Today, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol recommended that the House of Representatives find Trump adviser Stephen K.
I am very much reminded of the behavior of King James II (I bet you weren't expecting THAT, friends!) after he was deposed and replaced by his daughter and son-in-law William of Orange and Mary Stuart (King William III and Queen Mary II) in 1688. James, who was admittedly a whole lot smarter than TFG but also pretty deranged, was sustained in France, where he hung out with his buddy Louis XIV, and maintained a fantasy "court in exile" as well as trying to encourage his son Charles (from his second marriage) to invade England via Scotland--against his own half-sister. The dumb-show of the court is mimicked by TFG, who has a pretend office, with a pretend desk, and a pretend seal that he uses for his fundraising letters. Because, like James II, he is broke and isn't paying anyone. That is why he is having trouble finding competent lawyers to represent him, because they know he will stiff them. The Ghastly Ones People are almost identical to the Tories after 1688, who would go to visit James at his pretend court, play strategy games to get him back on the throne (which they actually did not want to happen, but it was a convenient way to muck up parliamentary activity and keep the sitting royals discomfited), and play up to the old guy because it suited their purposes. And he would try to hit them up for money because he was broke.
The GAO announced that, although TFG's hotel in the Old Post Office was the scene of forelock-tugging by foreign nationals who wanted his favor by paying extortionate rates for rooms there, it nevertheless lost an obscene amount of money (70 million is I think the number). TFG's organization is trying to sell the hotel but to no avail because, well, it is a dog. Which is an insult to dogs.
If anyone finds any of the behavior by TFG to be unusual, that person has been living in a media-free universe for the last, oh, 30 years or so. Because gaslighting is the ONLY technique he knows how to play.
When toasting the English monarch, those favoring James' son Charles would pass their wine glasses over their water glasses to signify they were actually toasting 'the king over the water' in France. Early dog whistle, early deniability.
Sedition bred in the bone of the decedents of those who fled over the water to America. Many of whom were the backbone of the Confederacy and today are the civil war minded Republican insurrectionist base.
The New York Times book review section had an interesting essay yesterday focused on the book Albion's Seed which is about which elements from Britain settled which sections of the country and the culture they brought with him. The author notes that there is a marked comparison when we examine where COVID is more of a problem.
“…it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out.” -HST …on the campaign trail ‘72
I am an Anglophile, so I am enjoying your comparison. I guess we can call death star donny some version of pretender; he is certainly old and living in some kind of la la land, Tsar-a-Loco.
My only question about the loss reported on the hotel, which I saw raised online, is that it's pretty typical for Herr drumpf to declare a loss when it suits his tax filing status. If all those wealthy foreign nationals were paying exorbitant rates as a low end grift to curry favor, he should have made money.
Same here. TFG's businesses have a history of losing money for everyone else while managing to line his pockets. I expect the same is true for the hotel.
Yeah--but he was not the one who identified the losses, as Judy says. His MO is to inflate the value of properties he wants to sell and deflate the ones he has to pay taxes on. He had a major toddler meltdown when the news came out because it makes it very hard to sell that property.
I think of this constantly, as I struggle with my own BP! How on earth does a washed up, overweight, mob boss, who lives on fries and hamburgers and no telling what drugs continue to wake up every damn day?
I just loved your historical references!!! Just as HCR brings in American history to help us understand present events, you gave us some European history to help us see TFG and his enablers in another light! Thank you.
Let’s not forget Charles I, whose head was cut off. After an Interregnum, Charles II returned to the throne and promptly sought to kill every Parliamentarian who voted for regicide. Having horses pulling a Parliamentarian apart was one technique of persuasion.He even had bodies dug up so that the bones could be sc be scattered. Can you Trump that?
Not sure if it is a "trumping" but Kim Jong-un is said to have his enemies put to death by firing a 40mm cannon. I am assuming this can be quite messy.
But I think you'll find, if you study history, that there are many variations in the pattern. For instance, honor was an immensely important motivating factor in the 17th and 18th centuries -- and, in many countries until quite recently.
It's not even to be found among thieves now. At least, not in Western societies. Omertà is enforced by thugs.
This is one area in which misunderstandings have arisen between societies in which honor still matters and Westerners who don't have a clue what it means... A not unimportant consideration for the conduct of foreign policy.
Well said! I liken it to just another ridiculous and bogus episode of The Apprentice. And those hotels are also probably infested with bed bugs among other things which would make one shudder.
Linda, let's not insult the memory of the Old Pretender, who at least had a claim to legitimacy, having been ousted by a Dutch invader (in the only successful invasion of England since the Norman conquest) by comparing him with this Pretense without even a shadow of legitimacy.
Nine months have passed, nine months, and the real perpetrators are still strutting around, pretending to be normal politicians doing "normal" politics... even pretending to be President... Thankful they're not in Saudi where they'd not have kept their heads for nine hours, thankful to be in a nation of laws (and shyster lawyers) which they can turn into Looking-Glass-Land, with a Looking-Glass President, a Looking-Glass Party of preening narcissistic pervert politicians, and a large Looking-Glass population that's fallen (or been misled) through the mirror.
Is America drugged? Why the hell can't the country wake up from this absurd dream and put its house in order?
Nine months. What other cosmic monster is coming to term?
The wheels of injustice are well-oiled, there's sand in the wheels of justice.
In this perma-putsch there are little green men everywhere, armed with... sand buckets...
Is the Republic suffering from dementia... that it suffers this subversion so long without reacting?
Are your media so drowned in money and virtualized unreality that they can't tell white from black, can't call a spade a spade?
This perfectly expresses my frustration and bewilderment with the current political morass in the US. How can the blatant thuggery and moral bottom feeding of a Trump and a Bannon continue to outmaneuver the sharpest minds in American politics? How can they still command such a large following? How can the authority of Congress be so feeble that the most serious threat to American democracy since the Civil War goes unpunished and the perpetrators brazen in their defiance? Can someone explain why the forces that would protect democracy against authoritarianism and a narcissistic and completely amoral leader seem so weak?
Totally agree with the "frustration and bewilderment" . . . for the life of me, I cannot understand why these criminals haven't been brought to justice.
Keep the faith, gentlemen. The forces of good often move slowly, and TFG has had a lifetime of "thrust and parry" maneuvers, public showmanship, and a network of thugs to cavort and distract attention from him. I think he's down on one knee if not yet down for the count. Meanwhile, the good guys are trying for airtight legal arguments. May they prevail.
It looks, to me, like Trump already has, indeed, "gotten clean away".
He is at Mara Lago riding around in his golf cart, once in a while standing for a few minutes, then back in the cart to go eat something to further expand his posterior.
In no way is Trump threatened with any significant limitations on his movements or freedoms in any way at all.
"got clean away" is what I am thinking.
In the meantime, while the Jan. 6 committee is invisible to most Americans,
"Let's Go Brandon"
has taken off in Social Media.
"Let's go Brandon" shows two things:
1) The very poor etiquette and manners and respect Americans now have for anything that smacks of responsibility, honesty and good intentions.
2) The inability for Americans to grasp or read or ingest anything the length of HCR's "letter".
"Let's go Brandon" took off all over America.
HCR has been writing this brilliant, informative, thoughtful letter for months and most Americans have never heard of her.
And therein lies the real problem in America. Americans themselves, not Trump. He is the symptom. Americans are the disease.
Americans. Americans are the world's largest problem now. Large consumers of food, junk, energy, etc., and low producers of anything except profane catch phrases that are disrespectful.
Americans are now too ignorant, too poorly read, too drunk and simply too lazy to sort the truth from fakery.
Now hold on, Mike S. Sweeping statements and broad criticism are unhelpful and unfair — and often sloppy and wrong-headed. Let’s pull back a minute and have a look at what’s going on.
We know, because we’re smart and read letters like HCR’s, that the wheels of justice turn s l o w l y. Annoyingly so. But as Dr Heather has so brilliantly laid out, those wheels ARE turning — encouragingly, maybe delightfully, so. We stalwart defenders of democracy, here in this HCR community and all across the nation, need to take heart: “Defending democracy,” however we’re called to do it, is how we will break the back of this powerful, disorganized tornado of rage and rebellion that’s sucking our energy and serenity.
We fight fascism with DEMOCRACY. It’s slow and it’s dull and it’s lacks the flash and pop and drama of Faux News and other propaganda tools. We fight fascist bullshit with “citizenship,” by sticking together, working together, relying on each other in our communities, forming unbreakable alliances with our neighbors. We can’t afford to get bollixed up and muddle headed with fear and anger and despair and blame. We have work to do, for God’s sake.
(Full disclosure and credit: I take these empowering, sustaining ideas from Teri Kanefield, Justin King, Heather Cox Richardson, of course, et al. And so grateful for them. And for all of you.)
In a less abnormal time, maybe we could all sit tight and wait for the wheels of justice to “grind slow, but grind exceeding fine”.
But I feel it desperately naive to be at this place and to like and believe in justice.
Trump landed on fertile soil when he ran for President in 2015. He uncovered a raw truth and exploited it - there are millions of Americans who are poor, who are deeply lonely and disaffected, who feel the system has trodden on them, who have been drowning deep sorrows in drugs and alcohol, who are poorly educated, who are mistrustful of expertise, who have no positive deep purpose in life, and who have found others of their ilk, in the sewers of social media.
None of Trump’s followers ticks every box of the above description, but many of those acolytes tick many of those boxes.
Trump, we can see now, exploded onto the scene in 2015-16., a supposed punchline destroying seasoned politicians with deep pockets of dark money with the ease of a man swatting flies away.
That should have been a warning that this country was going to spin on its axes in the near future.
What else can be added to this stew of toxicity?
A nation saturated in guns.
A country to whom fictional violence and the real stuff, up to constant war making is a part of the fabric.
A country with a never-exorcised racial problem and deep geographical fissures.
A border problem.
A once in a century pandemic.
Put it together and it is little wonder that you have deeply corrupt politicians, scum like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and their like soaring to the top because they say the most outrageous things to gain attention and win Trump’s favor.
You have a former President clawing against all possible logic that he won the 2020 election.
You have a seditious riot on Capitol Hill that has all the earmarks of being coordinated between foot soldiers and those who hold the levers of power.
You have a frantic race to the bottom where would-be politicians smelling the main chance are constantly trying to out-Trump the man himself by proposing ideas so wild they shouldn’t be given a hearing. Jordan wanting legislation to remove a mandate on ANY vaccine. Greene calling for an American divorce. A Texas législature, so feared that a school superintendent suggests that if the Holocaust is taught, equal time should be given to a mythical ‘other side’.
I am so so tired of white gloved Democrats, expressing horror at each event while placing an increasingly forlorn hope in the justice system to rescue us all. Savior syndrome is in the saddle, riding aimlessly around while days tick off the clock.
