A Sense of Doubt blog post #2187 - More thoughts on INSURRECTION and the new American Civil War
Just two shares today as I am behind and very tired.
The Republicans as the "but what if we didn't" party is very true.
Never forget what they were about to do:
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2021/01/08/thoughts-on-coups-and-sedition-1-8-21/
Thoughts on Coups and Sedition, 1/8/21
I have some additional thoughts on some of the events of the last few days, and to help me present them to you in an intelligible fashion, I’m going to employ the help of my fictional interlocutor. Say hello to the folks, F.I.
Hello, folks. And thank you, Scalzi, for letting me out of my box for the first time in months.
You’re welcome.
It’s very cramped in there.
Let’s change the subject.
Fine. First question: Was what happened on Wednesday an actual coup attempt?
What makes you think that it wasn’t?
I don’t know, I guess maybe I thought a real coup wouldn’t include a guy who looked like a Jamiroquai cosplayer at a Nazi bar karaoke night.
Just because it was a stupid coup attempt doesn’t mean it wasn’t a real coup attempt. Trump plumped for the thing to happen in his nodding and winking way on Twitter, and he incited it and encouraged it in person. The attendees came expecting to take part in one, and had planned their strategy, such as it was, on Parler and other not-exactly-savory portions of the internet. They brought weapons and zip ties. They went looking for congresspeople. They weren’t just there to hang out on the mall, wave their Trump flags, get a churro and go home. They meant business. Fortunately like all Trump business, it went belly up in record time. But that’s neither here nor there for the intent.
What do you make of the light police response?
I don’t really know what to think of it, to be honest. The most charitable take on it is that the Capitol Hill police genuinely thought these Trump dimsurrectionists were harmless, in which case this was a massive failure of intelligence and intelligence-gathering, since, again, it’s not like these folks were subtle about their plans. As people noted, these motherfuckers had merchandise made up for the event; there were people wandering about with “CIVIL WAR: JAN 6 2021” hoodies. The least charitable take is that the Capitol Hill Police, or some portion of it, at least, was in on it; I’m sure by now you’ve all seen the videos of the Capitol Hill policemen waving the coupers into the building and taking selfies with them as they trashed the place. There was also the matter of the DC National Guard not being activated as soon as the Capitol was breached; it was almost as if someone wanted the thing to succeed, or at least to let the couprists have as much time as possible to disrupt the electoral vote counting.
We will eventually discover the entire scope of the failure, but if I had to guess, I’d say it’s somewhere between, or maybe more accurately, a combination of, the two: The Capitol Hill Police didn’t understand the intent of the mob and/or was less concerned about them, because policing in the United States is racist as fuck and white people can wander around armed to invade a small country and the police won’t do shit about it; we also know Trump wasn’t exactly in a rush to send in the National Guard once the shit started going down. Incompetence and malice! Why not both!
What I do know is that Trump got exactly what he wanted out of the event. He just didn’t get all of what he wanted out of it. He absolutely pointed the mob at the Capitol. He absolutely intended to disrupt the electoral vote count. It’s my considered opinion he wouldn’t have been in the least bit upset if hostages had been taken and as such the vote count had been indefinitely postponed. In his mind, if the vote wasn’t counted, he’d still get to be President. That’s not actually how it works — his term is over on January 20 come hell or high water — but then Trump never understood any of that.
That all seems… a little dark.
I’m just getting started! If you want to go alllll the way into the woods, you can believe that the attack on Capitol and the various other right-wing protests and disruptions at state houses and other political targets were a coordinated effort to cause panic and chaos of the sort that would allow Trump to declare a military state of emergency, which he would then, of course, never undeclare. And then — wheee! — that’s the end of democracy in the US, hope you liked it, now your dictator for life is literally the stupidest and most venal man to hold the office of President.
Was this actually the plan? Maybe not on Trump’s part — I don’t think he has a plan other than “oh God oh God stop the Biden electoral vote I don’t want to go to jail” — but I’m pretty sure it was the MAGAts’ plan. The good news is that they don’t appear to have coordinated it particularly well nor did they appear to have a plan beyond trying to find parking as close to their protests as possible. Let me reiterate, this was a very shitty coup! For which we can all be thankful.
Do you think Trump will be impeached and/or sidelined via the 25th Amendment?
Maybe! But, you know, don’t get your hopes up. I think a second impeachment in the House is the most likely prospect — rumor says early next week — but whether the Senate will take it up in time, much less vote for removal is another issue entirely. Likewise, Pence has said he’s not interested in going the 25th route, so that’s unlikely. Unless, of course, Trump does something stupid, again, today or at any point over the weekend. Twitter did let him have his account back; it’s not outside the realm of possibility. But again: Don’t get your hopes up.
