Clark’s anti-democratic treachery was already known and reported on back in January. Insurrection moves fast, democratic adjustment to insurrection moves with deliberate, lawful slowness.
The NY Times (January 24, 2021):
Justice Department colleagues said they were shocked by Mr. Clark’s embrace of the president’s falsehoods and plan to oust the acting attorney general in an effort to overturn Georgia’s election results.
Jeff Clark is the newly established Chief of Litigation and Director of Strategy for the nonpartisan New Civil Liberties Alliance. NCLA is a young and vibrant organization focused on restoring the historically more robust civil liberties long enjoyed by federal and state citizens—liberties that have come under fire with the rise of the modern “administrative state.”
Before joining NCLA, Mr. Clark was dual-hatted as the Acting Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Division at the U.S. Justice Department from 2020-2021, as well as the Senate-confirmed 35th Assistant Attorney General of the Environment and Natural Resources Division (ENRD) from 2018-2021. ENRD is a component of the Justice Department with an illustrious, more-than-a-century’s worth of history. He has personally appeared in every federal Court of Appeals. . .
. . . During his two periods of service inside the federal government, Mr. Clark focused on howto implement Federalist 51’s vision of “oblig[ing the government] to control itself.” Now at NCLA, he will focus on enforcing, from the outside, the constraints of the Constitution and the laws on the government.
Interspersed with his government service, Mr. Clark was a partner at the international law firm of Kirkland and Ellis LLP, where he practiced general appellate litigation, environmental law, and administrative law. Moreover, Mr. Clark has also worked in numerous substantive areas of law, ranging from labor law, to class actions, to intellectual property, to bankruptcy, and to products liability.
This all needed to be openly debated for decades, and laws made to thwart this well-organized, massively funded, largely successful plot by America’s most cynical billionaires to maximize and ensure their hereditary privileges in perpetuity. It was done in secret until around the time of Obama, The Tea Party and Birtherism hit the news and the scales finally, decisively tipped in their favor..
Senator SheldonWhitehouse lays it all out clearly and succinctly in a short presentation.
I will fold this up, put it in an envelope, and send it to this longtime friend who told me he loved me like a brother, before repudiating me forever. Oh, well. I don’t write it for him, I write it for myself. You be the judge:
Maybe friendship, like everything else in nature, has a natural life span. On the other hand, long, close friendships that end in mutual enmity, while both former friends are still alive, reflect an unwillingness (or inability) to reach a humane understanding. Not that humans are primarily rational, of course, as we see on the world stage daily, and friendship is not an entirely rational thing. On the other hand, concluding that a person you once loved and trusted is an irredeemably hurtful asshole reflects a fundamental emotional/intellectual disconnect, an irreconcilable battle with your past self. Most tragically, in a world where we’re lucky to connect with a few kindred souls over the decades, this fatal falling out cuts off all possibility of redemption, a more nuanced understanding that leads to reconciliation and a better life. The traditional image of heaven, old misunderstood enemies tearfully embracing — not for chumps like us.
To clarify, I’m not trying to change your mind about anything. It’s pointless to go over the angry phone call when you rang to confront me about what you said was my dangerously out of control anger. If nothing else, your aggravating show of “concern” was a reflection of emotions that had long been simmering in your heart. We’ll agree that your inability to understand why I was so upset when you dismissed my right to have strong feelings about a screwing you couldn’t personally relate to was genuine.
We can safely assume I’ve always been the kind of vicious, hypocritical, ruthlessly angry hurtful fuck you now conclude I’ve always been, regardless of my protestations of patience and mildness, and that you’ve always been a hectoring bully confidently pessimistic about the possibility of real human growth. Not a problem. I try to learn lessons from things like a falling out with a friend of fifty years. I know saying that is provocative, especially to someone who doesn’t believe people are capable of truly learning from pain, or making meaningful changes in their emotional lives. It is one more of my irrationally superior tics, something that makes a lazy lost soul like me so despicably infuriating.