Are we to feel a burst of confidence in the DOJx, whose prosecutors of the 1/6 attackers have been recommending sentences so low that judges are totally flummoxed, and one has even meted out a punishment *higher* than what a prosecutor called for?
In my opinion, no.
We have a government willing to act in ways that would deeply benefit the American people, and perhaps save the planet in the bargain. But this government has much too small a mandate as has been ably demonstrated by President Manchin, for it is he who has the whip hand.
We have legislators in the most Trump-addled states returning racial rights to pre-1950 levels. And a Voting Act that will sink like a stone in this week’s vote.
In all of this there is one oasis of grit and determination - the House Committee on the events of January 6. They have clearly broken the glass and sounded the alarm. They are brilliantly organized and have the cold determination to take on a force which threatens to become invulnerable. And, at the same time, must be laughing at their feeble opposition.
I am so sick of hearing platitudes. I am so sick of being told to wait for justice to do it’s job while being granted the courtesy of moving just as slowly as they like. I am so sick of hearing what a great job Merrick Garland is doing.
I want the battle to be taken to the opposition turf. And as far as I can see, it starts with an arrest of DJT.
It continues with banishing President Manchin and his flaky comrade Krysten Sinema to an Independent role on the Senate benches.
We are losing there anyway. Neither is playing the role of a a Democrat. What positive difference do they make?
As our noble leader, HCR has pointed out many times, there is nothing new here; only a rehash of our politics born of racism and division, here as in other places, at other times. We are probably only going to move the needle a small grove in our time, but move it we will.
I agree with the determination and faith in your post, but see the situation a little differently.
The needle has gyrated wildly to the right and is flicking against that edge.
The job now is to move it far, far back in the direction of centre. This will require a non-violent but Herculean response which involves every possible shred of resourcefulness and wit the Left has.
We have somehow managed to turn the advantageous position following the elections and the horrific insurgent of January 6 into a state where we have almost run out of time and options to save America from being pushed into the abyss.
The needle must swing wildly back towards equilibrium before this job is done.
The former president's followers have the money to fly across the country in private planes to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers can afford to take vacations from their jobs to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers show up at his rallies in $70,000 pickup trucks and SUVs. The former president's followers have no problem shelling out $30 each for hats and t-shirts, and $40 and more for flags.
There's a narrative that the former president's supporters are the working poor. It's been debunked almost since it first appeared in 2015, and was further debunked after the 2016 election, but the media still pushes it.
I don't have any trouble believing those people are the majority of his supporters, I live in the middle of it. Of the ten SC counties with the highest household income, seven went to TFG in 2016 and eight went to TFG in 2020. The smallest margin of victory in all of those counties was 54.2%. These weren't 'squeaker' victories, he won going away.
Agree with Mike. t**** supporters are more dangerous than the man himself. That's been obvious since 2016 when tens of millions of voters elected him president. Even when tfg is gone, those supporters will still be here and the next person they support could be smarter, more dangerous and more damaging. Are there sufficient guardrails in our system to prevent that person from destroying our country?
Mike, thanks for the dose of sanity. What the fascists want is for us to give up and go away. The reason they're acting up is due to the fact that they recognize that they're outnumbered, and they're using these tactics to make us cower. We have to stop buying into their delusions.
Peter, it's not that I'm unconcerned about the threat, but our country isn't starving, with paralyzing inflation, as Germany was following WWI. TFG had his four destructive years, and has a rabid following, and so far, we've not gone fascist. I know our democracy is in danger, but am hopeful that enough people are turned off by the entire Repugnant criminalism that they will show up in force to obliterate his ilk, as they did during the pandemic. So far, they tried, but haven't burned the Capitol, as Hitler did the Bundeshtag in order to blame the communists and take over control. There is a great threat, and I'm not naive enough to think that foreign powers and tons of dark money from oligarchs have had nothing to do with the Orange Moron's rise, but we can't allow ourselves to become defeatist and cower in a corner and cringe while it happens.
True, Nancy. Nevertheless, there is one hell of a lot wrong with the country, and with too many other countries subject to the same economic and social forces: an economy disconnected from the common household, technology no longer prosthetic but autonomous and divorced from human minds and bodies, change at breakneck speed, accelerating... inequality, accelerating... The consequences?
I must have watched most of it. About the only worse things I recall having seen in a long lifetime are photos and film of Bergen-Belsen, photos of the Congo under Leopold II's company and a nightmare in which I actually witnessed an incident from the massacres at Sabra and Shatila when they were taking place, not from the outside but in the midst of the action.
There can be absolutely no question of cowering or cringing. This calls for resistance and all the courage that demands, otherwise we shall all find ourselves in a mafia state like today's Russia, or like China, the ultimate surveillance state, prisoners in our own country. While select oligarchs strip the place of everything that can be grabbed and our children wait to be taken over by the Chinese regime, along with whatever remains of the planet...
A worst-case scenario? Maybe. That depends upon us.
I am loath to urge people to join Cathy Learoyd's bold, courageous action and risk mayhem, loss of life, loss of livelihood, for this can only work as a mass movement. Not out of the question, but far from evident. Whatever individuals decide to do, this community must support her, otherwise it's just a talking shop.
#
I have written before in these threads of how, speaking in Manhattan nearly a quarter of a century ago, my Japanese friend who has since passed away said: "In this society, everything is on the surface and there's nothing behind it. With such a grave imbalance, the only possible outcome is illness."
The Europeans present got the message. The only Americans who understood were those who'd lived outside the country. Despite 9/11, despite the 2nd Gulf War, despite the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, despite mass psychosis and the TFG phenomenon, this still has not been understood.
Peter, I wholeheartedly agree that there is a tremendous amount wrong with this country, and believe it will get worse. Social media just complicates the fact that so many here are lazy intellectually, and will buy whatever trash is disseminated and treat it as fact. In my opinion, these people are being manipulated by the greedy power brokers and politicians on both sides of the aisle who do their bidding. None of us can afford to accept anything at face value. We all need to read behind the lines and ferret out the motivations behind events. As you say, the outcome depends on us, and it won't be easy.
Sure. A German Jewish judge driven into exile in 1937 whom I met as a young man insisted that AH should have been shot in 1923, after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
I think that HCR has traced quite clearly where the present-day GOP is coming from and where its policies (if one can use such a word) lead. The full historical context.
Absolutely, Mike. Blame it on the internet or Lazy-Boy entitlement. The Republican school of fish shifts at the wink of Trump's eye. It's ironic that in our land of so-call free thought millions have become unthinking lemmings. It is our leaders' duty to punish the guilty with a heavy hand or it will only get worse.
I have often been tempted by sheer irritation to write far worse things about your compatriots than you have here. (Note that I regard my own country as a sad sideshow in “a Barnum and Bailey world” and am left speechless by the degeneracy of England’s chosen… I could never have imagined such a comedown.)
However, while not doubting the former President’s hope of shooting someone on 5th Avenue as a preliminary to getting re-elected in 2024, I remain skeptical about him having “gotten clean away”, despite the excessive period of time during which he has been golf-carting (and even walking) free.
Nor shall I follow you in your sharp comment that the Trumpery is the symptom and Americans, the disease. Even if I feel you are close to the truth, a miss is as good as a mile. It is true that, just as Jung wrote of Hitler, “Without the German people he would be nothing,” so DT would be nothing without his millions of faithful disciples. Having said which, the man is nowhere near yet to his goal of capturing the American people. And even given the correct diagnosis of a very sick society, like some bombs, like some medicines, this particular infection is triggered by a combination of two factors: mass and misleader.
Even faced with the horrific reality of mass psychosis, we must beware of describing a human being, let alone an entire people as a disease. I am not shit, even if it is present in my gut, I am not disease, even if I may suffer from and carry the vectors of disease.
I want to insist on this because we need now to think beyond sickness if we are ever to gain health. And, even while remaining aware of the pathogens that incomers brought to America and which have since become endemic, we must never let ourselves get caught up with the far-right view of humanity as intrinsically evil. A view that entails a self-fulfilling mechanism, condemning our fellow human beings in advance—just as your would-be Fuehrer transforms the word “Mexican” into an insult and labels those crossing the southern border as “rapists and disease-carriers”. All of which tell us little about Mexicans but far too much about the speaker.
It is more than clear that the firebug ringleaders MUST be taken—and kept—out of circulation as soon as it can be done.
If treason is not to become “the new normal”.
Every day these people have been allowed to continue and increase their seditious activities has been a day too long.
... and undeserving of living in a democracy. The Constitution's framers knew that and that is why that compromise-filled document is not so democratic as it might have been.
Propaganda rules the fools. And we are awash in it. “The propagandists purpose is to make sure that one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
Or wasting away incarcerated while waiting to be tried because you could not make bail. Or being murdered by a police officer for driving while Black or passing a counterfeit $20 bill
Democracy is being challenged in an unprecedented way right now. The real judgment on democracy will be the outcome of the J 6 investigation, how hard the committee fights and how determined they (or ultimately, maybe a protesting public) are to hold everyone of the guilty to account. IMO, we cannot judge democracy on the current conditions b/c we are having to fight new threats never met before.
Thank you for this well-reasoned Letter, Dr. R. No matter what comes of the House Select Committee's efforts, nobody will ever convince me that Loser 45 and his gang did not plan January 6 well before the 2020 election. Guilty at every turn.
Morning, Lynell! He was laying the foundation for this in 2016. I am flummoxed by the mindset of Cult45 adherents as to the "peaceful protest" held on 6 January. Especially amongst my cop friends. At least the resort to "whataboutism" (and call upon the protests on the murder of George Floyd) rather than trying to justify the actions of the Capitol rioters. Mostly.
Morning, Ally!! In my day as a court stenographer covering depositions for lawsuits, lawyers NEVER accepted "whataboutism" as an answer to any of their questions. And they always persisted until they got an answer to their question.
"If the committee can be held at bay until after the 2022 election, a Republican victory might end its investigation." That is a very scary thought.....if this committee is held up and fails at its investigation of January 6th and the trump cabal is never indicted, tried, and brought to justice after such a blatant attack on the Capitol, we are doomed and will have been taken over by a terrorist group.
We have been wringing our hands for 5 years about the lying, cheating, criminal, violent, godawful character trump is (including 2 impeachments and his complete disregard for this country's constitution, rule of law, and government) for over five years. The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but continuing to allow the likes of trump and bannon to "roam the country freely" is the death knell and the thumbs up to mcconnell and the rest of the republicans to continue their dismantling of the government and solidifying a dictatorship and oligarchy that mimics putin, et. al.
“If the committee can be held at bay until after the 2022 election, a Republican victory might end its investigation.”
