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.

Dancing at the Grifter’s Ball

Pam Bondi’s anti-Biden nepotism speech is nestled into a night of Trump grifters living off their father’s/husband’s name. And The Trump Party sees no irony, can see no irony, in this.

He dirties everything he touches.

Everything. Trump spares no reputation, no tradition left clean, no ‘norm’ left unsoiled, any laws in his way are trampled into the dirt. His every touch is like a child with mud on their hands; filth is strewn over all. And like a child, he grins at the destruction in his wake. Last night Trump smeared his hands over the White House, the naturalization ceremony, the pardon, and used them all as petty, political tools to boost an election campaign that is already dirty with corruption and brimming with lies. He sullies them all not for any noble purpose or sense of justice, but to squeeze out just one more vote from those white, ‘suburban housewives’ that he keeps throwing hypothetical Black people at. 

Our government is reduced from a constitutional republic/democracy to no more than a political prop, the People’s White House as a stage for reelection, the employees using their office and power as campaign tools, and the taxpayer’s money blatantly being used to elect the most undemocratic leader the United States of America has ever seen. Nothing is sacred, nothing cannot be used to wrench what is supposed to be a government of the people, for all the people, to a thing to serve the power not of a small political base, but just one man, Donald J. Trump.

Last night RNC was a self-servering parade of corruption and lies, a weaponizing the American government for the benefit an amoral man at the head of a party ready and eager to serve that amorality. And, as usual with the entire Trump administration, the law breaking is right out in the open, proudly displayed, (“Russia, if you’re listening”) bragged about, passed around like a good joint at a frat party. This isn’t bending rules, this is snapping and breaking laws, flagrantly.

I said in a previous post that this convention was going to be a sort of ‘Woodstock’ for the Trump Party, ‘Four Days of Fear & Hate”. I feel I underplayed it. Speaker after speaker got up, lied and smiled about it. Pam Bondi of Florida spewed forth a much-debunked conspiracy theory of Joe and Hunter Biden and Ukraine, railing against ‘nepotism’ on a night where an array of Trumps (all benefiting off their father/husband’s office) overwhelmed the so-called ‘real’ people. And all the grifters danced in joy.

Through the looking glass, while denying you are actually in wonderland.

It was an evening of breaking laws, nepotism, lying, making bizarre claims (My father will put people on Mars!) and celebrating it all. All in an America, damaged, grieving, wondering how they will make rent and feed themselves, or as Trump calls 'it, '“Biden’s America.”

And an estimated 200,000 Americans are dead, with another 1,200 Americans died of the coronavirus on the Tuesday of this shitshow. One mention of the dead, in passing, from the First Lady, while everyone else acted like the virus was over, past tense, like it isn’t still burning, threatening, killing. A complete unreality show, with Trump and the Trump family the most unreal part of it.

Good lord, these fucking people. I can’t do anything more but shake my head at Trump’s American Carnage and wonder where it will end. Or if it ever will.

Trump says he alone can fix it; turns out only he alone could have brought it on.