Monthly Archives: January 2021

fucking democrats, i declare

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Here’s a headline in today’s Washington Post:

Democrats consider one-week impeachment trial, censure resolution after GOP signals likely acquittal of Trump.

And here’s the lede:

Bracing for the prospect of a likely acquittal, Senate Democrats are eyeing a rapid-fire impeachment trial for former president Donald Trump — as short as one week — while also contemplating alternatives such as censure that could attract more support from Republicans.

Fucking Democrats, I declare. This is the sitch: 1) the former president, having lost the election, after repeatedly making blatantly false claims of fraud, tried to stop the certification of the fairly elected new president by inciting a riot IN the US Capitol Building, which directly threatened the life of his own vice-president AND the Speaker of the House–a riot in which people died. 2) Democrats in the House filed an article of impeachment. 3) Republicans said “Nuh uh, not gonna happen.” 4) Democrats acknowledge defeat, consider censure instead, hoping for support from Republicans.

Democratic leadership, you guys suck. Don’t look for support from Republicans; look for support from the people who fucking VOTED FOR YOU. The Republicans are right not to respect you, because you don’t respect yourselves. Worse, you don’t respect us, the people who voted for you. We voted for you to stand up and do what’s right, to fight for what’s right, even if you might lose. Even if you know you’re going to lose. You guys think it’s somehow better to negotiate a surrender than take a chance on losing a fight.

You can’t negotiate with terrorists. Jesus suffering fuck.

A couple of days ago, Mitch McConnell, who is no longer in charge of the Senate, made this threat: “I made clear that if Democrats ever attack the key Senate rules, it would drain the consent and comity out of the institution. A scorched-earth Senate would hardly be able to function. It wouldn’t be a progressive’s dream. It would be a nightmare. I guarantee it.”

This guy? You’re letting this guy intimidate you? This pale, pasty, withered old fart? Fucking Democrats, I declare.

He feels confident enough to guarantee it because he knows you guys crumple like tissue paper when confronted. This is the same guy who openly pissed all over the key Senate rules. He reduced the hearings on Trump’s judicial appointments from thirty hours to two. Two hours to debate judges, some of whom the American Bar Associate said weren’t qualified. Two fucking hours. He got rid of the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, which gave us Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett. He used the reconciliation process to pass Trump’s tax break for the rich legislation. And now he’s threatening Democrats if they attempt to do the same thing?

Listen, you won the election. I shouldn’t have to repeat that, but I will. YOU WON THE ELECTION. We have a Democrat as president. Uncle Joe may not be the greatest, but he’ll do the damn job IF YOU HELP HIM. You have a majority in the House and you control the Senate. I’m going to say it again. You won the damned election. ACT LIKE IT. Impeach the motherfucker. Put the entire Republican Party on trial, since they supported him. Put them on record as supporting an insurrection. Get all the evidence out, let the people know what happened. If it takes two weeks–if it takes a whole month–to get all the evidence out, then do it. Don’t back down just because you’re afraid of losing. And pass Biden’s proposed legislation, even if you don’t have any Republican support (and c’mon, do you really expect you’re going to get much Republican support?). When Republicans whine about ‘unity’ don’t even bother to remind them of what they’ve done in the past. Just fucking ignore them and do your goddamn job.

There MUST be consequences. Consequences for the violence, consequences for the racism, consequences for lies, consequences for the hypocrisy, consequences for the misogyny, consequences for attempting to overturn the election, consequences for pissing all over representative democracy.

If you’re unable to see that FAILURE to hold these fuckers accountable will only insure that they’ll continue to pull the same shit again and again and again, then you’re useless. If you can’t see that, then you’ve wasted our votes. And there WILL be consequences for that. Count on it. The consequence may be that you’ll lose your seats in Congress, but if you won’t do your job, that’s not much of a loss. The real consequence–the consequence that matters–will be that you contributed to the death of democracy in the United States.

the gutter of rancor and vitriol

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Yesterday all one hundred members of the United States Senate were sworn in as jurors in the historic Repeachment trial of Comrade Donald Trump. A short time later, 45 of those senators–all Republicans, of course–voted against holding that trial.

