Coup, Coup Summer

Sown in the fires of Armageddon, or some such nonsense. Can’t even with these guys…

So.

So… sigh…

About the coup that General (retired) Flynn, Sydney Powell, Mike Lindell, Donald Trump, and pretty much all of Qanon is calling/praying/screaming for.

Ain’t gonna happen. At least not the way the way the Qer’s think it’s going to happen.

The military is not going to arrest Joe Biden, round all the mean ‘ol Democrats, and re-install Donny as president. In fact, I’m betting the leaders of the military were relived when Trump lost so decidedly. While Trump pretended to ‘respect’ for the military, he really has respect only for those named ‘Donald J. Trump’, or those at the heads of other countries who wield ‘ultimate’ power (murderous dictators). This is why he sucked up to Putin, to Kim, to MBS and Saudi Arabia, to China, (until his advisors told him to knock it off during covid), he likes those who strut and those who kill. Who kill reporters and protesters, that is. He’s just mad he can only strut. No, he has no respect those he can’t understand, those who seem to be sacrificing for others with nothing in it for themselves. If the answer to the question ‘what’s in it for me?’ is ‘honor and duty to country’, that’s a hard pass.

So, no, I really don’t fear the military rising up to help a man who insulted them as “losers” and “suckers”, no I fear the followers. The army of the deluded dead-enders, the ones still holding boat parades, still plotting on Parler and Telegram, the people who have been going on a four-year gun buying spree to arm themselves for the day when their particular ‘skills’ would be needed. Call it ‘boogaloo’, ‘race war’, ‘Armageddon’, or just ‘Civil War’, they’re down will alllll that. They desperately miss their guidance from Donald and especially from ‘Q’, and have been wandering around, seething and straining, fighting any battle they can (masks, vaccines) waiting for the bat-signal that will allow them to descend on America and ‘take back their country’. They’ve been waiting for a long time.

Trump, Flynn, Powell, Lindell (the Three Stooges and a spare), are giving it too them. They’ve giving them a date, a month at least; August. Don’t worry, Trump will be back in August, now please give us money. The Qanoners believe this stuff, like they believe Tom Hanks kills babies to drink their adrenaline. They think the military and Trump are actually running the country and that Joe Biden is either a clone, a doddering old man who has no idea where he is while Kamala Harris runs things, or was illegally installed and will be forced out. Or all of it, or bits of it. They’re nuts, what can I say?

Many Trump supporters are waiting, wanting, eager, and trembling to be part of a violent act in his name. Encouraged by Trump they have already committed violence in his name and are ready to do it again. It wouldn’t take much to do it again. Powell and Lindell, two people loved and respected in the cult, say Trump can be re-instated in August, Trump (the God of the Cult) repeats the August date, Flynn endorses a military style coup. If the military won’t step up to do its duty, the ‘anoners are very excited to do it for them.

 They are already plotting now. They haven’t really stopped in four years.

Trump gave them a month, they can figure out a day, a place and a time. He thinks with his announced rallies, his constant firing at them with fundraising emails, the constant repeating of the Big Lie and telling them he’ll be re-instated only if they ‘fight’ (you know that is coming) that his followers will bring about ‘the Storm’ (TM) (see video below), he’ll be back in power (and safe from prosecution) and they can round up all the ‘pedos’ together. They’ll all be the shining heroes they always knew they were. Jesus might even come back.

All they have to do is fight.

“Fight For Trump!”

Oh good, another summer made interesting for all the wrong reasons.

Crazy Qanon video below, shown at their conference last week where Flynn made his coup endorsement.

Ain’t No Civil War

Civil War? Don’t believe it.

I know. The press has to have their stories, with their storylines, ones they can see coming in advance, ones that fit past narratives and are easily pitched at the morning meetings. It’s very comforting, like a Simpson’s writing saying “Oh, we did something like that in season 12, but we can just give it a twist here. It’ll work!” A Republican civil war is an easy narrative, heck, you can just pull out and blow the dust off the ones from 2006, or ’12, or the summer of 2015. And the ones from 2015 have the advantage of not having to change most of the names, as many of the players are the same.