Nothing is more predictive in Dr. Richardson Cox’s excellent report than this sentence. This will be in the courts so long we will have forgotten how to spell T-r-u-m-p.
The Committee is doing the most brilliant work under the toughest circumstances. And this turd is effectively slamming the brakes on everything.
I repeat to the Georgia and New York DA offices:
Indict Trump.
Arrest Trump.
Perp walk Trump.
Try Trump.
Convict Trump.
Imprison Trump.
And I’m not over-concerned about the order that they do the above. They can start at the bottom for all I care.
Well said! Thanks, Eric. This must be the goal, imprison Trump, or he will go on bringing lawsuits and run again. The man needs to be stopped. (I'm still praying a higher power will intervene if necessary to bring him to a fitting end.)
For me, the biggest takeaway from your excellent coverage of this matter is: what will it take to put these thugs in prison where they belong?
So many Americans possessing influence and wealth can literally get away with murder and not be held accountable for their crimes.
Yet, the expendable footsoldiers stupid enough to believe Trump and company have been prosecuted, jailed or awaiting trial, while Trump reaps millions from his cult; Eastman has not been disbarred; many politicians who coordinated with the insurrectionists have not been identified; and Bannon is threatening violence with twenty thousand alleged followers.
But that is the way of a world dangerously unbalanced.
Moreover, if the GOP retakes the House next year, all bets are off that Trump and his politically powerful thugs will ever being prosecuted.
I find it very interesting that Eastman has not had disbarment proceedings. Surely this should be taken up by the bar in whatever state and courts are relevant. John Yoo’s is a more complicated issue for justifying torture. Currently he is a law professor at Berkeley formally known as Boalt Law school. The difficulty of this is that these are legal opinions and it would be a sticky wicket to Punish them for their extreme interpretations of the law. Nevertheless in Eastman’s case it could be argued that his acts were sedition.
The many Trump lawsuits are an attempt to use wealth to run out the clock until the Mafia Mob Party can return to power. It is hard to accept, but this tactic has a chance to succeed. Our justice(?) system has a penchant for protecting the powerful and politically connected operatives and keeping them out of prison. The Sacklers essentially seem to have run a drug cartel during an active "war on drugs," and the justice system protected them and their money. Rampant corruption leaves the nation and its people insecure.
Let’s hope that the deal currently on offer for the Sacklers is overturned by the several state attorneys general who have appealed the judge’s approval.
I don’t advocate lynching anyone, not even the horrible Sacklers. They should have every right to defend themselves. But I think that they should have to do that while facing serious criminal felony charges with no plea deal.
I know for a fact that they go back as far as 1997. My best friend and roommate married a woman that spent her weeks Dr Shopping and Pharmacy Shopping.She was using and selling. He divorced her. She died from an overdose a few yrs later. He had work insurance. They didn’t seem to care, At the same time his Credit Card was maxed out from All the Pharmacy’s in our area. They didn’t seem to notice either ? When she left He asked me to help him with his Tax’s. He had told her to save receipts . She did. A big box full. Wish I would have kept them. Thousands of $ . That’s what she was doing 3-4 times a week while he was at work. And you are going to tell me that the Dr’s and Pharmacy’s didn’t know ? Think the word is “ Kickback “. So many dead and it’s still going on. Our Local Jail has lots of them every week.
The Sackler's also had Marsha Blackburn running interference for them in congress. If there's a Trumpess of Belsen in more need of being burned at the stake, I can't come up with who they'd be.
Remember this from the narcissist- in - chief in January, 2016? This is actually the way this lowlife thinks:
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
Yep, it indeed is “like incredible,” as history will reflect about about the Republican game plan since Goldwater, all of which has manifested itself in the person of djt and all those who support him, whether the rich and powerful or the brainwashed, frightened carlson/hannity sheep.
Time to get busy everybody.
It’s Germany and it’s the late 20’s, early 30’s.
This is not “a test,” this is “an actual emergency.”
Hmmmmm, I seem to have woken up particularly worried today. Maybe the fact that I watched a WWII documentary last night has something to do with my concern about what the course of events and one malignant man can do.
A couple of reminders of the kind of thing that is going on -- hard though it may seem to believe it. Jung on Hitler:
“He is a loudspeaker who magnifies the inaudible whispers of the German soul until they can be heard by the German’s conscious ear. He is the first man to tell the German what he has been thinking and feeling all along in his unconscious about German fate, especially since the defeat in the World War."
The second quote I am giving because it corresponds so closely to my very confusing perception of DJT. I'm not a shrink and though I've encountered all sorts of people, I don't have that extensive an experience of human types. However, either this man is hiding or -- even more frightening -- there's no one at home.
"[...] no sense of humour. He seemed as if he might be a double of a real person, and that Hitler the man might perhaps be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so hiding in order not to disturb the mechanism."
In case you feel that these comparisons are out of place, given the colossal material power of America, destroying the world no longer calls for such an embodiment of evil. It doesn't even call for significant actions. Inaction in crucial areas could do the trick. A fool in the White House could do more harm than any Hitler, any Stalin, any Mao, any Genghis Khan could ever have dreamed of.
Wow! The first quote gives me a better feeling for the "underbelly." Question: is djt part of, one of, the underbelly or does he just understand it and play off it?
Your second quote: It's clear djt has no sense of humor, but is Jung also suggesting djt, like Hitler, is a reincarnation of someone or something else?
Agreed. He's not stupid. I would add malevolent and pernicious. Definitely an understanding of the underbelly that I had very little awareness or experience of.
I'll add to my item just below. This comes from the diary of a German who destested Hitler and the Nazis and ended up being shot:
... How much do we really know about the vaults and caverns which lie somewhere under the structure of a great nation—about these psychic catacombs in which all our concealed desires, our fearful dreams and evil spirits, our vices and our forgotten and unexpiated sins, have been buried for generations? In healthy times, these emerge as the spectres in our dreams. ... But suppose, now, that all of these things generally kept buried in our subconscious were to push their way to the surface, as in the blood-cleansing function of a boil? Suppose that this underworld now and again liberated by Satan bursts forth, and the evil spirits escape the Pandora's box?
And I don't see how anyone sane can "like" the truth you have spoken.
You have the advantage of being sighted... in the Country of the Blind. A risky advantage.
We are forced now to do what our culture has failed to do, casting off all the things that we are not and asking ourselves persistently what we really are.
Reaching down to the groundwater of our mind.
It is there.
I wish I could reach out to you and share confidence, despite what is upon us.
WOW!! Yes, the real action is in the Committee reports - none of the grandstanding for the cameras, pompous attacks on the witness and Committee members from the other party. A compelling read. Thank you, again, for keeping us informed in a clear, articulate manner.
Thanks again, Heather, for keeping us updated. It appears there is an open-and-shut case of conspiracy to obstruct Congress (not sure of the proper legal terminology) to be made against Steve Bannon and several other Trump intimates, and a very good possibility that this is just the tip of the legal iceberg and a small sample of likely perpetrators.
However, it worries me that we are hearing so little from the DOJ, the State of New York and the State of Georgia. Are the prosecutors literally afraid of TFG? Do they really need the politicians to open the road for them?
He's now a private citizen. Does the law apply to Trump et al or not? Arrest, interrogation, detention, if necessary. Then trials. Soon. Now would be better.
It does resemble greatly Alice in Wonderland and the mlad scene with the Queen of Hearts, it's true. I trust that we will not also get Tweedledum telling Tweedledee that "Jam is always tomorrow".
Thank you, dear Heather, for unpacking this compelling report for us!
What is quite worrisome though is that 45 is trying to stall the committee's work until the 2022 elections, correct?! The trouble is that those of us who never fell for DT's alternative facts are impatient for the truth plus a full and abundant measure of accountability, asap. Patience is not one of my virtues at present, and I can't wait to see all of the responsible parties held to account before any more Republicans -- G_d forbid -- are voted into congressional seats.
While just about every part of this letter conveys an important investigative view towards a number of people and events, I was struck by the last line of this paragraph:
"Congress established the committee, the report says, “to identify how the events of January 6th were planned, what actions and statements motivated and contributed to the attack on the Capitol, how the violent riot that day was coordinated with a political and public relations strategy to reverse the election outcome, and why Capitol security was insufficient to address what occurred.”"
Why was Capitol Security insufficient to address what occurred? At the time (as I watched from home; it was a red letter day for me, since I had just received my initial COVID-19 vaccination) while I watched a horribly overmatched, outnumbered, and poorly equipped law enforcement team try to hold back that angry crowd I wondered whether it was an abject command and control failure, a complete intel breakdown, or something more sinister involving the command and control team. Individual officers who were on that line acted with bravery and courage in an attempt to prevent the assault on the Capitol. Other individual officers took selfies with the rioters; some of whom were themselves officers of other police departments.
The interagency co-responsibility for the area (Capitol PD and Metropolitan PD being the most prevalent as having responsibility for the Capitol's security itself and for the surrounding areas outside the Capitol) was on good display, but where was the intel regarding this event? I knew from reading run of the mill Facebook posts that there would be a protest and an attempt to circumvent the election; how could the command and control structures of those two agencies (plus the other Federal intelligence agencies) NOT have that information? Why was there no riot control team equipped and on standby? Where were the SWAT teams? The only special team I saw in the initial stages of the riot was the Metro PD Bike team, and bicycle cops are not overly equipped with protective gear. I'd love to see the After Action reports...
Why was Capitol security insufficient? To me, this is the burning question for which we have the least information. We know the "why" but not the "who, what, and how." The answers, which surely we will learn, might be the most shocking of all the findings. No way that ineptitude alone was responsible.
"Mark Meadows and Chris Miller, raise your right hands and swear..."
I think Michael Bales' comment below names two persons who were probably at the top of the heap pulling strings before and during the riot: Mark Meadows and Chris Miller. They, of course, were probably taking their orders from the mob boss himself, who was enjoying the entire debacle as it played out on his TVs.
One has to assume that if Meadows and Miller are found to have relayed orders that led to the National Guard standing down, they will face serious criminal and civil liability. Same if the orders also led to the Capitol police being unprepared. So will TFG, assuming that the Justice Department finally discards the absurd Nixon-era memo that essentially claims presidents while in office are above the law.
I know there's much skepticism about Garland, some of which I've shared at various points. But in the end, I'm confident he will follow the law. While not related to the coup attempt, at least directly, the FBI's search today of two homes that Manafort buddy Oleg Deripaska owns in D.C. and NYC gives me hope.
Morning, Ally. The “explanation” given at the time was “optics”, because of the backlash in the press coverage of the riot-geared forces during the Portland demonstrations. They had enough intel. If I’d been in charge, I would have left the outside of the Capital looking “normal”, but had a riot-geared backup force deployed inside the building, out of sight unless needed. There is also the question of the hours delay from the Pentagon to the requests for National Guard reinforcement. There had to be some very high level people pulling strings to leave the building so vulnerable for so long.