That vote came about because Rand Paul, the weasel-ass Republican from Kentucky, had raised a point of order on the constitutionality of the repeachment trial. Although the Senate doesn’t have any legal authority to decide on the constitutionality of any issue, Paul suggested the trial would be unconstitutional because Trump is no longer president. He said,

“Private citizens don’t get impeached. Impeachment is for removal from office, and the accused here has already left office. Hyperpartisan Democrats are about to drag our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol, the likes of which has never been seen in our nation’s history.”

Rand Paul, if you haven’t figured it out yet, is a lying sack of rancid horseshit. Private citizens DO get impeached IF they’re former federal officials. There are several examples of this, though not at the presidential level. And if Rand Paul thinks a repeachment trial is dragging the US “into the gutter of rancor and vitriol, the likes of which has never been seen” I’d suggest he visit YouTube and watch some of the videos of the January 6th Insurrection. There’s some solid rancorous, vitriolic gutter-work there.

Senator Rand Paul (Weasel-ass, Ky) addresses the United States Senate.

The fact is, it’s not just Trump who’ll be on trial during the repeachment. The entire Republican Party will be on trial. Trump may have lit the fuse that caused the explosion at the Capitol, but the GOP either applauded him or stood quietly by while he did it. A hundred and forty Republican members of the House attempted to block the electoral college from certifying Biden’s election on the day of the insurrection. Yesterday, forty-five Republican senators supported Rand Paul’s objection to the repeachment trial. Republicans are actively working to prevent Trump from being held accountable for any criminal act, mainly because it would implicate them in the crimes as well. In doing so, the GOP is undermining representative democracy.

I’m of the opinion that any senator who believes the election was rigged or who refuses to acknowledge that Uncle Joe is the legit president, should be disqualified to act as a juror. In fact, here are some questions I think all one hundred senators should be asked–and required to answer under oath–during the repeachment trial:

  • Do you believe the 2020 election was rigged against Donald Trump?
  • Do you believe there is evidence of massive voter fraud in the 2020 election?
  • Do you believe Joe Biden is the legitimate president of the United States?
  • Do you believe Donald Trump disseminated a lie when he repeatedly told his followers the election had been stolen from him?
  • Do you believe Trump bears any responsibility for lying about the election?
  • Do you believe the invasion of the Capitol Building would have taken place if Trump hadn’t lied to his supporters about losing the election?
  • Do you believe the invasion of the Capitol was justified?
  • Do you believe the safety of VP Pence and Speaker Pelosi was at risk during the invasion?
  • Do you believe your personal safety–or the safety of your staff–was at risk during the rioting?
  • Do you believe the rioters should be held accountable for their actions?

Let’s face it; the entire GOP is guilty of dragging our great country down into the gutter of rancor and vitriol. Many of them were complicit in Trump’s attempt to overturn the election. The repeachment trial is as much a trial for the Republican Party itself. Will the GOP acknowledge its guilt and try to atone for it, or will they compound their guilt by denying it?

The truly sad thing–and I genuinely mean this makes me sad–is that they’ll almost certainly try to pretend they’re innocent.

two quick thoughts on repeachment

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The article of impeachment against former Comrade President Trump will go to the Senate today. Predictably, most Republicans are being assholes about it, making a couple of bullshit arguments against conviction.

Bullshit Argument #1: Impeaching Trump a second time will only further inflame the deep divisions between decent folks and fascist terrorists the two political parties and lead to further violence. Basically, this argument acknowledges that Trump, at the very least, encouraged the insurrection at the Capitol Building, but suggests that if he’s held accountable for his part in the insurrection, it could lead to another insurrection. In other words, “Yes, Daddy hit you, he’s sorry he lost his temper, it won’t happen again, unless you make Daddy very angry, then he’ll have to hit you again.”

At the heart of this bullshit argument is the notion that inciting a physical assault on the Capitol in an attempt to overturn an election is certainly to be frowned upon, but Trump failed to overturn the election, and surely that humiliating failure is punishment enough. This bit of fuckwittery leads us directly to the next bullshit argument.

Bullshit Argument #2: Impeaching a president after he leaves office sets a bad precedent. Unpopular presidents could be punished for being unpopular. This is a spectacularly stupid argument. Failing to impeach and try a former president essentially indemnifies a president against doing all sorts of awful shit in his last few months in office. Like, for example, installing a bunch of stooges in the Justice Department and the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community to help overturn an election. This argument says a president is free to commit crime during the lame duck period because there won’t be any consequences once the corrupt motherfucker is out of office.

