Category Archives: current events

All You Need to Know About Trump’s Defense — the “fight to the death”spirit of the “radical” Democratic leaders — and media’s ability to enflame

This post is, in part. an example of the power of media reports to enflame passions. I’d been thinking all along that it was a grave mistake for Democrats not to call witnesses. Every expert I admire felt the same way. I woke up late, to the notification of breaking news from Jeff Bezos and immediately had to update the post I began in the wee hours of last night/this morning:

I was glad the Democrats had decided to prove their case by using sworn, live testimony to demonstrate that the Trump defense team attacks on crucial evidence (e.g., their claim that Trump had no idea he was sentencing Pence to death by lynch mob when he tweeted to his followers to gently take care of him, that he was horrified by the violence he was enjoying on live TV and immediately tried to stop it, that the trial is not about Trump’s long, coordinated $54,000,000 Stop the Steal campaign but the meaning of the word “fight” on January 6, etc. ) were easily disprovable lies.

In a case where one side sticks to the facts and the other side keeps doubling down on lies, and calls the truthful presenters of evidence liars, a few strategic witnesses– Republicans who spoke to Trump during the riot, an aide instructed by Trump to stand down and stand by while Trump enjoyed the riot on TV, a member of the mob, a Capitol police officer, an aide in the room with Trump as he called people locked down in the Senate, pressuring them to block the certification while his crowd ran wild and he ignored repeated cries for help — is the only way correct the record, for history — if not to actually get 17 votes against the leader from his shameless cult of personality.

In hindsight I’m glad I missed the Democrats latest real-time display of spineless passivity (truly the principled Weimar Republic move, to back off when your unscrupulous enemy goes into a rage) and “sticking to the plan” no matter what strategy the enemy employs, no matter what the guaranteed outcome of not changing tactics.

I understand the Senate chamber became very ugly after the Democrats announced that Trump’s lawyers might miss their planes home, that they intended to continue fighting, with fact witnesses, to prove their case. Trump loves ugly, it’s as much his brand as fake gold. Ugly always plays to his advantage.

There was undoubtedly much outrage from Trump’s party of grievance, and no doubt more snarling, terrible threats to paralyze Joe Biden’s (and America’s) urgent agenda. Why not call Speaker of the House aspirant Kevin McCarthy as a hostile witness to deny under oath that Trump told him to fuck off during a shouting match when McCarthy called to ask Trump to call off the rioters? There would be nobody to block his subpoena the way Trump did for witnesses whose testimony could prove inconvenient, 130 times during his run. In time, the Supreme Court may rule that it was illegal for Trump to have done that, but why split hairs?

Instead, here you go, the end of the strong evidence-based fight and final surrender to the anti-fact party, sticking to the opinion that Trump won in a landslide, in the name of not dragging things out. Put this in the history books as an illustration, one screen of Bezos updates a few hours ago. It was this snapshot of apparent spineless capitulation by Democratic shot-callers that made my blood boil (read bottom to top):

To paraphrase Michelle Obama: when they go low, we make a strong, principled objection and then they lynch us, the bastards! We’ll repeat all of our strong, fact-based arguments again in closing, the ones that were all denounced as partisan lies by Trump’s hastily assembled legal team, and let the Senate vote as it will.

The truth, of course, was not all contained in the snapshot above, this article captures much more of the nuance of the debate within Democratic ranks. (again, sorry for Bezos’s pay wall).

The remainder of this post is from late last night/early this morning, when I still had a shred of hope the Democrats would actually fight like hell (Trump claims they always fight to the death, the truth is, he is the only one willing to have his followers fight to their deaths):

In the name of trying to save what was left of my sanity in these final days of American democracy, I decided to sit out Trump’s lawyers’ arguments yesterday. Their job today was simply to give a fig-leaf of cover to at least 35 Republicans to vote to acquit Donald J. Trump of orchestrating the riot at the Capitol to Stop the Steal. I knew they’d make desperate arguments, was fairly certain they would resort to lies and name-calling.

To be fair, Trump’s hastily assembled legal team have an impossible job actually countering the strong case presented that Donald Trump, after spending months, (and $50,000,000 in ad buys), claiming the rigged election he won in a landslide was stolen from him, after repeatedly calling for his followers to assemble on January 6, for a “wild” rally he funded with another $3,500,000 of donated funds [1], on the day the vote total would become official and binding, and fired them up with 70 minutes of outrage about the stolen sacred landslide victory, sent them to the Capitol to fight to Stop the Steal, then did nothing for hours as they rampaged, attacked police, killing one and wounding 140 others, and vandalized the Capitol as they called for traitors’ blood, including the obsequious Mike Pence’s.

I figured I’d let Mehdi Hasan, Glenn Kirschner, Heather Cox Richardson and the late night comedians give me the selected highlights and lowlights after the defense rested.

Then in the car with Sekhnet late in the afternoon, I heard some of the questions and “answers” provided by Trump’s crack legal team, to give cover to Republicans so they could acquit their disgraced leader with a clear conscience. I think these five minutes sum Trump’s defense up pretty well.

Freshman Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, graduate of prestigious Stanford University and then Yale Law School, submitted a question so brilliant, I am still not sure exactly what it means. He posed a Zen koan of a puzzler:

If the Senate’s power to disqualify is not derivative of the power to remove a convicted president from office, could the Senate disqualify a sitting president but not remove him or her from office?

Official Portrait of Senator Josh Hawley

(as his office Senate website notes, he and his wife are “the proud parents of two young children, Elijah, Blaise, and Abigail.”)

The president’s feisty new lead attorney, Michael van der Veen, was all over that clever, key question with his answer:

One more of van der Veen’s answers, responding to whether the ex-president’s claim that he’d won re-election in a landslide was a Big Lie, surely also greatly pleased his new boss, Mr. Trump. It is worth hearing in its entirety. Van der Veen reframed the question and told the nasty questioner in no uncertain terms what the real question was.

It won’t surprise you to learn that, according to Mr. van der Veen, the real perpetrators of the Big Lie are the impeachment managers, who claim, with zero evidence, that the Mr. Trump is a big liar with very deep pockets who organized, funded and whipped up an angry crowd with classic First Amendment speech. The riot had nothing to do with anything Mr. Trump said, in any way. And that’s the real issue before the Senate, zero evidence presented that anything the president said on January 6 was inciteful (which sounds just like “insightful”) of anything bad. It was pre-planned, as Democrats admit, so how could Trump’s protected free speech have had anything to do with it? Plus, he pointed out, the Democrats are the liars and cheaters who famously contest virtually every election, like they did in 2016. He did everything in his two and a half minutes but answer the question.

I’m glad I didn’t listen to the rest of this shit, most of it produced for dissemination to the faithful on Fox, Breitbart, OANN, Newsmax, Der Sturmer and so forth. But, as always, historian Heather Cox Richardson had the day’s best take on what happened in American politics — her report last night had some wild twists and turns and a few great surprises.