Here is a bit I wrote the other day, trying to work out some more lessons from life, as I wait for the update on whether or not I am dying of prostate cancer. Have a great day, man!
In this short clip Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) makes an excellent point about the “socialism” of wildly popular Medicare (even in its current no eyes, no teeth form) and Social Security (and by extension the Veteran’s Administration, Medicaid, Welfare, Disability Insurance, etc.) Forget the YouTube title and the hero shot of the giant Orange Polyp, there is barely a mention of the disgraced former would-be dictator. Durbin’s simple, well-stated point can only be refuted by an angry mob of freedom lovers shouting USA! USA!!! as their remaining privileges and immunities of citizenship are stripped away by the zero sum fascists they’re cheering for.
As for the Orange Polyp, things are finally closing in on him. There is now proof of three meetings he attended with a dozen Congressional lackeys to plan the spontaneous (ad budget to promote the lie that he won was a modest $50,000,000) January 6 “protest” that degenerate, Negro commies made to look so bad by dressing as a violent white MAGA mob and putting dozens of cops in the hospital, with help from the FBI, a dead Venezuelan socialist and other nefarious traitors, freedom haters and never-Trumpers. I really don’t see how he and his insurrectionist buddies get out of this one.
The impeachments were a joke, because, although strong cases were presented each time, his loyalists are so shameless and so terrified of his sadistic wrath they’d acquit him (after a trial with no witnesses, where the foreman of the impartial jury announced he was working closely with the defense) of publicly raping and eating a five year-old, but courts are a different matter. Even the zealot judges he appointed from the list given to him by the extreme right wing legal fraternity (The Federalist Society the Koch-funded Nazis call themselves) ruled against him in hundreds of cases — a couple even ripping him new assholes. Evidence or lack of it still rules in court and there are very few cases in which a judge can safely rule against the evidence (and those are mainly on the unappealable Supreme Court where the majority wins no matter how asinine their opinion). The numerous cases against Trump do not favor him.
Not to say he won’t bring a lot more pain on a lot more people before he’s done– and if they don’t prosecute him soon it may well be too late for all of us, AMERCA WHILL B GREAT AGIN, but it really looks like the tide is finally starting to turn against the enraged giant baby. The shit in his diaper doesn’t smell quite as sweet to many who used to pretend to love sniffing it, to coin a disgusting phrase.
The similarities between famous authoritarian regimes of the past and the Trumpist push toward autocracy are remarkable. The eternal lying is one thing, and it is seemingly integral to the fascist idea: making people doubt and despise evidence that points away from the infallibility of the Leader and letting the Leader have the last word in everything. The goal of a fascist regime is to make the majority of the population see the world through the special fascist lens. That lens presents everything in a light most beneficial to Party and Leader. I think it’s fair to call that lens “culture.”
Those who seek an honest accounting of American history, an open discussion of things like racism at law here in the USA, are often disparaged as “culture warriors”. When I hear culture warrior I always think of Bill Barr, the most pugnacious public example (excluding right wing cable TV and radio ‘personalities’) in recent memory. Barr has a rigid religious worldview in which he and his fellow believers represent good and all critics are evil, depraved, corrupt degenerate atheists.
Blacks and people of conscience turn out in the millions to protest the routine police mistreatment, violence toward and occasional killing, of unarmed minority citizens, (after one outrageous example of cold-blooded murder captured on video in its entirety). Barr warns them that if they expect protection from the police they’d better start showing some fucking respect. Calls them ‘anarchists,’ godless anti-fascists, denies there is anything close to systemic racism in policing, threatens them with the full power of the State if they continue to protest, and so forth.
Culture is how you see the world, what you cherish, how you expect others to behave. In some cultures playing music loudly in a beautiful public space is a generous service to others who might enjoy the same music. Other cultures regard this as an aggressive intrusion on nature and privacy. Freedom from tyranny is a value in most cultures, defining what exactly freedom is, and what constitutes tyranny, varies from culture to culture.
