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.

what needs to happen

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First, invoke the 25th Amendment and remove Trump’s power and authority. Second, impeach him again, and this time do it right. Third, appoint a Special Counsel to investigate Trump specifically in regard to yesterday’s insurrection.

That first step, invoking the 25th, is critically important. I don’t think we can afford to wait two more weeks for Trump to be removed. I don’t think he’s emotionally stable enough to trust for…hell, for another day. So yeah, I think it’s necessary for Vice President Pence to get together with Trump’s cabinet and invoke the 25th Amendment in order to remove Trump’s control of the nuclear arsenal, to take him out of the chain of military command, and to remove his power to issue pardons. I think we have to neuter his presidential authority, because yesterday he demonstrated more clearly than ever that he simply can’t be trusted to wield that power responsibly.

Then we need to impeach him again. The House needs to draft and pass articles of impeachment based only on his abuse of power yesterday. Keep it simple and specific. He incited a riot that resulted in an assault on a federal building, the destruction of federal property, and four deaths. The Senate needs to try him on that charge and Republicans need to find the balls to convict him and remove him from office.

At that point — before Biden assumes office — appoint a non-partisan Special Counsel with a very narrow mandate: investigate Trump to determine his level of responsibility in the January 6 riot and breach of the Capitol.

That’s not everything that should be done, of course. It’s not everything I’d like to be done. I’d like to see Trump hauled out of the White House in handcuffs. I’d like to see him in an orange jumpsuit. Hell, I’d like to see Cruz and Hawley and the rest of the Sedition Caucus removed from office. I’d like to see them dipped in shit and rolled in the sand. But what the nation needs right now is stability and maturity.

Right now — and I mean right now, starting this day — we need to take a few strong but essentially simple steps to settle the nation. We can sort out the rest later. But the shit that took place yesterday simply cannot be allowed to stand.

I’m ashamed to say it, but I don’t think any of this will happen. I don’t think there are enough Republicans with integrity to do any of this, and it can’t be done without them.

I have a LOT more thoughts on what happened yesterday, but I’m still too angry and sad and ashamed and disgusted to put them in any sort of order.

anything you can get away with

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I seriously doubt Comrade President Trump has anything like an actual philosophy of life. That would require thoughtful consideration and self-reflection, neither of which are in his toolbox. I do, though, think he has a guiding principle. Well, let’s make that two related guiding principles, which are as follows:

  1. take anything you can get away with
  2. if you can get away with it, it’s okay.

As guiding principles go (and c’mon, guiding principles should go pretty far), these have the advantage of being simple and flexible, largely because they’re not constrained by anything like morality, decency, and honor. They apply to almost any situation or circumstance, and they’re completely self-justifying. It can be summed up in two tiny sentences: Can I get away with this? Okay then. That’s it, right there.

“I can get away with it. I DID get away with it. You can’t stop me.”

Trump’s guiding principles are grounded in very basic zero-sum motivations: greed and power. One person’s gain is equivalent to another’s loss. Only one of us can have it. If you have it, then I can’t have it; if I have it, you can’t.

Doesn’t even matter what ‘it’ is. An apartment. The presidency. A magazine cover. The last piece of pie. The last two pieces of pie. What matters is only one of us can have it. It all comes down to greed and power. Greed means I want it (or just as likely, I may not actually want it, but I want you NOT to have it). Power means I can take it (or I can prevent you from taking it). It’s self-justifying because if I want it and I have the power to take it without much consequence, then I deserve it — and you don’t.

Trump is such a hollow, empty, soulless motherfucker that having ‘it’ isn’t quite enough. As far as that goes, you NOT having ‘it’ isn’t quite enough. Taking ‘it’ without any real consequence, that isn’t quite enough either. You being unable to prevent Trump from taking ‘it’ isn’t quite enough. It’s also necessary to make sure others SEE that Trump has ‘it’ and you don’t, that he took ‘it’ and you couldn’t stop him. Everybody has to see that Trump won.

Examples? Sure, I’ve got examples. Here’s a small example. Back in 2017, TIME magazine reported that at state dinners, Trump gets two scoops of ice cream with his dessert while everyone else at the table gets just one. If you wanted two scoops of ice cream, you’d have to ask. Subordinates ask. (I’m going to come back to this in a minute.)

Protecting a murderous thug, getting two scoops of ice cream — same thing.

A more meaningful example: In his most recent book about Trump, Bob Woodward quotes him as saying this:

“The people at the Post are upset about the Khashoggi killing. That is one of the most gruesome things. You yourself have said. I saved his ass. I was able to get Congress to leave him alone. I was able to get them to stop.”

Woodward is a former Washington Post reporter. WaPo has not been kind to Trump. He wants Woodward — and everybody at WaPo — to know he protected the Saudi ruler who had a WaPo reporter tortured, murdered, and dismembered. Trump wins, you lose, nothing you can do about it. He was able to help a despicable ruler get away with an international crime, and he gets a second scoop of ice cream.