President Biden’s policy agenda is hanging by a thread. And the reason can be summarized in two words: Joe Manchin. (Well, also Kyrsten Sinema, but does anyone know what’s going on with her?)
Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia — whose vote is essential given scorched-earth Republican opposition to anything Biden might propose — is reportedly against the Clean Energy Payment Program, the core of Biden’s attempt to take action on climate change, and wants to impose work requirements on the child tax credit, a key element in plans to invest in the nation’s children.
You might be tempted to view this impasse as an indictment of America’s wildly unrepresentative political system, which effectively allows the interests of a small state — West Virginia has substantially fewer residents than the borough of Brooklyn — to dominate national concerns. But it’s actually worse than that: Manchin appears ready to veto policies that would be in the interests of his own constituents.
Let’s talk about what considerations should sway a politician serving the people of West Virginia.
At first glance, West Virginia might seem less exposed than many other states to the effects of climate change. It’s landlocked, so rising sea levels aren’t a direct threat; it’s relatively rainy, so it’s not in immediate danger of sharing in the disastrous droughts afflicting the U.S. West.
But climate change is bringing more severe weather in general, including more heavy rain — and West Virginia turns out to be extremely vulnerable to flooding, in part because of the damage done by past coal mining.
Manchin reaps $500,000 or so a year in coal stock dividends. He is selling our future as a democracy for a half a million bucks. We need a miracle or two to save our future from such crminality.
His Big Pharma executive daughter is the one who raised the price of Epi-Pens 700%. Because she could. He has other investments - all in things that profit from the positions he takes.
Hey Joe....didn’t you ever learn that, as a politician, you should think twice about AVOIDING EVEN THE APPEARANCE OR THE SLIGHTEST SEMBLANCE OF IMPROPRIETY?
This is where teamwork comes in, Christopher. Many of us have digital WAPO subscriptions so if there is anything we need to share here, tee it up and we can pitch in.
Thank you. I take perverse pleasure out of tweeting articles like the one you shared directly with those who are exposed to the light of day. I am sure HE never reads them, but staff still have to sort through them. I just want them to know that "out there" in the universe that exists beyond their little bubble, are literally thousands of people who intensely despise the man.
“The truth behind a President’s actions can be found only in his official papers,” Harry S. Truman said in 1949, “and every Presidential paper is official.”
Today those records are both paper and electronic. From not taking notes himself, barring others from taking notes, tearing up notes and tossing them *to* refusing to log into official computer systems with automatic backup, permitting the use of private electronic devices, and deleting records
*to* having White House lawyers to decide which materials were to be scanned and catalogued *to* denying funding for the transfer of records during the obstruction of the transfer of power - the Trump administration has compromised the historic record. What has not been preserved is gone, what is not catalogued is untraceable and inaccessible.
I say 'the Trump administration' because it took a village of the damnable to raise the Trump presidency to this 'bad eminence.' There is almost no legal remedy or consequence. Cases have been thrown out of court for 'micromanaging the president.' In a Catch22, the Supreme Court has already denied Congress access to Trump records. Congress wanted the records to see how Trump may have slipped through loopholes in the law, so that they could write better laws. The Court said they had to detail how the president’s information would advance possible legislation - ie Congress needed to know what was in the documents to make the case for seeing the documents.
The Trump DOJ pushed a seemingly unrelated and relatively insignificant case (regarding a sheriff who used files he was authorized to access for personal purposes) to the Supreme Court and then argued for draconian punishments for those who access files without administrative approval. (One justice even asked 'why are we hearing this?') I think it was part of the Trump takeover of the civil service. Throughout the Executive and including the military, Trump notoriously demoted and reassigned career civil servants and then replaced them with Trump loyalists and sycophants. These panderers then became the gatekeepers of agency records - without their explicit permission, staff could not even access documents they had created without fear of retaliation.
This somewhat explains the timidity of the National Archives and Records Administration in the face of the Trump administration. The Archives administration had little legal authority and were afraid of having their top managers replaced by Trump. They gambled that their strategic compromises would be less harmful than risking putting the Archives under complete Trump domination. This manifested itself most publicly in context of celebrating women's suffrage - signs criticizing Trump were airbrushed out of a wall sized photomural of The Womens March.
When bureaucrats do not need to be told but decide on their own to doctor the historical facts to fit the executive's fancies - this is very bad. This is the ascendency of authoritarianism. This is 'the banality of evil' - not that evil is commonplace, but that cowed bureaucrats cravenly just do their job without consideration of the larger consequences - and see their job as bowing to one big man rather than serving the nation.
Thanks for these last examples of "doing the Fuehrer's will", a process that multiplies the effects of tyranny.
There have surely been more than enough instances of criminals attaining positions of great power during the past century for us to be fully aware of the danger.
I don't get the impression that readers are sufficiently aware of the risks entailed if DJT or his backers were to regain power. Risks, not only for America but for the entire planet.
Steve Banonn’s Lawyers are stating that unless or until TFG has Executive Privilege he will not testify
.My question : Who was our President the day after Election Day ? Or is our New President Official the Day after Inauguration Day ? But it still remains that Bannon had no Official Capacity involved in TFG’s Admin. I have also heard and read this could take years to resolve. Bannon , at worst will face a yr in Prison and fines if it ever gets there. In hindsight I think about daily how is it possible that the person who sits in the highest office in our Country, a Democracy based on laws that started out with a Gideons Bible and now can fill a football field stacked 15 ft high with Law books that this Executive seat is Free from them all ? Do we elect Presidents or Kings ? If I did intentionally commit Voting Fraud my punishment would be swift and severe. I think at this juncture we as a Country need to go back to the drawing board if all those Law books do in fact come down to “No One is Above The Law.” Least of all the leader of our Nation.
While we're second-guessing the 1/6 commission, I think we have to remember that the Constitution actually failed us, and in precisely the way James Monroe predicted it might: party factionalism. Trump was successfully impeached, not once, but TWICE. There were two opportunities for the Constitutional process to throw him out of office, bury him in shame and ignominy, and forever prohibit his return to politics. Both attempts failed, because of the GOP factionalism. The Constitution has no backup plan for this.
So the 1/6 commission is trying to salvage a boat that has already had a hole shot through it. They have NO appropriate tools for the job. They are making do as best they can, with the tools they have. Which are not adequate.
If the US falls, it falls by the treason of the GOP, under a list of names starting with Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader of the traitorous faction, and working its way down to the lowest freshman.
I am very much reminded of the behavior of King James II (I bet you weren't expecting THAT, friends!) after he was deposed and replaced by his daughter and son-in-law William of Orange and Mary Stuart (King William III and Queen Mary II) in 1688. James, who was admittedly a whole lot smarter than TFG but also pretty deranged, was sustained in France, where he hung out with his buddy Louis XIV, and maintained a fantasy "court in exile" as well as trying to encourage his son Charles (from his second marriage) to invade England via Scotland--against his own half-sister. The dumb-show of the court is mimicked by TFG, who has a pretend office, with a pretend desk, and a pretend seal that he uses for his fundraising letters. Because, like James II, he is broke and isn't paying anyone. That is why he is having trouble finding competent lawyers to represent him, because they know he will stiff them. The Ghastly Ones People are almost identical to the Tories after 1688, who would go to visit James at his pretend court, play strategy games to get him back on the throne (which they actually did not want to happen, but it was a convenient way to muck up parliamentary activity and keep the sitting royals discomfited), and play up to the old guy because it suited their purposes. And he would try to hit them up for money because he was broke.
The GAO announced that, although TFG's hotel in the Old Post Office was the scene of forelock-tugging by foreign nationals who wanted his favor by paying extortionate rates for rooms there, it nevertheless lost an obscene amount of money (70 million is I think the number). TFG's organization is trying to sell the hotel but to no avail because, well, it is a dog. Which is an insult to dogs.
If anyone finds any of the behavior by TFG to be unusual, that person has been living in a media-free universe for the last, oh, 30 years or so. Because gaslighting is the ONLY technique he knows how to play.
When toasting the English monarch, those favoring James' son Charles would pass their wine glasses over their water glasses to signify they were actually toasting 'the king over the water' in France. Early dog whistle, early deniability.
Sedition bred in the bone of the decedents of those who fled over the water to America. Many of whom were the backbone of the Confederacy and today are the civil war minded Republican insurrectionist base.
The New York Times book review section had an interesting essay yesterday focused on the book Albion's Seed which is about which elements from Britain settled which sections of the country and the culture they brought with him. The author notes that there is a marked comparison when we examine where COVID is more of a problem.
“…it goes a long way toward explaining why George Wallace is Governor of Alabama. He has the same smile as his great-grandfather—a thrice-convicted pig thief from somewhere near Nottingham, who made a small reputation, they say, as a jailhouse lawyer, before he got shipped out.” -HST …on the campaign trail ‘72
Very interesting. Something I would like to read.
I am an Anglophile, so I am enjoying your comparison. I guess we can call death star donny some version of pretender; he is certainly old and living in some kind of la la land, Tsar-a-Loco.
death star donny 😘🙏
My only question about the loss reported on the hotel, which I saw raised online, is that it's pretty typical for Herr drumpf to declare a loss when it suits his tax filing status. If all those wealthy foreign nationals were paying exorbitant rates as a low end grift to curry favor, he should have made money.
Same here. TFG's businesses have a history of losing money for everyone else while managing to line his pockets. I expect the same is true for the hotel.
Trump didn't report the loss the House Oversight Committee did
https://oversight.house.gov/investigations/trump-hotel-in-washington-dc
Yeah--but he was not the one who identified the losses, as Judy says. His MO is to inflate the value of properties he wants to sell and deflate the ones he has to pay taxes on. He had a major toddler meltdown when the news came out because it makes it very hard to sell that property.
I don't know what has prevented TFG from stroking out or just plain exploding.
I think of this constantly, as I struggle with my own BP! How on earth does a washed up, overweight, mob boss, who lives on fries and hamburgers and no telling what drugs continue to wake up every damn day?
Please don’t ask him, he’ll say he has superior genes. IMHO he’s just too damn mean to die.
One can only hope (no pun intended).
I was thinking the same thing, but you beat me to it.
Steroids.
a tax-conjured "loss" the grift is on-going
I just loved your historical references!!! Just as HCR brings in American history to help us understand present events, you gave us some European history to help us see TFG and his enablers in another light! Thank you.
Brilliant comparison and insight…
Hi David. I like the name
“Your brain in nature”
I subscribed. Looking forward to reading it!
Mitzi, I appreciate the interest and supportive comment. At the moment I’m stalled out… I’m in need of a collaborative illustrator.
Oops, I subscribed, also. We will be over here, waiting.