Subpoena Kevin McCarthy as a hostile witness, to verify, under oath, his screaming match with the ex-president during the riot, as Trump focused on stopping the steal and McCarthy snapped at him that he had to end the fucking riot, people were getting killed?

The statement explained: “When McCarthy finally reached the president on January 6 and asked him to publicly and forcefully call off the riot, the president initially repeated the falsehood that it was antifa that had breached the Capitol. McCarthy refuted that and told the president that these were Trump supporters. That’s when, according to McCarthy, the president said, ‘Well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are.’ ” (Her italics.)

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McCarthy indeed, shortly after Biden was inaugurated, made an urgent pilgrimage to Mar-a-Lago days later to kiss his boss’s ring and so on, but on the day in question, he tried to do the right thing. Make him admit that, during the riot, Trump told him “well, Kevin, I guess there are people much more upset about this stolen election than you are” .

Or, take what you imagine is the high road in a fight to the death where your determined enemy delights in the thought of drinking your blood. And has demonstrated its taste for it.

Tip of the hat to Nancy and Chuck Chuck Bo-Buck.

[1]

People involved in organizing the January 6 “Stop the Steal” protests that led to a deadly riot at the Capitol building received more than $3.5 million from the Trump campaign and its associated fundraising committees, a Wednesday report from the Center for Responsive Politics found. 

… BIG NUMBER: $771 million. That’s how much the Trump Make America Great Again Committee spent through a shell company called American Made Media Consultants LLC, OpenSecrets found. The New York Times noted in December that the LLC, which at one point counted Trump’s daughter-in-law and senior campaign advisor Lara Trump among its board members, has been criticized for deliberately concealing the recipients of campaign funds. Last summer, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC alleging that the Trump campaign violated campaign finance laws by “laundering” money through firms run by campaign officials.

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Lindsey Graham can let Donald go, but…

Lawyers/jurors Lyin’ Ted Cruz, Lindsey Graham and Mike Lee met with the president’s defense team yesterday to coordinate Trump’s defense strategy, as good impartial jurors/co-conspirators often do. Democrats have condemned the meeting as “inappropriate”. There appears to be little more that anyone can do to enforce “fairness” in an impeachment trial, as we are reminded over and over that impeachment is a political, not legal, process.

A criminal trial is much different than a political process in the Senate, where presidential supporters who voted that the whole thing was unconstitutional, and lost that motion, can still refrain from following the evidence (or even attending the trial, as many did yesterday, demonstrating their contempt for the process) based on that ephemeral, quasi-legal ground of inchoate “unconstitutionality”. They are also free to coordinate strategy with the defense team, something that would result in harsh penalties if they tried that in a court of law.

One difference between an impeachment and a trial in a court of law is that, in court, once a procedural objection is overcome, it’s done with, irrelevant, may not be considered in jury deliberations. Another difference — juries in criminal trials must listen to all the evidence and decide the case based on evidence presented or the lack of evidence. Neither of those things apply in an impeachment trial where jurors are under no such obligation, may listen to evidence or not, and may (and usually do) vote strictly based on political allegiance.

In a court of law there also that thing called perjury, which all of Mr. Trump’s biggest supporters know is a trap for a compulsive liar with impulse control issues forced to take an oath to tell the truth or repeatedly remember to invoke his privilege against self-incrimination.

So Trump is right not to be too worried about being convicted by his peeps in the Senate, no matter how chaotic and incoherent the improvised defense mounted by his third rate lawyers is. It’s the criminal cases he’s about to face that give private citizen Trump the Heebie Jeebies.

One expected criminal investigation, from the great state of Georgia, hit the news cycle yesterday. It relates to Trump’s several calls to Georgia officials (as well as Lindsey Graham’s, one presumes) to solicit their help in overturning the thrice-counted, duly certified electoral count in that state.

Fulton County DA Fani T. Willis began a criminal investigation into Trump’s calls to solicit conspiracy to commit election fraud under the Georgia Criminal Code.   She wrote a businesslike, thorough, letter to the Governor’s office instructing them to preserve all documentary evidence, including emails and texts, relating to the period between the election and January 2 when Raffensberger made the tape of Trump’s latest “perfect call”. 

In that recording (made by Raffensberger to protect himself) Trump violates every provision of the Georgia criminal law. The call is like a walk through all the elements of the crime, Trump ticked every box.  It’s hard to see any defense for the GOP’s strongman leader in the criminal trial. Mandatory minimum two year sentence, if convicted, if I recall correctly.  Let him be convicted, sentenced and appeal all the way up to Amy Coney Barrett.  If justice is served in court, he’ll be in prison in time to rant about the 2024 presidential campaign as a guest of the great state of Georgia.

[Fulton County District Attorney Fani T.] Willis, a Democrat, told state officials that her office will examine whether anyone illegally solicited election fraud, made false statements to state and local government officials, made threats, or participated in a criminal conspiracy as part of attempts to influence the election outcome.

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Of course, the timing of this totally unfair witch hunt, by a “colored” female partisan Democrat (pictured below), an obvious Trump-hater from the late John Lewis’s crime-infested anarchist jurisdiction, a hotbed of fraud that Trump claims helped Biden steal, by 11,799 fraudulent votes, the state from the rightfully elected Donald John Trump, is pretty goddamned suspicious.

Or maybe not– what say you, Lindsey?

Oh wait, actually, you could be called as a witness, or even indicted as a co-conspirator, since you also called Georgia elected officials on behalf of your guy, Mr. Trump, to try to convince ’em to do the right thing and toss those dirty Democrat votes.

Sad that in our nation of laws Congressional co-conspirators who knowingly stood on what they had to know was Trump’s Big Lie about a rigged and stolen elections, are not excluded from voting on the guilt or innocence of their partner in crime.

What we need in this impeachment trial are a few witnesses (how about Raffensberger and the Capitol Police officer who lost an eye to the MAGA mob?) to hammer home by their testimony the enormity of the crimes Mr. Trump and his followers committed since losing the presidency in November. Here’s a good analysis from Greg Sargent in today’s Washington Post — Democrats have one big weapon left against Trump. Will they use it?

I’m starting to fear that the next thing we’re going to see in our law and order nation are political assassinations committed by fanatics with nothing to lose, the only thing left to do on the way to the final triumph of the John Birch Society in America.

Quick Tour of Trumpist Resistance

The hallmark of Trumpism is a strong and repeated commitment to any lie that can help its cause. It used to be embarrassing for a president to be caught in a lie. That seems a long time ago. The new, well-worn norm is that as long as he didn’t lie under oath (and only a sucker would place himself in a “perjury trap” by agreeing to tell the truth if it didn’t benefit him) — fuck off and get over it, loser.

Impeachment managers today continue to try to convince 34% of a committed block of GOP obstructionists, as well as the American people, that a president who lies for months to inflame rage and finally incites a violent insurrection to overturn an election must be held accountable. The pundits all seem to agree that this is an exercise for the history books, for the midterm elections and possibly beyond. The smart money says that 17 Republicans, in the name of healing and looking forward, will not break ranks to convict their fearsome leader of wrongdoing.

