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Locked in a windowless room in an undisclosed place, U.S. Rep. Anna Eshoo said the last five-plus hours she has spent hiding from mobs of President Donald Trump supporters who stormed the nation’s Capitol building is the worst day of her life in politics.
“I think it’s been a day from hell for everyone who’s here and across the country,” she said during a phone call on Wednesday evening in Washington, D.C., where she was still in lockdown.
“This is the tabernacle of our democracy. To see a mob break through, break windows … it really leaves one so shaken,” she said.
The country has never experienced such an extraordinary event as the takeover of its congressional halls by a citizen mob seeking to overthrow the election of a president. The last time the government was attacked in such a manner was in the 1800s when a foreign power attacked the White House, she said. (During the War of 1812, the British Army raided and set fire to the White House, the Capitol and other structures in D.C.)
Eshoo said she was walking from her office through a tunnel to the House chamber when a mob breached the building. She was headed to the gallery to observe the proceedings, as only those who were speakers were allowed on the floor due to COVID-19 protocols.
Capitol police came running toward her. “They said, ‘Turn around! Turn around! Go back! Go back!'” she said. She had not been allowed to return to her office in the Cannon Building, one of two buildings that were evacuated, she said, but she was with other people.
When she came to work, she thought the security seemed “totally inadequate.” There didn’t seem to be many more officers in place than on any other day and she didn’t understand why the perimeter of the Capitol plaza wasn’t closed off, she said. She said she thought perhaps they would add more security protections later in the morning.
“When I looked at the plaza, I didn’t have a good feeling,” she said. “Why isn’t there a full force out there?’ she said she thought.
“I think there was totally inadequate preparation for this. … This was a determined, vicious crowd driven by and embracing the lies of the president,” she said.
Eshoo said she hoped Congress would return to their certification proceedings of the presidential election sometime later in the evening. (Congress did reconvene on Wednesday night.)
“Despite the horrors of today, and the attack on our democracy that we will be resilient and continue. Specifically, with the count of the electoral balance. I think that would send a very strong message across the country that we are not going to be (threatened) that we that we must continue, and that we will,” she said.
Beyond personal losses such as losing family members, Eshoo said Wednesday was the saddest day of her life.
She hasn’t heard any Republicans condemn the actions of the president or his followers, she said. She doesn’t know whether they plan to continue arguing against the certification, she added.
“They certainly don’t seem to have very much to say,” she said. “I mean, (they) obviously, wrapped themselves around the, the axle of Donald Trump for four years, and I haven’t heard one of them today say far ‘This is terrifying.’ It needs to be called out. I haven’t heard anyone say anything. And you’re talking about other people in Congress and in the Senate — Republicans. Republicans, specifically, were complicit in this.”
She had strong words for the president.
“Demonstrators have a Constitutional right to protest,” she said. But “(the president) urged them to do more than that. He did damage to not just a building and its room. This is where the representatives of the people speak on their behalf. This is where they govern … This is not a window broken in the basement of public works,” she said.
This undertaking started with the president “inciting people. He incited them,” she said.
Asked what actions she thinks should be taken against Trump, she said, “I would impeach him. I would impeach him in the next 24 hours. He should not be president. He’s brought our country, he’s brought our democracy to its knees. … Beyond his party registration, I think he’s a sick, broken individual.”
Eshoo was among hundreds of legislators who fled the House floor on Wednesday as thousands of rioters supporting Trump stormed the Capitol building.
Protesters against the election of Joe Biden as president entered the Capitol on Wednesday morning as both houses of Congress met to certify the Electoral College votes, according to multiple media reports. Trump had spoken to his followers earlier in the day at a rally and told them to march to the Capitol to protest the election results, which he has claimed against all evidence was fraudulent.
One woman was shot by Capitol police as she broke into the building and has died, according to the Daily Mail. The Washington Post stated three others succumbed to medical emergencies during the riot.
The National Guard has been ordered to assemble and help restore order, according to news reports, which said the request was made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco.
Pelosi tweeted at about 1 p.m. that she and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer are jointly calling on Trump “to demand that all protestors leave the U.S. Capitol and Capitol grounds immediately.”
In a televised address, Biden also told Trump to step up and call off the violence.
“Let me be clear: the scenes of chaos at the Capitol do not represent who we are. What we are seeing is a small number of extremists dedicated to lawlessness. This is not dissent, it’s disorder. It borders on sedition, and it must end. Now,” he said.
He also took his demand to Twitter. “I call on President Trump to go on national television now to fulfill his oath and defend the Constitution by demanding an end to this siege,” he wrote.
At about 1:30 p.m. Trump went on television and told people to go home. He insisted, however, repeatedly, that the election was stolen.
Rep. Jackie Speier tweeted updates to her followers Wednesday afternoon, offering the news that Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell had been escorted out. “We are in lock down. Thank you, POTUS!” she wrote, followed a couple of hours later by, “We are in a safe place. I will have lots more to say about this. We are not a 3rd world country but you couldn’t tell that today.”
She also called for removing Trump from office.
“Trump has given us no choice. The 25th Amendment must be invoked now. We need to immediately wrest control of the country from him. He is not the commander of (sic) chief of the U.S. He is commander of chief of the Trump mob & proud boys. Pence must step up and defend our democracy,” she wrote.
Gov. Gavin Newsom said what was being witnessed in the Capitol was reprehensible and “an outright assault to our democratic institutions.”
“The people of California have spoken, and our congressional delegation should never have to fear for their lives to represent Californians,” he said in a statement.
Assemblyman Marc Berman of Palo Alto said in a tweet, “We are watching in real time an attempted coup of the American government, and it’s being led by the President of the United States. Shame on all who have emboldened, coddled, and made excuses for him and his seditious actions. All of them.”
On Wednesday afternoon, Facebook announced on Twitter a 24-hour block on Trump’s account that will effectively prevent any posts from going up on the president’s official Facebook page, which has 32.5 million followers.
“We’ve assessed two policy violations against President Trump’s Page which will result in a 24-hour feature block, meaning he will lose the ability to post on the platform during that time,” a Twitter post from Facebook Newsroom said.
By Thursday morning, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg extended the block indefinitely.
“The shocking events of the last 24 hours clearly demonstrate that President Donald Trump intends to use his remaining time in office to undermine the peaceful and lawful transition of power to his elected successor, Joe Biden,” Zuckerberg wrote on his Facebook page.
Over the last few years, Facebook has allowed Trump to use the platform consistent with its rules, at times removing content or labeling his posts when they violated the policies. Zuckerberg said they did so because they believe the public has a right to broad access to political, if controversial, speech.
“But the current context is now fundamentally different, involving use of our platform to incite violent insurrection against a democratically elected government.
“We believe the risks of allowing the President to continue to use our service during this period are simply too great. Therefore, we are extending the block we have placed on his Facebook and Instagram accounts indefinitely and for at least the next two weeks until the peaceful transition of power is complete.”
