Michael Flynn Goes Full-Traitor

General Flynn as a cowboy. Hee-ha.

"I want to know why what happened in Myanmar can't happen here?"

The questioner from the audience at Dallas, Texas Q-Annon conference asked former National Security Director and confessed felon, General Michael Flynn.

The audience cheered and applauded.

"No reason. I mean, it should happen," said Flynn.

They cheered and applauded even more.

In Myanmar, a democratically elected government was overthrown in a military coup, the leaders of the government seized and imprisoned. When the people protested, the military then turned on their own citizens, killing some 800 Burmese people, including at least 40 children. This is according to Myanmar's Assistance Association for Political Prisoners. More than 4,000 citizens people have been arrested and are being held in the continuing aftermath.

This is what Flynn, and the right, are now calling for here in America. Demanding that the United States military install Q-Anon’s favorite ‘strong’ man, presidential loser Donald Trump as a dictator-in-chief.

This is, simply, treason.

And Flynn called for this during the weekend reserved for memorializing and remembering those we have lost in our nation’s wars. He either forgot about honoring them, or didn’t care.

It should be no surprise to anyone Flynn decided to go full-on traitor, he’s been dancing on that line for years, especially since joining Donald Trump on the Trump campaign trail. He was bound to fall over the line sooner or later. He worked behind the scenes with foreign entities to advance the Trump campaign, and lied to the FBI about it. He confessed, and then (once Sydney Powell stepped in to start spewing right wing conspiracies about Flynn) withdrew his thrice confirmed confession. Then AG Barr tried to undermine the case, and several prosecutors resigned in disgust. The fight over Flynn’s guilt and sentencing continued until he was pardoned by Trump.

During the last days of the election, and in the months after, Flynn was a man unleashed and unhinged. He, Powell, (who had briefly joined the Trump defense team before being pushed out for being too crazy even for them) and Trump advisor and some-time lawyer Lin Wood during the post-election lying seemed to compete with one another over who could be the craziest and make the biggest, most treasonous statements. He even took the Q-Anon ‘pledge’.

Flynn in December was pushing Trump to declare martial law and seize the reigns of power, regardless of the election outcome. As news of this push leaked out, Flynn stated on NewsMax (one of the Trumpier of the right-wing ‘news’ pushers):

"People out there talk about martial law like it's something that we've never done. Martial law has been instituted 64 times." (68 times actually, never in an election)

No big deal, nothing much to see here, just taking over the government with the military and installing a dictator. Please, go about your business.

Calls for outright violence have been louder, shriller and more desperate and Trump’s lies of a ‘stolen’ election were absorbed and amplified until they spurred the violence of January 6th at the Capitol. That violence, that attempt to overthrow the election is celebrated by Q-Anon and many on the right, and new violence is constantly advocated, constantly escalated. Again, as if the most outrageous statement wins.

This new statement is Flynn being more explicit about violent overthrow. As a retired general, as a former Trump official, Flynn is a rock star to Trumpers, one they listen to, believe, and follow. To call for a military coup from this platform is irresponsible and utterly dangerous. We’ve seen where this shouting ends. During the last five years we have all seen what the overheated lies and violent rhetoric can do to a crowd ready and willing to do the bidding of those yelling the loudest.

All they need is to believe.

Mitch Has a Message For America

Mitch might be putting up a thumb, but he’s really thinking ‘middle finger’.

There was a time, and I’m not completely crazy here, when politicians actually tried to help people other than themselves. Or at least they helped other people while helping themselves. Something got done, benefits at least trickled out occasionally to ordinary Americans and the country lurched slowly forward.

 Yeah, those were good… times?

All that’s done now, and has been for the last few decades. Helping people had its run, but we’re on to other things now. We’re in the age of announcing, via statements to the DC press, that we’re helping ourselves as policy and acting as if that is a benefit, as if that was what we were elected to do in the first place. Hurting the country and their own voters as if that is what those voters wanted all along. “Please, make sure our lives are harder, our struggles more painful so you win more power!”

“Can do!”

Kentucky Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell is always one to put his own power and that of his party before the good of the country. We saw that under Obama with McConnell’s proclamation that his job was to make Obama a ‘one-term president’. Fought everything, from healthcare for the uninsured, to stimulus designed to get us out of a financial disaster presided over by Obama’s Republican predecessor. This opposition lengthened the recovery by years, needlessly causing financial pain to Americans. Now, he’s at it again.

This time McConnell has said “One hundred percent of my focus is on stopping this new administration.” Not on helping the American people, not on getting the country back to sanity after a devastating pandemic that killed well over a half million people, not trying to revive the economy, no. Petty politics is where his head is, preserving his own power at the cost of the country is his goal, but then it always was.

Not only did he try to kill the covid relief bill, now he’s trying to kill infrastructure, voting rights, and a bi-partisan investigation into the origins and happenings of the January 6th insurrection. After the Democrats gave basically everything the GOP was asking for, he proclaims it ‘not enough’. He not only is trying to kill it by allowing a filibuster, he’s also lying about the nature and makeup of the committee itself.  

Why?

He’s worried it could “could hurt the party’s midterm election message,” which is ‘Biden is horrible, he’s done nothing (because we made sure he could do nothing), he’s too ‘woke’, he destroying America, so vote for us’. He’s worried finding out the truth about an attack on the US Capitol would somehow hurt the GOP’s message. Scared of the truth.

Again, why? They claim it was ‘antifa’ and Black Lives Matter supporters, now is their chance to prove it.

Why is the GOP afraid of what a bi-partisan look at the insurrection would find? Well, they must know it was their supporters out there beating police, using the very Trump flags they were flying as blunt weapons to put cops in the hospital, smash windows, and use the shields stripped from the police to break down the doors of the Capitol. Instead of facing up to this fact, and dealing with the fallout and the lies that brought us all to that day and to this, to try to protect themselves and their colleagues from further attacks…

…they filibustered it. Ignore it, and the insurrectionists will just go away.

I hear Joe Manchin is oh so very shocked and disappointed. The very thing that nearly everyone told him would happen, that the GOP would block everything regardless of benefit no matter what, has happened.

And I hear there’s gambling in the back room at Rick’s.

And then McConnell announced opposition to police reform that does away with ‘qualified immunity’, the bizarre rule that lets police get away with civil and criminal acts (like killing people), upending negotiations his own party member Tim Scott is carrying on with the Senate Democrats.  

So, no money for crumbling infrastructure, childcare, elder care, no police reform, no voting reform and protection, no investigation into the threat against our democracy, all because it “could hurt the party’s midterm election message.”

The Republican message seems to be “Fuck You.”

And nothing has stopped them from getting that message out in the last 40+ years.

Are you finally listening, Senators Manchin and Sinema?