Biden in Statuary Hall yesterday delivering a blistering speech against Trump - and a wake up call to the nation on how dangerously close we are to losing our democracy.
"Trump was willing
to stage an assault on more than two centuries of democracy in America simply
because his all-encompassing ego will not allow him to admit that he was
repudiated by more than 81.2 million voters.
And most Republicans, it is now clear, seem just fine with that. Remarkably enough, Republicans’ desire to cater to the whims of the orange emperor has not lessened in the past year despite his loss of power (and his Twitter account...Indeed, the entire Republican Party has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the Trump Organization.", Max Boot, Washington Post yesterday, 'Biden Is Right, Trump's Wounded Ego Is Main Reason for Jan. 6'
The figures - political statistics- I cited in my previous post on January 6th, barely touch on the level to which our democracy has descended to near oblivion. Much of this is because of citizen complacency especially in an ongoing memetic war waged by the far Right to return this country to Trumpian authoritarianism. The other part is owing to tens of millions swallowing lies wholesale about an election. Thomas Jefferson warned of this potential if citizens ceased keeping their minds alert and "improved" - as he wrote in his Notes on Virginia:
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED."
Jefferson's message was basically to warn citizens of his era - and all future eras- that government "degeneracy" is inevitable if trusted to the rulers alone. Thus, the people can only prevent a government's descent - e.g. to autocracy - if the citizens are alert and aware, and especially able to parse rhetoric, see through lies and misinformation. Hence, the injunction: "their minds must be improved."
Leave it to President Joe Biden to make a heroic move to that end, in getting all dead heads back to reality about what the day meant. Especially that it marked a "dagger to the throat of democracy" - torpedoing the same day's WSJ editorial balderdash (Democracy Isn't Dying') it was just a "national disgrace" (more on this below). Biden's speech, maybe the best of the past year, reminded the mental sluggards and inattentive just how perilously close we came to losing our 250 plus -year old American experiment. In his stirring words:
“One year ago in this sacred place democracy was attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The constitution, our constitution, faced the gravest of threats... The former president of the United States of America has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election,
“He has done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interests as more important than his country’s interests. Because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our constitution.
He can’t accept he lost, even though that’s what 93 United States senators, his own attorney general, his own vice-president, governors and state officials in every battleground state have said: he lost. That’s what 81 million of you did when you voted for a new way forward.”
Referring to the cretinous vermin who "used American flags as spears, defecated in the hallways and injured more than 140 Capitol police". Biden didn't mince words in referencing by actions - but not directly naming - the orange maggot at the center of this atrocity: Donald J. Trump. For spreading a malignant "web of lies" about the 2020 election that enraged his feral mob to violence and still has what's left of their brains in thrall. As Biden put it" "He could not accept that he LOST!"
And what did the orange traitor have to say after seeing Biden speak, apart from his deranged claptrap about "the crime of the century" being the 2020 election itself which was "the real insurrection"?:
"To watch Biden speaking is very hurtful to many people,"
Maybe, but in truth only hurtful to the ones who want to tear our Republic to shreds and who buy into Trump's malicious lies. As for "patriots" - NO! Patriots don't smash windows, threaten lawmakers and defecate in hallways. That is the province of vermin, of moral reprobates and renegades. As Biden noted "they came there enraged, following the orders of one man!" D.C. Officer Daniel Hodges only a night before - in an interview with David Muir of ABC - related how he was being crushed between two doors and beheld his assailant "frothing at the mouth".
Enraged, his reptile brain in the throes of hyper aggression spawned by Trump's lies, he frothed, barked and tried to crush Hodges. But Daniel Hodges was nowhere near the only victim of the insurrectionists' violence, see e.g.
As Biden asked:
"What kind of nation are we going to be? A nation that accepts political violence or the rule of law?
Well, first of all, as Biden observed - to be a "great nation" means accepting the rule of law- and that means accepting the truth. Do we? No, not yet! Let's go even beyond the disreputable spectacle of only TWO Republicans - Dick and Liz Cheney - showing up in the House Chamber yesterday. None of the other members, apart from Rep. Cheney, had the nerve to face the truth as dozens of fellow members related their accounts of that day in floor speeches. No, the absent Reeps were busy applauding the traitor podcast of Steve Bannon featuring Marjorie Taylor Greene and alleged child sex trafficker Matt Gaetz. The traitor pair also appeared in an alternate hokum media event claiming the Dems were behind the 1/6 assault, e.g.
Quasi-convicted (DUI) Reep criminal Gaetz uses bogus video to try to convince morons the Dems were behind 1/6
How deep in shit are these Reepo brains? Typical responses to CNN on Twitter featured chestnuts like this:
"The Democrats were behind it all. There is no way Republicans would act that way!"