Consider the Republicans’ united embrace of Trump’s right to any reality he chooses. It was seen in the weeks before their leaders, including Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, acknowledged Joe Biden as the president-elect. After the election McConnell soberly told the country that Mr. Trump has every right to do everything he thinks best to make sure that Biden didn’t win by cheating. It was seen as an act of betrayal for any Republican to acknowledge the fair counting of the ballots and the bipartisan certification of the vote in all 50 states.

Fast forward to after all the federal and state lawsuits contesting the election were dismissed, after all legal avenues to contesting an election Trump lost by 7,000,000 votes were closed. January 2, four days before the final certification of the votes by Congress:

From the Joint Statement of Senators Cruz, Johnson, Lankford, Daines, Kennedy, Blackburn, Braun, Senators-Elect Lummis, Marshall, Hagerty, Tuberville (note that Hawley, first among them to announce his intention to contest the certification, is not on this list):

“The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.”

This appears to be the cunningly worded work of clever lawyer and former Supreme Court clerk Lyin’ Ted Cruz. Note the key word “allegations”. We’re not saying that there was unprecedented voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities, we’re not saying there wasn’t — we’re just stating the indisputable truth that tens of millions of Americans honestly believe these things, these arguably unproven, allegedly baseless, allegations. [1].

The rest of the statement is peppered with suggestive lies. Although, admittedly, the “breadth and scope” of voter fraud is disputed (and virtually none was found by Trump’s Commission on Voter Fraud before it disbanded, nor by any of the many courts that dismissed Trump’s/RNC’s evidence-free claims of fraud), “by any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.“

Widespread public belief in these “allegations”, of course, has nothing whatsoever to do with a constantly repeated presidential lie about massive fraud or the $50,000,000 in advertising to convince people the election was stolen from Mr. Trump. In fact, Mr. Trump, in his speech on January 6, expressly and strongly denied spending a single dollar on any ads promoting this falsehood, to wit:

I did no advertising. I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that. Amy and everybody. We have some incredible supporters. Incredible. But we didn’t do anything. This just happened. Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said what are they there for? Sir, they’re there for you. We had nothing to do with it.

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So there!

“Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.” writes Cruz.

Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence of serious election fraud, had any existed. I love the lawyerly shot they take at the apparent betrayal of justice by the anti-Trump Supreme Court in refusing, twice, to even hear a case that could have thrown the election to Mr. Trump. The AG of Texas had every goddamned right to contest fake, anti-Trump votes in other states!

The above group of senators, now jurors in Trump’s impeachment trial, voted to contest the final, largely ceremonial, certification of Joe Biden as the president, even after the rioters ransacked the Capitol. As is their right, of course, based on evidence, suspicion or political expediency, it is not our place to question their motives, or their ability to be impartial jurors now.

After Trump was impeached on January 13th, Mitch McConnell seemed to unequivocally condemn him and the lies that had stoked the rage that led to the deadly attack on the Capitol, which he said Trump and other leaders provoked:

Then, because he’d refused to reconvene the Senate during the remainder of Trump’s term so that the article of impeachment could be delivered to the Senate and a trial scheduled during Trump’s remaining time in office, the tricky, “transactional” McConnell voted with 44 other Trump-supporting senators that the impeachment was now unconstitutional, since, after Biden’s inauguration, Mr. Trump was indisputably a private citizen and could no longer be removed from office. (Talk about unclean flippers, Mitch, you slimy bastard).

Trump’s defense team in the unconstitutional impeachment made an outstanding point in their answer to the charges, after observing:

“The 45th President of the United States performed admirably in his role as president, at all times doing what he thought was in the best interests of the American people.”

Indeed, Mr. Trump watched the riot unfold on live TV, tweeting a reminder to the rioters, during their attack, that Mike Pence lacked courage (hang the traitor!), then an hour or two later, tweeted a video telling them that he knew their pain, that the election had been stolen, that he loved them, that they were special. All admirable and in the best interests of the American people. No other president would have behaved any differently, if he truly thought his actions were in the best interests of the American people (ask Alan Dershowitz!).

They then came to the heart of the matter about Trump’s hundreds of arguably false and inflammatory statements about a rigged and stolen election:

“Insufficient evidence exists upon which a reasonable jurist could conclude that the 45th President’s statements were accurate or not, and he therefore denies they were false.”

See? There simply is no evidence — plus, a very strong denial! Therefore, he can’t be lying — and, even if he is, he strongly DENIES IT [2].

And on and on with the “I know you are, but what am I? you’ll never get 17 votes, losers, nyah, nyah!” defense.

It may be that under the RICO investigation the DOJ is planning to conduct into the organization and planning of the riot at the Capitol, some of the jurors who will soon vote to acquit Mr. Trump, along with some of the majority of House Republicans who voted to contest the election and against impeachment, will be investigated and indicted for their seemingly key roles in fomenting the insurrection.

It may be that, whatever their involvement or culpability, Trump patriots Hawley, Cruz, Tuberville, Graham, McCarthy, Brooks, Taylor Greene and co. will get a pass. After all, ladies and gentlemen, this is the United States of America, the greatest democracy Jesus ever personally blessed.

[1]

“The election of 2020, like the election of 2016, was hard fought and, in many swing states, narrowly decided. The 2020 election, however, featured unprecedented allegations of voter fraud, violations and lax enforcement of election law, and other voting irregularities.

“Voter fraud has posed a persistent challenge in our elections, although its breadth and scope are disputed. By any measure, the allegations of fraud and irregularities in the 2020 election exceed any in our lifetimes.

“And those allegations are not believed just by one individual candidate. Instead, they are widespread. Reuters/Ipsos polling, tragically, shows that 39% of Americans believe ‘the election was rigged.’ That belief is held by Republicans (67%), Democrats (17%), and Independents (31%).

“Some Members of Congress disagree with that assessment, as do many members of the media.

“But, whether or not our elected officials or journalists believe it, that deep distrust of our democratic processes will not magically disappear. It should concern us all. And it poses an ongoing threat to the legitimacy of any subsequent administrations.

“Ideally, the courts would have heard evidence and resolved these claims of serious election fraud. Twice, the Supreme Court had the opportunity to do so; twice, the Court declined.

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[2]

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Yet more senseless waste from the man who flushed billions down the toilet over the years in the name of his vanity

The Washington Post delineates a small bit of the massive chunk of taxpayer dollars that had to be spent because the provocative, lying grifter-in-chief, while bilking his own followers out of half a billion dollars in donations to “defend himself” after a “stolen election,” cost us all a similar amount — and counting — to protect against and repair damage that he did.

One of Trump’s greatest talents is flushing hundreds of millions of other people’s dollars down the toilet (while he famously nickels and dimes everyone who works for him). The reason he got that huge $70,000,000 tax refund that is now in dispute was because he lost a billion dollars in the preceding years while twisting from one bankruptcy to the next.