Comrade Trump has fucked the GOP and they’re about to give birth to a monster.

Senate Republicans have only themselves to blame. They’ve dropped themselves into a situation where their choices are either 1) to convict the corrupt motherfucker they should have convicted a year ago OR 2) go on the record saying they support the corrupt motherfucker who a) incited an attack on the Capitol that led to half a dozen deaths, b) spent a couple of months trying to strong-arm a handful of states into falsifying their election results, and c) placed a cadre of equally corrupt motherfuckers in key federal positions to help overturn the will of the voters.

Neither option is attractive. They’ll try to pretend they’re doing the right thing. They’ll claim they’re taking a principled stand in defense of…I don’t know what. Unity maybe? The Constitution? It’ll be bullshit, whatever it is. And whatever the result, the GOP’s romance with Trump has produced an angry, resentful, hate-fueled mob of white supremacists who will continue to plague the US for some time.

One last thing. When President Uncle Joe spoke about unity, he wasn’t saying we should all agree on what’s important and how stuff should get done. He was just saying we’re all caught in the same fucked up situation and if we want to get out of it, we should try to work together rather than kicking each other in the balls out of spite. Jeebus on toast, it’s not that complicated.

ADDENDUM: I just learned SCOTUS has chucked all of Trump’s emoluments cases as moot, since he’s no longer POTUS. Basically, that clears future presidents to turn the White House into a for-profit enterprise, allowing them to accept money (including from foreign governments) so long as they can delay any legal proceedings and run out the clock until they’re out of office. Thanks, Republicans.

unity

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Congressional Republicans (or, as I like to call them, ass-weasels) have a new strategy for governance. It’s called whining. Here’s an example: Senator Rob Portman (ass-weasel, Ohio) had this to say in response to President Uncle Joe Biden’s proposed Covid stimulus package.

“I have not personally [heard from the White House], and I’m disappointed in that, not about me but about, you know, it’s one thing to talk about outreach, another thing to do it.”

Portman was disappointed, poor babby, that Uncle Joe hadn’t personally assured him that after more than 400,000 Covid deaths, after the failure of the Comrade Trump administration to produce any sort of national plan to fight the pandemic or distribute the Covid vaccine, and after the resulting collapse of the economy, the US government would need to spend a buttload of money in order to get people inoculated and keep people housed and fed.

Rob Portman, (R ass-weasel) — known for his grey hair, low stance, fluffed-out feathers, and small head.

What’s worse, Portman made that comment on Friday. Uncle Joe had only been on the job since Wednesday. Well, Thursday really; most of his first day was taken up by ceremonial stuff. I guess you’d call that preemptive whining. Still worse, Portman is generally considered one of the more ‘reasonable’ Republicans.

This is the atmosphere in which ‘unity’ is supposed to take root. Republicans are, in effect, saying, “Okay, so you Democrats kept control of the House, you took control of the Senate, and you captured the White House, and okay, yeah, a hundred and forty-seven of us did sort of actively try to block Biden from becoming president, and sure, some of us appear to have encouraged the storming of the Capitol Building, and maybe some of our members even conspired with the insurrection, and okay, a few of us are probably carrying concealed weapons in the building right now, but why isn’t Biden asking us what WE want? Where’s that unity he keeps talking about?”

The problem with Uncle Joe’s call for unity is that the modern Republican Party doesn’t operate that way. There are no longer any principled conservatives in the Republican Party. Nobody in the modern Republican Party can be trusted to act in the best interests of the nation, not unless you’ve got their balls snugly wedged in a six-inch bench vise. They simply don’t believe in cooperative unity as a concept. Cooperation for the good of the nation is as baffling to them as a game of checkers is to a Buff Orpington hen. They’ve become a political party whose agenda is driven almost entirely by fear, resentment, white rage, and a pervasive feeling of victimization.

Buff Orpington hen — known for its heavy, broad body, low stance, fluffed-out feathers, and small head.

So what are Democrats supposed to do? We expect Democrats to act like reasonable, responsible adults. At the same time, we expect Republicans to act like ass-weasels. We tend to hold each party to those standards. The thing is, modern Republicans are just NOT going to act like reasonable, responsible adults; they’re going to continue to act like ass-weasels. We need to accept that reality.