The action follows a wave of condemnation from Silicon Valley leaders and other moves from tech companies to stop the spread of false information on the election results and encouragement of violent protests.
Late Wednesday afternoon, Twitter first announced a 12-hour block on @realDonaldTrump, an account with 88.7 million followers and is separate from Trump’s official government Twitter account, after the social media company removed three tweets from the president, including a video where he told supporters to “go home,” but not before he said he “loved” his supporters and continued to double down on his false claims that the election was stolen from him. (The video has since been removed from YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.)
Citing the company’s “ civic integrity policy,” Twitter name-dropped Trump and said in a post that “future violations of the Twitter Rules, including our Civic Integrity or Violent Threats policies, will result in permanent suspension of the @realDonaldTrump account.”
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Lloyd Lee contributed to this report.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Lloyd Lee contributed to this report.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Lloyd Lee contributed to this report.
Palo Alto Weekly Staff Writer Lloyd Lee contributed to this report.
Thanks for running this I tried her office today and got voicemail
I think at some point Democrats are going to have to understand that there is no amount of damage caused by Republican lies for power/plutocracy, stretching all the way back to Nixon and Reagan (and including the incompetent response to Hurricane Katrina, 50 years of disinvestment in higher education and national infrastructure/our position in the first world, the incompetent response to pandemics, climate change, and Russian meddling in our elections, their assault on American’s healthcare, the 2008 financial crisis after 8 years of near total Republican control of government, the concentration of wealth from Republican policies that favor the wealthiest, etc), that will cause them to wake up to the corruptness of their ideology and the damage to democracy. (Read the book — It Was All a Life — of major Republican operative Stuart Stevens if you want to understand better what he calls the “industrial lying” the Republicans have been engaging in all these years — that he himself admits he engaged in — that he admits has no equivalence on the other side.)
“Conservatives” are not going to ever realize it, do you see now that they are the party that NEVER takes personal responsibility for ANYTHING, and they’ll blame you for anything and everything they do wrong?
Politics in this country have not been competing public goods for over50 years, ever since Republicans decided they were the party of lying for plutocracy. Today, we have seen the end result of that continuous assault on competent democratic governance and on our position in the first world.
If Republicans like “I-think-he’s-learned-his-lesson” Collins do not all get together and repudiate not only this violence and assault on our democracy today but also the party’s systematic rejection of truth, decency, and competence in governance, we will all be vulnerable to worse in the future.
The Republican PA Congressman blamed the media for this — and I will say that if the media did not simply pass through the false ideas that Trump is better for the economy, and ignore the evidence that Biden would be better, for the economy indeed, the overwhelming evidence that Democratic administrations are better for the economy over any reasonable stretch of time over the course of the last 100 years (and Democrats bear some blame for being unwilling to take up the mantle of being the only adults and fiscally responsible ones in the room), I don’t think Trump’s seditious message could have nearly had the same agency. In fact, if Democrats had been able to get that message across — and the media didn’t just have this endless fascination with elevating and amplifying the voices of the extremists and vocal political minority and never seem interested in listening to the millions of us who are in the majority, going back decades — I do think the rightwing propagandists would have had less success.
I’m really, really tired of this situation in which the media and everyone else have just accepted Trump’s charge that anyone on the left is motivated only by bias, when the evidence is more that this is more a rightwing phenomenon (looking at ALL the Republican witchhunts against Democrats for decades and Republican deflection of due examination of rightwing corruption by accusing others of what they — Republicans are most guilty). The unique imperviousness of those on the right to truth, facts and decent fair play were already endangering democracy for decades and ensuring this endpoint. I’m really sick and tired, frankly, of not being heard or respected for my voice and opinion because I am a Democrat now and treated like therefore I can’t have well-reasoned, insightful, intelligent things to say. I wish the media would stop acting like Trump’s baseless charges were actually true and creating a confirmation bias by elevating rightwing voices.
I’ve heard a lot about how rightwing voters have felt intimidated, when they’re just mostly reacting to being asked to listen to and weigh the truth; on the left, we’re having to field a constant stream of assaults like the POTUS retweeting from a rightwing government official that the only good Democrat is a dead Democrat.
The media CAN start listening to the majority of us going forward. That might help.
Happy to hear that Ms. Eshoo and her staff are safe. However, our 244 year experiment in self-government is not safe. The first step in restoring safety of We the People is to impeach Donald Trump TONIGHT.
Where’s The Law?
The 25tTd Amendments must be invoked tonight and trump removed from office and place under arrest for sedition. This was a coup attempt Latin American style, driven by the incessant lying and incitement by a US President. We are on the verge of becoming a fascist banana republic. V.P Pence should do the first positive thing he has ever done, invoke the 25th Amendment, remove the traitor and NOT pardon him while he serves as President for the remaining few days of this horrible administration.
.
Looked like very peaceful protesters to me. Capitol belongs to the people. 70 million voters feeling disenfranchised. They’re hurting and want their voices heard.
There were two groups of participants in the activity. The Antifa people no longer bother wearing masks and are well known. Their job is to capitalize on any demonstration and create chaos. Their playbook and participants are well known.
Alvin – You are not paying attention. These “protestors” threatened police and others, destroyed property and violated the rules of the Congress.
Hopefully they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law including those who incited their violence.
On Wednesday, a coup attempt was led by the president of the United States. A rightwing mob attempted the coup in the form of a violent riot that stormed the Capitol building. They disrupted the proceedings that would have completed the recognition of the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Those proceedings had been disrupted earlier by elected officials bringing forth bad-faith claims that the election was not legitimate and should instead produce a continuation of Trump’s presidency. This too was a coup attempt, an attempt to violate the constitution and override the will of the voters in this election. Inside and outside were two faces of the same thing, and both were fomented by the leaders of the Republican party and by the US president. The mob outside would not exist without the politicians inside. Those insiders will make noises of horror and repudiation, but they own this.
Congress resumes election certification after pro-Trump mob storms US Capitol – live
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Had Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders recognized the legitimate winner of the election in early November, had there been no challenge to a legitimate election from inside the government, there would have been no mob. Having failed to suppress enough votes to guarantee a Republican presidential victory, the Republican party and the Trump administration decided to try to suppress them retroactively. Trump invited the mob and whipped it up for months and set it off today, as surely as if he’d lit a bomb’s fuse.
@ Peter Carpenter,
I’m sorry to say, Alvin is paying attention — he’s doing what people on the right have been doing for a very long time, and it is the rest of us who are not paying attention. Alvin was just reflecting back the legitimate counter of Black Lives Matter protestors to the exaggerations, misinformation and outright lies which the POTUS and his Republican enablers used to falsely characterize the social justice protests as violent and portray blue states and cities as lawless.
The right has been doing this throughout this term and before, the examples are legion:
-Trump and supporters screaming “lock her up!” so much that you never hear people talking about how he should be locked up for his corruption.