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By all means, and any means necessary, acquit this poor man, Mr. Cruz, Mr. Graham, Mr. Hawley, Tommy Tubaveale, on a shaky technicality if that’s all you’ve got, in his second baseless, unconstitutional, impeachment trial, because the many provable facts of his long, coordinated con (hundreds of Republican officials and appointees colluded with him throughout) to steal the election he claims was stolen from him are really not relevant when measured against the irrational rage of people who simply hate him for no reason, as they hate our freedom, as they hate all White Christians in this white, Christian nation.

Nothing to see here, boys and girls.

Although, personally, I’m riveted by the clear presentation of damning evidence at the impeachment trial. I’m looking forward to the final vote to acquit, GOP senators rising, one after another, to look into the cameras and pronounce, now and for all time … uh…

Three Exhibits for an (arguably) unconstitutional impeachment trial

note: you can “argue” anything, as we keep seeing from our litigious former president’s army of ever weaker lawyers.

I argue that these three statements by Donald Trump remove any ambiguity about the former president’s intent to incite the riot he provoked (according to Mitch McConnell) on January 6th.

As Joaquin Castro details months of Trump’s constant, angry lies about a “rigged election”, starting many months before the voting started (and amplified, as Eric Swalwell points out, by $50,000,000 in ads, the ad buys ending January 5th [1]), and reminds us of the armed gangs of Trump supporters who went, in the months before the riot at the Capitol, pursuant to that Big Lie, to STOP the counting of ballots in many places across the US, I was struck yesterday by these three statements by Mr. Trump, from the day of the riot.

Trump and his allies insist, to this day, that we will never know how prevalent the imagined electoral fraud was that swept the big baby out of office. Actually, we do know. There was very little voter fraud found anywhere. The former president’s lawsuits claiming fraud were dismissed, by the dozens, for lack of evidence of fraud. Even the former president’s gunsel/personal attorney/AG Bill Barr finally stated that there was no evidence of fraud on a scale that could have changed any election results.

Exhibit One:

A striking line from Trump’s 70 minute speech to the crowd he invited to DC for an organized January 6th protest he promised “will be wild,” just before the riot:

Say what you will about Donald Trump, he knows a thing or two about going by a very different set of rules.

Exhibit Two:

The text of Trump’s tweeted video two hours into the riot (after tweeting his disappointment at Mike Pence’s “lack of courage” [2]). At first, you think “there’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened” (note Yiddish-inflected syntax) refers to the riot at the Capitol he has spent months provoking. A second later you realize he is simply doubling down on his provocative lie, the only thing Trump knows how to do.

He didn’t know how people with COVID, who were not millionaires, felt about getting this scary, sometimes deadly disease, he doesn’t know how families felt when they couldn’t feed their children, or the terror of people finding themselves without health insurance during a deadly pandemic — but he did know exactly how his angry, armed supporters felt when they broke into the Capitol to hang Mike Pence and shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head [3].

Exhibit Three:

Trump tweet four hours into the riot:

“sacred landslide election victory,” y’all.

To the Trump party senators who intend to acquit their leader on a far-fetched constitutional technicality (that came about only because their party refused to reconvene the Senate in time), heed the words of your infallible leader, delivered to the crowd he exhorted to Stop the Steal:

Today, we see a very important event, though, because right over there, right there, we see the event that’s going to take place, and I’m going to be watching because history is going to be made. We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity. They’ll be ashamed. And you know what? If they do the wrong thing, we should never, ever forget that they did. Never forget.

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“We’re going to see whether or not we have great and courageous leaders or whether or not we have leaders that should be ashamed of themselves throughout history, throughout eternity. They’ll be ashamed.”

The People rest.

[1]

Always in character, Trump lied about this to the crowd that ransacked the Capitol on January 6:

I did no advertising. I did nothing. You do have some groups that are big supporters. I want to thank that. Amy and everybody. We have some incredible supporters. Incredible. But we didn’t do anything. This just happened. Two months ago, we had a massive crowd come down to Washington. I said what are they there for? Sir, they’re there for you. We had nothing to do with it.

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[2]

“Mike Pence didn’t have the courage to do what should have been done to protect our Country and our Constitution, giving States a chance to certify a corrected set of facts, not the fraudulent or inaccurate ones which they were asked to previously certify. USA demands the truth!” Trump wrote at 2:24 p.m. ET as the mob of his supporters was breaching the building.

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[3] I transcribed that from the section of the 13 minute videotape played by the impeachment managers. There’s more, including a line pirated from from Bill “I feel your pain” Clinton:

“I know your pain. I know you’re hurt. We had an election that was stolen from us. It was a landslide election and everyone knows it… But you have to go home now,” Trump said in the pre-recorded video that was quickly locked by Twitter “due to a risk of violence.” “We have to have peace. We have to have law and order. We have to respect our great people in law and order. We don’t want anyone hurt. It’s a very tough period of time. There’s never been a time like this where such a thing happened where they take it away from all of us… This was a fraudulent election but we can’t play into the hands of these people. We have to have peace. So go home. We love you. You’re very special.”

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GOP Narrow Framing, personal anecdote

As former president Trump’s legal team and his party begin to argue that it is unconstitutional to impeach a president once his party has run out the constitutional clock on an impeachment trial, and that anything the president might have said that made certain irrational people act violently against elected officials, even if seemingly in response to his exhortations, was within his protected First Amendment right to free speech, I have a personal anecdote that is directly on point. I’ll try to set it out in a flash for you.

When I was thirty my younger sister got married. I was the best man. There is a photo of me in my rented tuxedo making my ironic, prophetic toast welcoming my brother-in-law to the family. Behind me in the photo the caterer, also in a tuxedo, if I recall correctly, is glaring at me. Not a fan of irony, perhaps, I don’t know. A short time later the caterer was pounding me with his fists, trying to bash my face in.

Afterwards my parents took the caterer’s side in this dispute. My disrespect toward the caterer had, understandably in their view, justified the caterer in his strong conviction that I needed to be punched in my smart fucking mouth a few times. This fight, clearly, took place long before I began trying to practice a form of ahimsa, consciously refraining from harmful actions as much as I can.

In my own defense, I had no idea the caterer was an off-duty cop. Had I known perhaps I’d have chosen a less inflammatory way of telling him to buzz off than the one I used. In hindsight, I see how disrespectful it was of me to tell the officer to suck my dick. I’m still, more than thirty years later, not certain it gave him the right to physically assault me, but that’s not our concern here.

A few days after the wedding (the party was amazingly not interrupted by my loud fist fight with the cop, the band drowned us out) my parents were still in a rage because, in their view, I had deliberately tried to ruin my sister’s wedding. I was angry too. It seemed to me too evident to dispute that the caterer, at the moment he began trying to bash my face in, was at least as culpable as I was in the ugly confrontation. My parents disagreed. It had been 100% my fault, no question. The caterer was a lovely man, I was a violent, enragingly provocative thug, as they told me several times. After a few days of a sickening stand-off I went to confront my parents about this, to try to set the record straight.

