We waited until you losers lost

Recall that immediately after McConnell, McCarthy, Graham and other top Republicans publicly denounced Trump’s riot on January 6th, Congress went on a brief break.   The House drafted articles of impeachment designed to make sure the insane, riot inciting bastard was disqualified from ever running for president again.   McConnell waited a few days before returning to Washington to accept the articles of impeachment officially, right before Biden was sworn in.

It’s too late, McConnell solemnly argued as the impeachment trial began, Trump has already left office, we can’t impeach a former president, as a procedural matter the charges must be dismissed.   Mueller had concluded after a long investigation that though the evidence of obstruction of justice against Trump was strong, that he was prevented by a DOJ memo from recommending prosecution of a sitting president.  The proper venue for doing that, he wrote, was Congress, which was, sadly, controlled by Trump’s flying monkeys.   McConnell intoned during the quick second impeachment trial that the former president could be investigated, indicted and tried for any crimes he may have committed, now that he’d left office.  After the four day rope-a-dope, Republican senators acquitted Trump on the technicality that the House had not served the articles of impeachment in a timely manner.  More Republicans voted to impeach a Republican president than at any impeachment in US history (generally party line votes) but too few to make sure Trumpie was done, and facing criminal charges as an ordinary corrupt oligarch, or mob boss, in private life might.

It is striking how quickly law enforcement grabs people with no power and how carefully it proceeds against the powerful.  If you are an anonymous driver with a broken tail light, there is reasonable cause to legally pull you over, and if you are not judicious in how you express fear of police who are almost never held accountable for overkill, you can be legally killed, for a variety of standard reasons.   If you are a wealthy white male scofflaw with an army of lawyers, and a political machine behind you, you can enjoy absolute freedom for years before anyone comes looking at you for crimes everyone knows about.

Now, after the most recent J6 hearing, we know why the Stop the Steal January 6 organizers never got a permit for a march from the rally at the Ellipse to the Capitol.  Trump was hiding the planned march so he could argue that it was just a spontaneous outpouring of love for him and the police that sent thousands barrelling down Pennsylvania Avenue to Stop the Steal and hang the disloyal coward Mike Pence so that president pro tem Chuck Grassley could do the right thing and throw the presidential decision to the House, which under a never used rule, could install Trump in spite of his huge electoral loss.  The hundred or so out-numbered police who wound up in the hospital?  Never mind them, the riot was about patriotism, law and order, freedom from tyranny!  As we see time after time, a coherent narrative is unnecessary when passionate feelings are in play.

Notice how none of these people testifying to the January 6th Committee, people who offered damning testimony about the fevered machinations of Trump and several crazy dead-enders plotting to keep the Apprentice star in power after he lost, NOT ONE, came forward while illegal plans were being hatched, during the second impeachment trial or at any time since.  One and a half years later, Patsy Baloney needed public pressure from Liz Cheney and a subpoena to become a frank, candid, supremely careful witness to weeks of Trump’s insane conspiracy theorizing and illegal actions planning.  

True enough some of these shocked patriots, both White House insiders and journalists, published tell-all books, several of them best sellers, which laid out much of the sordid story of an unhinged loser just claiming he won, at the urging of “an apparently inebriated Rudy Giuliani” (one of Liz Cheney’s best lines), Sloppy Steve “Build the Wall scam” Bannon and folks so clearly insane they are now called “the crazies” by “normal” Republicans — traitor Mike “Declare Martial Law” Flynn, clearly mad Sidney Powell, passive, silent, seething Mark “we might be able to stay in power” Meadows, Lin Wood, John Eastman, Jeff “Let me put my pants on” Clark and others.  I saw one, that white mustached asshole John Bolton, another “I told you so” guy who refused to testify, in part because he was paid a large sum to withhold everything he knew about Trump’s madness until publication day, publically venturing his latest opinion of coups d’etat, Trump, the J6 hearings and the hundred failures of Biden.  I declined to watch.

When Trump lost virtually all of the five dozen RNC-financed post election cases his spokes-sphincters claimed the courts had never reached the merits, that all sixty lawsuits were all dismissed for procedural reasons (mostly lack of a scintilla of evidence for any claim).  “If only courts had heard the actual arguments!” they argued.  The actual arguments were so frivolous and weak, and unsupported by credible evidence, that defending herself against strong claims of defamation Sidney “Unleash the Kraken” Powell said nobody in their right mind could have taken any of her legal claims seriously.

Of course not.