Let’s not forget Charles I, whose head was cut off. After an Interregnum, Charles II returned to the throne and promptly sought to kill every Parliamentarian who voted for regicide. Having horses pulling a Parliamentarian apart was one technique of persuasion.He even had bodies dug up so that the bones could be sc be scattered. Can you Trump that?
Not sure if it is a "trumping" but Kim Jong-un is said to have his enemies put to death by firing a 40mm cannon. I am assuming this can be quite messy.
I believe that they are still looking for Kim’s uncle’s scattered parts. Oh well, one less at family dinners.
OMG, I had almost forgotten KJU whilst focusing on his former buddy (according to the buddy), DJT.
The more things change, the more they stay the same. Human nature does not change. We are still dealing with the issues of greed, money and power.
The flaws in human nature.
But I think you'll find, if you study history, that there are many variations in the pattern. For instance, honor was an immensely important motivating factor in the 17th and 18th centuries -- and, in many countries until quite recently.
It's not even to be found among thieves now. At least, not in Western societies. Omertà is enforced by thugs.
This is one area in which misunderstandings have arisen between societies in which honor still matters and Westerners who don't have a clue what it means... A not unimportant consideration for the conduct of foreign policy.
What changes is technology, so we have the same old humans using very sophisticated and often deadly tech.
Well said! I liken it to just another ridiculous and bogus episode of The Apprentice. And those hotels are also probably infested with bed bugs among other things which would make one shudder.
Delightful reading for a Tuesday morn, Linda. Thanks for that!
sorry - what am I missing in this thread - how did TFG become the acronym for Trump?
The Former Guy. So his name doesn’t have to appear anywhere…..
DD for Dastardly Dotard (credit to Kim)
AKA He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named
Just researched TFG and found the info I needed - it's no longer oblique, but much too reflective of "social media speak" for my taste. At least I'm up to speed now: https://nancyfriedman.typepad.com/away_with_words/2021/04/word-of-the-week-tfg.html
Am I right that TFG epithet was first from the lips of Pres. Joe?
Yes, I learned that from the site I posted above
Yes, indeed, it's The Former Guy. Saying his name leaves a bad taste in my mouth!
Wendy I also missed the thread. We’re dealing with a fast crowd and missed a step.
Linda, let's not insult the memory of the Old Pretender, who at least had a claim to legitimacy, having been ousted by a Dutch invader (in the only successful invasion of England since the Norman conquest) by comparing him with this Pretense without even a shadow of legitimacy.
"Ghastly Ones People", good one.
Linda, thank you for this excellent history lesson.
Nine months have passed, nine months, and the real perpetrators are still strutting around, pretending to be normal politicians doing "normal" politics... even pretending to be President... Thankful they're not in Saudi where they'd not have kept their heads for nine hours, thankful to be in a nation of laws (and shyster lawyers) which they can turn into Looking-Glass-Land, with a Looking-Glass President, a Looking-Glass Party of preening narcissistic pervert politicians, and a large Looking-Glass population that's fallen (or been misled) through the mirror.
Is America drugged? Why the hell can't the country wake up from this absurd dream and put its house in order?
Nine months. What other cosmic monster is coming to term?
The wheels of injustice are well-oiled, there's sand in the wheels of justice.
In this perma-putsch there are little green men everywhere, armed with... sand buckets...
Is the Republic suffering from dementia... that it suffers this subversion so long without reacting?
Are your media so drowned in money and virtualized unreality that they can't tell white from black, can't call a spade a spade?
Unworthy. An obscene, shameful farce.
This perfectly expresses my frustration and bewilderment with the current political morass in the US. How can the blatant thuggery and moral bottom feeding of a Trump and a Bannon continue to outmaneuver the sharpest minds in American politics? How can they still command such a large following? How can the authority of Congress be so feeble that the most serious threat to American democracy since the Civil War goes unpunished and the perpetrators brazen in their defiance? Can someone explain why the forces that would protect democracy against authoritarianism and a narcissistic and completely amoral leader seem so weak?
40 years of Murdoch propaganda.
The long shell game come to fruition. Fox News distracting us while school boards and state legislatures were being taken over.
Faux News needs to be banned, or at least exposed as to who they are: Dangerous Propaganda!!!
Not factual news at all!!!
Yes, Jeri, thank you.
Propaganda. Americans believe only German citizens of the 30’s were so easily led. Hubris
Totally agree with the "frustration and bewilderment" . . . for the life of me, I cannot understand why these criminals haven't been brought to justice.
Keep the faith, gentlemen. The forces of good often move slowly, and TFG has had a lifetime of "thrust and parry" maneuvers, public showmanship, and a network of thugs to cavort and distract attention from him. I think he's down on one knee if not yet down for the count. Meanwhile, the good guys are trying for airtight legal arguments. May they prevail.
Their only strategy is to run out the clock and hope to be back in power.
Unfortunately, thats a strategy that works when dishonorable people can false filabuster
Exactly this.
Peter,
Yes,
It looks, to me, like Trump already has, indeed, "gotten clean away".
He is at Mara Lago riding around in his golf cart, once in a while standing for a few minutes, then back in the cart to go eat something to further expand his posterior.
In no way is Trump threatened with any significant limitations on his movements or freedoms in any way at all.
"got clean away" is what I am thinking.
In the meantime, while the Jan. 6 committee is invisible to most Americans,
"Let's Go Brandon"
has taken off in Social Media.
"Let's go Brandon" shows two things:
1) The very poor etiquette and manners and respect Americans now have for anything that smacks of responsibility, honesty and good intentions.
2) The inability for Americans to grasp or read or ingest anything the length of HCR's "letter".
"Let's go Brandon" took off all over America.
HCR has been writing this brilliant, informative, thoughtful letter for months and most Americans have never heard of her.
And therein lies the real problem in America. Americans themselves, not Trump. He is the symptom. Americans are the disease.
Americans. Americans are the world's largest problem now. Large consumers of food, junk, energy, etc., and low producers of anything except profane catch phrases that are disrespectful.
Americans are now too ignorant, too poorly read, too drunk and simply too lazy to sort the truth from fakery.
Now hold on, Mike S. Sweeping statements and broad criticism are unhelpful and unfair — and often sloppy and wrong-headed. Let’s pull back a minute and have a look at what’s going on.
We know, because we’re smart and read letters like HCR’s, that the wheels of justice turn s l o w l y. Annoyingly so. But as Dr Heather has so brilliantly laid out, those wheels ARE turning — encouragingly, maybe delightfully, so. We stalwart defenders of democracy, here in this HCR community and all across the nation, need to take heart: “Defending democracy,” however we’re called to do it, is how we will break the back of this powerful, disorganized tornado of rage and rebellion that’s sucking our energy and serenity.
We fight fascism with DEMOCRACY. It’s slow and it’s dull and it’s lacks the flash and pop and drama of Faux News and other propaganda tools. We fight fascist bullshit with “citizenship,” by sticking together, working together, relying on each other in our communities, forming unbreakable alliances with our neighbors. We can’t afford to get bollixed up and muddle headed with fear and anger and despair and blame. We have work to do, for God’s sake.
(Full disclosure and credit: I take these empowering, sustaining ideas from Teri Kanefield, Justin King, Heather Cox Richardson, of course, et al. And so grateful for them. And for all of you.)
In a less abnormal time, maybe we could all sit tight and wait for the wheels of justice to “grind slow, but grind exceeding fine”.
But I feel it desperately naive to be at this place and to like and believe in justice.
Trump landed on fertile soil when he ran for President in 2015. He uncovered a raw truth and exploited it - there are millions of Americans who are poor, who are deeply lonely and disaffected, who feel the system has trodden on them, who have been drowning deep sorrows in drugs and alcohol, who are poorly educated, who are mistrustful of expertise, who have no positive deep purpose in life, and who have found others of their ilk, in the sewers of social media.
None of Trump’s followers ticks every box of the above description, but many of those acolytes tick many of those boxes.
Trump, we can see now, exploded onto the scene in 2015-16., a supposed punchline destroying seasoned politicians with deep pockets of dark money with the ease of a man swatting flies away.
That should have been a warning that this country was going to spin on its axes in the near future.
What else can be added to this stew of toxicity?
A nation saturated in guns.
A country to whom fictional violence and the real stuff, up to constant war making is a part of the fabric.
A country with a never-exorcised racial problem and deep geographical fissures.
A border problem.
A once in a century pandemic.
Put it together and it is little wonder that you have deeply corrupt politicians, scum like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Jim Jordan and their like soaring to the top because they say the most outrageous things to gain attention and win Trump’s favor.
You have a former President clawing against all possible logic that he won the 2020 election.
You have a seditious riot on Capitol Hill that has all the earmarks of being coordinated between foot soldiers and those who hold the levers of power.
You have a frantic race to the bottom where would-be politicians smelling the main chance are constantly trying to out-Trump the man himself by proposing ideas so wild they shouldn’t be given a hearing. Jordan wanting legislation to remove a mandate on ANY vaccine. Greene calling for an American divorce. A Texas législature, so feared that a school superintendent suggests that if the Holocaust is taught, equal time should be given to a mythical ‘other side’.
I am so so tired of white gloved Democrats, expressing horror at each event while placing an increasingly forlorn hope in the justice system to rescue us all. Savior syndrome is in the saddle, riding aimlessly around while days tick off the clock.
Are we to feel a burst of confidence in the DOJx, whose prosecutors of the 1/6 attackers have been recommending sentences so low that judges are totally flummoxed, and one has even meted out a punishment *higher* than what a prosecutor called for?
In my opinion, no.
We have a government willing to act in ways that would deeply benefit the American people, and perhaps save the planet in the bargain. But this government has much too small a mandate as has been ably demonstrated by President Manchin, for it is he who has the whip hand.
We have legislators in the most Trump-addled states returning racial rights to pre-1950 levels. And a Voting Act that will sink like a stone in this week’s vote.
In all of this there is one oasis of grit and determination - the House Committee on the events of January 6. They have clearly broken the glass and sounded the alarm. They are brilliantly organized and have the cold determination to take on a force which threatens to become invulnerable. And, at the same time, must be laughing at their feeble opposition.
I am so sick of hearing platitudes. I am so sick of being told to wait for justice to do it’s job while being granted the courtesy of moving just as slowly as they like. I am so sick of hearing what a great job Merrick Garland is doing.
I want the battle to be taken to the opposition turf. And as far as I can see, it starts with an arrest of DJT.
It continues with banishing President Manchin and his flaky comrade Krysten Sinema to an Independent role on the Senate benches.
We are losing there anyway. Neither is playing the role of a a Democrat. What positive difference do they make?
It’s time to go ugly. That is my cri de cœur.