But that is just lazy, by-the-numbers sort of thing, above anyone but hacks on a deadline. Now, I can’t say anything about the ‘hack’ part, heaven forfend, but the lazy bit… well…

People love to see what they want to see, what they are expecting to see, and everyone loves a good fight. So, some Republicans are fighting some other Republicans and we’re all pulling up our lawn chairs (six feet apart, of course) and popping up the popcorn (salt, light butter) getting ready to watch the fight.

But there really isn’t one.

The fight is over. It ended with the nomination and election of Donald Trump. The professional sycophants (Cruz, Rubio, Graham) went from highly critical to embarrassingly praiseful overnight. It was like a photo-finish. I can see the 8X10, all three (there were more, but let’s go with the big three) in a leaning-forward run, lips outstretched, all aiming for Trump’s large ass.

The ‘civil war has been over for years. Trump swallowed the party whole. Oh, he burped out a few, Jeff Flake, Justin Amash, Republicans who couldn’t take Trump (but still voted for many of his policies) and left before the humiliation of their Trumpified voters kicking them out.

So, this isn’t a ‘civil war’, this is a purge. The last of the previous generation of Republicans, themselves heirs of a previous right-wing coup and purge (the ‘Reagan Revolution’), are now getting flushed out by the very radicals they nurtured, the vipers they thought they could control while they passed on to ‘elder statesman’ status. They were wrong. Vipers do what vipers do, they strike.

See, they have been striking for years, but with Trump giving the order that the ‘stolen election’ bullshit is now the Golden Rule by which all must be judged, the strikes, the Purge ™, has been increased in speed and scope; everyone who dared to question, dared to stop Trump’s steal must be cast out into the wilderness. They must be burned to the ground, and their cubicles and office mugs salted so no one who might question The Donald can grow there.

Liz Cheney? She’s just the most public face. The local GOPer’s, the ones who certified the votes, who oversaw the Republicans elections in reddish/purple states and followed the rules, all those Republicans who put in place all the rules designed to elect Republicans (that failed to elect Republicans this time), they’re either gone, or have had their power so curtailed they might as well be gone.

So, put away the popcorn, there’s no fight here. Everyone knows what’s up, everyone knows how this is going to go. Except those in the media who just don’t get it, or like the narrative too much to tell their editors what is really going on. The War is over, the War has been won, they’re dragging the bodies off the field.

The GOP is Trump’s party, has been for years, they’re just cleaning house. 100% Trump, or 100% gone.

The Fire This Time

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. In case you’ve been living under a bush the past several decades, she was a hell of a woman. In her 21 years on the bench (appointed by President Clinton) she has been an inspiration to friends and not-friends, ruling with passion and honor. During that time, she’s personally battled both with colon cancer, and won, and then pancreatic cancer in 2009. She fought it hard for 11 years, but succumbed on Sept 18th, in the Year of our Hell, 2020.

We have now gone from ugly election, in the middle of a pandemic that has killed 203,361 Americans, to a full-pitched political battle for the direction of the country for decades to come.

It didn’t have to happen. It really didn’t.

In 2016, Justice Antonin Scalia, died suddenly. With 11 months still left on his term, President Obama nominated Merrick Garland, just the kind middle-of-the-road jurist that was Obama’s speed. All taht threre was to do now for the Senate was to follow the Constitution, hold hearings and a vote. Easy.  

No. Anything but a far-right fire breather would sway the court and change the majority, which is historically one of the farthest-right ones in decades. This can never be. So, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, already famous for a reputation of ignoring rules when it came to accruing himself and his party power, literally just made up an excuse not to do his job.

“The American people‎ should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new President.”

Mitch McConnell, 2016.