Bannon got slapped down in his latest eleventh hour attempt to postpone his contempt trial that starts Monday.  The crime of contempt of Congress was committed, 100%, by a defiant Bannon who is still bravely talking shit, between breaks for actual diarrhea.   The Trump-appointed judge underscored Bannon’s guilt when he agreed with Bannon’s desperate lawyer that since there are no legal defenses for Bannon what is the point of even going to trial?

The question on millions of minds is where is Merrick Garland, as the J6 committee lays out more and more damning evidence, sworn to under oath by hundreds of eye witnesses.   Garland appears regularly defending other DOJ actions, to protect asylum seekers’ rights, to protect school board members threatened by angry Trumpists, to protect LGBTQ persons under attack by new discriminatory state laws, to protect what’s left of a woman’s right to abortion and so on.  Witness tampering? Obstruction of Justice?  Obstructing an official proceeding?  Planning and launching an armed insurrection to overturn the results of a valid election?    Nothing, Dogg? 

Nice exhibit for Bannon’s second emergency motion to delay his contempt trial

Because it’s no fair if your own words can be quoted against you in a so-called court of law. Even with a Trump judge you can’t get a break, they seem intent on using your protected speech against you. I think Bannon should have included this prejudicial clip with his motion to delay his criminal contempt trial by several months. Any Trump appointed judge ought to see the irony.

GOP an increasingly militant antigovernment party, predating their first insurrectionist president

Today’s J6 Committee hearing really fleshed out the irrefutable (except on an orchestrated procedural technicality) arguments heard at Trump’s second impeachment. In order to support the former president, it is necessary to subscribe to the wild lies of Sidney “no reasonable person would have taken me seriously” Powell, the My Pillow guy, John Eastman, Steve Bannon, Rudy and Mike “I said the Fifth” Flynn.

After decades of determined, organized, well-financed effort to undermine democratic institutions Americans have lost faith in our government to solve problems. This distrust culminated in the presidency of an unhinged idiot performer who plays people around him with a reptilian instinct to win at all costs. Dana Milbank lays out the largely successful GOP effort to activate and weaponize American distrust of the government they systematically disabled.

For three decades, as the Republicans transitioned from a limited-government party to an anti-government party, GOP leaders have seen political advantage in undermining Americans’ confidence in their institutions, and in sabotaging the functions of government. . .

. . . It began with Newt Gingrich’s instructions to Republicans on how to refer to Democrats (and the government) in 1990: “Traitors.” “Corrupt.” “Cheat.” “Decay.” “Failure.” “Incompetent.” “Abuse of power.” As the era of government shutdowns, default brinkmanship, hostage-taking, name-calling and mindless obstruction was just beginning, Vice President Al Gore presciently remarked: “The Republicans are determined to wreck Congress in order to control it — and then to wreck a presidency in order to recapture it.”

McConnell played a major part in the sabotage, and not just with his extravagant intransigence toward legislation and nominees, highlighted by the theft of a Supreme Court seat in 2016.

https://wapo.st/3nXOgPT

insight?

When I was in my late twenties, visiting the farm of my parents’ best friemd, Arlene, she laid a great truth on me. As we watched the sun set one evening she said:

“You feel like you disappointed your parents, like you’re responsible for their unhappiness. I love your parents to death, as you know, they’re my best friends, but they are both very unhappy people. They just are, they were that way long before you were born. Their unhappiness has nothing to do with you, there is nothing you can do to change it, the burden of it is not something you need to carry through life.”

Though what she said sounds obvious to me now, it was like she’d reached up and pulled a string to turn on a light in the universe.

That understanding was an immense help to me, comparable to my father’s older first cousin Eli, years later, describing how he witnessed his beloved Aunt Chava grab the thick, burlap covered cord for her steam iron, from a drawer behind her seat at the kitchen table, and whip little Irv across the face with it.

“In the face?” I said.

“Yep, over and over,” said Eli.

“Jesus,” I said, “how old was he?”

“However old you are when you can stand on your two feet without falling over,” he said, with limitless sorrow. He saw it many times after that, and he said that over time all she had to do was rattle the drawer where she kept the whipping cord and young Irv would stand at rigid attention, staring at the ground, trembling, waiting for the whipping to start.

State laboratories of autocracy

Because there were stringent laws against lobbyists directly influencing federal legislators with things like lavish vacations, expensive meals. nice gifts and so on, the Koch network focused on state legislators in the various states, since there are no analogous laws about not bribing them. An organization like the American Legislative Exchange Council drafts model laws like Stand Your Ground, that are distributed at legal corporate/legislator party vacations paid for by the dark money donors of ALEC.