As our noble leader, HCR has pointed out many times, there is nothing new here; only a rehash of our politics born of racism and division, here as in other places, at other times. We are probably only going to move the needle a small grove in our time, but move it we will.
I agree with the determination and faith in your post, but see the situation a little differently.
The needle has gyrated wildly to the right and is flicking against that edge.
The job now is to move it far, far back in the direction of centre. This will require a non-violent but Herculean response which involves every possible shred of resourcefulness and wit the Left has.
We have somehow managed to turn the advantageous position following the elections and the horrific insurgent of January 6 into a state where we have almost run out of time and options to save America from being pushed into the abyss.
The needle must swing wildly back towards equilibrium before this job is done.
The former president's followers have the money to fly across the country in private planes to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers can afford to take vacations from their jobs to attend an insurrection. The former president's followers show up at his rallies in $70,000 pickup trucks and SUVs. The former president's followers have no problem shelling out $30 each for hats and t-shirts, and $40 and more for flags.
These are not the working poor.
I have to doubt that people such as you describe make up the majority of his 74 million voters in the last election.
There's a narrative that the former president's supporters are the working poor. It's been debunked almost since it first appeared in 2015, and was further debunked after the 2016 election, but the media still pushes it.
I don't have any trouble believing those people are the majority of his supporters, I live in the middle of it. Of the ten SC counties with the highest household income, seven went to TFG in 2016 and eight went to TFG in 2020. The smallest margin of victory in all of those counties was 54.2%. These weren't 'squeaker' victories, he won going away.
Agree with Mike. t**** supporters are more dangerous than the man himself. That's been obvious since 2016 when tens of millions of voters elected him president. Even when tfg is gone, those supporters will still be here and the next person they support could be smarter, more dangerous and more damaging. Are there sufficient guardrails in our system to prevent that person from destroying our country?
We have to be the guardrails. It's essential.
What’s your game plan, GMB?
Mike, thanks for the dose of sanity. What the fascists want is for us to give up and go away. The reason they're acting up is due to the fact that they recognize that they're outnumbered, and they're using these tactics to make us cower. We have to stop buying into their delusions.
Rupert has had a 40-year head start, it’s why we have a cult, not a tribe or just differences of opinion.
I continue to insist that there are more of us than them.
I agree Nancy. I just wish "the more of us" would speak up.
That may be so, but those who do not vote don’t get counted.
And many who do vote don’t get counted. That’s why we need overwhelming numbers at the polls. Oh, and the Freedom to Vote Act.
Absolutely, on both points - especially the second one.
True. But this is not a matter of numbers. There were probably more non-Nazis than Nazis before Hitler came to power (or am I mistaken?).
Think Thermopylae. 400 against over 100 000.
Think Gideon's 300 dogs of war defeating the vast army of the Midianites -- the choice of the 300 makes a tale worth thinking about.
Peter, it's not that I'm unconcerned about the threat, but our country isn't starving, with paralyzing inflation, as Germany was following WWI. TFG had his four destructive years, and has a rabid following, and so far, we've not gone fascist. I know our democracy is in danger, but am hopeful that enough people are turned off by the entire Repugnant criminalism that they will show up in force to obliterate his ilk, as they did during the pandemic. So far, they tried, but haven't burned the Capitol, as Hitler did the Bundeshtag in order to blame the communists and take over control. There is a great threat, and I'm not naive enough to think that foreign powers and tons of dark money from oligarchs have had nothing to do with the Orange Moron's rise, but we can't allow ourselves to become defeatist and cower in a corner and cringe while it happens.
True, Nancy. Nevertheless, there is one hell of a lot wrong with the country, and with too many other countries subject to the same economic and social forces: an economy disconnected from the common household, technology no longer prosthetic but autonomous and divorced from human minds and bodies, change at breakneck speed, accelerating... inequality, accelerating... The consequences?
Take this horror, for example:
https://www.mc3.edu/news/2020/crisis-in-kensington-documentary
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGyIEEyK3DA
I must have watched most of it. About the only worse things I recall having seen in a long lifetime are photos and film of Bergen-Belsen, photos of the Congo under Leopold II's company and a nightmare in which I actually witnessed an incident from the massacres at Sabra and Shatila when they were taking place, not from the outside but in the midst of the action.
There can be absolutely no question of cowering or cringing. This calls for resistance and all the courage that demands, otherwise we shall all find ourselves in a mafia state like today's Russia, or like China, the ultimate surveillance state, prisoners in our own country. While select oligarchs strip the place of everything that can be grabbed and our children wait to be taken over by the Chinese regime, along with whatever remains of the planet...
A worst-case scenario? Maybe. That depends upon us.
I am loath to urge people to join Cathy Learoyd's bold, courageous action and risk mayhem, loss of life, loss of livelihood, for this can only work as a mass movement. Not out of the question, but far from evident. Whatever individuals decide to do, this community must support her, otherwise it's just a talking shop.
#
I have written before in these threads of how, speaking in Manhattan nearly a quarter of a century ago, my Japanese friend who has since passed away said: "In this society, everything is on the surface and there's nothing behind it. With such a grave imbalance, the only possible outcome is illness."
The Europeans present got the message. The only Americans who understood were those who'd lived outside the country. Despite 9/11, despite the 2nd Gulf War, despite the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, despite mass psychosis and the TFG phenomenon, this still has not been understood.
Peter, I wholeheartedly agree that there is a tremendous amount wrong with this country, and believe it will get worse. Social media just complicates the fact that so many here are lazy intellectually, and will buy whatever trash is disseminated and treat it as fact. In my opinion, these people are being manipulated by the greedy power brokers and politicians on both sides of the aisle who do their bidding. None of us can afford to accept anything at face value. We all need to read behind the lines and ferret out the motivations behind events. As you say, the outcome depends on us, and it won't be easy.
Sure. A German Jewish judge driven into exile in 1937 whom I met as a young man insisted that AH should have been shot in 1923, after the Beer Hall Putsch in Munich.
I think that HCR has traced quite clearly where the present-day GOP is coming from and where its policies (if one can use such a word) lead. The full historical context.
Absolutely, Mike. Blame it on the internet or Lazy-Boy entitlement. The Republican school of fish shifts at the wink of Trump's eye. It's ironic that in our land of so-call free thought millions have become unthinking lemmings. It is our leaders' duty to punish the guilty with a heavy hand or it will only get worse.
That’s an unusual way of viewing democracy, Randy.
Not all though. You’re not. There is more.
Ah, I've succeeded! Here's the message:
Mike,
I have often been tempted by sheer irritation to write far worse things about your compatriots than you have here. (Note that I regard my own country as a sad sideshow in “a Barnum and Bailey world” and am left speechless by the degeneracy of England’s chosen… I could never have imagined such a comedown.)
However, while not doubting the former President’s hope of shooting someone on 5th Avenue as a preliminary to getting re-elected in 2024, I remain skeptical about him having “gotten clean away”, despite the excessive period of time during which he has been golf-carting (and even walking) free.
Nor shall I follow you in your sharp comment that the Trumpery is the symptom and Americans, the disease. Even if I feel you are close to the truth, a miss is as good as a mile. It is true that, just as Jung wrote of Hitler, “Without the German people he would be nothing,” so DT would be nothing without his millions of faithful disciples. Having said which, the man is nowhere near yet to his goal of capturing the American people. And even given the correct diagnosis of a very sick society, like some bombs, like some medicines, this particular infection is triggered by a combination of two factors: mass and misleader.
Even faced with the horrific reality of mass psychosis, we must beware of describing a human being, let alone an entire people as a disease. I am not shit, even if it is present in my gut, I am not disease, even if I may suffer from and carry the vectors of disease.
I want to insist on this because we need now to think beyond sickness if we are ever to gain health. And, even while remaining aware of the pathogens that incomers brought to America and which have since become endemic, we must never let ourselves get caught up with the far-right view of humanity as intrinsically evil. A view that entails a self-fulfilling mechanism, condemning our fellow human beings in advance—just as your would-be Fuehrer transforms the word “Mexican” into an insult and labels those crossing the southern border as “rapists and disease-carriers”. All of which tell us little about Mexicans but far too much about the speaker.
It is more than clear that the firebug ringleaders MUST be taken—and kept—out of circulation as soon as it can be done.
If treason is not to become “the new normal”.
Every day these people have been allowed to continue and increase their seditious activities has been a day too long.
Bravo
More true than not, I agree with you every time I turn on the tube. Milton Mayer said it best in “They Thought They We’re Free.”
... and undeserving of living in a democracy. The Constitution's framers knew that and that is why that compromise-filled document is not so democratic as it might have been.
This is so disturbing! Especially when the reporter blatantly lies about what fans are chanting while interviewing Brandon!
Propaganda rules the fools. And we are awash in it. “The propagandists purpose is to make sure that one set of people forget that certain other sets of people are human. Aldous Huxley
And then think about people wasting away in Prisons for selling Pot ?
Or wasting away incarcerated while waiting to be tried because you could not make bail. Or being murdered by a police officer for driving while Black or passing a counterfeit $20 bill
Even more infuriating!
Infuriating!
And the rest of the world sees this farce and drifts away from Democracy. We're not much of a role model.
Democracy is being challenged in an unprecedented way right now. The real judgment on democracy will be the outcome of the J 6 investigation, how hard the committee fights and how determined they (or ultimately, maybe a protesting public) are to hold everyone of the guilty to account. IMO, we cannot judge democracy on the current conditions b/c we are having to fight new threats never met before.
Thank you for this well-reasoned Letter, Dr. R. No matter what comes of the House Select Committee's efforts, nobody will ever convince me that Loser 45 and his gang did not plan January 6 well before the 2020 election. Guilty at every turn.
Vote Blue in '22 and Once More in '24.
Like he was guilty in the first and second impeachments! 3 strikes, lock him up!
Morning, Lynell! He was laying the foundation for this in 2016. I am flummoxed by the mindset of Cult45 adherents as to the "peaceful protest" held on 6 January. Especially amongst my cop friends. At least the resort to "whataboutism" (and call upon the protests on the murder of George Floyd) rather than trying to justify the actions of the Capitol rioters. Mostly.
Morning, Ally!! In my day as a court stenographer covering depositions for lawsuits, lawyers NEVER accepted "whataboutism" as an answer to any of their questions. And they always persisted until they got an answer to their question.
I have quit giving them space in my head. It was causing WAY too much stress and anger. I just shake my head.
Good for you, Ally. If it were me, I'd just give 'em a Chesire cat smile...then they'll wonder what you're up to!
"peaceful protest" with all those injured cops? How do they juggle that?
They just draw more comparisons to the BLM protests in Portland and the number of officers injured there. There is a severe disconnect in their heads.