Which is too bad! I think at this point the GOP would be doing itself a solid removing Trump from office via the impeachment process, if only because then he is absolutely barred from holding office again. A bunch of senators want to run for president in 2024, after all — this would be a lovely way to keep him from coming back to haunt the party.
You really think Trump is going to run again in 2024? After this week?
Actually I think the reason he’s not going to run again in 2024 is because at this point there’s a better than even chance that he’s going to be in jail. But why take that chance, GOP senators? Punt his ass!
Speaking of Republican senators, I can’t help notice your picture of Josh Hawley up at the top of the entry.
Oh, that motherfucker. Yes. Him.
Would you care to share your thoughts on him?
Why yes I would! First, he’s a seditious piece of shit who thankfully chose exactly the worst possible time to yoke himself to the Trump wagon — I mean, seriously, it takes some doing to have tied yourself to the man just as he’s going over a fucking cliff, but Hawley managed it. Second, that little fist pump he gave to the mob before they went and trashed his workplace is perhaps the most spectacularly ill-timed bit of portraiture in the history of the Senate. Third, the fact that even after the House invasion Hawley still deciding that disrupting the electoral vote count was a good idea shows that his sense of political timing is epochally poor. He’s certainly paying for it, though — he lost his book contract, the major newspapers in his state have called on him to resign, and his political mentor calls him the “worst mistake” of his life. Life comes at you fast, doesn’t it, Senator Hawley.
He’s not alone in the sedition caucus — he’s joined by Ted Cruz, a fetid assemblage of moist dryer lint that dares to assert it’s a man, as well as a few other Republican senators, and more than a hundred Republican House members, including, regrettably, my own. They all should be ashamed of their votes on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, although of course they won’t be. What is shame to the shameless? It would be nice to think Hawley and Cruz, at the very least, might be bounced from the Senate for their role in abetting sedition, but, like Trump being removed before the end of his term, I wouldn’t get my hopes up.
But make no mistake: Hawley’s a piece of shit and an embarrassment to his state and our nation, as is Cruz and every other politician who participated in the farce that impeded a smooth and non-controversial reading of the electoral votes. They knew it was a farce and they did it anyway, and in doing so, by intention or otherwise gave Trump the excuse he needed to assemble his sad coup d’ego.
Maybe they’ll learn.
Lol, okay, there.
Any final thoughts?
Just that I literally never want to hear another white dude whine to me that they don’t, in fact, live on the lowest difficulty setting of American life. Motherfuckers, armed white dudes perpetrated a goddamn coup attempt at the Capitol — the seat of our national legislature — and at least some of them appear to have been invited in by the police to do so. They wandered around the place with their guns and zip-ties, took maskless selfies as they trashed the place, looted offices and climbed all over the Senate chamber like it was a playground… and then walked away, almost entirely unharmed. Any time some defensive white dude querulously mopes to me about how his life isn’t on the lowest difficulty setting, I’m going to send him that picture of Naziroquai posing at the dias of the Senate chamber, and then I’m going to tell him to shut the fuck up. Captain Furhead there walked in during the middle of an armed insurrection against the national government, struck his pose, and walked out. He is still alive and as of this writing, not even close to being arrested. That’s the lowest difficulty setting in action, friends.
(Let us acknowledge here that one person was in fact shot dead by the police during the insurrection, and others died during it or as a result of it, including one cop. Let’s also acknowledge that on the day of an actual armed insurrection against the Capitol, mostly perpetrated by white folks, a grand total of thirteen people were arrested. Compare and contrast that with, oh, any of the protests this summer. What was the difference there? Hmmm.)
Anyway, that’s where I am on all of that right now.
So we’re done?
Yes.
Does this mean I have to go back into my box?
… yes.
— JS
https://whatever.scalzi.com/2021/01/07/but-what-if-we-didnt/
But What If We Didn’t
I have a theory about the Republican Party, and it is that around the time Newt Gingrich became the head of its brain trust, the GOP added a fourth functioning principle to its previous tripod of “Southern Strategy to corner the racist vote,” “Abortion to corner the Evangelical vote” and “Tax cuts to corner the capitalist vote (and money).” The fourth principle was not about kettling and controlling a voting bloc, but rather a principle to maximize its power and to motivate the voting blocs beyond whatever the GOP could offer them politically.
That fourth principle, to put it in its shortest and bluntest form, is:
“But what if we… didn’t?”
Somewhat more broadly, the Republicans recognized there was a suite of political conventions and traditions that were designed to make it easier for things to get done, and that this suite of conventions and traditions were exploitable by denial. While people in both parties (and the parties themselves) would occasionally use this exploit, it was not done systematically.