You can phrase certain forms of coercion in a way that makes them sound very much like freedom, or like the worst form of tyranny. I learned in high school that words like “freedom” and “tyranny” are “glittering generalities” — they sound great but mean very little on their own. A mask mandate during a raging pandemic is tyranny, or prudence, depending on the culture you belong to.
The real political battle in the USA, and in many parts of the world, is over culture, since your view of culture determines everything. Culture is a powerful weapon in the hands of political hucksters and ambitious, partisan conmen, just the mention of a deadly threat to our “culture” and way of life galvanizes crowds. There is a huge, lucrative industry enlisted in the fight over culture, market testing resonant catchphrases (“death tax,” “death panels,” “climate alarmists,” “right to (fetal) life”). The idea is to phrase everything in a way that will make people agree with you, and “owning” your enemies, while ideally simplifying the discussion to whose culture will prevail.
“My body, my choice,” depending on which culture you are part of, is either a declaration of a woman’s right to decide whether to give birth or of a patriot’s right to resist a vaccine, not be forced to wear a mask, to be able to freely spread a so-called pandemic to whoever the hell he wants to spread it to.
When thinking about Trump and the GOP, all roads seem to lead back to Germany and Herr Hitler, who was a Trump-like rock star to millions of Germans. Listening to some “alternative factual” dissection of culture and current events by a member of MAGA nation, I flashed on the old Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur, the original Nazi outfit that fought the war for control of German culture. Though its organizer, Alfred Rosenberg, may have been a less adept a Hitler ass-kisser than others in the ambitious, highly competitive, jealous Nazi hierarchy (particularly Josef Goebbels, who soon took jurisdiction over Nazi culture), the group did its work from 1929 (a few years before Hitler took power, think culture champion Rush Limbaugh) until it was eventually absorbed completely into other Nazi agencies eight or nine years later. Rosenberg, the thinking man’s Nazi, nonetheless held high office in the Nazi hierarchy to the end and, for all his hard work, was eventually executed after the Nuremberg tribunal ruled he’d committed crimes against humanity [1].
What was the work of the Kampfbund für deutsche Kultur? As you might expect, fighting a war for how Germans saw the world. For example:
Degenerate jungle music. Here is a cartoonishly unhuman Negro, wearing a Jewish star, making hideous jazz music that is obviously degenerate and not fit for good German ears. The Nazis banned jazz (though the Gypsy jazz of Django Reinhardt in occupied Paris was prized by many SS officers) and launched a massive national campaign against degenerate visual artists, displaying the works of Picasso, Matisse, Chagall and a bunch of German-Jewish degenerate artists in a wildly popular traveling museum art show.
Real Germans, citizens of the Third Reich learned, loved realistic, idealized depictions of Aryans, healthy, strong and happy. This kind of art is known as Heroic Realism and is often used by autocrats for propaganda purposes. Odd note, the Entartate Kunst museum show of degenerate art in Nazi Germany was the most well-attended art show of all-time, until the Metropolitan Museum in NYC mounted the wildly popular Treasures of King Tut exhibit a half century later.
High ranking Nazi Hermann Goering (who owned a large collection of plundered Entartate Kunst) famously said “when I hear the word culture I reach for my gun.” Indeed.
The Poisonous Dwarf, Nazi Minister of Public Enlightenment, J. Goebbels, in a chipper mood
No doubt, the Democrats, who were in charge of every ANARCHIST JURISDICTION under Trump, set the tone by DOING NOTHING when some protesters became violent, set fires and broke windows in outbreaks of violence at mostly peaceful anti-racism protests (when met by militarized riot police) which, of course, led directly and predictably to a violent attack on a joint session of Congress where other protesters broke windows, fought police and did only a few minor unlawful, though patriotic, things (for which they have become political prisoners and, in some cases, martyrs).
