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.

They Wanted a Massacre

Trump’s MAGA mob of traitors, bringing shame to the nation.

This was UGLY. The more we know about what went on, the uglier it is. They came with bombs, guns, Molotov cocktails, flex cuffs, knives, homemade weapons. They were looking for blood, chanting 'hang Mike Pence'. They were invited to DC by Trump himself, promising them it would be 'wild'. Trump and his enablers were calling anyone who actually acknowledged the fair outcome of the election was a 'traitor'. Rudy called for a ‘trail by combat’, Trump told them Mike Pence held the power (he doesn’t) to turn the election, and the White House, over to them, if he would only ‘do the right thing’. Anyone who stood in the way were traitors. ““We’re going to the Capitol,” he said. “We’re going to try and give them the kind of pride and boldness that they need to take back our country.”

The president added: “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Then he invited them to ‘walk to the capitol’ and ‘cheer’ the lawmakers on.

Vice President Pence announced that he would not object to the vote, which the president tweeted about, to his followers, the fired-up and angry mob he had just sent to march on the US Capitol. Trump told them, but his own rhetoric that Pence was now a ‘traitor’. He refused to do what Trump wanted him to do, but what he legally could not do. He would now just be part of the cast of traitors that stood between them and their prize

And they went looking for those 'traitors'. They went looking for a massacre.

They beat cops, they beat up reporters, smashing their equipment, the broke down doors, smashed windows, they ransacked the offices of the capitol, smashing and vandalizing as they went. They shit and peed on the floors and walls, looted, probably allowing foreign agents access to the building, including the Speakers laptop which went missing.

They beat a policeman to death.

Five people died during this insurrection, this attempt by Donald Trump to overthrow an election he can't admit he lost fair and square. He nearly got his own Vice President killed. It was ugly, deadly, and disgraced America in the eyes of the world while delighting its enemies.  

And they had wanted it to be worse, they had wanted actual blood for their ‘tree of liberty’.

Now, the very people who incited this travesty, Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, Keven McCarthy, Hawley, Cruz, and every Republican who defended this ‘stolen election’ nonsense, the 147 Republicans who objected on Jan. 6th to the certification of Joe Biden’s election, these people with blood on their hands are calling for ‘peace’, ‘healing’, ‘unity’, they are demanding not be held unaccountable for their own actions, their words, for inciting a mob that tried to do exactly what they were asking them to do.  

No.

Just. No.

The House will vote to impeach Trump, making him the only president to be impeached twice. He deserves it, a thousand times over. He’s a literal traitor to his own country. The rest must be held accountable, held to the oath they took when they were elected:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter: So help me God.”

“All enemies, foreign and domestic”. That includes the President and those that supported and enabled the actions that led to the debacle, the insurrection aimed at installing Donald Trump as a king over America, because that’s would he would have been, that was Trump’s endgame here and that of his supporters. It failed, as any rational person knew it would, but Trump and his supporters are not rational. Never have been.

The only way to deal with them is the take them out of power and make sure they never get back in.

Never.

The Last Days of the Slow-Coup

Donny rallying his Redcoats.

Donald Trump has reached the Nixon ‘walking the hallways night at night swearing at the paintings’ stage. That hasn’t stopped him stepping up his desperate coup attempt by proposing in a White House meeting making election ‘lawyer’ Sydney Powell as a ‘special counsel in charge of the election, with a high security clearance and access to classified materials. This would put her in charge of ‘investigating’ the election, i.e.: making baseless charges from a high government position with resources like investigators and subpoena power. She could make a lot of election officials miserable, ruining their careers and their lives, dragging democracy through the mud for months.

Fortunately, this was shot down, but not before a lot of arguing and heated words, many from Powell herself, fighting for more power. Advisors pointed out she had yet to prove any of her accusations, prompting Powell to whip out yet more affidavits from the same dubious source she has used in the past. That doesn’t mean she will go away, or that Trump won’t go over his advisors and force an appointment.

Then busy little Donny, (busying doing anything but his job, or protecting America from Russian hacking or covid) in a meeting with Ken Cuccinelli, No. 2 at the Department of Homeland Security, asked that the DHS seize voting machines for an ‘examination’. Cuccinelli gingerly told the president that the DHS had no power over voting machines.