That is, until Gingrich saw that practice as a weakness to be attacked. Here’s an early version:
“Treat the members of the other political party as colleagues rather than bitter enemies? Okay, but what if we… didn’t?“
And it worked! Which is to say that it got attention, raised temperatures and was an effective political cudgel against those who didn’t understand (or didn’t want to believe) that the political ground was shifting underneath their feet. Gingrich was a political genius (until he wasn’t), and he set the pattern of Republican contravening of norms that advanced inexorably over the years.
Mitch McConnell, seen above, is a master of the “But what if we… didn’t?” school of politics. Allow a sitting president of the opposite party to name a Supreme Court justice? Okay, but what if we didn’t? Stick with the principle that you established with regard to Supreme Court justices being nominated in an election year? Okay, but what if we didn’t? Actually choose to have the Senate be a legislative body rather than just a rubber stamp for conservative judges of questionable competency? Okay, but what if we didn’t? And so on. McConnell understands the depth of his transgression against political norms, you can be sure — he’s been in Congress long enough to remember how it was before — but like Gingrich, he doesn’t particularly care. He doesn’t care, because it get results. The ends justifies the means.
In this, Trump was — and make no mistake, still is — the perfect GOP president. Trump has no loyalty to tradition and operating principles; indeed his entire appeal is transgression. He no interest in procedure, regulation or rule of law. To be sure, he was less “But what if we didn’t” than “I’m just not gonna,” but the effective difference between the two is subtle and in any event abetted the GOP’s “what if we didn’t” principle to a significant degree.
The 2020 election was a perfect storm of “but what if we didn’t?”
So: Joe Biden won the 2020 election and has to be acknowledged as the president.
Okay, but what if we didn’t? Let’s say the election was tainted by fraud!
The facts show that the election was not tainted by fraud and indeed it was one of the most secure elections in US history, and we have to acknowledge those facts.
Okay, but what we didn’t? Let’s take it to court!
More than 60 court cases, on both state and federal levels, rule that, yes, in fact, the election went for Biden without any significant fraud. His electoral count stands and is uncontroversial and should be acknowledged as such when Congress convenes to count the votes on January 6.
Okay, but… what if we didn’t?
Well, now we know what happens when they didn’t.
The Republicans want us to believe they are surprised an insurrection has happened, but why should we believe that? These are not (all) unintelligent people. They knew what they were doing, they knew how they were transgressing, and they knew, every step of the way, what the result of each transgression was meant to be, both in terms of the fabric of democracy in the United States, and on the expectations of the Republican voting base.
There was a Republican mob at the Capitol yesterday because the GOP put them there. Not just yesterday, or through the course of the election, or the four years of the Trump administration. The storming of the Capitol is the (current) culmination of a decades-long project by Republicans, a project of denial, in which they didn’t recognize the validity of power being shared, or the equality of the other party, or the supremacy or desirability of democracy, if democracy meant a diminishment of their power and goals.
Democracy? Okay, but, what if we didn’t?
The Republicans aren’t surprised that this is where we are, and make no mistake that if at any point in the 2020 post-election they could have gotten away with subverting the will of the voters they absolutely would have done so. Joe Biden won 306 electoral votes and 7 million more popular votes than Trump, an unambiguous and, realistically, unassailable number. The Republicans chose to assail it anyway — not just a few members of the party, but as a matter of policy from the top all the way down. What is the number of electoral votes a Democrat now must win to be acknowledged without contestation as the winner of a presidential election by the GOP? We don’t actually know, except to say it has to be more than 306.
Yesterday our nation’s capitol was invaded and looted, and our democracy was shamed, and even then a half dozen Republican senators and more than a hundred GOP representatives who a few hours before were stuffed into shelters for their safety decided to play the “But what if we didn’t?” card. Sedition was preferable to being put on record as acknowledging a loss of power and privilege. Don’t come to me in the light of day and tell me this wasn’t where the GOP understood we would one day end up. The only problem the Republicans have with where we are at the moment is that, for once, “but what if we didn’t?” didn’t do what it was supposed to.
The Republican Party is a traitor to the ideals and practice of democracy in the United States. It fomented, aided and abetted an insurrection. A regrettable number of its members in the national government have signed on for sedition over the peaceful transfer of power (“The peaceful transfer of power? Okay, but what if we… didn’t?”). These seditious members should be drummed out of Congress, right now, and some Republicans who are in power should be charged with crimes. The Republican Party got us as close as we have gotten since the Civil War to the collapse of our democracy, not by accident, but by design, and had the implementation of that design been only a little more competent, both now and over the last few years, it might have succeeded. The GOP is an enemy of the United States — not conservatism as a whole, but its party (although at the moment I have no great kind thoughts about conservatism, either) — and if it had any institutional capacity for shame and self-reflection, it would end itself.