Knowing that, here’s my suggestion for Democrats. Act like reasonable, responsible adults. Ask Republicans to participate in crafting legislation as if they were reasonable, responsible adults. When they act like ass-weasels, Democrats should just Merrick Garland the fuck out of them. Ignore their whining, ignore their complaints, ignore their lies, pass the legislation they want by majority rule, move on to the next thing on the agenda and repeat.

Unity is a grand thing. It would be nice if Democrats and Republicans could act in unity. If they can’t, then Democrats should act in unity alone.

yesterday was a peach bellini

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Comrade Trump is gone. Uncle Joe Biden is the prez, with Kamala Harris as veep. Democracy has been resurrected. Winter will end. Bluebirds will sing again. Flowers will grow unbidden where Amanda Gorman walks. The breeze will be warm (or cool) and scented like apricots. All small towns will be called Bedford Falls. A cup of coffee will only cost a nickel.

Okay, maybe there’s some wishful thinking in there. But that’s sort of how it felt yesterday. That feeling won’t last, of course. Reality is a merciless sumbitch (as QAnon believers discovered yesterday); the Covid pandemic is still killing thousands of Americans every damned day, the climate is still massively fucked, and it’ll take a generation or so before anything like real racial/gender justice takes firm root.

But we deserve — hell, we need — a few days to just let the feeling that good things can still happen roll over us. Yes, there’s a LOT of work to do, but let’s not allow necessity to cast a shadow over the multitude of ways yesterday was special. Just one example: the undiluted joy of seeing the first woman — a woman who is black AND Asian — sworn in as Vice President of the United States by the first woman of color appointed to the US Supreme Court with her hand on a Bible that belonged to the first black man appointed to the US Supreme Court. That’s some serious history, right there.

So let’s not make a fuss about which particular bit of history yesterday was the most significant. It’s not a contest. And let’s not scold or castigate (now there’s an interesting word; it’s derived from the same root as ‘chaste’ and it originally meant ‘to make someone pure by correction or reproof’) other folks for enjoying a fashion decision, or an internet meme, or the selection of an entertainer that seems trivial compared to the magnitude of yesterday’s events. And for fuck’s sake, let’s not be assholes about ‘winning’. A bit of gloating is understandable and forgivable (did I spell that right? It doesn’t look right), but even though Trump and his followers treated us as the enemy, we shouldn’t prove them right.

I’m NOT saying we need to forgive and forget. Fuck that. But I am saying unity is important. There are people who ought to be investigated; if found responsible for awful behavior, they need to be held accountable. NOT for our pleasure or amusement, but because that’s how society is supposed to work. (On the other hand, if we get some measure of pleasure and amusement out of it, that’s gravy and we needn’t deny ourselves of it.)

I guess what I’m saying is this: yesterday was a good day. A really good day. Let’s not make any more of it than what it was, but let’s also not diminish or minimize any part of it. Yesterday was…let’s say yesterday was a peach Bellini. A cool, stimulating, mildly alcoholic cocktail with a delightful but subdued color palette. Was it a great peach Bellini? No, not really. Ideally a Bellini would be made with Prosecco and white peaches. Maybe this one was made with champagne instead of Prosecco, maybe with yellow peaches instead of white. But it was a very good Bellini, served properly, and at exactly the right moment.

Drink it, don’t diss it for not being perfect, don’t overstate its fine qualities, just enjoy it for what it is. Fizzy, refreshing, sweet, mellow, but stimulating.

heart’s grown brutal

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It’s hard to believe, isn’t it. Right now, today, we have about twenty thousand National Guard troops in Washington, DC to protect our government from our president. We have been forced to mobilize a military force larger than the military response we have stationed in Afghanistan or Iraq in order to insure that the insurrectionist followers of Donald Trump won’t disrupt the inauguration of the legitimately elected President of the United States.

That is completely fucking insane–and yet here we are. We’ve arrived at this unnerving moment of history because Trump, supported by sycophantic Republicans in Congress and in coordination with a nexus of unhinged right-wing anti-government cranks and conspiracy theorists (fueled in part by Russian social media disinformation trolls), refuses to acknowledge he lost the 2020 election. Even though Trump has apparently abandoned the demented fantasy that he might somehow, magically, still be declared the winner, he hasn’t yet abandoned his lies about the election being ‘stolen’. That lie hangs in the air, fouling any hope for reconciliation.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare

Billy B. Yeats wrote that in 1922. Ireland, after a couple of years of open warfare against British troops, had signed a treaty with the United Kingdom, granting independence to all but six of Ireland’s counties. The failure to establish full independence sparked the Irish Civil War, between those who insisted on full independence and those who were willing to accept partition in the hope that it would someday lead to a united Ireland. It led to Irish people fighting against “Irish soldiers of an Irish government set up by Irishmen.”