-Trump and supporters calling Hillary Clinton corrupt with no basis when Trump is objectively much more corrupt, but the disproportionate use of the charge ends up sticking — for example, ask any Trump supporter about the Clinton Foundation versus the Trump Foundation, and you will get a distorted alternative reality about which is objectively the corrupt front (the Trump Foundation) and which is a legitimate charity that does a lot of good (the Clinton Foundation).
-Trump bringing Bill Clinton’s accusers to his debate with Hillary and making loud accusations when he was hiding paying off a porn star he had sex with, which harkens back to Republicans like Newt Gingrich persecuting Bill Clinton when Gingrich himself was carrying on a longtime affair with an intern (for whom he left his wife while she was in the hospital with cancer).
-Republicans screaming about “coups” during the impeachment hearings last January when this is an actual coup attempt and they were using the accusation to deflect lawful accountability of his corruption. All of those Republicans knew who he was and every one of them has blood on their hands, not just from the death today, but hundreds of thousands of Americans who would still be alive today if they had done their jobs and we had competent governance and a coordinated national response to the pandemic unencumbered by the politicizing that increased the infection around the nation.
Examples are actually legion, because it has become a modus operandi on the right, since they have developed such a pathological disconnection from any sense of truth or check on their hypocrisy. Keep an eye out for it. The inappropriate use of the true defense of BLM protestors above is actually what’s called “benign racism” but that’s another subject.
You can help by, anytime you see this happening, where someone on the right makes a statement or accusation that is actually more aptly applied to them, don’t just ignore it because it makes you uncomfortable. Trump has done this and modeled this behavior because he gets away with it. If he wants to deflect from the behavior of his children, he goes after Biden’s, etc. The only way to stop it is to stop making that behavior so successful. For example, use the word “coup” now, when it’s really applicable, and keep overtly pointing out when people like Alvin above try to keep perpetuating the false, misinformation alternate reality that the right has been building for decades. (Also let Fox News know what you think of their part in it.)
“@ Peter Carpenter,
I’m sorry to say, Alvin is paying attention -”
I stand corrected.
Alvin – you are a co-conspirator in this effort to overthrow our democratic government.
I condemn your comments and your actions.
…and the biggest one, of course: Trump screaming “Stop the Steal” and repeating that the election is being stolen, when that is exactly what he is attempting to do himself. His repeating the falsehood so vociferously makes other back off of using the language and charges as they appropriately would be used, to describe his own behavior.
Thanks @Peter Carpenter.
If Republicans want to fix this, they should start by impeaching and removing Trump and asking Pence to voluntarily resign, so that Nancy Pelosi becomes President for 2 weeks (and we can have the first woman President) and in that time, she can help Biden transition for the people. Trump has taken a wrecking ball to our national government with his incompetent chaotic “management” — competent governance matters and is what keeps us safe and in the first world. For the sake of our security, our economy, and our peace, they should do this immediately.
Trump is a domestic terrorist, and he should not be allowed to serve out his remaining 13 days in office. He is perfectly capable of triggering more bloodshed and terrorist attacks. VP Pence should do the right thing, trigger the 25th amendment and then resign, which would allow the Speaker to be acting President until January 20.
Thirteen days his far too long a time to allow an insane mobster to be the most powerful person in the world.
Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were “willing executioners” in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent “eliminationist antisemitism” in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argues that eliminationist antisemitism was the cornerstone of German national identity, was unique to Germany, and because of it ordinary German conscripts killed Jews willingly. Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized. The book challenges several common ideas about the Holocaust that Goldhagen believes to be myths. These “myths” include the idea that most Germans did not know about the Holocaust; that only the SS, and not average members of the Wehrmacht, participated in murdering Jews; and that genocidal antisemitism was a uniquely Nazi ideology without historical antecedents.
Conversly, it is obvious that when Trump entered the 2016 presidential race, the GOP rank and file, and most of its political representatives were ready for him after a process of anti democratic, theocratic and neo fascist indoctrination that began with Nixon, and kept intensifying, than became completely radicalized by Newt Gingrich and his enablers following the GOP mid term election sweep in 1994.
Decades of right wing incitement, paranoia igorance, Fox, hate radio, Joseph Goebbels style incessant lying, anti government and fact free propaganda also made it certain that what happened yesterday is tragically only the beginning of a national nightmare.
Trump should resign, be impeached or arrested for sedition.
The lawyers who falsely laid claims of election fraud before the federal courts should be brought before their bar association(s) and actions taken including disbarment for breach of their ethical duty to uphold the Constitutions of the USA and their State.
The Congressperson has experienced what the average citizen may experience any day in any city. I drew the conclusion that she feels that being in Congress gets her extra protection and security. I don’t mind protest when they become violent that is a problem. I blame both parties for allowing this to occur. Last summer large protest certainly occurred, and they were violet. This was started by the Democrats when they failed to put down violent protests in numerous cities. The President encouraged the behavior, but there is plenty of blame to be passed around to both parties. The failure of the Democratic elected representatives are also at fault for allowing protest to continue. I don’t mind protesting, when they become violet that is a problem and both parties encouraged the protesting.
If people really think Speaker Pelosi should be President-under any terms think again. She is actually worse than President Trump. I voted independent in November because I didn’t like Biden or Trump. The country can do a lot better, hopefully, in 2022 Speaker Pelosi will be replaced. Comments made during the last year from the Speaker demonstrated to me, she is also mentally unstable for the Speaker position. You would think the Democrats could select someone who is really qualified for the position. I don’t understand why you would think if Vice President Pence took over he should resign. Of the three people, he is probably the most stable one of the group.
Donald J. Trump cannot be allowed to be President of the United States for a single second longer. It’s not simply that he is unfit for the office he holds. That’s true of Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, too. Trump is something worse. He has proven himself to be a national security threat, the most serious one in Washington since the Royal Marines burned the place. He’s a traitor to his oath and to his country. He needs to be forced out, either through the provisions of the 25th Amendment or through an accelerated impeachment process. Any elected officials who do not agree with this simple and obvious fact dishonor the offices they hold with every second they decline to do it hereafter.
He is responsible for all of it. He is responsible for the assault on the Capitol and for the incredibly lax response from the Capitol Police. He created an atmosphere in which the worst impulses in the worst cops all over the country are inflamed and encouraged until the Capitol Police refused to defend the Capitol. He has to go. Today.
President Trump will be in office until January 20th-live with it. You seem to feel that Senator (s) Hawley and Cruz should also leave. You don’t have that power. That resides with the voters in the State they represent. You have some real problems regarding the law. You should try reading the Constitution.
The comments from Eshoo, Speier and Newsom are almost laughable if for what happened yesterday at the Capitol building. I don’t recall any of them condemning with conviction, the rioting, looting, burning and destruction of property that occurred this past summer in many large cities across the country run by democrats and under the guise of “peaceful protests.” There was nothing peaceful about them and the activities continue today to a lesser degree in some of those cities without any or very little reportage by the complicit media.