To which I see the Republican Party saying, “Okay, but what if we… didn’t?” Because even now I can tell you that from the GOP point of view the problem isn’t the damage that party has wreaked upon the US and its people. The problem is its plan didn’t work.
The GOP always meant for us to be here. The thing is, there’s somewhere beyond here the GOP still wants us to go. We shouldn’t pretend that the GOP won’t get us back to here as soon as practically possible. And then past it, to the ruin of us all.
— JS
Lisa Murkowski is OUTA HERE
Chuck and Nancy are full steam ahead on IMPEACH THE MOTHERFUCKER ALREADY, AGAIN, with a presumptive date of Monday to throw down NO INSURRECTION NO INSURRECTION YOU ARE THE INSURRECTION in the House. (Monday is when the House's next session is scheduled; to introduce articles of impeachment before then would require unanimous consent, and have you met the House Republican Caucus?)
Over in the Senate, Mitch McConnell has explained to his members that trying the House's impeachment indictments won't take place until Trump is already out of office, because of the same issue with when the session is scheduled to start (January 19) and unanimous consent. (Chuck Schumer and his New Georgia majority won't take over until Biden's term begins, when Kamala Harris becomes the tie-breaking vote.) And that? Is FINE. We will impeach that dumb bloodthirsty bitch after he's out of office, and if he's convicted, he can never hold office again. His idiot son and daughter will have to catfight over the 2024 Traitor Party nomination.
But there's someone (besides Lindsey Graham, who needs to borrow Obama's Time Machine and travel back to 1998 to learn from himself what an impeachable offense is) who thinks we should not impeach a man who just sent a horde of thousands, some armed with zip ties, some armed with arms, to the Congress to "fight," "strong," "not weak," "durrrrrr," and incidentally kill a cop by bashing him in the head with a fire extinguisher. And that man is dicks-wouldn't-melt-in-his-mouth House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy.
Let us listen, with all due respect, to McCarthy's thoughts on NO STEP ON SNEK MEAN TO PRES!
When I spoke to President Trump on Wednesday, I told him he had a great responsibility to intervene to quell the mob and start the healing process for our country. Over the coming weeks we will work with law enforcement to bring anyone responsible for the violence to justice. Lawlessness and extremism have no place in our way of life.
Our country is not just divided. We are deeply hurt. The task ahead for the next Congress and incoming Biden Administration couldn't be more momentous. But to deliver a better America for all, partisans of all stripes first must unite as Americans and show our country that a peaceful transfer of power has occurred. Impeaching the President with just 12 days left in his term will only divide our country more.
If you are a longtime Wonkette reader, you remember all the times Trump lost a vote to John McCain's ghost and how he'd always go, like, "we lost 50 to three! Kill the filibuster!" (Well look at that. We finally agree on something.) But in those cases he only ever counted Republican votes, because of how those are the only votes that count. The votes he lost were actually 53-47.
Kevin McCarthy thinks impeachment will "divide our country more," but the only people it will divide is Republicans.
Reuters, have the American people been polled on the issue of TRUMP GTFO?
Fifty-seven percent of Americans want Republican President Donald Trump to be immediately removed from office after he encouraged a protest this week that escalated into a deadly riot inside the U.S. Capitol, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll.
Were most of those Democrats? Sure. Did they comprise two in 10 Republicans? They did.
Let's check in with one of those Republicans, US Senator from Alaska Lisa Murkowski.
"I want him to resign. I want him out. He has caused enough damage," Murkowski, R-Alaska, said during an interview from her small Capitol office, steps away from the Senate chambers that were invaded by pro-Trump rioters on Wednesday. [...]
"I think he should leave. He said he's not going to show up. He's not going to appear at the inauguration. He hasn't been focused on what is going on with COVID. He's either been golfing or he's been inside the Oval Office fuming and throwing every single person who has been loyal and faithful to him under the bus, starting with the vice president. He doesn't want to stay there. He only wants to stay there for the title. He only wants to stay there for his ego. He needs to get out. He needs to do the good thing, but I don't think he's capable of doing a good thing," she said.
That sure sounds like a GOP vote for IMPEEEEACH, I reckon! Add in Romney, a couple others, fuck it I wouldn't put money against Mitch McConnell joining up but I am very bad at "politics," and they may not get to 17 Republicans (and Joe Manchin), but then again, maybe they will.
In conclusion, the end.
[BusinessInsider / ADN / Reuters]
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2102.12 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2051 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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