Actually, they would, you stupid baboon - given the MAGA mob is on record as even sending tweet storms to FOX - in the days after - to remind its gasbags it was THE MAGAs carrying TRUMP flags who "fought for freedom", not Antifa. Well, at least they're honest to admit it, unlike the delusional asswits tweeting CNN.
Then there were the more subtle language truth -avoidance tactics of the reactionary lying, spinning Wall Street Journal, starting with the disgusting editorial ('Democracy Isn't Dying') with the claim January 6th, 2021 was "no insurrection". According to these deflecting nabobs:
"The Capitol riot of Jan. 6,
2021, was a national disgrace, but almost more dispiriting is the way America’s
two warring political tribes have responded. Democrats led by Speaker
Nancy Pelosi seem intent on exploiting that day to retain power,"
These fools can't even admit that a "disgrace" doesn't begin to cover a direct and violent assault on our seat of democracy to the extent of erecting workable gallows, using American flags as weapons, disabling police with bear spray, leaving 140 Capitol officers injured, dozens of windows smashed, defecations in the hallways, and assorted pipe bombs, nooses, plastic ties brought in along with a Confederate flag. Makes you wonder what type of dope combo these twits were on when they penned that bullshit. Including that it can't be called an "insurrection" until the evidence appears about secret planning - by motley characters at the Willard hotel. Don't worry, that evidence is coming and will be presented at the public hearings of the House Select Committee.
But leave it to the Journal's hacks to be patently obvious in their purpose: basically conceding that for them to use the term "insurrection" would doom the GOP in the midterms. They aren't worried about Pelosi being 'intent on retaining power" but on too many citizens seeing through the (FOX-WSJ Axis ) whitewashing efforts and rejecting the UNFIT GOP! As I wrote in my previous post, this is merely one of many "attempts to muddy the perceptual waters for the political gain of its ideological fellow travelers - the GOP traitors."
Then in the same issue we behold a doubling down on this 'no insurrection' rubbish embodied in an insipid op-ed column ('Don't Call It An Insurrection', p. A17) by a blowhard, pedant legalist by the name of Jeffrey Shapiro. According to this character:
“The demonstrators who unlawfully entered the Capitol during the Electoral College count were unarmed and had no intention of overthrowing the U.S. constitutional system or engaging in a conspiracy against the United States...a real insurrection would have required the use of violent force and the aim of replacing one government or political system with another."“
It's understandable these Trump- GOP apologists would
want to jettison use of the term insurrection and replace it with
an euphemism. It is in their political interest to do so, to ensure a GOP win in the midterms. But to act the part of an ignoramus as this joker does goes way too far. If the rabble who invaded the Capitol "weren't armed" what does he call the weapons fashioned to injure over 140 officers? As even long time Reep strategist Karl Rove wrote in a WSJ op -ed yesterday:
"Many wore tactical gear. Some came armed with chemical agents, flagpoles, batons and sticks."
Going on to reference the havoc and injuries wrought. What does Shapiro call all those flagpoles, batons etc. wielded against the D.C. police- in a "medieval battle"- to use the parlance of officer Michael Fanone. What does Shapiro call the pipe bombs left at DNC and RNC offices? What does he call the Molotov cocktails and rifles seized from one Alabama MAGA head? Toys? What is he, an idiot? What about the bear spray that likely chemically suffocated officer Brian Sicknick and disabled others to the point of having to be evacuated to ICUs? That bear spray was just innocuous vapor? What is his IQ, 10? Oh wait. Maybe that's his legal I.Q.
Let's be clear the declared claim of the seething pro-Trump
rats included assassination (e.g. of AOC, Pence, Nancy Pelosi) and taking
hostages using plastic zip ties. The final tally of the dead was 5 but it
could have been vastly worse, indeed in the hundreds.
The other aspect of Shapiro's astounding ignorance is he has no remote clue that the actual effort to replace the Biden gov't (with the loser Trump one) was being attempted at the same time as the Capitol assault. All that assault was intended to do was to delay the formal certification (by Pence) long enough for the suits in Trump's White House and "war room" (including Jeffrey Clarke, Mark Meadows, and likely Jim Jordan) to get alternate electors set up for the key 6 swing states. Then use the Electoral Count Act- objections raised by the Reeps in House and Senate - to hurl the end result into a de facto tie (269-269) that would have required state congressional votes to break. And of course the Reeps lead in that dept. That is a coup, but I also call it part of the insurrection.