I’ll never forget the image of a CNN reporter stating that the protests were peaceful while in the background the city of Minneapolis was burning down on live TV.
All of a sudden, our elected officials are calling for swift action and demanding arrests and imprisonment. Wanting more security and protection. Where were these same people in the late spring and summer of 2020? What security and protection did they offer residents of these cities? I guess they are now experiencing some of the same fears that citizens and business owners experienced during the riots. Rest assured they will act on their own demands and continue to ignore the people that put them in office. It’s how politicians roll. Benefits for me, but not for thee.
Donald Trump’s final 13 days as US president pose a grave national security threat and warrant his immediate removal from office..
Trump incited a mob of supporters to stage an insurrection at the US Capitol building in Washington, leading to four deaths, 68 arrests and bipartisan outrage.
The assault on the citadel of American democracy fueled a sense of foreboding about what the president, who possesses the nuclear codes, is capable of before he makes way for Joe Biden on 20 January. He could, for example, encourage his followers to march on government buildings and other state capitols again.
“He needs to be removed,” said Joe Walsh, a former Republican congressman. “He’s a threat to this country. We’re not safe with him in the White House. Our president is this country’s greatest national security threat.”
Walsh added: “What he did yesterday, he could do again tomorrow. He could call another 50,000 people to Washington DC on Sunday to do whatever. He can use the power of his office to incite violence and insurrection again any day for the next 13 days.”
Trump is reportedly in a downward spiral as his time runs out at the White House, raging about his election loss, ignoring the deadly coronavirus pandemic and ever more delusional, paranoid and out of touch with reality. He feels betrayed by allies including Mike Pence, the vice-president who rubber-stamped the election result in the early hours of Thursday.
A man as unstable , as immoral, as criminal and as divorced from realty can destroy this nation in less than 13 days.
Mr Weiss, do you actually have any evidence of your claim… right wing zealots like those incited to crimes by the Trump Organization.
Mauricio, I feel that Gov. Newson is also unfit to govern our state. I’ve learned to live with him though he has numerous faults.
@ mauricio,
All good points. But unless Democrats get serious about being PROACTIVE in restoring not only calm, but also Democratic homeostatis and respect for the importance to our safety and lives of competent governance, then this event is just a prelude. Democrats have to stop waiting for Trump’s and the anti-democracy Republicans’ next move (or their often unwitting undermining of our national strength and integrity) and being just enough reactive for the moment.
This event and even the whole Trump presidency is just the next logical extension of the Republican ideological assault on our government since Nixon, the “drowning it in a bathtub” as Gingrich called it in the Reagan years.
Democracy is NOT fragile, our democracy has been made fragile by a 50 year assault on it by Republicans to replace it with plutocracy. All of it
-the American Legislative Exchange Council,
-the systematic efforts to enshrine Reagan like the racist confederate statues erected in the 1920’s and tear down Bill Clinton and Barack Obama (who were both much more fiscally responsible than any Republican potuses in that time) in order to enshrine the unproven, deleterious trickle-down economics,
-the efforts to create a fundamental idea that government is somehow inherently bad and that the people should hate their government and make it hard for public servants to do their job caring for the safety of the American people, etc,
these are all part of a constant assault on our government and national strength and integrity from the inside by the right. While the right continues like the bully babies they’ve been for 50 years to treat our government and fellow citizens like a spoiled errant child out to destroy a longsuffering parent, they will in fact destroy us and destroy our democracy, and even if they haven’t noticed how they’ve weakened the potential of our people, our national economic engine, our national global position, and our internal strength, our enemies have.
Democracy and a healthy economic marketplace work well when there are competing interests working for good. When one side decides to take advantage to eviscerate the checks and balances that maintain healthy homeostasis, the conflict between sides is no longer about competing public goods but rather gridlock and one side tries to nail the seesaw to the dirt for the sake of their own power.
But absolute power corrupts absolutely, and history has shown that the end result of this is violence as one side tries harder to maintain their lock, and much worse violence when there is a violent course correction to the other side. We aren’t in the latter place yet, but it is inevitable if we do not value and restore homeostatis, and together understand what the right has done to our nation over the last 50 years. In short, the right needs to realize that the ideology of trickle-down economics and lying for plutocracy actually contradicts freedom, economic strength, and national strength, and that giving up on that will actually allow them to support a far healthier business environment and economy.
The fundamental dynamic is that democracy is government of, by, and for the people, and while it will never be perfect, it is the means by which in a democratic society, ordinary people have the most power to represent the interests of most people (even the richest, but including everyone else). Plutocracy is government of, by, and for the wealthiest, which is what Republicans have been pushing for and protecting for 50 years. They have been largely successful. Every person in the country should look at these nonpartisan Pew Research graphs of what’s happened to wealth and income for the last 50 years: it’s really as if the very wealthiest have taken all the money from the middle class and poorest.
Seriously, scroll down and look at the charts showing what has happened to the money:
https://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2020/01/09/trends-in-income-and-wealth-inequality/
Before Republicans instituted this whole Lying for Plutocracy movement (which became enshrined under Reagan) and attacked the power of the people to stop it by getting them to hate their own government (which is us), the middle class had the lion’s share of the income and millions more had small businesses that dominated the economy. Now the economy is more dominated by gigantic corporations, because the Right have leveraged policies (including by stacking the SCOTUS) that have ensured both this income inequality AND the weakening of our democracy and national government in favor of the power of plutocrats.
Concentrations of wealth are a giant weight on one side of that seesaw, and Republicans favoring them above democratic homeostastis and healthy marketplaces are part of why we are here. Because over time, it has become more and more obvious from the facts that trickel-down economics create a fragile economy which disinvests in the foundation of future success and depends on just a few sources for jobs, control, and circulating capital. We saw how devastating that is in this pandemic: the wealthiest simply stopped spending money and if you worked in an industry related to serving that sector, you most likely lost your job; the poor and middle class were what kept the economy going and if you served that sector you are most likely still working. When you have a few spigots of circulating capital, it will never be anything close to the prosperity and economic stability you get from millions and millions of job creators and income earners circulating the money.
The trickle-down idea was given wings by a big lie, which Reagan’s budget director David Stockman admitted was a lie to get massive tax cuts on the wealthiest. This allowed the wealthiest to stop paying back for the public investments that lay the foundations for their success, and resulted in the ensuing decline of the last 50 years in our national infrastructure, educational investment, and even healthcare and public health, among much else.
That lying for plutocracy has been the Republican modus operandi ever since. Instead of honing and improving their ideas and their actions from competing for public good in the marketplace of ideas that is politics, instead Republicans have been honing the lying, including lying to themselves about the results of their actions. This is why they brought us the most gobsmackingly lying, unsafe, incompetent potus in the history of this country and continued to support him and lie about it all (to themselves and us). Again, this brought us to here.