And horrifying as it is to hear a guy like Jim Jordan use reasonable sounding words to stir the shit pot, at times it still fascinates me to see a sphincter designed for pushing out solid waste forming actual words and stringing them into understandable sentences.
An unaccountable crime scheme never ends until the perpetrators are charged, arrested, prosecuted and convicted. The former president, an insane giant baby, angrily rants and his party stalwarts cower, doing whatever he says, no matter how insane or babyish (though, in recent days, more cracks in this united facade are showing). For the most part, publicly, it’s Whatever you want, Mr. Insane Giant Baby, sir!
“Sir, they say, they always call me ‘sir’, which is funny if you think about it…” notes the Insane Giant Baby with that winning fake smile.
You had virtually every leader of Trump’s constantly changing 2016 campaign team (with the exceptions of Jared and Kellyanne) arrested and/or briefly locked up for various crimes, including working directly with Russian intelligence officers and fleecing Trump supporters of millions of dollars (with a fake Build the Wall website), several convicted of perjury and other crimes, most pardoned by the man they loyally worked for. The same goes for at least five members of the former president’s cabinet, referred for criminal investigation, none charged by the Trump DOJ. This is not normal, as they used to say.
You had four years and counting of seamless obstruction of justice by the sitting president using the DOJ as his personal legal cover-up team. Inauguration Committee chairman Tom Barrack was investigated for serious crimes (similar to those committed by QAnon advocate and martial law/MyPillow enthusiast Mike Flynn) by the Department of Justice under Jeff Sessions and/or Barr and never charged with anything. Using the same evidence reviewed by Trump’s personal DOJ, Barrack has been indicted and is facing many years in prison if his criminal case goes to trial. The tax returns Trump fought so doggedly to hide, that the DOJ now says Trump’s DOJ and Steven Mnuchin illegally refused to turn over to Congress? Nothing to see! Personal! Nobody’s business, NANCY PELOSI, ASHLEY BABBIT, POWERFUL PEDOPHILE CANNIBALS, LIARS, ENEMIES, COMMUNISTS, DR. SUESS, MR. POTATOHEAD!!!!
The other day, apparently because Trump, frenetically trying to fix the “fake” election results, did not get around to classifying all DOJ notes and memos in the waning days of his presidency, when he was super busy trying to stay in power by any means necessary, some incriminating notes of a conversation he had with the corrupt Bill Barr’s successor as interim-acting AG (after even Barr had to bail) are now public. These contemporaneous notes show Trump had actual knowledge that he was lying about the election he lost, as he and his most ardent followers continue to brazenly do. Trump knew the truth, he just wanted the DOJ’s help to sell the lie.
This proof that he had knowledge that he was lying about the election shows his clear criminal intent for the many illegal actions he took, an intent his followers, especially Barr, kept obfuscating while they were all busily obstructing justice. At minimum they show Trump’s corrupt intent in, most recently, promoting his Big Lie, including $50,000,000 spent on ads (how is this not a big thing?) and countless calls (at least one recorded and heard by the public) and meetings during his unhinged “charm offensive” trying to pressure state Republicans to overrule their states’ voters.
Barr had already informed Trump, in a heated private exchange, that Trump’s continued claims of election fraud, and a rigged, stolen election were “bullshit.” Though Barr provided one last enthusiastic reach-around in his letter of resignation (“you are the greatest of all-time, sir, and the most passionately loved and admired compulsive liar in American, yea, world history. Your member is enormous and millions worship you”) he went on the record then and now as saying the election had not, in fact, been stolen. There had been no fraud, he concluded, on behalf of the DOJ, on a level that would have changed any election result. Too little and way too late, after all of Barr’s truly herculean efforts to shield Trump from accountability for anything, but even he left the sinking Trump administration before he could be directly tied to the attempted violent coup his boss was openly planning.