Let’s also note Shapiro was
pulled up before on his “overly legalistic” definitions - this time for dismissing “incitement” as a proper basis for Trump’s 2nd
impeachment, i.e. inciting the insurrection. This was in the National Review article ‘A
Former Prosecutor Misunderstands Impeachment’ (Jan. 11,
2021)
I rest my case, and again assert Biden's speech - in the wake of all the attempted whitewashing and obfuscation - was badly needed and one of his best. I especially liked his vow to stand in the breach to protect our democracy, something none of the major GOP leaders want to do. Why would they when they remain all in with Trump as their master and leader. Where we are at right now is a major inflection point in whether this nation circles further down the drain of misinformation and division, or we come to our senses. That depends ultimately on whether we follow Thomas Jefferson's advice, first by paying attention to the subversive undercurrents, and second improving our minds to the point we don't fall down a rabbit hole of lies and deception to enable the destruction of the country.
If we are alert and aware we must acknowledge we cannot put the GOP back into power again until it ceases to be Trump's personality cult. To do otherwise is to invite disaster, not only for this generation of Americans, but many future ones.
Most odious of all are those - like the deranged Reep mutts in Highland, Michigan yesterday, who celebrated January 6th in a perversion of "freedom", and those renegades who assaulted the Capitol as "patriots". There can be no national unity, no comity, until this lot are gone or leave this nation - maybe for Russia - which helped Trump get into power in the first place. In the words of one Denver Post letter writer yesterday:
The assaults on Dec. 7, 1941, and Jan. 6, 2021, are equal. Both were direct attacks on our government, our democracy. In the recent event, the terrorists wanted to totally subvert all of us who legally voted and the Constitution, which was forged over a long period of time to give us a logical, peaceful way and inclusive method of resolving conflicts. They care only about themselves and power.
I regard anyone who participated, gave encouragement or helped in any way with my total contempt. If only there was a way to send them to Afghanistan, Russia or anyplace with a dictator to really see what they were advocating. They don’t deserve to live here.
Bingo and then some!
And recall what the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. noted, that what we have most to repent about is not so much the vitriol and actions of the bad people- but the silence and inaction of the good people. More and more speaking out, as the letter writer did, is what is needed now - as opposed to burying heads in the sand pretending the threat isn't as bad as it is. (Or that I am being "hyperbolic" about it in this post. If you believe that, you either aren't paying attention, or are gobbling too much nonsense from the wrong sources!)
Reading back over this post, yeah, Janice might be correct there is struck "a highly emotional chord" - that may not appeal to all readers. Well, ok, fire me. I believe my Revolutionary War ancestors would be proud of my giving a full-throated defense of truth and genuine patriotism - not the fake B.S. pushed by the 1/6 traitors and their enablers like Tucker Carlson, Matt Gaetz et al., e.g.
See Also:
by Jeffrey C. Isaac | January 8, 2022 - 7:22am | permalink
And:
by Magdi Semrau | January 7, 2022 - 8:53am | permalink
Excerpt:
Over the past few months, the public has been receiving piecemeal information about both this violent insurrection and the quieter plots that preceded it. While there are many unknowns, here is what is certain: there was an attempted coup on American soil.
In the weeks leading up to January 6, Trump and allies plotted to overturn the election and undemocratically seize power from President-elect Joe Biden. Then, on January 6, Trump supporters attacked the Capitol, potentially delaying certification.
Many have viewed these two threads – the ostensibly soft coup and the hard coup – as perhaps independent events. It’s important, now, to outline what we know and what questions are outstanding about the extent to which these various plots – from quiet proceduralism to violent insurrection – were intertwined.
And:
by Joan McCarter | January 7, 2022 - 8:10am | permalink
And:
Excerpt:
Marking the one-year anniversary of the deadly Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol, President Joe Biden delivered his most forceful rebuke to date of Donald Trump, his incessant lying about the 2020 election, and his ongoing attack on American democracy.
Though Biden never once mentioned Trump by name, he repeatedly referred to him as "the former president," turning it into a blistering rhetorical cudgel against a man whose greatest mortal fear—it's indeed existential—is being a loser.
"He's not just a former president, he's a defeated former president," Biden emphatically stated Thursday, about a third of the way through the 25-minute speech he delivered from Statuary Hall in the Capitol.
But Trump's loss wasn't just one pointed line Biden uttered on the way to making other points. "He lost" was, in fact, the central theme of a speech aimed at rallying every remaining sane American around the goal of saving our democracy.
“Here’s the truth: The former president of the United States has created and spread a web of lies about the 2020 election. He's done so because he values power over principle, because he sees his own interest as more important than his country's interest—than America’s interest—and because his bruised ego matters more to him than our democracy or our Constitution.
“He can't accept he lost.
And:
by Thom Hartmann | January 7, 2022 - 8:23am | permalink
