he killed people, but he’s never killed me.” Insane.

The ‘real people’ stars of the night were the two personal injury lawyers from St. Louis, Mark and Patty McCloskey, who thought it a good idea to wave guns at people who dared to walk past their house. They were there, again, to tell you the things happening in Trump’s America were actually happening in the mythical ‘Biden’s America’, where every day would be a mix of Soylent Green, Mad Max, and Planet of the Apes. You could boil the whole thing down to: The Black people are coming to riot and move in next to you. These are the ‘ordinary Americans’ the GOP wants to praise, protecting their gilded McMansion against… passersby.

That was a bigger theme than any openly announced; Be Afraid of ‘Those People’. There were several Black speakers on this first night: Senator Tim Scott, State Senator Vernon Jones, Kim Klacik, Herschel Walker, there to say how terrible Democrats are to Black America and how un-racist Trump is. Now, the Democrats do need to do better on race (we all do), but that’s not why these Black speakers were there. They were not there to appeal to Black and POC, (Trump support in the Black community is so small as to be a blip) they were there to reassure the white voters that they’re not racist. It’s okay to vote for someone with Trump’s abysmal record on race, it won’t make you racist. I’m sure that was not the intent of the sincere speakers, but it is the intent of the Trump Party.

The Promised Land indeed.

One of the most batshit things of the evening was Kimberly Guilfoyle, ex-Fox News host, ex-wife of CA Governor Gavin Newsom, girlfriend of Don Jr, and an important and effective fundraiser for the GOP. She gave the standard ‘Dems comin’ for your money, guns, and babies, gonna make you all socialists’ speech, but delivered it in a such a shouting, shrill, angry fashion I cringed at home. I thought something was wrong with her. I’m an actor, I wanted to tell her that they have microphones, you don’t need to yell. It was as if she had practiced it to be shouted at a noisy, crowded, and rambunctious room and couldn’t adjust to the fact the hall was empty. She even still had all the applause lines. To the echo of no applause.

Should I mention Guilfoyle got her own heritage wrong, claiming her mother wasn’t a citizen (she was born in Puerto Rico, which makes her an American citizen), and calling herself a ‘1st generation American Citizen;’ (getting the nomenclature wrong) when she’s not?

Nah, that’s petty. And I don’t want to be petty about pettiness.

We end here with probably the more anticipated speech of the night: Donald Trump Jr. Don Jr. started with his dad’s campaign, figuratively (sometime literally) fetching the coffee. It was Jr. who brought the Russian spy to Trump Tower to pitch her anti-Hillary, Pro-The Donald portfolio, which everybody knows was a great move. In the past few years though, his position has become point man for his father, and he and Guilfoyle have become a power couple in the Trump Party and a ‘credible’ prospect of running for president in 2024. Of course, that was before this speech.

Really, maybe he was just stunned by Guilfoyle’s speech, or deafened, but he delivered his usual ‘Imagine how the world would be if my father was not president’ speech with red, weeping eyes, and stuffed nose. It lite up Twitter for all the wrong reasons. This is the future of the Republican Trump Party.

What all these speeches have in common (besides Trump good, Biden evil) is trying to blame everything that has gone wrong under Trump’s presidency on the Democrats and Joe Biden. The coronavirus, the cratered economy, the double-digit unemployment, the protests, the est. 200,000 dead Americans and the rest of us not knowing how we’re going to pay rent or even eat. None of this is Trump’s fault. It’s all a plot against him, it’s all the Deep State ™, it’s really what will happen under Joe Biden. This night is like all other night’s in the Trump Party; they shout, they point, they exaggerate, they twist, they lie to avoid any sort of responsibility, and then say they deserve four more years to save you from… them.

Tuesday night; more of the same.