Not caring for that answer, Rudy Giuliani then called personally to ask Cuccinelli about seizing voting machines so they could be ‘examined’ (screwed and tampered with) by Trump partisans. The President’s personal lawyer asking to illegally seize property.

Maggie Haberman of the NYT reported: 

“Rudy Giuliani called Ken Cuccinelli, second in command at the Department of Homeland Security, on Thursday night and asked him whether DHS could seize voting machines," Jonathan Swan reported, citing "a source familiar with the call."

Cuccinelli told Rudy the DHS didn’t have that power.

They really don’t like hearing ‘no’.

In the meeting with senior aides and Powell, was ex-general, and every bit as crazy as Sydney, fervent Trump (and pardon recipient) Michael Flynn. After getting turned down for his voting machine scam, and not being able to appoint Sydney Powell as Witchfinder General, Trump gestured to Flynn and asked about Flynn’s idea of martial law, using the military to overthrow the election and forcing either a national re-vote, or a re-vote of just the states Trump wants.

Yes, we have a President of the United States, asking to seize voting machines, demanding to appoint a persecutor-in-chief to go after his perceived ‘enemies’, proposing martial law, and calling for a violent overthrow of the government to reverse a lost election, with most of the GOP happy to do so.

This is treason.  

This is un-American. 

But he won’t succeed.

There are too many good people standing in his way who honor their oaths to the Constitution, and a few bad ones who know the gig is up, want to get their pardon, and get out. Trump can and will do damage on his way out, it’s the nature of the wounded animal to thrash, snarl and lash out at anything near… as they die.

Trump’s term dies the 20th.

And the marines know how to escort trespassers off the property.

The Stolen Steal That Must be Stopped

We must stop the steal that isn’t actually happening. Poor, deluded souls, almost feel sorry for them, but nah.

Stop the Steal.

Really?

What the actual fuck with these idiots. Do they believe this? Some do, god knows. I think most Republicans in the leadership don’t believe it, and are pushing this crap for their own motives (like being white-faced scared of Trump’s cult) they have shown, over and over to be brimming with bad faith. So, yeah, screw those guys hard. But the down market ‘Republicans’ (really, a lot are there for Trump and Trump only) actually believe it. Go on Parler (a ‘free speech’ site, but really full of whiny Trumpers, screaming, crying and threatening over the 2020 loss) and glory in the insanity; the people claiming Trump couldn’t have lost because of ‘crowds’, because of ‘boaters’, because of the ‘Trump Train’ truck rallies. It mystifies them that Trump’s super-spreader events didn’t somehow translate to a Trump win. Something musty be wrong! Trump must have won, and all evidence to the contrary must be wrong. Because! There cannot be any other result. can’t! Yeah, the crazy is thick and slimy with these desperate people, but the problem with desperate people is they do desperate things.

Like the ’Proud Boys’.

This is a group of idiots looking for an excuse for a fight. They’re that bully in Junior high that would get in your face, poke you in the chest and yell ‘What you gonna do about it’ while spraying spittle all over you. They want a reason, and if they can’t get one, they’ll just make one up. ‘Cuz, Trump, mofo!

Yeah.

We are in a dangerous time. We are in a time were the leaders of our government (126 of the bastards) are pushing a ‘lawsuit’ brought by an indicted Texas AG (who would like one of those pardons Trump is writing out, BTW) whose motives are questionable, and a majority of the Republicans in the House have signed out to it. They want to throw out the votes of tens of millions of Americans for the crime of not voting for Donald Trump. This is utterly un-American. This is a delectation of duty and a denial of the oath they took to defend the Constitution.  

Not that they care.

They hew to power, not to ‘truth’ or ‘rightness’, antiquated concepts that get in their way. Arguing in bad faith is second nature by now. Of course, that doesn’t make them any less the traitors than they are. Again, either they believe this nonsense, (they don’t) or they are pushing complete nonsense for they’re own benefit. It like they’re waving to Trump and saying ‘Hey! Donald! Look at me kissing your ass! See me kissing your ass? Tell your friends on Twitter…please..?

Yeah. Traitors for hire. The whole GOP is like this. Why people still vote for these grifters who lie to them election after election I will never understand.

Nuts.

321,094+ lost to covid, as of Saturday December 19th.