A moment ago I said subordinates ask, which implies superiors don’t. Superiors don’t have to ask. If they ask, they expect it to be taken as a command. When Trump said to the President of Ukraine, “I would like you to do us a favor,” he wasn’t really asking for a favor. He was expecting obedience. On Saturday, in his telephone call with the Georgia Secretary of State, Trump said, “So what are we going to do here, folks? I only need 11,000 votes. Fellas, I need 11,000 votes. Give me a break.” You can hear in his voice how galling it was that he was forced to ask for a break, when he should have been given one as a matter of course. You can be sure, if Georgia SoS Raffensperger had agreed to ‘give him a break’ Trump would make certain everybody knew he was the one in charge and Raffensperger merely complied.

“So look. All I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes.”

John Adams, in reply to a letter from Thomas Jefferson (Tangent Alert: the letter was about the partition of Poland, of all things, and increasing turmoil in Europe — and really, if you’ve got a moment, Adams’ letter is worth reading, if only to see what real statesmen used to be like), wrote this:

Power always sincerely, conscientiously, de tres bon foi, believes itself Right. Power always thinks it has a great soul, and vast views, beyond the comprehension of the weak; and that it is doing God service, when it is violating all his laws.

Greed and power. Take everything you can get away with; if you can get away with it, it’s okay. I suspect Comrade Trump truly believes he has vast views beyond the comprehension of the weak; but I’m also convinced he has panicky moments in which he knows himself to be a hollow, frightened, shell of a human being who is only valued by others because of his purported power and genuine greed.

I feel compassion for the panicked hollow Trump. I truly do. But that doesn’t prevent me from also wanting to see that wretched motherfucker taken away in handcuffs and tried for crimes against the American people. At a time when the nation whose care he’s been charged with is experiencing the worst public health crisis in modern history, this piddling, grasping, spiteful bastard is only interested in protecting himself.

a bipartisan discussion on infrastructure policy

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Democrats: President-elect Uncle Joe Biden says we should work with Republicans even though we may disagree on some policy issues. So let’s discuss the infrastructure bill.
Republicans: In Comrade President Trump’s second term, we should consider sending Democrats and other Satan-worshiping perverts to re-education camps. It’s only fair.

Dem: Excuse me, we don’t mean to be rude, but Uncle Joe won the 2020 election and will be inaugurated on…
Rep: STOP THE STEAL! We have incontrovertible proof that BLM operatives planted tens of thousands of pre-filled-out ballots for Biden!

Dem: The courts have repeatedly rejected your claims because of a lack of evidence, so…
Rep: The radical left courts are full of communist Trump-haters who hate Trump and MAGA and also Christians!

Dem: Many of the judges who’ve heard your cases were Republicans, some even nominated by Trump himself, so we don’t think you can…
Rep: Fake news!

Dem: It’s not fake news. It’s neither fake nor news. It’s just the facts, so let’s turn our attention back to infrastructure.
Rep: China is behind it! Where’s Hunter Biden?!

Dem: We don’t think that has anything to do with…
Rep: Joe Biden is a child molester and his son Hunter has sex with dwarfs!

Dem: No, he’s…wait, what?
Rep: China has infiltrated specially trained sex dwarfs to seduce Democrats and blackmail them to support the Chinese Communist Party!

Dem: …
Rep: Democrats don’t deny their participation in Chinese dwarf sex ring!

Dem: Look, can we just focus on why we’re meeting today and talk about infrastructure legislation?
Rep: We don’t make deals with Antifa! Why do you hate America?! STOP HAVING SEX WITH CHINESE DWARFS!

Dem: We’re not having…look, we’re standing here right in front of you.
Rep: You’re having Chinese sex with dwarfs in your mind! Right here in Congress! Have you no shame?!

Dem: Back to infrastructure…
Rep (grabbing their crotch): Infra this structure, bitches!

Dem: That’s completely inappropriate.
Rep: Fuck your feelings! Stop the steal! Lock her up!

Dem: We see no point in continuing with this.
Rep: Where are you going?! To see your Chinese sex dwarfs?! Do you keep them imprisoned in a secret chamber in an underground bunker hidden below DNC headquarters?!?!

Dem: We’re outa here.
Rep: Radical left Democrats refuse to cooperate with Republicans on infrastructure!

1/6/21 – fick herum, finde es heraus

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January 6th. For me, it’s the birthday of Sherlock Holmes (and Joan of Arc, if you prefer religious martyrs). For you maybe it’s the Feast of the Epiphany, which is something of a big deal if you believe in that sort of thing. If you live in Dublin, you might think of the 6th as the anniversary of the Night of the Big Wind in which a storm in 1839 damaged or destroyed about a fifth of all the houses in the city. Speaking of disasters (or martyrs of a different sort), it’s also the wedding anniversary of Henry VIII’s short marriage to Anne of Cleves.

Lots of stuff taking place on the 6th. It’s also the day when both houses of Congress will meet to officially record the electoral college vote, which was taken on Dec. 14 to confirm the results of the 2020 election on November 3rd (SPOILER: Uncle Joe Biden won 306 votes to Comrade Trump’s 232 votes). Normally — as if ‘normal’ still had any meaning — that vote would be just a formality.