They were defensive, sticking to their guns. I was a provocative, irrationally angry, violent-tongued person. I had no right, in any universe, to tell the nice man to suck my dick. My explanation, whatever it was, was beside the point. Once I said that to him he was within his rights to charge me, get me up on his hip and begin throwing punches into my face as hard as he could.

My explanations bounced off my parents like Jewish space lasers off a kryptonite force field. Like the caterer’s punches to my smart face, which landed on my forearms as I continued to provocatively curse at him like the pugnacious potty mouthed asshole I’d always been.

Nothing I said could make them see any part of the unfortunate confrontation any differently. My father was mostly quiet, letting my mother do most of the heavy lifting. When he finally spoke, it was to calmly deliver the death blow to my arguments.

“You’re leaving out the most important part of the whole thing,” my father said confidently, holding the trump card that would cancel out all of my arguments. I walked into his trap.

“You had no right to be in the kitchen, so whatever happened after that, was completely your fault,” said my father with icy calm.

Talk about narrow framing.

I had permission to be in the kitchen, from the caterer himself, earlier in the evening, when he told me to just go into the kitchen to get something I’d asked him for.

No matter. You had no right to be in the kitchen.

There is nothing like a stubbornly narrow frame to frustrate an adversary. Frame any issue in a narrow enough legal strait jacket, and hold fast to that framing, and you can eliminate any discussion of the facts, the merits, drama, nuance, culpability, incitement, escalation, etc. from any story.

Did the president stoke escalating anger by constantly lying about a stolen, fraudulent election for months, invite his followers to a wild rally to #Stop the Steal on the day the election was going to be officially certified, exhort them to go down to the Capitol to STOP the STEAL, to TAKE THEIR STOLEN COUNTRY BACK? Did he watch the riot on TV for hours, refusing to take panicked calls from the locked down Capitol, before reluctantly allowing the National Guard in to restore order? Did he finally tell his rampaging followers to go home now, that they were right to be angry about the stolen election, that he loved them?

All irrelevant, you see. Our position is that it is clearly unconstitutional to hold a trial for a president who has already left office. Y’all know that. Y’all know that! Even if you somehow twist it and get a 51-50 vote that the constitution allows this outrage, you’re punishing free speech in an insane, partisan political stunt motivated by irrational hatred for an innocent man whose only “crime” was making America great again!

After my father pulled his Bill Barr-like parlor trick with the flimsy trump card that he claimed foreclosed all further discussion, I grew more frustrated. I laid hands on my father with violent intent for the only time in my life. Actually, I laid one finger on him, smartly across his nose, to demonstrate the difference between verbal assault and a physical one.

The cop caterer was perhaps within his rights to tell me to eat shit and die, or to go fuck myself, or that I should suck his dick, but not to start grunting and trying to punch me in the face over and over. My father was unconvinced by my demonstration, though he was now outraged too, began bellowing threats from his couch, and as my mother screamed “suck my dick! suck my dick!” over and over I took my leave of my unreasonable, angry parents.

This pathetic scene is basically what is going to be playing out in the Senate the next few days, by all appearances.

Jeff Bezos — GENIUS monetizer!

I wrote this sometime last week and forgot about it. Since then Jeff Bezos stepped aside to let his handpicked successor, the sassy Mr. Jassy, become CEO of the world’s most lucrative business. Bezos, perhaps the greediest prick in the world, has become my image (along with supremely smug Facebook boss Mark Zuckerberg) for what’s wrong with the neoliberal “Free Market.” Like philanthropist/monopolist Bill Gates, these guys have made a career of crushing or buying out anyone seeking to do anything similar to what they did. As they went, an army of lawyers fought anti-trust lawsuits and brought other lawsuits to crush as many people as necessary to maximize their already unimaginable wealth and power.

And again, the personal is political. Think of any tyrannical personality type you have known. Were they ever generous? In my experience, taking from you, making you surrender something, is as important to them as whatever they gain. Bezos, with his $70,000,000,000 (Billion) in pandemic profits, has long refused to let his workers unionize. Why should unskilled workers making a generous, voluntarily paid $15/hr. in warehouse sweatshops tell Bezos how much personal profit he can make from the genius money machine he built exploiting the laziness of American shopping addicts? It’s unAmerican! No Robber Baron would have stood for it, neither will Jeff.

Here’s what I wrote the other day:

A friend, given the option to give a gift subscription when she purchased one, signed me up for a Washington Post digital subscription. I’m glad to have another news source on my phone, particularly one that, like the NY Times, breaks important investigative stories from time to time.

Whatever else we may say about these newspapers and the status quo enforcing beliefs of their wealthy owners, they occasionally do very important work. I installed the Washington Post app on my phone, which buzzed at 9:18 pm to alert me to important “breaking” news, to wit:

Very important to have this crucial, aggravating news beamed to me at 9 pm, with a notification beep to interrupt whatever else I was using my phone for, in case I missed the earlier news conference during which Nancy Pelosi reported her discomfort serving with House Member “enemies within” who actively support the former president’s baseless conspiracy theory about a stolen election and his attempt to violently nullify the stolen election

For some reason, the Washington Post reports, Pelosi had no healing words towards her colleagues who staunchly oppose Trump’s impeachment (on transparently bogus “constitutional grounds” mind you). Pelosi is upset that several of her most extreme and defiant Trumpist colleagues appear to have been involved in the planning and support of the violent insurrection, in addition to mockingly spreading COVID-19 to colleagues during the siege and lockdown, refusing to wear masks until a fine was eventually imposed (to be taken directly from their paychecks), and who now refuse to go through a metal detector put in place to prevent handguns from being brought to the floor of Congress by these same violence-defending extremists.

Who would have known any of this without that innovative genius Jeff Bezos and his state of the art Artificial Intelligence? Jeff Fucking Bezos, among the greediest and most selfish pieces of shit on the planet, shining a light into the darkness where democracy has slinked off to die. (“Democracy dies in darkness” was a Bezos innovation after he bought the newspaper).

Leaving no space unmonetized that can enhance his “brand” and increase his already obscene wealth, at the expense of everyone else, Bezos tirelessly soldiers on. His cause? Being the first man to a trillion dollars in personal wealth. Hopefully I can opt out of these “notifications”– though knowing the thoroughness of the obsessive control freak Bezos, probably not…

WaPo zombie executive editor being interviewed by a zombie journalist on the Clinton News Network:

Now do you see what Trump is talking about?

Back to February 8th:

There was a nice article in today’s New York Times that gives some more insight into the calculating, predatory business practices of this great man who has stepped to the side (as the shit seems likely to hit the fan for him and other billionaire tech anti-trust law evaders) to spend more time on his “philanthropy” (I wouldn’t be surprised if he donates $1,000,000,000 to causes near and dear to him!) and his plans to monetize space travel.