The “incriminating” notes, taken by the acting assistant deputy to then brand new interim-acting AG Jeffrey Rosen, show Rosen again informing Trump that there was no evidence of a rigged, corrupt or stolen election. The conversation took place on December 27, shortly after Barr left and ten days before the January 6 MAGA riot. Rosen corrected Trump’s false and mistaken claims. When Trump claimed there was a 68% miscounted vote/fraud rate in Michigan, Rosen corrected his number, it was actually a 0.0063% miscount rate, Sir, less than one hundredth of a percent. A small math error, fortuitously in his own favor, Trump’s rate was more than 10,000 times more than the actual rate. Anybody can get confused by decimals.
Trump remained undeterred with his political appointees, continued to try bending them to his will. The note quotes Trump’s response to being told by Rosen that the DOJ cannot just “snap its fingers and overturn the election results”. The Insane Giant Baby said he understood that, all he wanted was for the DOJ to do him a favor, though:
“just say the election was corrupt + leave the rest to me and the R. congressmen”
“These notes reveal that a sitting president, defeated in a free and fair election, personally and repeatedly pressured Justice Department leaders to help him foment a coup in a last-ditch attempt to cling to power,” Laufman [a former DOJ official] said. “And that should shock the conscience of every American, regardless of political persuasion.”
At this point, the war-weary American conscience is pretty darned hard to shock and there are always appeals and legal delays that can be employed by Trump and his myrmidons until there is a GOP majority in Congress again. Biden appears to believe (and is betting American democracy on that belief) that keeping Americans safe from the pandemic, giving them security, help with poverty, providing millions of jobs, repairing our crumbling infrastructure and starting the hard work of slowing catastrophic climate change will convince committed anti-fact fanatics to no longer support the Insane Giant Criminal Baby they faithfully adore. The moderate American president seems to actually believe that the results of his popular programs will speak for themselves, without a real need to overturn dozens of GOP voter suppression laws in many closely fought “battleground” states, laws that leave the final counting and certification of votes in the unchallengeable hands of GOP partisans. In less than a hundred days, after all, Biden’s legal experts will issue their report about the constitutionality of increasing the number of federal judges (no controversy, Congress can actually do it any time, absent the filibuster), including unpacking the 6-3 Federalist Society Supreme Court. What’s the rush? Americans aren’t that stupid… surely they’ll understand the radical Democrat commies improved their lives…
As for the seriousness of the new revelations about our criminally-inclined former Teflon Don and whether they will prompt any federal action?
I can hear the demented argument of former civil libertarian Alan Dershowitz, opining that, perhaps, had this been known at the time, while Trump was in office (where he could not have been legally prosecuted, even for murder, according to a generous reading of a famous memo) the notes might have, arguably, been a convincing part of a larger argument that the president had knowingly abused his power to spread a self-promoting lie and facilitate illegal efforts to make it the “truth”, although, as Trump’s first impeachment and second impeachment demonstrated beyond a shadow of a doubt, abuse of power, by itself, is neither a high crime nor a misdemeanor if the powerful abuser is known to be supremely vindictive, petty and sadistic, and has at least 50 votes in the Senate.
Now, some will say that this new “note” by Jeffrey Rosen’s deputy is much ado about nothing. EVERYBODY knows Trump lies, thousands of times as president, many, many, many times since he lost the election he tenaciously claims, without any evidence, that he won. Everybody knows you either love Trump unconditionally or hate him without boundaries. Those who love him admire his unbeatable ability to say “fuck you” to anybody, at any time, with no consequences. Those who hate him consider him a deadly cancer on decency and democracy. Who’s to say who’s right?