"If the committee can be held at bay until after the 2022 election, a Republican victory might end its investigation." That is a very scary thought.....if this committee is held up and fails at its investigation of January 6th and the trump cabal is never indicted, tried, and brought to justice after such a blatant attack on the Capitol, we are doomed and will have been taken over by a terrorist group.
We have been wringing our hands for 5 years about the lying, cheating, criminal, violent, godawful character trump is (including 2 impeachments and his complete disregard for this country's constitution, rule of law, and government) for over five years. The wheels of justice may grind slowly, but continuing to allow the likes of trump and bannon to "roam the country freely" is the death knell and the thumbs up to mcconnell and the rest of the republicans to continue their dismantling of the government and solidifying a dictatorship and oligarchy that mimics putin, et. al.
This:
“If the committee can be held at bay until after the 2022 election, a Republican victory might end its investigation.”
Nothing is more predictive in Dr. Richardson Cox’s excellent report than this sentence. This will be in the courts so long we will have forgotten how to spell T-r-u-m-p.
The Committee is doing the most brilliant work under the toughest circumstances. And this turd is effectively slamming the brakes on everything.
I repeat to the Georgia and New York DA offices:
Indict Trump.
Arrest Trump.
Perp walk Trump.
Try Trump.
Convict Trump.
Imprison Trump.
And I’m not over-concerned about the order that they do the above. They can start at the bottom for all I care.
Well said! Thanks, Eric. This must be the goal, imprison Trump, or he will go on bringing lawsuits and run again. The man needs to be stopped. (I'm still praying a higher power will intervene if necessary to bring him to a fitting end.)
Thanks for your report.
For me, the biggest takeaway from your excellent coverage of this matter is: what will it take to put these thugs in prison where they belong?
So many Americans possessing influence and wealth can literally get away with murder and not be held accountable for their crimes.
Yet, the expendable footsoldiers stupid enough to believe Trump and company have been prosecuted, jailed or awaiting trial, while Trump reaps millions from his cult; Eastman has not been disbarred; many politicians who coordinated with the insurrectionists have not been identified; and Bannon is threatening violence with twenty thousand alleged followers.
But that is the way of a world dangerously unbalanced.
Moreover, if the GOP retakes the House next year, all bets are off that Trump and his politically powerful thugs will ever being prosecuted.
Thanks for keeping me informed.
I find it very interesting that Eastman has not had disbarment proceedings. Surely this should be taken up by the bar in whatever state and courts are relevant. John Yoo’s is a more complicated issue for justifying torture. Currently he is a law professor at Berkeley formally known as Boalt Law school. The difficulty of this is that these are legal opinions and it would be a sticky wicket to Punish them for their extreme interpretations of the law. Nevertheless in Eastman’s case it could be argued that his acts were sedition.
The many Trump lawsuits are an attempt to use wealth to run out the clock until the Mafia Mob Party can return to power. It is hard to accept, but this tactic has a chance to succeed. Our justice(?) system has a penchant for protecting the powerful and politically connected operatives and keeping them out of prison. The Sacklers essentially seem to have run a drug cartel during an active "war on drugs," and the justice system protected them and their money. Rampant corruption leaves the nation and its people insecure.
Let’s hope that the deal currently on offer for the Sacklers is overturned by the several state attorneys general who have appealed the judge’s approval.
I don’t advocate lynching anyone, not even the horrible Sacklers. They should have every right to defend themselves. But I think that they should have to do that while facing serious criminal felony charges with no plea deal.
I can't think of a bunch I'd rather "get all medieval on".
I hear that sizzle, TC. Marsha Blackburn. Ewww.
She’s my senator. I’m embarrassed to admit that now that she has a national reputation for being useless (and what’s with her hair lately?).
How about buried in sand up to their necks in an Fire Ant pile. We could sell Tickets TCinLA and give the $ to families who lost their kin to.
That works. Or head first in a Mojave Desert ant hill, with her head covered in honey.
I know for a fact that they go back as far as 1997. My best friend and roommate married a woman that spent her weeks Dr Shopping and Pharmacy Shopping.She was using and selling. He divorced her. She died from an overdose a few yrs later. He had work insurance. They didn’t seem to care, At the same time his Credit Card was maxed out from All the Pharmacy’s in our area. They didn’t seem to notice either ? When she left He asked me to help him with his Tax’s. He had told her to save receipts . She did. A big box full. Wish I would have kept them. Thousands of $ . That’s what she was doing 3-4 times a week while he was at work. And you are going to tell me that the Dr’s and Pharmacy’s didn’t know ? Think the word is “ Kickback “. So many dead and it’s still going on. Our Local Jail has lots of them every week.
Thank you for your second paragraph.
The Sackler's also had Marsha Blackburn running interference for them in congress. If there's a Trumpess of Belsen in more need of being burned at the stake, I can't come up with who they'd be.
Perhaps The Duel had a leveling effect on justice afterall.
Remember this from the narcissist- in - chief in January, 2016? This is actually the way this lowlife thinks:
"I could stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody, and I wouldn't lose any voters, OK?" Trump remarked at a campaign stop at Dordt College in Sioux Center, Iowa. "It's, like, incredible."
Yep, it indeed is “like incredible,” as history will reflect about about the Republican game plan since Goldwater, all of which has manifested itself in the person of djt and all those who support him, whether the rich and powerful or the brainwashed, frightened carlson/hannity sheep.
Time to get busy everybody.
It’s Germany and it’s the late 20’s, early 30’s.
This is not “a test,” this is “an actual emergency.”
Hmmmmm, I seem to have woken up particularly worried today. Maybe the fact that I watched a WWII documentary last night has something to do with my concern about what the course of events and one malignant man can do.
“It’s like incredible.”
Seeing your use of ‘djt’ this morning prompts me to want to add an ‘i’ as in ‘idjt’.
I get the joke obviously and there is a grain of truth in it.
But he has a malignant genius and a deep understanding of the underbelly of America.
I’m not one for underestimating him any longer.
A couple of reminders of the kind of thing that is going on -- hard though it may seem to believe it. Jung on Hitler:
“He is a loudspeaker who magnifies the inaudible whispers of the German soul until they can be heard by the German’s conscious ear. He is the first man to tell the German what he has been thinking and feeling all along in his unconscious about German fate, especially since the defeat in the World War."
The second quote I am giving because it corresponds so closely to my very confusing perception of DJT. I'm not a shrink and though I've encountered all sorts of people, I don't have that extensive an experience of human types. However, either this man is hiding or -- even more frightening -- there's no one at home.
"[...] no sense of humour. He seemed as if he might be a double of a real person, and that Hitler the man might perhaps be hiding inside like an appendix, and deliberately so hiding in order not to disturb the mechanism."
In case you feel that these comparisons are out of place, given the colossal material power of America, destroying the world no longer calls for such an embodiment of evil. It doesn't even call for significant actions. Inaction in crucial areas could do the trick. A fool in the White House could do more harm than any Hitler, any Stalin, any Mao, any Genghis Khan could ever have dreamed of.
Wow! The first quote gives me a better feeling for the "underbelly." Question: is djt part of, one of, the underbelly or does he just understand it and play off it?
Your second quote: It's clear djt has no sense of humor, but is Jung also suggesting djt, like Hitler, is a reincarnation of someone or something else?
Jung died in 1961. One contemporary Jungian psychologist describes the narcissistic pervert as the present-day manifestation of evil.
Agreed. He's not stupid. I would add malevolent and pernicious. Definitely an understanding of the underbelly that I had very little awareness or experience of.
Streetwise.
I'll add to my item just below. This comes from the diary of a German who destested Hitler and the Nazis and ended up being shot:
... How much do we really know about the vaults and caverns which lie somewhere under the structure of a great nation—about these psychic catacombs in which all our concealed desires, our fearful dreams and evil spirits, our vices and our forgotten and unexpiated sins, have been buried for generations? In healthy times, these emerge as the spectres in our dreams. ... But suppose, now, that all of these things generally kept buried in our subconscious were to push their way to the surface, as in the blood-cleansing function of a boil? Suppose that this underworld now and again liberated by Satan bursts forth, and the evil spirits escape the Pandora's box?
Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen
In August 1936, from Diary of a Man in Despair
That does describe what has happened here too -- the evil spirits have escaped Pandora's box.
YES.
You have said it.
And I don't see how anyone sane can "like" the truth you have spoken.
You have the advantage of being sighted... in the Country of the Blind. A risky advantage.
We are forced now to do what our culture has failed to do, casting off all the things that we are not and asking ourselves persistently what we really are.
Reaching down to the groundwater of our mind.
It is there.
I wish I could reach out to you and share confidence, despite what is upon us.
Maia, I automatically do that every time I see those lower case initials. 😏
WOW!! Yes, the real action is in the Committee reports - none of the grandstanding for the cameras, pompous attacks on the witness and Committee members from the other party. A compelling read. Thank you, again, for keeping us informed in a clear, articulate manner.
Thanks again, Heather, for keeping us updated. It appears there is an open-and-shut case of conspiracy to obstruct Congress (not sure of the proper legal terminology) to be made against Steve Bannon and several other Trump intimates, and a very good possibility that this is just the tip of the legal iceberg and a small sample of likely perpetrators.
However, it worries me that we are hearing so little from the DOJ, the State of New York and the State of Georgia. Are the prosecutors literally afraid of TFG? Do they really need the politicians to open the road for them?
He's now a private citizen. Does the law apply to Trump et al or not? Arrest, interrogation, detention, if necessary. Then trials. Soon. Now would be better.
"Off with his head!"
It does resemble greatly Alice in Wonderland and the mlad scene with the Queen of Hearts, it's true. I trust that we will not also get Tweedledum telling Tweedledee that "Jam is always tomorrow".
😂
Perhaps he could be uncerimoniously dumped somewhere in the Indian ocean.
Nope - I even have a nice sharp axe I'll donate for the job. :-)
How macabre!
😂
I think TFG was deposed in an interview yesterday and Mary Trumps attorney will have a go at him soon.
Preliminary video shows he didn't do so well, either. Surprise surprise. He couldn't tell the truth if you held a gun to his head.
But when he did speak from true, painful personal experience, urging the crowd to vaccinate... they booed him.
Such are the effects of lying hourly. It's like crying wolf...
Thank you, dear Heather, for unpacking this compelling report for us!
What is quite worrisome though is that 45 is trying to stall the committee's work until the 2022 elections, correct?! The trouble is that those of us who never fell for DT's alternative facts are impatient for the truth plus a full and abundant measure of accountability, asap. Patience is not one of my virtues at present, and I can't wait to see all of the responsible parties held to account before any more Republicans -- G_d forbid -- are voted into congressional seats.
As Joe said, our patience has a limit!