We only get out of this if Democrats start (and KEEP) talking about this, start drawing those lines, start reminding Republicans of what they really said they care about (things like fiscal responsibility, integrity, morality, personal responsibility, even religious freedom) and how what they’ve been doing have been pragmatically contradicting those things, and that their lying and hypocrisy have serious negative consequences to our national safety and prosperity.
Everyone can start by stop just saying we are so divided, or there is so much misinformation — stop talking in third person, because it’s a cowardly way of avoiding laying responsibility where it’s due, mainly on the right for assaulting our democracy for decades, for being responsible for the lions’ share of misinformation in order to continue propping up the whole lying for plutocracy MO. If Democrats (and Republicans who might finally be getting a reality check through the fog of their decades of self-deluding lies) think this is just about Trump and this moment, they will miss how to not only prevent it from happening WORSE again, they’ll miss how to put our nation back on track to being prosperous, stable, peaceful, and unified.
To do that, it’s necessary to understand the importance of democratic homeostasis, and how we restore that so that all parties are working for the benefit of sound, competent, successful self-governance — a good, functioning government — rather than puppet plutocrats. If not, this is a blip like the bombing in the basement of the World Trade Center, and few appreciating the far worse tragedy in the offing.
I don’t see anyone addressing the assault on small business by Democratic leaders in the cities of Portland, Seattle, Chicago, and New York. Last summer certain groups decided it was time to take out small businesses and destroy them. Where were the Democrats? When I was younger Democrats were concerned about the survival of small businesses. I was a Democrat. Today Democrats own large companies that will basically run over small businesses. I was a partner in a small business, and when Democrats came running with regulation they literally put us out of business. Five years ago, my business partner and I threw in the towel with the Obama regulations. Here you seem to have a concern about Congress, where was your concern last year when several small businesses were burned out of business. My concern is with all the employees of the small business-they now lack jobs. I’m really not into all the garbage about plutocrats-it is just a fancy word that means nothing. I no longer support either party, I’m more moderate driven there by years of over-regulation business by Democrats. I find them more of a threat than Republicans.
“Mauricio, I feel that Gov. Newson is also unfit to govern our state. I’ve learned to live with him though he has numerous faults.”
You may be opposed to Governor Newsome politically, although you are dead wrong about his qualifications: he has been a highly qualified terrific governor, but he is not an insane mobster, Putin puppet, conspiracy monger, traitor and inciter of violence, including violence against constitutional procedures. Big difference.
A friend in Germany who had been a college mate of mine many years ago just sent me this message. It’s important for Americans to get his perspective.
‘ As a German, I say this: Do not repeat Germany’s De-Nazification mistakes.
Once the Third Reich fell, magically all the Nazis in Germany disappeared. The big ones were put to trial, but all the little ones disappeared.
The law-bending Nazi-judges of the Third Reich magically stopped being Nazis.
The bootlicking NSDAP-members in every town-hall and administration magically stopped being fans of Hitler.
SS-soldiers magically became good people over night.
Germany as a whole simply decided to forget that the 12 years of Hitler’s rule had ever happened.
Germany as a whole simply decided to forget that there were people in their midst who had commited horrible atrocities.
Please mark my words: If US-society decides to forgive and forget, if it decides to move on and to go back to business as usual, if it doesn’t deal thoroughly with this hatred, with this divide and its perpetrators, then there will be dark consequences down the road.
Now I can see why so many people who make comments are blocked. The comments on the board, clearly indicate why I left the Democratic Party. This is not the same party I belonged to for over 30 years. I’m proud to be a member of the Independent party. If you don’t like comments people make, you report them and get them banned.
Perhaps you should read the Consititution and focus on the 25th Amendement.
@jr1’s comments exemplify the “bothsiderism” which is one strategy the right uses to continue to self-delude and lie to themselves. He equates his political opposition to Governor Newsom, a politician doing his job (not perfect, but no one can be) to the opposition to lying, incompetent, self-serving Trump and the Republican party serving the wealthiest top crust at the expense of our nation, national security, and economy. There’s no way to take his comments about “regulation” etc in good faith because it’s the same old spouting divorced form any reality — Republicans will find a way to blame whatever is wrong on Democrats regardless of how much Republicans are to blame. They lost all sense of personal responsibility and simply blame others for anything and everything the way and angry bullying toddler does.
Regulation is why bank employees don’t just take your money and go live the high life somewhere without an extradition treaty, which allows us to have a monetary system. Regulations have actually been eviscerated so thoroughly by Republicans that big corporations have been able to steal our money — my family would be seven figures richer today if we could have just been able to enforce contracts with big corporations like insurers under existing laws, but Republicans so weakened the regulations and let the large companies have their way in precedent-setting court decisions that there was no way. This is why they hate the Consumer protection agency in Washington, Republicans go after any threat to the plutocracy that is intended to restore a more fair playing field.
Part of what’s wrong with Republicans that got us to here is that the “industrial lying” as Stuart Stevens called it has created a false framing, a delusional echo chamber and wrong/damaging foundational ideology that Republicans will continue to cling to and that this even will not wake them up over. I hope that @jr1’s posts demonstrate that to everyone else. Restoring democratic homeostasis for the benefit of our national security and prosperity — including a respect for competent governance and civil service, and for essential regulations — will require sustained and purposeful effort. If we do not, things will continue to get worse. The Republican lying machine to protect plutocracy and stir up these delusional righting sentiments have left a string of bloody political violence from the dead children in the Oklahoma federal building daycare to what happened at the capitol yesterday.
What do most Republicans (except Mitt Romney who, bless him, was always a decent person even if he also has a blind spot for the corrupting influence of plutocratic concentrations of wealth) do when this happens? Make excuses, try to soften it, create false equivalencies, avoid taking responsibility for failing to remove Trump from office last year (for that they have the blood of hundreds of thousands of American souls to answer for in my opinion), go back to the old false framing to avoid taking personal responsibility and make out like the other side is the bad guys.
Or they turn tail and run, resigning out of cowardice instead of staying and defending our nation from this petty vengeful tyrant, invoking the 25th Amendment, and ensuring a smooth transition and that our nation isn’t even more vulnerable in the next month because of this incompetent demagogue who has so damaged the functioning of our federal government.
I hope everyone will also read Michael Lewis’s The Fifth Risk and realize it was written at the outset of the Trump Presidency (the predictions are chilling). He decided to investigate three federal agencies he knew next to nothing about, and realized that a lot of what he believed about government were just wrong (kind of like the way only Perry realized the Department of Energy was in charge of the nukes only after he was put in charge and after he’d called for its abolishment out of pure ignorant idiocy, only without the self-deluding Republican partisan blinders), and he discovered that our government actually is filled with many purpose-driven people trying to serve our nation, and is engaged in defending our safety and prosperity in ways he never realized. Everyone should read the book if they can. Both books, The Fifth Risk by Michael Lewis (who wrote The Blind Side, Moneyball, The Big Short), and It Was All a Lie by Stuart Stevens.