While Amazon has always been a super rapacious company with tentacles in everything lucrative, why dwell on the small stuff, like the media smear campaign Bezos’s public relations department launched against a worker seeking health safety measures in the warehouse where he worked when the pandemic was first raging out of control? After Amazon fired they guy they set a media hit team after him to discredit the loser malcontent in the eyes of the public. It’s not like 20,000 Amazon workers came down with COVID-19 due to the highly infectious work conditions. Oh wait, that’s the number the NY Times reported today. Hey, shit happens, we’re all humans…

The personal is political. Would you expect generosity from Jeff Bezos? Only if he was able to bask in the gratitude of the recipient, I suppose. But generosity like acknowledging that his vast fortune is built on the hard work of his underpaid workers, subject to his whims about what is best for them? Not bloody likely. I’ll take my multibillionaires with a little more concern for the people they exploit.

Fuck off, Jeff, and thanks for the considerate notification beeps you keep sending to my phone alerting me to things I already know.

Belief Trumps “facts”

From my father’s “jokes that killed vaudeville” collection — husband of wife who catches him busy in bed with a prostitute — “who are you going to believe, darling, me or your lying eyes?” Our most recent former president mirthlessly cracked the same “joke” when he told his followers: “don’t believe what you see and hear. Believe me, (for I cannot tell a lie.)”

Actually, it was more explicit than that. Trump’s lies were the entire point of the exercise. If you lie enough, consistently, brazenly, steadily, no matter how many times you are caught– well, then you WIN. Lying is not a crime unless you’re stupid enough to take an oath not to commit perjury. The so-called truth is nothing but a thing that weak, stupid losers cling to because they suck!

As every pious Christian knows, if you believe, you go to heaven. If you refuse to believe, it’s hellfire for eternity, sinner.

The most dangerous legacy of Tump is the now common and mainstream elevation of irrational beliefs to irrefutable debate points superior to demonstrable facts. The patriots who spontaneously stormed the Capitol a month ago honestly believed a powerful cabal of corrupt Jews, Blacks, Muslims, Mexican rapists, predatory transsexuals, child molesters, Satanic child cannibals and others had stolen the election to illegally take over the government.

Trump didn’t invent the Big Lie, of course, the Nazis did, and demonstrated its dependable value to politicians willing to use it. We’ve had our American version of it here for decades. In televised debates we had decades of a scientist, representing the overwhelming consensus of virtually every climate scientist vs. a paid public relations spokesperson working for the oil company who did the original research on global warming, promoting “climate skepticism” and so on. Who did better, the pencil necked egghead with his “facts” or the impeccably prepared paid spokesman with his even more compelling focus-group tested “beliefs”? We report, you decide.

Trump didn’t invent the maddening “I know you are but what am I?” technique, but he turned it from n-word laced bar room muttering (and these boys don’t mince that “n-word”, son) into a mainstream springboard for actionable reality. Looking back, the end of the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 was a death knell to fact-based reality — broadcasters no longer need to give equal (or any) time for someone to refute even the most radically insane, inflammatory, lying position expressed at length on commercial media.

Which brings us to Mitch McConnell’s “loony” Republican It-Girl Marjorie Taylor Greene [1], who got a standing ovation from 199 of her fellow-traveler colleagues in the House after she courageously admitted, during a Republicans-only session, that there had been a terrorist attack on September 11, 2001 after all and that the dead children at two of our most infamous recent school massacres were not paid crisis actors. The same day she tweeted that she will never back down and claimed to her GOP colleagues she is being “crucified” (like our Lord Himself) for things she may have said or written long ago, things she — well, in her beautiful phrase:

The seamless incoherence of these new American folk heroes is what I love, if I may ironically use that overused l-word. Greene regrets that she was allowed to believe things that weren’t true? Already we have a menacing scapegoat waiting in the wings– WHO allowed her to believe these regrettable things (probably powerful fucking Jews, no?)?

Or did she regret that she “would ask questions about them and talk about them?” Better, after all, to keep a secret conspiracy theory secret until the perpetrators of the vast Satanic child sex cabal are all caught and publicly executed…

She added, to be fair and balanced while expressing her regrets, that the media is just as guilty as Q-Anon of spreading “truth and lies to divide us.”

Of course, it’s possible that the self-proclaimed “worst nightmare” for the unAmerican Democrat [sic] child blood-drinkers is simply lying about her “regrets”. She repeated incendiary lies throughout her campaign, has repeated them since becoming a member of Congress. She expressed “regret” to a standing ovation of a Congressional cohort that insisted in a huge majority (and these players never recant), that Trump had every right to break over two hundred years of precedent to refuse the peaceful transition of power by hotly contesting the certification of a stolen election he had actually won in a landslide.

Her party (with only 11 dissenters) defended her from this attempted crucifixion, after her expression of, eh, regret (not a bone of regret thrown to the fucking Jews who operate that giant, deadly space laser that started the deadly fire in California. Personally, I’m not satisfied with her “explanation” but we rarely are, people like me…).

Meanwhile, Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) who unforgivably stated what is obvious to most Americans:

“On January 6, 2021 a violent mob attacked the United States Capitol to obstruct the process of our democracy and stop the counting of presidential electoral votes. This insurrection caused injury, death and destruction in the most sacred space in our Republic.

“Much more will become clear in coming days and weeks, but what we know now is enough. The President of the United States summoned this mob, assembled the mob, and lit the flame of this attack. Everything that followed was his doing. None of this would have happened without the President. The President could have immediately and forcefully intervened to stop the violence. He did not. There has never been a greater betrayal by a President of the United States of his office and his oath to the Constitution.

“I will vote to impeach the President.”

escaped censure, and being stripped of her position in the House, by her party in a secret vote.

Here are a few of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 199 defenders in the House defending the rising Republican star:

…On Thursday, House Republicans rushed to her defense. “We’ve all said things we regret,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), top Republican on the Judiciary Committee.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-Tex.) protested the proceedings by forcing a vote to adjourn. “We shouldn’t be wasting the time of this body attacking a member of this body,” he said.

Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) disowned Greene’s rhetoric, but what he really found “sad” and “unprecedented” was that Democrats weren’t giving her “due process.”

Rep. Ted Budd (R-N.C.) informed Democrats that “today is really about one party single-handedly canceling a member of the other party because of something said before that member was even elected.”

source

The beauty of any intractable asshole is their total refusal to ever admit they did anything to make amends about. Greene got into office, and achieved superstar fame, by spouting hate and unapologetically appealing to violent anger. She is currently the Republican party’s victim-in-chief, carrying the heavy cross of her idol, persecuted martyr Donald J. Trump. How did she do at the news conference afterwards?

Republicans defended Greene with absurd parallels. They attacked Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) for past anti-Semitic statements — omitting the crucial distinction that Omar, after Democrats roundly condemned her words, said, “Anti-Semitism is real and I am grateful for Jewish allies and colleagues who are educating me on the painful history of anti-Semitic tropes. … I unequivocally apologize.”

Greene, by contrast, remained unrepentant. On Friday, she held a celebratory news conference, again refusing to recant, or apologize for, her violent and anti-Jewish words and gestures.

Would she apologize for advocating the execution of Pelosi?

“I don’t have to,” she said, calling for the journalist to apologize instead.

Would she disavow her endorsement of putting “a bullet to the head” of Pelosi?