The poem is called The Stare’s Nest by My Window. Apparently in the west of Ireland ‘stare’ was the local term for a starling. I’d read the poem a number of times and loved the language of it, but it wasn’t until I was living in DC and had the chance to hear the poet Seamus Heaney read it aloud, that it actually made sense to me.

William Butler Yeats

When he wrote the poem, Yeats was living in a 16th century tower called Thoor Ballylee. Outside his window, honeybees were building a comb in the crevices of the crumbling masonry near an abandoned starling’s nest. Yeats uses all that as a metaphor for the Irish Civil War. The old tower is falling apart, the nest where mother starlings brought “grubs and flies” to feed the nestlings is empty, but bees are still at work creating a home filled with the sweetness of honey.

My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

Outside his tower, in the real world, Irishmen were killing Irishmen. Yeats acknowledges that violence in the poem — “somewhere / A man is killed, or a house burned.” “Last night they trundled down the road / That dead young soldier in his blood.” He pleads for peace and rebuilding, for restoring the masonry of civil society, in a repeated refrain. “O honey-bees / Come build in the empty house of the stare.”

This is where we find ourselves now, here in the United States. We’re badly divided, but unlike the Irish in 1922, we’re not divided by competing notions of independence; we’re divided by willfully ugly lies, deliberately ugly rhetoric, and ugly conspiratorial fantasies created, spread, and often repeated by prominent Republicans.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love.

The masonry holding our society together has been eroded, often intentionally, by those who want to create uncertainty and fear in order to stay in power. Our hearts have grown brutal; our hate seems stronger than our love. We desperately want/need it to be repaired. I believe–I want to believe–it’s possible to repair the damage. I see all those troops camped out in the ornate halls of our government, and the possibility of Americans fighting Americans fills me with dread and sorrow. Like Yeats, I feel we are “closed in, and the key is turned / On our uncertainty.”

I have no clear idea what will happen over the coming months. I have hopes; I have fears. I take some small comfort in knowing that countless others throughout history have felt similar hopes and fears. The fact that we’re able to read their writing today is proof that folks generally muddle through somehow.

Here’s the entire poem, probably in violation of some copyright somewhere.

The Stare’s Nest by My Window (1922)

The bees build in the crevices
Of loosening masonry, and there
The mother birds bring grubs and flies.
My wall is loosening; honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We are closed in, and the key is turned
On our uncertainty; somewhere
A man is killed, or a house burned.
Yet no clear fact to be discerned:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

A barricade of stone or of wood;
Some fourteen days of civil war:
Last night they trundled down the road
That dead young soldier in his blood:
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

We had fed the heart on fantasies,
The heart’s grown brutal from the fare,
More substance in our enmities
Than in our love; O honey-bees,
Come build in the empty house of the stare.

caught up in the moment

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You know that guy playing ninja during Comrade Trump’s RiotFest? The one in the photo, hanging from the balcony of the Senate Chamber, that guy? His name is Josiah Colt (and by the way, that’s a great name for a fictional character, isn’t it?). He’s 34 years old, from Boise, Idaho (also by the way, the ‘s’ in Boise is pronounced like…well, an ‘s’ not a ‘z’; you call it Boyzee folks will know you’re from out of town — just so you know).

Our boy Josiah left Idaho and went all the way to DC, nearly 2400 miles, to support Comrade Trump’s attempt to overturn the 2020 election. He wants you to know he’s sorry. In an interview with CBS news, he said,

“I love America, I love the people, I didn’t hurt anyone and I didn’t cause any damage in the Chamber. I got caught up in the moment.”