Fast forward 40-50 years, and Robert Reich gives you a succinct picture of how American autocrats have seized control of a majority of the state legislatures and a 6-3 anti-democracy Supreme Court that is poised to give Republican state legislatures the unappealable last word on who won the federal elections in their state.

“keep in mind, Trump reads transcripts”

Like everything else in MAGA world, the claim is bullshit.   Trump can barely read a teleprompter and only does so when he thinks it will help his “brand” to stumble through prepared comments.  Whether he reads or not is beside the point, the message in “Trump reads transcripts” is that you can’t hide from the wrath of this destructive, vindictive maniac, even if what you truthfully reveal is only written on a page somewhere.  The bold lies of MAGA world are central to its popularity, its legitimacy!  You can’t argue so-called truth with people happy with any lie that helps their cause, and who are openly calling for the killing of their hated enemies.

Against this determined onslaught we have a 79 year-old moderate chosen by his party as our leader in this perilous moment.  Joe Biden promised to give his heart and soul as president.  He probably has.  His heart is clearly broken and his soul appears to be inconsolable too.  He is blamed, by virtually everyone, for worldwide inflation, for the “failure” of all his promises to make it past the sacred, inviolable filibuster, supported to the death by two of his slim 51-50 Senate majority, nullifying all initiatives.  There’s nothing sacred about the filibuster.  Remember how nonchalantly fucking Mitch McConnell changed the sacrosanct filibuster rule to install a “51-49, suck it” fully MAGA Supreme Court majority after denying Obama’s nominee a hearing and leaving Scalia’s seat open for Gorsuch.   And, of course, cramming Christian cultist Amy Coney Barrett down America’s collective throat to make it “6-3, suck it” while votes were being cast in the 2020 presidential election.  Quite the little shit sandwich, with supremely entitled, angrily hissing victim of left wing revenge conspiracies, Boof Kavanaugh, in between.

Biden seems to live in his memory as much as in 2022.   He probably remembers having coffee with Mitch McConnell years back and coming away with the impression that Mitch wouldn’t stand by silently as others tried to lynch the first mulatto president.   He still believes a calm, steady approach appealing to decency is best, that Reason always wins over blind hatred (true in the long run, perhaps, but not in the short run).   He acted in accord with this belief when appointing calm, steady, cautious Merrick Garland as AG, with the perfect poetic justice of the moderate Supreme Court candidate the GOP fucked out of a hearing leading prosecutions of those who trampled American democracy, restoring bipartisan faith in American justice and democracy.

American justice has most often been carried out by violence.   Frontier justice, Texas justice, Home Rule justice, States’ Rights justice.  Lynch mobs that support their leader’s view of things always act with impunity.  The simpleton’s nuanced logic runs this way:  deadly violence to keep the peace is justified when the good guys with the guns control the violence, otherwise common criminals would run roughshod over all of us.   Police routinely arrest white mass murderers and quietly take them into custody, they also fill Black traffic law violators, or those suspected of such violations, with bullets from time to time.  A literal lynch mob storms the Capitol, armed to the teeth, organized, led by paramilitary hate group members.  The cry of the violent is always “Justice!“

So, yeah, by all means, keep in mind that Trump reads transcripts, just like he reads his second favorite book, The Bible.   The book he kept at his bedside, according to his first wife, was the Collected Speeches of Adolf Hitler.   Hitler knew a thing or two about how to get things done.   How the will, exerted as mightily as possible, can overcome all obstacles, all logic, all so-called decency, overcome all hesitation, all so-called moral qualms (conscience being a Jewish invention, according to AH).  Find men who believe you were sent by God Himself, an infallible man of destiny.  When the moment calls for a screaming temper tantrum, rage, that’s how you bend people to your will.

The answer to a screaming temper tantrum, of course, is firmness, logic, and sometimes, a good hard slap.  If the tantrum is by a president insisting on his right to take illegal action, the good hard slap is enforcement of the laws he and his allies violated.   It is the enduring shame of the human race that we have so often been herded by groups of wilful men operating in a blinding rage, opposed by good people bound by moral qualms.  When Trump finally goes to his reserved seat in the smoking section of Hell, the radical party of born-wealthy men like him will continue to exert its infuriated will.  After all, what good is having all the money in the world if you also can’t make everyone in the world do whatever you tell them to?