As for not appreciating what I’m saying, I’d also like to mention that friends from high school still remember me predicting the wealth inequality, and the course of the political strife of the last 50 years because of Reagan’s policies and what the Republican party had become. Friends who came from ultrarightwing families have been voting blue because of seeing how much of what I predicted came true over the years.
It’s not rocket science, though, and nations that have endured dictatorships are warning us that we should not think this is over unless we really come to terms with why it happened and if we don’t take really strong action now to stop this. But stopping it means understanding what has really become the machine of plutocracy and destroying our own government from the inside so that we are vulnerable to our enemies, domestic and foreign, and have become more so for 50 years. Trump is the logical successor to the lies that brought us Reaganomics and conservative governments/presidents that took power without a majority for so many years (but relied on lies for power). If we do not deal with countering this powerful influence, what happened at the capitol yesterday will look like nothing.
We need a functioning Republican party that does defend business interests, but not through lying and trying to eviscerate our functioning government.
@jr1,
As a direct answer to your question, no one is bringing up what you claim is protest violence from this summer because
A) they have nothing to do with the violation of the capitol by rightwing insurrectionists yesterday
B) the vast majority of social justice protests were peaceful and where they weren’t, there was usually an element of rightwing violence
C) the vast majority of political violence in this country has been rightwing
D) the rightwing media have grossly exaggerated and misled about the extent of the violence related to BLM protests and the impact on businesses.
Many countries, democracies like South Korea (with 50 million people), suffered only a few hundred deaths from Covid and despite recent upticks there, largely escaped economic recession because of it. China, because of a competent national response, has not only not suffered recession, they’ve benefited. We might have done that, except for the incompetent governance inflicted on us by the right and their damaging ideology (including that they never take any personal responsibility for what they inflict on the rest of us).
Competent governance matters. No political leader is ever going to be perfect, but the flip side of that is not that seeking competent governance doesn’t matter. It’s always been an irony of the rightwing quest to destroy our goverment from the inside since the contract on America (the quest to drown government in a bathtub, I think they said) that they just love the Constitution but hate and want to destroy the government that said Constitution establishes.
@ mauricio,
I think you are missing the fact that Germany is the bastion of freedom it is today precisely because they were willing to go through a long and deep period of self-reflection: young people wanting to know what their parents did during those years, why the older generation didn’t stop Hitler, what they knew, when. I’ve studied what the Germans study, and kids in school are required to understand the propaganda techniques they used and the history in order to prevent it from every happening again. I had to listen to friends from Germany talk about how the Republicans (even going back to Reagan and Bush) have been employing many of the same techniques. With Trump, it’s been even more obvious, such as the Big Lie (his lies are so outrageous and made with such confidence, people who already want to trust him — and are uniquely unwilling to subject his lies to facts — will think he must be telling the truth because who would tell a lie in the open like that? Anyone who has been watching American politics since the 70’s could see that Republicans would believe anything their leaders say and could shoot someone on 5th avenue, as their leader just said, and people would still vote for him. Question: given this leader’s propensity for hiding things in the open like that, has anyone looked bad at potential unsolved 5th Avenue shootings? At this point, it’s a legitimate question…)
@Citizen, the German people started to face their horrendous past only in the 1970s, which is why so many Nazis were able to flee to S. America. They all knew who they were and pretended it had nothing to do with them.
My german friend’s point is that if we ignore the American right wing fascism that trump hadn’t created, but fostered and used to advance his brand, we will pay for it dearly. I might add that we will also lose our democracy and become a banana republic, although watching yesterday’s horror story, as well as the 2016 election of horrible person singularily unqualified to be anything but a con man, makes me wonder if we aren’t already a banana republic.
Last September Donald Trump called upon the Proud Boys and other violent supporters to “stand back and stand by.” Now we know the purpose for which he was asking them to stand by.
What is most horrifying about the G.O.P. senators’ effort to overturn Biden’s popular vote and Electoral College victory is not that these Republicans are plainly wrong – it is that they know that they are wrong and know that they are lying when they deny Joe Biden won the election fair and square.
How could it be otherwise? Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and the other members of their cabal are intelligent enough to understand what evidence is, and they know full well there is no evidence of massive voting fraud. They also know that there was no giant conspiracy, including Republican election officials and Trump-appointed justices and judges, to conceal the theft of an election.
That they seek to overturn the election anyway means they are the would-be thieves, ready and eager to destroy American democracy. It is not too much to say that these senators, along with Republican colleagues who have chosen to remain silent, have turned the G.O.P. into the party of treason to the United States Constitution.
@ citizen …. Barack Obama was not fiscally responsible. He drove up the national debt to more than the total of all previous presidents before him. It is possible that Trump may have exceeded him.
Bill Clinton was fiscally responsible because the Republicans controlled the house led by Newt Gingrich, and the senate resulting in Clinton producing a balanced budget.
@mauricio,
Ah, got it. You’re right. But in the case of Germany, there was no way for them to avoid the self-reflections eventually. Unfortunately in our case, the Republicans who are responsible for the trashing of our government, economy and national strength and standing for the last 50 years, they’re never going to have such a come-to-Jesus moment, so the speak, like the Germans couldn’t avoid. Because they’re lying to themselves, too, just like they’re lying to the rest of us. There is no amount of evidence that the laissez-faire economics/Reaganomics/trickle-down-economics/plutocracy-serving economics are bad for our prosperity and democracy that will cause them to change what they think and do. It is really up to the rest of us to sustain our conversations about it and reflection on it, and voting in the interest of democracy (and not just thinking it’s this one election or this one man).
We have been losing our Democracy and even our first-world position for a long time. Take a road trip across this country then spend a summer in Europe. The decline used to be the opposite: when I was a kid, it was Europe that was falling apart because of the dominance of concentrations of wealth and America that was shiny and new and full of opportunity and investment in our infrastructure and people. (There was a great article in MIT’s Technology Review about what the GI bill investments did for ensuring generations prosperity and building our educational assets as a nation — this pandemic is an opportunity to come to terms with how the Reagan administration decimated that and the consequences.) Many European countries are now better places for economic advancement for ordinary people than we are. At some point, we will not have the resources to invest our way out of this rightwing-led destruction of our national assets.
@What will they do,
Your post is an example of Republican self-delusion about fiscal responsibility. In CA, every time we’ve had Republican governors, they’ve driven up debt and deficits, irrespective of the economy. Democrats have been the responsible ones, including Jerry Brown who under a recession and Democratic supermajority, took our state from a Republican led deficit to multi-billion surplus and rainy day fund.