Accusing the questioner of lying, she replied: “That’s your problem and that’s how we end news conferences.” She walked away.

source

Jesus Christ, we Jews and Italians are so fucking unforgiving! Every threatener of gun violence to defend liberty would do the same if she was confronted by a lying journalist. Who among us has not wanted to shoot a nosy enemy reporter in the fucking face? I mean, let he who is without sin fire the first AK-47 burst into a crowd of paid crisis actor kindergarten kids. As for repudiating even our ugliest statements? Not my problem. After all, “we’ve all said things we regret.” Take a cue from Jesus, fuckers.

Here is a fun, fact-filled account (by Crooked Media) of the near unanimous Republican defense of their It-Girl, popular intractable hate-monger Marjorie Taylor Greene.

[1]

Greene has endorsed the killing of numerous high-profile Democrats. She helped moderate a Facebook page featuring death threats against them. Just before the election, she declared that if Democrats won, it would destroy “freedom,” which can only be won back “with the price of blood.” Greene also helped instigate the insurrection, heralding the event as the GOP’s “1776 moment.”

…Greene did condemn the assault after it happened. But, importantly, she has since kept on feeding the ideology that inspired it.

In an extraordinarily deranged Twitter thread, Greene said that the Democratic caucus is “filled with” lawmakers who “cheered on” the destruction of cities, sleep with “our greatest enemy” and are out to “destroy Republicans, your jobs, our economy, your children’s education and lives, steal our freedoms, and erase God’s creation.”

Let’s not mince words: This is a veiled exhortation to supporters to keep up the violent warfare against Democrats. If the threat Democrats represent is as she depicted it, what else could possibly constitute an adequate response?

source

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s impressive Gerrymandered victory in November 2020

My first question is, obviously, how the hell did she know about our deadly space laser? Is nothing sacred?

I was curious to find out more about the wide margin of victory Trump’s “future Republican star” enjoyed in becoming a Representative from Georgia’s deep red, eight year-old 14th District. She won in a landslide, it turns out, crushing her opponent by 50 points.

I read a long, sad piece about her idealistic Democratic opponent, 35 year-old political novice Kevin Van Ausdal, which describes how he was literally broken by the onslaught from the fierce Taylor Greene and her militant, threatening supporters [1]. It made me curious about who she wound up running against in November 2020. Wikipedia fills in the details:

Greene finished in first place in the primary election and faced John Cowan in the runoff election.[21] Greene defeated Cowan to win the nomination on August 11. Greene was considered an overwhelming favorite to win the seat in the general election, as the 14th typically votes heavily Republican.[22] The 14th has a Cook Partisan Voting Index of R+27, making it the 10th most Republican district in the nation and the third most Republican district in the Eastern Time Zone. Among Georgia’s congressional districts, only the neighboring 9th district is more Republican. Since the 14th’s creation in 2012, no Democrat has won more than 30 percent of the vote.[23] Trump carried the 14th with 75 percent of the vote in 2016, his eighth-best performance in the nation.[24] On the day after Greene’s runoff victory, Trump tweeted his support for her, describing Greene as a “future Republican Star” who “is strong on everything and never gives up – a real WINNER!”[25]

Greene was expected to face Democratic IT specialist Kevin Van Ausdal, but he withdrew from the race on September 11, 2020. This left Greene unopposed for the general election, though the district is so heavily Republican that any Democratic challenger would have faced very long odds.[26][27][28]

On September 3, 2020, Greene shared a meme to her Facebook page depicting herself holding an AR-15 style rifle next to a collage of pictures of Democratic representatives Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib. Greene claimed that it was time for “strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart”. The caption underneath the images read “Squad‘s worst nightmare.”[29] House Speaker Nancy Pelosi described the meme as a “dangerous threat of violence,” and Omar demanded that the meme be deleted after claiming it had already triggered death threats.[30] In response to questions from Forbes about whether the meme was a threat, a spokesperson for the Greene campaign called the suggestion “paranoid and ridiculous” and a “conspiracy theory”.[31] Facebook deleted the meme the following day for violating its policies on inciting violence, prompting Greene to claim that Democrats were “trying to cancel me out before I’ve even taken the oath of office”.[32]

source 

Kevin Van Ausdal, who withdrew as a candidate on September 11th (out of fear of violent extremists and horror at how ugly the campaign had become), got 25% of the vote two months later, from Georgians who simply wanted to vote against Taylor Greene.

So the future Republican star won by a whopping majority, about as large as Trump’s landslide margin in Georgia’s 14th District back in 2016.

On the other hand, she ran unopposed in a beautifully gerrymandered district that had always voted at least 70% Republican since its creation in 2012. America the beautiful, y’all.

[1]

My apologies for this link, which will probably lead to a paywall at uber-capitalist Jeff Bezos’s Washington Post. It was a fine article, but Jeff, who made $70,000,000,000 so far during the pandemic, does not leave a penny on the table, as he proved again by taking the tips of gig workers (“independent subcontractors”) hired to make deliveries for Amazon in their own vehicles, and using the confiscated tips to pay their “salaries”. Cost him $61,000,000 to settle that case, about a dime to Jeff — (plus, not to worry, not a penny came out of his pocket). Leave me a comment if you’re interested and I’ll send you a copy of the article, cut and pasted, subject to not getting a restraining order from the world’s greediest genius/predator...

Here’s a taste, from the link above:

But they all agreed that ignoring Greene was not an option, so they began drafting the statement and emailing versions to Kevin, who kept suggesting revisions that made it softer, thinking he had made it harsher.

“He needs to be ready,” Vinny told Ruth on one of their daily video calls.

“I don’t know what it’s going to take to get him to use the kind of language we need him to use,” Ruth told Vinny. “It’s a very big shift for him.”

“How’s it going?” she said to Kevin on Day 21 of the campaign, trying to sound upbeat as they began to rehearse the draft statement.

Kevin said he had been trying to stay relaxed. He had a cold.

“Okay, I know you’re not feeling well, but the good news is, sometimes when you need to push through a barrier, the best time to do that is when you’re sick, because your defenses are down,” Ruth said. “We’re not going to take you anywhere horrible.”

“We’re good,” Kevin said.

“Okay, I want you to breathe deeply,” Ruth began. “A lot of your tonality will have to go down. There will be times when you’re speaking about what Marjorie has done and you’ll be angry. You’ll need to be angry.”

More often in his life, Kevin could not afford to be angry. His voice tended to swing up, a tone he found helpful in defusing conflicts in his job at a financial services company, which had enabled his first real stability as an adult. He’d only recently bought the tan split-level where he lived with his wife and 1-year-old daughter. Now it had a “Save the American Dream” sign in the flower bed by the mailbox, one of the stories of his rise into the middle class he’d imagined telling voters about when he first started running.

Letting Go of the Past

The idea that it’s necessary to let go of the painful past is very big in the self-help world. “It is never too late to have a happy childhood,” we are told, among other encouragements to let go of the bad things in the past and gratefully embrace the many beautiful things about our present lives. As a general principle, letting go, not constantly reliving the hurts we’ve experienced is healthy, essential to living our best lives and to protecting our loved ones. The devil, as always, is in the details of how we actually do this.