We may take as many precautions as we can but those who think the whole thing is a 'hoax' (as pushed by the president) refuse to take even the most basic measures continue to fuel the huge spike in numbers. We keeping falling into the pit because people insis it isn’t there. It's Insanity, utterly.

Those same defenders of Donny aggressively ignore the hundreds of thousands of deaths under his watch. They will point to the vaccine (not created by Trump) that came out while he was president that he seems to think he forced into being with his own mighty will. Bullshit. This is the idiot who denied the science, who tried to muzzle the scientists who were warning him how serious this pandemic would be.

321,094, I don't understand those who think this is acceptable, those who believe wearing a mask is somehow a horrible encroachment on their 'freedoms'. People are dying. If we had listened to the experts, if we had not allowed our 'leaders' to politicize the precautions to this damn virus, we could have been out of this by now. We are suffering, over and over, the arrogance of the minority.

We are chained to the least of us.

We await the coming of Biden/Harris not as a ‘savior’ but as sanity. The GOP already making plans so he won’t be able to fix anything (I said they were traitors, but we saw this behavior under Obama as well), and he will have a huge uphill stuggle just to do the basics of governing. That’s where we are, even simple agreements, like allowing the lights to stay on at the State Department is politicized. Everyday we have to fight the insanity because it’s important, because if we don’t turn on a light, the world sits in darkness.

January 20th cannot get here soon enough.

Trump Lies, Democracy Pays

“Suckers” as Trump would call them. But really, we’re all getting screwed.

Trump lost an election, he’s a loser, and he’s making sure we all pay for it.

He can’t admit to being a loser (which is what he is, a loser), so he’s screaming fraud. And he won’t stop for the next four years, hell, for however long he lives he won’t stop. There is, of course, no evidence of any widespread fraud. But this is about evidence, this is about the long con, and power. Trump yells ‘RIGGED!!’ He begs for money to ‘stop the steal!’ and then diverts that money into his personal ‘leadership pac’ (slush fund) to the tune of 200 million or there about. Jesus.

Insane. He’s grifting them, admits (at the crazy Georgia rally) to grifting them, and supporters give him more money to continue the grift.

I think the Kevin Bacon character in ‘Animal House’ defines the ardent Trump supporter. As a pledge being whacked hard on the ass all he can say is ‘Please sir. May I have another?!’

Yep. ‘Please sir, even though you are actually keeping my money and not giving it to fellow grifters Rudy Giuliani and Jena Ellis (Well, not all of it) please take more of my money anyway!’

Trump will probably announce a 2024 run, even if he doesn’t really mean it. This will ensure that he keeps owning the GOP and that all candidates have to kiss what must be a well-callused ass. It gives him the power and attention he desperately needs. Attention is like oxygen to him; without it he will wither and die.

Trump and the Trump Party (really, it kisses up to his ass so much it’s really the only honest label/name for the former GOP) is going to push this ‘rigged election’ nonsense and use it to shove (and probably pass) new and even stricter voting restrictions, coming down hard on Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, students, anyone who might be seen as a ‘Democratic base’. Trumpubican legislatures and governors will use the idiotic claims of the Great God Trump to screw anyone who might dare to vote Democratic. The ‘steal’ will be the excuse for years to come, a reason for draconian measures to make certain a Trump loss will never happen again, no matter which Trump is running. The Trumpers will punish anyone who would dare to vote against them, legal or not.  

This lie of a stolen election will consume the Republicans, if it hasn’t already. It will burn in those whose anger and grievance already overwhelms them and those Republicans that don’t show enough fealty to the lie, or to Trump himself, (the president-in-exile) will be purged from the party.

The faith cannot handle the influence of the non-believer.

Trump lies, and democracy pays. He and his supporters will make sure it will.

The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, They Just Hate it.

The poor, harried and over worked election officials of Clark County listen while a fool Trump supporter goes off on an angry, incoherent rant. They’s been hearing this cap all night at this point. He went away and they went on with their business.

2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers, setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.   

This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960’s), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.” 

Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?

Right.

As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting voting; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.

Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting altogether at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.

It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.  

Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.  

For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.

Burrowing in for destruction

How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be 'policy making' positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by 'presidential appointments', basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called 'burrowing', placing political allies into civil positions, but this is on a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.

Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”

Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.

Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.

This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.

The Republicans don't care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.