Complete bullshit, with no legal or Constitutional basis, but the right-wing Senators and pundits cranked out volumes defending it, casting aside any reputation for seriousness they might have left. Really, they’re a machine of obfuscations and out-of-context quoting. They were fooling nobody, probably not even themselves. This was no stand of integrity by a man who has displayed little his entire career, this was yet another smash the rules power grab.

And he got away with it. 

And the GOP and Trump have gleefully proclaimed their willingness to destroy the remaining public legitimacy of the Supreme Court.

Full screeching stop.

It didn’t have to happen. Still doesn’t.

Here we are, another justice beloved by their ‘side’ and died, some 40 days before a presidential election. How is that infamous ‘McConnell Rule’ applied?

“President Trump’s nominee will receive a vote on the floor of the United States Senate,”

Mitch McConnell, 2020.

One Mitch, two different rules for two different presidents. And this is why the GOP is a party of hypocrites.

I’m just totally shocked. This is my shocked face. May never go back.

How bad is the hypocrisy? You have probably seen the quotes a dozen times by now, but here they are:

Lindsey Graham (R-SC), 2018:

“I’ll tell you this...if an opening comes in the last year of president Trump's term and the primary process has started we'll wait to the next election.”

“I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.)

Late in 2016, in an op-ed defending the McConnell’s decision: “voters — not a lame-duck president — should decide the composition of the highest court in the land.”

Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.)

“The next president of the United States should have the opportunity to fill the vacancy on the Supreme Court. Our next election is too soon and the stakes are too high; the American people deserve a role in this process as the next Supreme Court Justice will influence the direction of this country for years to come.”



Sen. Susan Collins (R-MN) have said similar things, as has Sen. Lisa Mukowski (R-AK), Mitt Romney (R-UT) is a wild card in this, sometimes showing some backbone. We’ll see.

Now, I suppose they’re not actually hypocrites yet, as they haven’t announced which they’ll vote, but past performance predicts future actions. They’re already coming up with bullshit exemptions to a bullshit rule, like the kid in a cops and robbers game calling out excuses why he wasn’t really shot.

Now, the question is; will they hold to what they have said in the past, or will it be exposed as so much ‘of-the-moment, forget-it-later’ hypocrisy? Well, looks like McConnell has probably solved that one for us. He will gather, pressure and threaten his caucus until he gets the result he wants, he sees what as his job; principles are things that stand between him and what he wants, he doesn’t understand them. This was already going to be a divisive election, one with decades long implications poised to make or break us as a country; now it could be a bloodbath.

It doesn’t have to happen, it really doesn’t. If Trump, McConnell and the GOP would put, for once, country above party, we can step back from the abyss. McConnell would abide by his completely made-up rule, and the choice would go to whomever won the presidential election. McConnell, of course, would never consider such a thing. He makes and breaks rules as it occurs to him to do so; when one is no longer convenient, new one’s spring forth from the head of Zeus, given the little ‘legitimacy’ that McConnell has left, and is treated as if it was always there in the first place.

Maybe the far-right’s beloved Federalist Society could step in to halt the coming destruction, announcing that the seat open should be left open. This would go a long way to cooling the flames and give cover to Republicans who might not to burn down the SCOTUS, not so soon at least.

There is literally no way this will happen.

The Federalist Society, McConnell and the GOP have been on a literal RBG death watch for years now, probably hitting refresh on their browsers to keep check, lists of names already disseminated and ready to announce.

Do I sound cynical? Decades of watching the GOP has made me so. I know to put nothing past them, to ‘trust but verify’ in Reagan’s smug but utterly nonsensical phrase. But I can’t even do that anymore.  

Mitch McConnell could have ended it, simply by following his nonsense ‘rule’ (not a rule), but he cannot pass up yet more power for his dying party. So, he will not.

Trump also could stop it, but he also cannot. This is his ultimate owning of the libs’ and he lives for the moment he can put his boot to the back of his ‘enemies’ neck and grind their face into the dirt.  

They like to see the world burn and fate has given them a blowtorch.