Letting go of hurts of the past is a theme I chew on frequently, having a decent amount in the past to let go of. I feel my daily connection to history, for better or worse, and my personal stories, funny and terrible, which support my view of the world. Seeing the value of these memories, I am reluctant to simply let the past go. I feel like there are lessons in these stories, endlessly repeated; learning we need to extract and digest to move forward. It’s important to view the past in its complexity, considering the terrible things beside the inspiring ones. My once-large family was massacred back in 1943, during dark times in Ukraine and Belarus; pruned down to a very small family that lives and prospers today in the USA and in Israel. Both things are equally true.

I think of this theme of letting the past go in personal terms every time I encounter how hard it has always been for me to accept the the loss of a longtime friend. I understand that certain estrangements are inevitable, and we can see them coming most of the time, but also, a world of associations and shared memories are irretrievably lost each time. Each loss of a longtime friend is a little rehearsal for death.

Although I know the reasons for it, it bothers me each time that I could not find a way to reconcile with a couple of old friends and fond acquaintances in recent years. You could say that our lives are the stories we have lived, have told ourselves are true. People come to different conclusions about what is most important in life. Sadly, sharp differences of opinion (accompanied by drifting apart, taking friendship for granted and fading empathy) can prove insurmountable obstacles to a mutually beneficial relationship.

This leads me to once again consider how personal the political actually is, (political views are based entirely on our personal feelings about the world around us), and how political the personal can be, for the same reason. I hope to work through this “letting go” idea concisely today.

There are at least two ways of letting go of things that hurt us, as true in personal life as in political life. We can forgive and forget, using love to move forward without the need to rehash everything that hurt us in detail. This is a kind of Christian forgiveness, turning the other cheek when we are struck, as Jesus, The Prince of Peace, advised his followers to do [1]. Another way to let things go is to separate ourselves from people who hurt us repeatedly. This second way involves making hard decisions about who is accountable for what and what, realistically, is likely to happen going forward if we simply forgive and forget. Once we have done this, it is easier to let go of that troubled part of the past, though, of course, it is not as simple as that.

The difficulty of letting go of strong feelings is most easily seen in the context of physical violence against us, which is often a criminal matter best dealt with by a court of law. If someone beats us to a pulp and then asks us to please let go of our anger against them for their mistake, are we required by any moral power in the universe to agree to this? In the case of violent physical assault, there is an understandable emotional limit to a human ability to “let go of the past,” no matter how compelling a general case there is to be made for the idea.

The advice to let go of the pain and forgive can preempt the idea that you have a right not to be violently assaulted by someone who then tells you to get over it. There is a process you have to go through, once you are victimized, to first live with your rightful feelings and then separate yourself from that feeling of helplessness in the face of torment.

When a MAGA mob ransacked the Capitol recently chanting “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!!!” elected officials went into hiding from rioters calling for the execution of one of Trump’s most loyal sidekicks for the crime of not overturning an election he was powerless to overturn. There were also calls to shoot Nancy Pelosi in the head. During the several hours of rioting (as federal troops were told to “stand down and stand by” as Mr. Trump watched it unfold on TV) NY Representative Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez wound up taking shelter in Katie Porter’s office where they barricaded furniture in front of the door to keep the lynch mob out. Ocasio-Cortez recently revealed that she had been a victim of sexual assault in the past. Imagine how extra “triggering” a shouting mob kicking at your door might be if you had been violently assaulted in the past.

As a general principle we might all agree that nobody should ever be placed in the situation of having to barricade themselves into a room to try to protect themselves from a violent lynch mob. We might all agree to that, I think (when I say “we”, obviously I’m not talking about members of the lynch mob and those very fine people who support the mob’s right to violent anger.)

Here is a seemingly subtle thing that seems irrefutable to me now, coming back to the personal. If someone in your life is unsympathetic to your situation once in a while you can (and should) indeed let it go, overlook it, be generous, write it off to their being preoccupied with their own problems. We can’t all be empathetic all the time. It is different, and a sign of trouble, if the person is repeatedly unsympathetic and also quickly turns to blaming you for any challenging situation you find yourself in. If this happens with any regularity you will find yourself in a destructive cul du sac of contentiously conflicting perspectives. In my experience this self-perpetuating conflict can often be irreconcilable, since each party is certain that they are being mistreated by the other. If you can make no progress toward getting the other person to see the harmfulness of their stance, it is time to hop out of that deadly dead end.

It matters little what the other person’s argument is against your feelings, particularly if the argument is aggressive, angry and unyielding. Once you see that the other person will never yield, won’t concede anything to your expressed feelings … it’s time to go. Someone who is capable of empathy, and self-reflection, and who really cares about you, will find a way around their need to be right, in the interest of making a lasting peace and ensuring a mutual future. Again, true friends are very rare, especially when times are toughest. You should try not to fight about things, most things are not worth it. Once the fight takes on an abusive feeling — time to go.

As in personal life, so it is in politics. We are being told that Trump’s refusal to accept the will of the voters, his insistence that, in spite of bipartisan agreement about the fair election, and all of his lost voter-suppression and voter-fraud lawsuits, he won in a “landslide”, his raging lies about a “stolen election” that led to a rampage that could have resulted in the deaths of dozens (“only five” died directly, two Capitol Police officers took their own lives shortly after– three more dead than BENGHAZI… hmm…) including the executions of Pence, Pelosi and others, is something to “get over”. In the name of unity and healing, you understand.

As in politics, so it is in personal life. If someone beats you up, then asks forgiveness, then beats you up again, then asks forgiveness — what is the proper response? An understandably human response is to mercilessly kick the shit out of him next time he raises his hand to you, if you have the power to do so. Another, much more practical, response is walking away from the person, not letting them within punching and kicking distance. In either scenario, you accept the hard truth that this person who claims to love you is a violently angry person who can’t help taking it out on you when he feels up against it all. In no case is it a healthy response to simply get over it, until it happens next time.

Countless spouses and mates stay in these kinds of abusive relationships, being profusely apologized to by someone who will, in time, beat the shit out of them again. People stay in these kind of abusive relationships for many reasons, mostly related to fear and a feeling of not really deserving any better from their mate. Every person who stays convinces themselves of the same thing: my mate loves me, it’s just understandable human weakness that leads to the abuse. “I would be a monster not to forgive, look at those tears… ”

We can, and should, healthily let go of many things from the past that trouble us. Awareness of abuse isn’t one of them. The only thing to learn to do about abuse is to recognize it when it arises (it is not always as obvious as a fist to the face) and take steps to get far away from the perpetrator when it persists. Being out of harm’s way is the first necessary step to letting it go. The rest, friends, is much trickier, but we will never get to it while still in the cycle of endlessly replenished anger.

[1]

How often this Christian turning of the other cheek is done in reality, and how effective it may be if one manages to do it, are separate questions. For one thing, responding to mistreatment with love presumes the presence of the Divine in the person who struck your cheek.