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Thursday, May 20, 2021

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2284 - Rewriting Recent History about the Violent Insurrection Against our Country and Democracy



A Sense of Doubt blog post #2284 - Rewriting Recent History about the Violent Insurrection Against our Country and Democracy

We are living in alternate reality in which "republicans" are creating a world that does not exist. It's nauseating. It's offensive. It's vile. It is beyond simple dishonesty. It's more destructive than the word "lie" implies.

And FOX NEWS and its ilk are more responsible than the politicians because they are brainwashing people and promoting this alternate reality.

It is grotesque.

So much for the party of law and order.




https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2021/05/the-gop-is-turning-the-january-6-insurrection-into-a-new-lost-cause/

The GOP Is Turning the January 6 Insurrection Into a New Lost Cause

Rewriting history has officially begun.

On January 6, the day Congress was scheduled to certify the electoral votes in the 2020 presidential election and declare Joe Biden the victor, thousands of supporters of President Donald Trump stormed the US Capitol. They looted congressional offices, vandalized the building, and assaulted hundreds of law enforcement officials. The insurrection left five dead—including Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick—and marked a dark day in the history of the United States. Among the countless photos that went viral was one of a man flying a Confederate flag inside the Capitol. That such a symbol was still proudly waved in America only foreshadowed the egregious whitewashing to come.

Rewriting history is a staple of American mythology. Across the country, one can find people who sincerely believe that slavery wasn’t that bad, the Civil War was fought over states’ rights, and that, had he not been murdered by a racist, the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would’ve been a Republican today. American exceptionalism requires recasting the particularly ugly parts of our past into rosier scenarios. And now, just a few months after the insurrection at the Capitol, the Republican Party has laid the groundwork for repeating this grand tradition, creating their own version of the Lost Cause narrative from the Civil War.

It’s not quite right to say that the Republican Party is living in an alternate reality. They actually experienced the reality that they have now chosen to completely reframe. At a House oversight committee hearing last week, Rep. Andrew Clyde (R-Ga.) sought to dramatically downplay the severity of the attack on January 6, comparing an armed mob to a “normal” visit by tourists. “As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor, and who with other Republican colleagues helped barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter,” he said, remaining grounded in reality thus far, “I can tell you, the House floor was never breached, and it was not an insurrection.” 

It’s quite an imaginative leap to be one of the lawmakers forced to barricade a door while a violent mob attempted to break through and still claim that the mob’s actions did not constitute an insurrection. But he was far from alone in this new appraisal of the event. As impressive as his mind-bending argument was—smashing windows and beating cops with flag poles was just another day at the American parliament—the GOP’s nearly unanimous attempts to engage in massive historical revisionism has one familiar precedent. If 156 years after the Civil War, millions of people believe that the Southern states were fighting for “states’ rights,” then surely today’s GOP can also convince them that the January 6 insurrection was just another protest.  

Technically, the Confederacy only lasted four years, but in practice white supremacists have kept the dream of a pro-slavery state alive through the collective myth known as the Lost Cause. There are a few components to this cherished dogma. First is the racist belief that the Southern states that seceded from the Union in the run-up to the Civil War were righteous and justified and did so not to preserve slavery as an institution but as an assertion of constitutionally guaranteed state’s rights. This belief was further buttressed by the fact that Reconstruction—which was an attempt to reunite the country after the war and end discrimination against the newly freed people—was largely a failure. The failure of Reconstruction then further legitimized the fantasy that in the end the South was sort of right all along. 

After the Civil War, former Confederate states were readmitted fairly quickly, a ban on former Confederate soldiers serving in the government was short-lived, and white vigilantes and paramilitary groups wreaked havoc across the states. Their approach was to violently overtake governments and kill Black people and any white people politically aligned with them, all the while passing laws that made it impossible for Black people to exercise their civil rights. For the Southerners who continued to champion the myth of the Lost Cause, this era, which was marked by unspeakably horrific violence against Black people, was often conveniently ignored.

Reconstruction expert and historian Eric Foner describes the myth as advancing the proposition that “Reconstruction was a vindictive effort by Northerners to punish white Southerners, that Black people were incapable of taking part intelligently in a democratic government. And therefore, the overthrow of Reconstruction was legitimate.”