I get that. I really do. I’ve experienced that. I’ve been caught up in the moment and done stuff that I regret, stuff I knew was wrong, stuff I’d never do ordinarily. I suspect many of us have had similar moments. We found ourselves caught up in the moment, and afterwards wondered, “What the HELL was I thinking?” We got caught up in the moment at an auction and bid too much money on something we didn’t really want. Or we got caught up in the moment and got a tattoo. On our ass. That says ‘Mom’. Or we got caught up in the moment and agreed to volunteer to knock on doors for a cause. Or we had sex with somebody wildly inappropriate. Or we came home from the market with a tin of sardines in mustard sauce.

Being in the moment is a good thing. Getting caught up in the moment is a risk; it can be good or it can be an utter fucking disaster. Hell, sometimes getting caught up in the moment is absolutely glorious even as it’s turning into an utter fucking disaster. I’m pretty sure our boy Josiah was having a great time being ‘Josiah Colt, American Ninja’ starring in the action movie Capitol Building Takedown. I’d be willing to bet my modest income that a LOT of the insurrectionists who stormed the Capitol Building were like Josiah, folks who just got caught up in the moment.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m also confident that many of the insurrectionists knew exactly what they were doing, knew exactly how criminal it was, and were genuinely trying to destroy the government. Those people were just using the Josiah Colts as unthinking camouflage and cannon fodder. Which, let’s face it, is what they were.

Josiah also said this:

“I sincerely apologize to the American people. I recognize my actions that have brought shame upon myself, my family, my friends, and my beautiful country. In the moment I thought I was doing the right thing. I realize now that my actions were inappropriate and I beg for forgiveness from America and my home state of Idaho.”

I believe him. Well, I believe he actively regrets what he did. I appreciate his apology, though I question its sincerity. Maybe at some point in the future, I’d be willing to forgive him and his fellow ‘in the moment’ insurrectionists. But not now. It’s too soon. It’s not too soon for me to forgive him; it’s too soon for him to apologize sincerely. He hasn’t had enough time to truly consider what he and his fellow insurrectionists have done.

The problem with — wait. This is going to seem like a tangent (yes I’ve a history of wandering off on tangents, so I don’t blame you for being suspicious), but it’s not. Okay, I want you to think for a moment about the Japanese tea ceremony, cha no yu. You’ve probably seen it in movies and there’s a fairly good chance you thought it was lovely but relatively ridiculous. I mean, it’s a lot of time and effort just to sip a cup of tea. But here’s the thing: all that effort, all the meticulous preparation, the cleaning of the path to the tea room, the washing of the implements and the teapot, the arrangement of the flowers, the slow process of making the tea, the ritual of how to handle the cup — all of those things are done for a very simple reason: to create a quiet, meditative state of mind which allows the host and the visitor to be in the moment — that one particular moment — when the tea is sipped. There is a singular, beautiful purity in that moment.

Josiah and his fellow insurrectionists went through a somewhat similar process, although it’s the polar opposite. There were a LOT of steps involved in getting them to DC, all of which contributed to creating the proper frame of mind to try to overturn the election. Every step along the way fed their purpose — the constant barrage of presidential tweets, the echoing claims of fraud, the commitment involved in traveling to DC, the speeches given that morning, the chanting at the rally, the excitement of the crowd, the thrill of feeling powerful, the violence. All of those steps helped create and nourish the frame of mind needed to experience that one particular moment when the mob breached the Capitol. There’s a singular, awful purity in that moment.

Of course people got caught up in it. It took time and a lot of emotional spade-work to achieve that moment. It’ll take an equal amount of time and spade-work for Josiah Colt to truly comprehend what he did in that moment, the gravity of his offense. Unless he’s able to do that, his apology won’t truly be sincere. Until his apology is actually sincere, there won’t be any forgiveness. Not from me.

The same goes for everybody involved in the insurrection, from the most insignificant and lowly flag-waver to the elected representatives in Congress. They all willingly took that path. They have to willingly retrace their steps if they expect any sort of absolution.

that lying fucker is fucking lying again

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Did you see Comrade President Trump’s ‘concession’ video? I watched it last night. I knew it would be full of lies, because…well, Trump. But Jesus suffering fuck, it was like thirty pounds of lies packed into a twenty pound lie-sack. You’d need a goddamned abacus to count all the lies. Almost every sentence was a lie.

Let’s just look at the first three lines. “I would like to begin by addressing the heinous attack on the United States Capitol.” Bullshit. There is NOTHING he liked about addressing the attack. He no more wants to address the attack than a toddler wants to begin potty training. And I seriously doubt he considers the attack heinous. Having to deal with the aftermath of the attack, that’s heinous for Trump.