Maybe, just maybe, those Republican senators quoted above, maybe joined by Mitt Romney, will step up to save their party and country and vote either ‘no’ or ‘present’. Or just announce their intentions, denying McConnell and stopping the official vote at all.

But that wouldn’t stop them; the right would tar and feather them, in the press and literally if they could. They’d be fielding death threats like leaves in a windstorm. And Trump and McConnell would hold their vote anyhow.

Save the party or the country.

And the world will burn.

They Need Gone.

Robert E. Lee, basically the South’s version of Jesus. Traitor to his country, and wasn’t even that good a general.

You know what?

Confederate monuments have got to go.

Yes, they need gone, they need to be trashed and consigned to the dustbin of history.

This should not be a controversial position, but the insistence and butthurt of the right makes it so.

I really have to question why the right is defending traitors, slaveholders, and racists, but that’s beside the point…. Or is it?

Seriously, people, the monuments and plaques to the Confederates serve only one purpose; to reinforce white supremacy. That’s it. The ‘Daughters of the Confederacy’ worked hard to promote the racist ‘Lost Cause’ myth (the poor, poor put-upon South!), to try and turn a righteous and deserved defeat into a phoenix victory. They worked hard to promote white grievance, supremacy and the view of the South that the Civil War was about more than slavery (it wasn’t). Don’t @ me with ‘states rights’ because those ‘rights’ were the ‘right’ of the one race to hold another in chains, steal their labor, their children, their lives. And the were perfectly fine about it, they used the Bible (of course they did) to excuse their behavior, bending Christianity until it broke into very tiny, fine pieces. Want to know why there were Northern Baptists and Southern Baptists for decades? Slavery. They broke apart because the North could not bend their Christianity to accept slavery (they were okay with white supremacy though, but that’s another post) and the South, all high, mighty, and pissed off, took their bat, ball, and slavery-infested religion, and stormed off home.

And started a war. Yep, they started it, all so they could keep people in slavery. That was the cause and the war ended it.

Well, in name. The South was able to end ‘Reconstruction’ (an era when Blacks had the vote, held elected offices and had power) and start the Era of Terror, where whites would violently take back power through intimidation, terror, and murder. And to mark their white ‘territory’? Statues of the great Confederate ‘heroes’. The DOC started founding chapters (you just needed seven women who had bothers or fathers who were Confederate soldiers, that was pretty much the entire South) and started collecting money for monuments. And of course, passing out their ‘Lost Cause’ propaganda. (They even had a Confederate Catechism. No, really!) They erected as many monuments as they possibly could; statues of generals, soldiers, plaques to dubious ‘achievements’ of the South (like the time a white mob, angry at the election of a Republican governor and his Black Lt. Governor, took over the statehouse for three days. Yes! There was a plaque up for decades calling these racist vigilantes ‘heroes’!). So, yeah.

The statues and monuments were part of a disinformation campaign for the white South, and a campaign of intimidation against Blacks and any notions of equality they might have. Flags, monuments everywhere, on public land, some paid for with public money. Imagine if you were Black, walking through your town, (the places you were allowed to walk), and seeing soaring tributes to your oppressors, the people who killed friends and loved ones, literally everywhere you looked.

Pretty fucking horrible.

Intimidation usually is.

And no, these didn’t go right up after the war, the majority went up at the end of the 19th century to the revival of KKK in the teens and twenties, and then during the later 40’s through the 70s. Notice anything? The most monuments went up at times when civil rights were being pressed. It was the 50s and 60s, the ‘Civil Rights Era’ (really, every freakin’ year should be part of a ‘Civil Rights Era’) that the Confederate flag was being adopted (yes, I know it was never the real flag of the Confederacy, don’t ‘actually’ me) as a well, a flag for white supremacy.  

The statues, these monuments, these plaques, these named buildings were all part of a campaign to spread lies and to intimidates and terrorize innocents. They do not commemorate history, they push lies. Ugly lies. We don’t need any more of their crud in our public spaces or our private minds.

They need to go.