But we live in a post-normal grotesque Trump-shaped world. This January 6th, Josh Hawley (the spider-brained junior Senator from Hobby Lobby Missouri) has announced he’ll challenge the certification of electoral votes. That will force every member of Congress to publicly support either the actual election results OR the theory that Satan-worshiping, cannibalistic sex perverts among Democrats and Hollywood elites conspired with Republicans in Name Only, in cooperation with traitors in the Supreme Court and the Department of Justice, to insert an algorithm developed for the dead Venezuelan president Cesar Chavez into voting machines manufactured by a Canadian-based corporation that switched votes from Comrade President Trump to Uncle Joe Biden so that China will…fuck, I forgot what China is supposed to get out of this. Cheap soybeans, maybe?

Comrade Trump and GOP wanker Josh Hawley sing ‘I gotta be me’ at Attention-Seeking WhoreCon.

Anyway, while that freakish shitshow is taking place inside Congress, outside on the streets of DC, there’s going to be a pro-Trump rally. It’s hosted by Women for America First. You may be asking, “Greg, old sock, who are these Women for America First?”

I’m glad you asked. First, stop calling me ‘old sock’. Second, on their website, WfAF describe themselves (and again, I’m not making this up) as a “21st century suffrage movement” which gives “women the tools and a safe place to speak out – even when the haters come after us and try to shut us up just because we are women.” It’s clever of them to assume and anticipate that they’ll be hated, then to preemptively deflect that hate by claiming it’s because they’re women, not because of their fascist totalitarian views. They probably see themselves as modern Joans of Arc; their website is suffused with the self-pitying scent of burning martyr.

The coming God, Guns & Bullshit rally.

I don’t know what’s going to happen in DC on the 6th, but I’m pretty confident it won’t bear any resemblance to a woman’s suffrage rally. Comrade Trump is hot for this rally. He’s tweeted (of course he did) that it’s a ‘protest’ rally, and that it’ll be big. “Be there, will be wild.”

That seems a safe prediction; the previous two pro-Trump rallies (on 11/14 and 12/12) were pretty wild. Proud Boys and other right-wing extremists roamed around the streets, attacking anybody they suspected of being Antifa or BLM supporters or lizard people. There’s every reason to believe that will happen again on the 6th. The Proud Boys are especially upset right now because the Hotel Harrington — their preferred hotel — has decided to close its door to guests from Jan. 3 through the 6th. Why? Out of “concern and desire for everyone’s health and safety.” Basically, it’s because the staff hate the Proud Boys and because the hotel’s management doesn’t want the Harrington to be known as a magnet for racist hooligan fuckwits.

Trump, being Trump, seems to be tacitly encouraging the Proud Boys and the loopiest elements of Qanon — and that’s spooking the hell out of DC’s many law enforcement agencies. The DC metro police, the uniformed Secret Service, the federal Park police, the Capitol police, the Federal Protective Service — everybody is on edge, everybody is worried. Not just because of the potential for violence, but because nobody knows how Comrade Trump will respond to it. WaPo has reported, “Government officials fear that if violence spreads, Trump could invoke the Insurrection Act to mobilize the military” in an attempt to ratfuck the results of the election.

Proud Boys slogan — FAFO, fuck around, find out. It’s more impressive in German.

This is basically what Michael Flynn (former US Army general, former Trump National Security Adviser, Qanon dickhead, self-confessed liar, and felon) has advocated. He suggested right out loud that Trump “could take military capabilities and he could place them in those states [won by Biden] and basically rerun an election.”

That sounds like the plot of a bad Bruce Willis movie. Until you remember that in recent weeks Trump has replaced a LOT of career Pentagon officials with a job lot of inexperienced, fever-brained Trump supporters. It sounds ridiculous until you remember that his pet Attorney General recently resigned, and that Trump has threatened to fire both the current directors of the FBI and the CIA. It sounds ridiculous until you remember the vast majority of Republicans in Congress have stood around playing with their dicks while Trump has casually, deliberately violated almost every presidential norm and tradition (not to mention a number of laws). Congressional Republicans might voice ‘concern’ if Trump does try to invoke the Insurrection Act, but there’s absolutely no reason to believe they’d try to stop him.

And if that’s not enough to make you wet your pants, remember this: just a few days ago Trump threatened to attack Iran after Iranian-supported militias in Iraq launched some missiles at the US embassy in Baghdad. Trump tweeted (of course he did), “If one American is killed, I will hold Iran responsible. Think it over.”

Think this over: what would Comrade President Trump consider doing if he thought it would help him stay in power? Destroy the Republican Party? Spark a riot in DC? Start a little war in the Middle East? Burn a third of a million American Joans of Arc in the nation’s Covid wards?

I hate to say this — I truly hate to say it — but things may be owl-shit crazy right now, but I’m afraid things could get even owl-shit crazier starting on January 6th, 2021.