6MWE — six million wasn’t enough. Not convinced this guy was motivated by election integrity.

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness and mayhem.” Bullshit. Trump has a history of encouraging violence, lawlessness, and mayhem if it’s done by his followers at his campaign rallies. Or if it’s done by gun-toting right-wing teenagers defending gas stations in Kenosha. Or if it’s done by local law enforcement officers against ‘thugs’. Or by federal agents or the National Guard against BLM and Antifa. Or by the military (or private military contractors) against Muslims. When used by his people against people who oppose him, Trump eats up violence, lawlessness, and mayhem with a spoon.

That’s part of the reason Trump’s followers love him. He allows them to hate the people they want to hate. He let’s them enjoy their hate, and feel proud of it. All those people storming the Capitol Building on Wednesday, does anybody really believe that was about election integrity? Naw, that was mostly his followers getting a chance to let their hate run free. It didn’t matter if the hate wasn’t actually directed at the specific groups they hated, it was a chance to break shit and feel good about it. It was venting without consequence. It was a physical manifestation of their Twitter/Parler feeds. Let loose, tear shit up, have a laugh.

“I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders.” Bullshit. Massive bullshit. Trump, who was puppy-dog eager to deploy the National Guard against BLM protests, did fuck-all on Wednesday. Trump even blocked the DC National Guard from being issued riot gear or being deployed without the direct approval of…whoever the fuck the current Acting Defense Secretary is (seriously, I pay attention to this stuff, and I don’t have a clue who is in charge of the DoD at the moment; Trump spent recent weeks hollowing out the leadership of the Pentagon, replacing career people with obscure but virulent Trump sycophants). So no, Trump didn’t authorize the deployment of either the DC or the Maryland National Guard; he did everything he could to disrupt any National Guard response.

How could anybody predict rioters would breach the Capitol Building perimeter by 1:30?

What Trump DID do, though, was tell the rioters that he understood them, that he loved them and thought they were special. He actually said that. Then, in his bullshit ‘concession’ speech, he said “emotions are high” as if the storming of the Capitol Building was some sort of spontaneous emotional outburst.

It wasn’t. It was planned well in advance. Trump even announced and promoted it himself on multiple occasions. Big Protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild! His followers organized rides to DC, they published lists of what to pack (toothbrush, gas masks, a sweater in case it gets chilly, zip tie cuffs if you intend to take prisoners, charger for your cell phone), they arranged meeting locations, they created and sold event merch. There was nothing surprising or spontaneous about this.

Who could have predicted there’d be a MAGA Civil War on January 6th?

Trump’s ‘concession’ speech wasn’t a concession speech at all. It was a grudging, weak-ass, pathetic attempt to dodge being impeached for a second time. It was Trump’s version of the kid who murdered his parents asking a judge for mercy because he’s an orphan. It was Trump doing the spouse abuser apology (I’m sorry I hit you, but you made me so mad, here are some carnations I picked up from the gas station, I love you). It was Trump saying all he did was set off some celebratory fireworks, it’s not his fault there was a drought, who could predict there’d be a forest fire, and why didn’t the fire service respond sooner?

It was Trump sacrificing his followers to save his own ass. He said, “[T]hose who engage in the acts of violence and destruction: you do not represent our country, and to those who broke the law: you will pay.” This is what Trump does. If it turns out that somebody has to pay for the awful shit he’s pulled, he makes sure it’s not him. Or his feral children (although if they have to be sacrificed, we all know Eric goes down first).

The stupidest thing is, Trump probably believes his ‘concession’ speech will work. He probably believes it’ll get him off the hook. It’ll save him from impeachment. He’s said some of the words his people have told him he needs to say, surely everything will be okay now. That’s how it works, right?

Sadly, that IS how it works. At least it’s how it’s always worked before. If history is any indication (SPOILER: history is almost always an indication), there’s every reason to believe Trump will skate on this. There’s every reason to believe he’ll manage to remain POTUS until his term expires. There’s every reason to believe he’ll never be held fully accountable for his many crimes.

But we have a new president coming in, with a new Congress that’ll be controlled by Democrats, and a new Attorney General. So while there’s every reason to believe Trump will skate, there’s also reason to hope this time will be different.