While just about every part of this letter conveys an important investigative view towards a number of people and events, I was struck by the last line of this paragraph:
"Congress established the committee, the report says, “to identify how the events of January 6th were planned, what actions and statements motivated and contributed to the attack on the Capitol, how the violent riot that day was coordinated with a political and public relations strategy to reverse the election outcome, and why Capitol security was insufficient to address what occurred.”"
Why was Capitol Security insufficient to address what occurred? At the time (as I watched from home; it was a red letter day for me, since I had just received my initial COVID-19 vaccination) while I watched a horribly overmatched, outnumbered, and poorly equipped law enforcement team try to hold back that angry crowd I wondered whether it was an abject command and control failure, a complete intel breakdown, or something more sinister involving the command and control team. Individual officers who were on that line acted with bravery and courage in an attempt to prevent the assault on the Capitol. Other individual officers took selfies with the rioters; some of whom were themselves officers of other police departments.
The interagency co-responsibility for the area (Capitol PD and Metropolitan PD being the most prevalent as having responsibility for the Capitol's security itself and for the surrounding areas outside the Capitol) was on good display, but where was the intel regarding this event? I knew from reading run of the mill Facebook posts that there would be a protest and an attempt to circumvent the election; how could the command and control structures of those two agencies (plus the other Federal intelligence agencies) NOT have that information? Why was there no riot control team equipped and on standby? Where were the SWAT teams? The only special team I saw in the initial stages of the riot was the Metro PD Bike team, and bicycle cops are not overly equipped with protective gear. I'd love to see the After Action reports...
Why was Capitol security insufficient? To me, this is the burning question for which we have the least information. We know the "why" but not the "who, what, and how." The answers, which surely we will learn, might be the most shocking of all the findings. No way that ineptitude alone was responsible.
"Mark Meadows and Chris Miller, raise your right hands and swear..."
They prob will try to get away with raising their left and crossing fingers on both hands.
I think Michael Bales' comment below names two persons who were probably at the top of the heap pulling strings before and during the riot: Mark Meadows and Chris Miller. They, of course, were probably taking their orders from the mob boss himself, who was enjoying the entire debacle as it played out on his TVs.
One has to assume that if Meadows and Miller are found to have relayed orders that led to the National Guard standing down, they will face serious criminal and civil liability. Same if the orders also led to the Capitol police being unprepared. So will TFG, assuming that the Justice Department finally discards the absurd Nixon-era memo that essentially claims presidents while in office are above the law.
I know there's much skepticism about Garland, some of which I've shared at various points. But in the end, I'm confident he will follow the law. While not related to the coup attempt, at least directly, the FBI's search today of two homes that Manafort buddy Oleg Deripaska owns in D.C. and NYC gives me hope.
Morning, Ally. The “explanation” given at the time was “optics”, because of the backlash in the press coverage of the riot-geared forces during the Portland demonstrations. They had enough intel. If I’d been in charge, I would have left the outside of the Capital looking “normal”, but had a riot-geared backup force deployed inside the building, out of sight unless needed. There is also the question of the hours delay from the Pentagon to the requests for National Guard reinforcement. There had to be some very high level people pulling strings to leave the building so vulnerable for so long.
I love hearing what you have to say!
I’m waiting patiently for more intel on this tragic situation.
Thank you!
I go with more sinister option. Has weighed heavily on many people.
OPINION
PAUL KRUGMAN
Joe Manchin Versus West Virginia
Oct. 18, 2021
President Biden’s policy agenda is hanging by a thread. And the reason can be summarized in two words: Joe Manchin. (Well, also Kyrsten Sinema, but does anyone know what’s going on with her?)
Manchin, the Democratic senator from West Virginia — whose vote is essential given scorched-earth Republican opposition to anything Biden might propose — is reportedly against the Clean Energy Payment Program, the core of Biden’s attempt to take action on climate change, and wants to impose work requirements on the child tax credit, a key element in plans to invest in the nation’s children.
You might be tempted to view this impasse as an indictment of America’s wildly unrepresentative political system, which effectively allows the interests of a small state — West Virginia has substantially fewer residents than the borough of Brooklyn — to dominate national concerns. But it’s actually worse than that: Manchin appears ready to veto policies that would be in the interests of his own constituents.
Let’s talk about what considerations should sway a politician serving the people of West Virginia.
At first glance, West Virginia might seem less exposed than many other states to the effects of climate change. It’s landlocked, so rising sea levels aren’t a direct threat; it’s relatively rainy, so it’s not in immediate danger of sharing in the disastrous droughts afflicting the U.S. West.
But climate change is bringing more severe weather in general, including more heavy rain — and West Virginia turns out to be extremely vulnerable to flooding, in part because of the damage done by past coal mining.
MORE: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/18/opinion/joe-manchin-biden-climate-child-care.html?unlocked_article_code=AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACEIPuonUktbfqohlSFUaCybSRdkhrxqAwvrIzfk5j3n1LCmTDDxDw-kTRoOE-kLEeacmbNsy2zjeT9ZbPfkvWPl2hKd5DnBadjOJ8NGCiYhXZGI8s56yVWc7mJiXUe1i_DO6K2XgIbg6mefl4VePaDLpRKPag3F1I1tkpcBidEq4miBdntezGeZz3tl42v0hAIkrBmtTIXnX4IS7Tkl2K96EbRnD6gApW-E_WTjbntCU6r5oYxwFQBudDys5uTBgnYsabNAHP6__LwojeN78gtgSC29oKoSrA_4hVj6mfcslsvcXRfdXk8JUiXk&smid=url-share
(This will be my last gifted link for the month, used 'em all up!)
Manchin reaps $500,000 or so a year in coal stock dividends. He is selling our future as a democracy for a half a million bucks. We need a miracle or two to save our future from such crminality.
His Big Pharma executive daughter is the one who raised the price of Epi-Pens 700%. Because she could. He has other investments - all in things that profit from the positions he takes.
Hey Joe....didn’t you ever learn that, as a politician, you should think twice about AVOIDING EVEN THE APPEARANCE OR THE SLIGHTEST SEMBLANCE OF IMPROPRIETY?
This is where teamwork comes in, Christopher. Many of us have digital WAPO subscriptions so if there is anything we need to share here, tee it up and we can pitch in.
I still have a bunch of WaPos to gift but thanks for the offer. I have some other workarounds. ;-)
Thank you. I take perverse pleasure out of tweeting articles like the one you shared directly with those who are exposed to the light of day. I am sure HE never reads them, but staff still have to sort through them. I just want them to know that "out there" in the universe that exists beyond their little bubble, are literally thousands of people who intensely despise the man.
“The truth behind a President’s actions can be found only in his official papers,” Harry S. Truman said in 1949, “and every Presidential paper is official.”
Today those records are both paper and electronic. From not taking notes himself, barring others from taking notes, tearing up notes and tossing them *to* refusing to log into official computer systems with automatic backup, permitting the use of private electronic devices, and deleting records
*to* having White House lawyers to decide which materials were to be scanned and catalogued *to* denying funding for the transfer of records during the obstruction of the transfer of power - the Trump administration has compromised the historic record. What has not been preserved is gone, what is not catalogued is untraceable and inaccessible.
I say 'the Trump administration' because it took a village of the damnable to raise the Trump presidency to this 'bad eminence.' There is almost no legal remedy or consequence. Cases have been thrown out of court for 'micromanaging the president.' In a Catch22, the Supreme Court has already denied Congress access to Trump records. Congress wanted the records to see how Trump may have slipped through loopholes in the law, so that they could write better laws. The Court said they had to detail how the president’s information would advance possible legislation - ie Congress needed to know what was in the documents to make the case for seeing the documents.
The Trump DOJ pushed a seemingly unrelated and relatively insignificant case (regarding a sheriff who used files he was authorized to access for personal purposes) to the Supreme Court and then argued for draconian punishments for those who access files without administrative approval. (One justice even asked 'why are we hearing this?') I think it was part of the Trump takeover of the civil service. Throughout the Executive and including the military, Trump notoriously demoted and reassigned career civil servants and then replaced them with Trump loyalists and sycophants. These panderers then became the gatekeepers of agency records - without their explicit permission, staff could not even access documents they had created without fear of retaliation.
This somewhat explains the timidity of the National Archives and Records Administration in the face of the Trump administration. The Archives administration had little legal authority and were afraid of having their top managers replaced by Trump. They gambled that their strategic compromises would be less harmful than risking putting the Archives under complete Trump domination. This manifested itself most publicly in context of celebrating women's suffrage - signs criticizing Trump were airbrushed out of a wall sized photomural of The Womens March.
When bureaucrats do not need to be told but decide on their own to doctor the historical facts to fit the executive's fancies - this is very bad. This is the ascendency of authoritarianism. This is 'the banality of evil' - not that evil is commonplace, but that cowed bureaucrats cravenly just do their job without consideration of the larger consequences - and see their job as bowing to one big man rather than serving the nation.
https://time.com/5308542/trump-presidential-records-nixon/
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/23/will-trump-burn-the-evidence
Thanks for these last examples of "doing the Fuehrer's will", a process that multiplies the effects of tyranny.
There have surely been more than enough instances of criminals attaining positions of great power during the past century for us to be fully aware of the danger.
I don't get the impression that readers are sufficiently aware of the risks entailed if DJT or his backers were to regain power. Risks, not only for America but for the entire planet.
Steve Banonn’s Lawyers are stating that unless or until TFG has Executive Privilege he will not testify
.My question : Who was our President the day after Election Day ? Or is our New President Official the Day after Inauguration Day ? But it still remains that Bannon had no Official Capacity involved in TFG’s Admin. I have also heard and read this could take years to resolve. Bannon , at worst will face a yr in Prison and fines if it ever gets there. In hindsight I think about daily how is it possible that the person who sits in the highest office in our Country, a Democracy based on laws that started out with a Gideons Bible and now can fill a football field stacked 15 ft high with Law books that this Executive seat is Free from them all ? Do we elect Presidents or Kings ? If I did intentionally commit Voting Fraud my punishment would be swift and severe. I think at this juncture we as a Country need to go back to the drawing board if all those Law books do in fact come down to “No One is Above The Law.” Least of all the leader of our Nation.
While we're second-guessing the 1/6 commission, I think we have to remember that the Constitution actually failed us, and in precisely the way James Monroe predicted it might: party factionalism. Trump was successfully impeached, not once, but TWICE. There were two opportunities for the Constitutional process to throw him out of office, bury him in shame and ignominy, and forever prohibit his return to politics. Both attempts failed, because of the GOP factionalism. The Constitution has no backup plan for this.
So the 1/6 commission is trying to salvage a boat that has already had a hole shot through it. They have NO appropriate tools for the job. They are making do as best they can, with the tools they have. Which are not adequate.
If the US falls, it falls by the treason of the GOP, under a list of names starting with Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader of the traitorous faction, and working its way down to the lowest freshman.
I was thinking of James Madison, BTW.