The stodgy New York Times printed an editorial the other day, entitled, circumspectly enough “ Trump and His Allies Still Aren’t Telling the Truth about January 6th” (Trump and his Allies are still lying about January 6th might have seemed biased, right?) contrasting numerous counter-factual GOP talking points to the truth as established by actual evidence and the fact that it actually happened. It was an impressive collection of fact and often absurdist alternative fact, but, of course, it proves nothing to those millions who are convinced that had faithless Brad Raffensberger and other powerful RINOs, including Trump’s loyal but spineless VP, homophobic lapdog Mike Pence, had merely done the right thing, finding Trump ONE more vote than Biden in each of the several swing states Trump “lost”, we wouldn’t be having this annoying fucking discussion now, while vicious Satanist cannibal child-fuckers like “affable” Communist Tom Hanks are running free and gleefully unaccountable for monstrous crimes they continue to blissfully get away with (sorry, Tom, but, you know people are sayin’… ‘sir’ they say ‘Tom the actor is not a good guy’).
It’s been said many times lately, prominently by justice-obsessed former federal prosecutor Glenn Kirschner, that the ongoing GOP authoritarian insurrection will not be halted until its leaders and organizers are charged, arrested, tried and convicted. Elected insurrectionists, who seem to have played key roles in the lead-up to Trump’s MAGA riot (and its follow-up), still loudly talking shit, must be held accountable and, if merited, forced off the political playing field, that much is clear.
The proof of Trump’s criminal intent is there, Trump’s actual intent in his many criminal undertakings since losing the presidency can be easily established by deposing Barr, Rosen and his deputy assistant. It is beyond question that Trump knew he was lying when he sought extra-legal help overturning a fair election, he refers to others he enlisted, Mo Brooks organized three pre-January 6 strategy meetings with at least ten other elected Republicans, and still they persist, “doubling down” on the Stolen Election Lie at every opportunity.
We must all hope (those of us who are not Trumpists) that the water in the pot that is slowly heating now under the Giant Insane Angry Baby and some closely related frogs will get hot enough, soon enough, to make some of his loyal, betrayed co-conspirators start making deals to get out of the bouillabaisse, soon.
Why not take a one-month vacation now, Congress, you’ve certainly earned it! Nothing of great importance that won’t wait a month or two, or six, or … whatever.
When I was a teenager, and I made friends who lived in other states, we’d keep in touch by letters and phone calls. Long distance calls were expensive, but letters could be written any time, drawn on, dropped in the mail and delivered within two or three days for the price of a full-sized chocolate bar (in those days less than a quarter, believe it or not). “Drop me a line,” we’d say, taking our leave of each other, and get busy, on a bus, a train, lying on a couch, setting pen to paper. It was always a great moment when a return letter arrived, particularly when a friend came up with an inventive envelope (for a time we always tried to top each other with wild, ridiculous hand-made envelopes).
Now, those were, to be sure, primitive times, very similar, in terms of communication, to the previous hundred years or so. We did not carry small, powerful personal computers in our pockets that could also be used to text, tweet, make phone calls and video chats. We sat and wrote by hand, folded the pages, put them in an envelope, addressed it, put a stamp on it and dropped it in the mail box. Seems unreal now, even though I sometimes still send drawings and scrawled notes to a small circle of people from time to time.
Here’s a “funny” thing, though. People regularly don’t know what to say when they get something in the mail (and, admittedly, my letters are often more visual than literary, so theres’s also that). As often as not I never even find out my letter has reached its intended recipient, unless I follow up later by text. I have a few theories, including that people in general don’t know how to react to “art” (particularly if it is not monetized, official, etc.), but it is notable, I think, that if you ask a question in a colorful, handwritten letter, you will virtually never get an answer to that question. Although, of course, it’s not hard to see why this letter may not have received a response:
I get that there’s something a bit maniacal-looking there. It is part of my graphomania, when it strikes, I am helpless against it. On the other hand, it is not uncommon to have a question, asked simply, unaddressed when it is written on a page, with other stuff, and mailed to somebody. This is my experience anyway, not many people are attuned to the art of old-time correspondence in our era of super-terse hyper LOL instant response-demanding knee jerks. It was not always this way, my young friends, and, like anything else, the old way was not without its pains in the ass.