Your post is cherry picked to meet your desire to believe that Obama was worse, but Obama has objectively been better than Trump. Here’s an article from Forbes, which is a center right publicaton:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/chuckjones/2020/09/27/trump-will-create-more-debt-than-obama/?sh=4a90628712f1
“….statements about how much debt was generated by Obama typically leaves out that when he entered office that the economy was in the teeth of the Great Recession, which he had no control over.”
Obama was handed an economy in freefall and had to rely on debt to dig us out, but if you look at the numbers, he turned things around as the economy had been rescued from the Republican-caused abyss. He then oversaw the longest, continuous expansion, low unemployment, and often better economic numbers than Trump had (and which the right touts while they criticized better numbers under Obama in his last 3 years).
Trump, on the other hand, was handed a healthy economy and trashed it, and as this article points out, will be responsible for far more debt even despite the pandemic.
Sorry, but Republicans can’t take credit for Clinton’s economic discipline. Clinton and his administration did the hard work of submitting balanced budgets to Congress. He did the kind of efficiency review and management of agencies that Republicans with their corrupt cronyism and political appointees rather than competence do not. FEMA, for example, was a great, efficient agency that handled disasters well under Clinton but was utterly destroyed by Bush (remember heckuva job Brownie during Katrina?) If anything, Republican pressure kept the Clinton administration from being able to make the kind of national investments we haven’t been making for 50 years in our infrastructure and people, and kept us from reforming healthcare.
Bush Jr had a Republican administration in all branches of government for most of his 2 terms, and he almost immediately took the Clinton balanced budget and trashed it, threw us into massive debt and deficit again. If that had anything to do with Republicans in Congress, that shouldn’t have happened.
The big picture is that Republican policies that favor plutocracy are actually bad for all of us, bad for our prosperity, and bad for our economy and strength. The Republican propensity for lying to us and to themselves about that is not harmless.
The big picture based on facts (and this research of the economy under different presidents was done by academics who are more conservative than liberal) is that “The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. “ That’s for the last HUNDRED YEARS.
You can cherry pick in very narrow ways the way you have just done, but the evidence is actually overwhelming that your preordained conclusion is just wrong. Your ideology is at odds with the best policies for economic prosperity and fiscal responsibility.
“The big picture based on facts (and this research of the economy under different presidents was done by academics who are more conservative than liberal) is that “The US economy has performed better when the president of the United States is a Democrat rather than a Republican, almost regardless of how one measures performance. “ That’s for the last HUNDRED YEARS.”
Sorry, forgot to include a link to the study: Presidents and the Economy, An Economic Exploration:
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20140913
Something like 11 out of the last 12 (or 12 out of the last 13) recessions have begun well under Republican administrations.
I used to wonder why the Russians couldn’t see that Communism was bad for them, and now of course they’re criticizing this as showing that American-style democracy doesn’t work.
But the Russians and others are wrong on that count. American-style democracy works brilliantly; it withstood the relentless assault of Republicans trying to destroy it from within, disinvesting in our nation and people, weakening our government and encouraging people to mistrust government and democracy for their (Republican) benefit and power, and pushing policy after policy (including from SCOTUS rulings) propping up plutocracy at the expense of democracy (see the book “Supreme Inequality”) for 50 years.
Given how hard the Republicans have been working at undermining our system, undermining our government, disinvesting in our nation and people, weakening our government and hollowing us out from the inside then giving the keys to our enemies (and pathologically lying leaders), our American-style democracy has been monumentally strong, not fragile. 50 years of Republican attacks have made it fragile (ask rightwing true believers, many will even outright tell you that they believe the lie that our nation wasn’t supposed to be a democracy, deliberately choosing to believe that a democratic republic can’t be a democracy).
Since people love to compare to US to other countries…violence around elections happens in India all the time, and they’re still heralded (rightfully) as one of the world’s great democracies. So while the events in Washington are nothing to be proud of, and Trump does need to be labelled a “bad actor,” let’s not get carried away here with the hyperbole about the fall of democracy, however cathartic it may be. It certainly wasn’t an attempted coup (you need the military for that), and was in no way an actual threat to democracy, since the vote certification commenced a little later without difficulty. It IS, though, an example of how we still need police, and more of them at times, not fewer. Oh, and when are people going to learn that the US is not a European country, and never will be. We’re a country of the Americas, for better and for worse.
The lack of accountability is just appalling. But I am not surprised, as there are two sets of standards in this country for Black and White. If there continues to be no consequences for the actions of domestic terrorism… it will happen again in a more destructive and consequential fashion. The laws need be used to persecute the perpetrators…starting with Trump down to the rioters flying Confederate flags within the Capital. It’s dangerous to just stand by… the mob is not a fringe movement. White Supremecy has spread across mainstream America because of social media.
It’s not all an example of how we need the police. The capitol police allowed Trump’s goons to enter the building, offering no resistance. They took selfies with them, they poured water in their eyes after some of them were exposed to pepper spray, they escorted them out as if they were dear friends who came for a visit, and they arrested only a small number of them, reluctantly according to eye witnesses. Compare it to how viciously they attacked and arrested peaceful protestors.
We need law enforcement, but not racist armed militias posing as law enforcement. There are other models of law enforcement that can protect civilians’ safety without becoming their enemies.
Internet detectives are identifying scores of pro-Trump rioters at the Capitol. Some have already been fired.
“As he strolled past gold-framed portraits of past Congressional leaders, one rioter who stormed the Capitol in a pro-Trump mob on Wednesday wore a red Trump hat, a commemorative sweatshirt from the president’s inauguration and a lanyard around his neck.
When a photo of him went viral, it didn’t take Internet sleuths long to realize that the lanyard held his work badge — clearly identifying him as an employee of Navistar Direct Marketing, a printing company in Frederick, Md.
On Thursday, Navistar swiftly fired him.”
“Through early Thursday, police said they arrested 69 people from at least 20 states and the District for charges ranging from unlawful entry of public property, to violating curfew and assaulting a police officer”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2021/01/08/capitol-rioters-fired-doxed-online/
“A US Capitol Police officer has died from injuries suffered when he reportedly was struck in the head with a fire extinguisher during Wednesday’s riots.”
Every person involved in this riot is now an accessory to murder.
Felony murder is where a crime results in a murder – then all of the participants of the crime can be also be charged with murder.
The participants cannot argue that they did not know that there would be violence. Here was what was posted:
“You can go to Washington on Jan 6 and help storm the Capital” said one 8kun user a day before the siege.”As may patriots as can be. We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents, and demand a recount.”
https://theweek.com/speedreads/959808/extremists-publicly-shared-violent-plans-operation-occupy-capitol-weeks-ago
Trump should be unquestionably charged also with accessory to murder, as he incited his cult followers and urged them to go to capitol hill.
It will take many years to get rid of the stench of the Trump family in the White House, but the stain of installing this insane gangster as president will be forever imbedded in our history. I will never be proud again of being an American, because having Trump as President for four full year will never be forgiven by history.
