Like probably most members of the left of center blogosphere, I am having a devil of a time coming up with the right words to match the emotions of seeing that mob storm the Capitol yesterday. Just about every member of that community of thinkers and writers, most of us locked out of every getting words to appear in a reputable magazine or newspaper, and certainly never going to be interviewed on TV for being right a heck of a lot more often than we are wrong were watching said screen thinking, 'yup I knew something like this was bound to happen'.
I didn't expect the big push to look like that. Are you kidding? Storming the Capitol? I was listening to NPR coverage of counting the Electoral Collage votes in the joint session through Twitter. First it was a trickle, reporters outside talking about the protestors flocking towards them. The republican grandstanding about Arizona's votes had been getting louder when they switched to watching the maga republicans outside, waving trump flags, start to break through the barricades (they looked like bike racks, were those seriously what police use?), and ooze up the stairs. The footage was so much stranger than the still photos we're seeing now. It was like these call of duty cosplayers and assorted deplorables were moving in slow motion, just little by little getting through the doors, breaking windows, and then slowly shambling through Statuary Hall (between the rope lines too) and then breaking more windows.
I had to stop everything else I was doing and was glued to the screen, it was so surreal. And, like everyone else watching, I had to ask; where the fck were the cops? It was not long before footage showed up of Capitol police appearing to open the barricades and wave the mob in, cops taking selfies with them, and generally just milling about as these fcking traitors busted into the People's House. Why? I guess Occam's Razor would tell you that the Capitol police in particular are utterly incompetent in the face of republican treachery because believing they were complicit would require a lot of evidence that I don't have. But it would probably only take the suspicion that some of the officers there were in league with the mob to make a lot of others who wanted to do their jobs wary of getting Serpico'ed. On top of the fact that republican mobs are always armed and have little fear of police, but there's no excuse for folding that completely.
And that made the job of Secret Service agents inside the chamber next to impossible. The mob is lucky that only one ambitious true believer was shot when they were pushing up against the barricaded doors. And breaking windows, and breaking into offices, and looting the place. Then outside, the cameras caught a little pagan ritual where the fcking animals were smashing cameras and broadcasting equipment, most of it said "AP" on it. Remember when the tea baggers were lionized in the media for "always cleaning up their trash", good times.
We should probably define what actually took place. Doughfacedonny conscripted the followers that he has been inciting to violence for four years now into a mob. They voluntarily walked to the Capitol, with no promise of compensation for their work on behalf of the wannabe dictator, after listening to him harangue reality and pretend that political violence is somehow a legitimate response to losing an election. So this is stealing an election by insurrection, not a coup d'état, it could be defined as an auto-coup where the dictator dissolves the legislature to consolidate his rule. However far-fetched the conspiracy and sedition seemed to the reality-based community. But republican base voters have nothing left to sell but their cult of violence, cruelty, and suffering. What is amazing is not that they failed ultimately, but that they even got within spitting distance of the floor of Congress in the first place. It is tired to compare republican mobs to demonstrations against injustice that sometimes get out of hand, but yeah, if this was "antifa" or BLM attempting to storm the Capitol... they'd still be sweeping up the eyeballs. Didn't stop the cult from immediately claiming that this was an antifa false flag, republican keyboard warriors are so conditioned at this point that they didn't even need signals from HQ to start the conspiracy theorizing.
Since the insurrection began there have been a myriad of calls for action, "we need to impeach him!" "we need to do X... this has to happen!"
And I am sorry as hell if I have ever inflicted this on you.
I understand now that many of the advocates and activists have only slightly more power to do any of the things that need to be done than my cat has to make me pancakes.
My goal, before this insurrection made it plain to everyone, was that we don't need to entertain republican "ideas" as legitimate when they clearly aren't. We don't have to act like republican elected officials have any moral authority when they are wholly bankrupt of morals, and we do not have to treat them with respect or deference when they clearly hold us liberals in utter contempt. A big thing to convey is also that the boomers, our elders, are so often full of shit that they do not deserve the benefit of the doubt. Especially republican boomers, they seem to have learned absolutely nothing in their years and we owe them nothing. I have watched many people I know become interested in politics since doughfacedonny stole the election and almost all have been on the Democratic side. Now it seems I have nothing to teach them. This blog is therefore at a crossroads, do I still try to do things as I have always done or should I try to get more serious and take things up a notch?
This insurrection could be a breaking point in the fever, or it could simply be another year zero. When donny is finally dragged out of the White House is the cult going to go underground for a bit, only to reemerge as tea party 2.0. Will the political press let them get away with it again? Will the Biden administration make the same mistakes as the Obama administration and let a whole year get away before actually doing something? Will all the organizing in the last four years fray and fracture again?
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