I had a close friend for many years, a prodigious correspondent, who was a solipcist. By this I mean that he was convinced of his own reality in the world, (because he thought, and therefore, he was), but was not convinced anyone could ever truly know what was in somebody else’s mind or heart, or even if they actually existed, independently, outside of his perception. This belief, to me, is the essence of intellectualized alienation and a ticket to misery, as it was in his case, but he sure loved to write long, complex letters, in spite of his deep skepticism about anyone actually being able to truly understand anything he expressed.
At a certain point, tired of getting ten page, two-sided letters, mostly about his troubles and unresponsive to anything I’d written, I negotiated a deal with him. We agreed that in every letter, often at the end, we’d re-read the other person’s letter and briefly respond to everything of note. These quick responses would be set off between ellipses, the old dot dot dot (or in the Orange Polyp’s case dot dot dot dot dot dot) in the manner of famous antisemitic doctor and novelist Ferdinand Celine… the Celine section we called it… as in “now I will review and Celine your latest”.
It turned out to be a great innovation. You’d get actual feedback on things you’d written, a response.
“Yer description of the putz — on the nose … no, I never tried ayahuasca, did you ever find some?… she’s always like that, remember August 1971 for but one famous example … they suck, as you have noted whenever the name of their Nazi owner comes up … funny bit about your urinary troubles, if you know what I mean … further comments on the issue of solipcism are in order, remind me next time, if you actually DO exist independent of my perceptions of you …”
While not spontaneous or ideal, this enforced mutual responsiveness was a great improvement to our correspondence and probably extended our friendship by several years.
To me, having a dialogue is like having a leisurely catch. You throw me the ball, I hold it for a second, feeling its texture and its weight, and I toss it back to you, placing the ball in the air where you can easily catch it. We do this until we agree we’ve done it enough. Nothing is more natural, I think, than tossing a ball back and forth on a nice day.
This kind of meditative back and forth is tragically a more and more rare experience in our always in a hurry, time is money, make your point in 140 characters, too late, wait, I was distracted, what was I saying? society. Because we are always in a hurry, and time is not only money but money is free speech, and because so much free speech is also false, and the firehose of mendacity sprays full bore, torrent so powerful it can rip your skin off … I’m sorry, what were you saying? Wait, I’m getting another call… oh, God, here’s a text coming in too, a very important one, can you… hang on, Oh I don’t believe it! I don’t fucking believe it! Wait til I send you this… on second thought, maybe not, can you hold, can I call… what the hell do they want now?… can you text me later?
Ah, you know what, I’ll drop you a line.
Though I’ve learned to deal with it better and better in recent years, I am predisposed to a tic about silence by way of reply, because my father, in his most sadistic moments, would simply refuse to reply, deploying the old deniable silence (“what are you whining about, I didn’t even fucking hear you”) to wound quite effectively. So silence by way of reply when I ask a question has long had a kryptonite effect on me. Still, as a general rule, we all want to know we are being heard and replied to sensibly. It does not happen enough these days in general, which is one major reason people are so isolated and ready to jump into an online rabbit hole like QAnon that provides a false sense of community to those lonely, crazy souls who embrace it, “where we go one, we go all”, and shit.
It is worth the minute or two it might take, when a friend asks you a question that requires an answer, to actually digest what they are looking for, indicate confusion if there is any, wait for clarification and then think for ten seconds or so before giving your thoughtful reply. Worth it in my humble (and my conceited) opinion, anyway.
Six Republican members of the House, escorted by a man in a giant Trump costume bearing the message “TRUMP WON,” marched on the Justice Department Tuesday afternoon to speak up for those they called “political prisoners” awaiting trial for their roles in the insurrection.
“These are not unruly or dangerous, violent criminals,” Rep. Paul Gosar (Ariz.) proclaimed at a news conference outside DOJ headquarters. “These are political prisoners who are now being persecuted and bearing the pain of unjust suffering.” Rep. Louie Gohmert (Tex.) speculated that “we have political prisoners here in America.”
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