“Call the zip ties by their correct name: The guys were carrying flex cuffs, the plastic double restraints often used by police in mass arrest situations. They walked through the Senate chamber with a sense of purpose. They were not dressed in silly costumes but kitted out in full paramilitary regalia: helmets, armor, camo, holsters with sidearms. At least one had a semi-automatic rifle and 11 Molotov cocktails. At least one, unlike nearly every other right-wing rioter photographed that day, wore a mask that obscured his face.
These are the same guys who, when the windows of the Capitol were broken and entry secured, went in first with what I’d call military-ish precision. They moved with purpose, to the offices of major figures like Nancy Pelosi and then to the Senate floor. What was that purpose? It wasn’t to pose for photos. It was to use those flex cuffs on someone.”
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/was-there-a-plan-for-hostages-or-killings-at-the-capitol.html?sid=5388d3b4dd52b85a7a000220&utm_medium=email&utm_source=newsletter&utm_content=TheSlatest&utm_campaign=traffic
Mauricio,
” If US-society decides to forgive and forget, if it decides to move on and to go back to business as usual, if it doesn’t deal thoroughly with this hatred, with this divide and its perpetrators, then there will be dark consequences down the road.”
Spain and its dictator Franco is a much closer, apt analogy than Hitler and the Nazis. And unlike Trump, Franco was an actually, brutal dictator. Yet today, Franco is still openly and shamelessly admired by some, while Spain still manages to remain a democracy. Some would even say a progressive democracy (in some areas at least), rather than a country mired in darkness. It’s not all or nothing, and always pulling Nazis out, as an example of authoritarianism shows a grave ignorance of history and its lessons. Heck, even Daniel Ortega today is ordering the shooting of protestors and behaving much worse than Trump!
“Daniel Ortega today is ordering the shooting of protestors and behaving much worse than Trump!”
I could care less who is worse than Trump. All that matters is that Trump is so bad that he is unfit for office.
Among others, Trump’s goons were looking for Mike Pence, who is now a traitor to the MAGAs, because he refused to trump orders to ignore the votes from the battle ground states. Had they found him, the country would have had to deal with the assassination of a vice president trying to perform his ceremonial constitutional duty. Even Linsey Graham, Trump’s chief senate enabler, is now a “traitor”to the MAGAs and fears for his safety.
The greatest threat to the USA is domestic right wing terrorism and its chief enabler, Donald Trump.
Blaming President Trump for this violence is, at this point, stating the obvious. He has been inciting his supporters for weeks, telling them that the election has been stolen and they need to stand up to save freedom. If his cult followers really believe that, took what the president said seriously, why wouldn’t they take dramatic action?
But the blame needs to go beyond Trump and land squarely on the Republican Party itself —an institution that, for decades, employed a political strategy that sowed the seeds of an uprising against the American state.
The animating force of modern Republicanism is this: Democratic Party rule is an existential threat to America and is by definition illegitimate. It is a belief that explains much of what we’ve seen from the GOP in the past few decades, the glue that binds together Republicans ranging from dungflingers in the QAnon fever swamps to much of the GOP congressional caucus.
Whether elite Republicans genuinely believe what they tell their base is beside the point. The fact is their delegitimizing rhetoric has been the fuel of the conservative movement for many, many years now. Trump’s presidency, and the violence with which it is ending, represents the logical next step for the modern GOP — and where it goes from here will determine our future as a democracy
The Republican Party is destroying itself. Many long time Republicans, including myself, have formally left the party and registered as Independents or Democrats.
The Georgia runoff election shows the dim future of this once principled party of Abraham Lincoln.
The funding of the Republican party will dry up and without funding it will be in a death spiral supported only by zealots.
Senator Hawley’s largest supporter has disowned him.
Senator Murkowski is openly suggesting that she will leave the party.
I suspect that Senator Romney may do the same.
Murkowski and Romney as Independents would destroy the Republican’s power in the Senate.
Here is a chilling comment from Dr Fiona Hill, former top senior Trump advisor for Russian affairs:
‘The president was trying to stage a coup. There was little chance if it happening, but there was enough chance that the former defense secretaries had to put out that letter, which was the final nail through that effort. They prevented the military from being involved in any coup attempt. But instead, tTump tried to incite it himself. This could have turned into a full blown coup had he had any of those key institutions following him. Just because it failed or didn’t succeed doesn’t mean it wasn’t real.’
Well, some Capitol Hill cops seemed to actually try to help the insurrections, but fortunately that didn’t work to well either. The mob tried to capture and probably kill the entire succession line to trump, starting with Pence and the Speaker, which would have given trump an excuse to declare martial law and become virtually a monarch. This seemed to be the plan all along.
Testing
I am proud that Trump Legion stormed the Capitol. Scared all the career politicians out of the building, beautiful to watch. They didn’t burn anything, they didn’t hurt anyone. But occupying Seattle is O K. We really need term limits for Congress.
Instead of career politicians representing the people, career politicians work against the people to enrich themselves. Of course ultra-hateful foaming-at-the-mouth liberals like mauricio are none the wiser. Don’t you realize we’re actually on the same team? And it has NOTHING to do with white supremacy ffs.
The hypocrisy, shaming and bullying here is staggering. We blur the lines of reality with social media wars. Twitter gave the right a HUGE assist with the Trump ban. Twitter literally committing suicide. Jack got his panties all up in a bunch and couldn’t help himself.
It’s all so entertaining. I thought the show was over but they are still, forever drunk on Trump. Who’s that Joe guy again?? What does he even believe and stand for? Being a career politician?
From the videos I watched and sequence of events, Trump did not incite violence and called for peaceful protests instead. The Capitol invasion appeared to me like a false flag with left wing agitators bused in and allowed to enter by the DC police, separate from the actual Trump people who do not destroy property or harm innocent people. It was also a convenient excuse to stop the debates on the electoral vote counts from the disputed swing states. The Trump folks love this country.
The left is weak. They are seizing our government and the expectations are so high they cannot meet them. Further, they know that folks are fed up. Fear will keep them behind the security perimeter, but they are serving up a scorched earth plan. It will be messy.
The Republicans, with the exception of a few, are just as feckless. Lindsey Graham rode Trump to re-election and then threw him under the bus. Pence the same. There was an interesting piece in the American Mind (Oct 19, 2020) by John Yoo, a constitutional law expert, a few months ago that argued that the President of the Senate (i.e., The Vice President) not only opens and counts the votes, but also judges the validity of those votes – decides between the competing slate of electors chosen by state legislators and governors, or to decide whether to count votes that remain in litigation. Pence also acknowledged election irregularities at a rally in Georgia on January 4th. He could have tossed out what he felt were fraudulent electors.
In the end America is about, for and controlled by Americans. Patriots will muster up enough nerve to fight back.