Fast-forward to the weeks and months after the insurrection, during which hundreds of people were charged with crimes ranging from entering a restricted building to assaulting law enforcement officials in connection with the insurrection. For some Republicans, however, the suspects are the real victims. “Where is the outrage about young people being unfairly treated?” Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) asked at the same hearing. “Joe Biden’s Justice Department is criminalizing political protest.” This is rich coming from the political party that has dozens of proposed bills that stifle free speech and criminalize protest. It’s also the first of what I assume will be a deluge of attempts to rewrite history. 

Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) also believes the insurrectionists are the real victims. “Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding US citizens—especially Trump voters,” he said at the hearing. “The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal record and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime.”

One possible strategy to set the record straight would be for Congress to form a commission to investigate what happened on January 6. Democrats are in favor of doing this and advanced legislation to create such a body. Unsurprisingly, the majority of Republicans, many of whom still believe Donald Trump won the election, are against it. A factual record would directly contradict the lies they’ve already told and will continue to churn out. House minority leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) opposed the idea of focusing only on what happened on January 6, because he disingenuously argued that the commission should look into “left-wing” violence like Black Lives Matter or other antiracist groups. “Given the political misdirections that have marred this process, given the now duplicative and potentially counterproductive nature of this effort, and given the Speaker’s shortsighted scope that does not examine interrelated forms of political violence in America, I cannot support this legislation,” he said in a statement.

Obviously, there is no reason to investigate liberal groups; the January 6 attackers had just come from a Trump rally during which the ex-president encouraged them to go to the Capitol. They were wearing Trump hats and waving Trump flags. But in order to reshape the history of what happened that day, the GOP wants to downplay it or even outright deny that it was an insurrection. It’s in this denial that the parallels between Reconstruction and the Capitol attacks are most worrisome. If Republicans succeed the way the South did during the Reconstruction era, the future story of January 6 will not be that it was a violent white supremacist attack on democracy, but rather that it was a heroic tale, a venerated Lost Cause for modern times.



Boy, This Georgia GOP Congressman Must Really Hate Tourists!


screengrab via

Last week, there was a nutbag hearing in the House Oversight Committee. The guy who was for five minutes Donald Trump's (acting) Defense secretary, Christopher Miller, comported himself like an absolute ass as he defended his reactions to the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Republican congressmen were even worse, outright denying that there even was an insurrection that day.

One of the absolute worst was GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde of Georgia, who angrily intoned that "there was no insurrection! To call it an insurrection is a bold-faced lie!" He said it was more like a "normal tourist visit." His comments were so absurd that somebody on Twitter decided to put them side-by-side with actual footage of the "tourist visit."

For context, other recent times Clyde appeared on Wonkette include when he was one of the 147 members of Congress who, even after the terrorist attack was over, still voted against certifying the results of the election. Also, when he was one of only 12 GOP reps who couldn't find it in his patriotic soul to award congressional medals to the Capitol police who saved them that day. You know, from "tourist visit."

Well, there is a quick update on "tourist visit." It turns out a photographer got a snapshot of Clyde that day during "tourist visit."

That tweet is from Tom Williams, the photographer from Roll Call who photographed "tourist visit." The Independent explains:

A photo has emerged of Andrew Clyde, the Republican congressman who claimed "there was no insurrection" and compared US Capitol rioters to "tourists", barricading the House chamber during the attack.

"The Rep. Clyde news reminded me of this," Roll Call photographer Tom Williams tweeted this week, and included a picture of the Georgia congressman in a group of eight men pushing a piece of furniture against doors to the chamber.

Man, that guy must REALLY hate tourists. He's standing there at the door like "NOOOOOOO! Tourists! Don't let them in! The tourists!"

For the record, here's more of what Clyde said in that hearing that day, about "tourist visit":

"As one of the members who stayed in the Capitol and on the House floor and who with other Republican colleagues helped barricade the door until almost 3 p.m. that day from the mob who tried to enter, I can tell you, the House floor was never breached, and it was not an insurrection," he said. [...]

"You know, if you didn't know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit," he said.

Here's some video that guy being confronted about calling it "tourist visit" and just being an absolute shitheel about it, suggesting that we are failing to consider the context of what he said, about "tourist visit."

It's almost like these people are breathless, unrepentant pathological liars or something.

[Independent / Business Insider]

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https://www.wonkette.com/another-day-another-accused-capitol-rioter-who-cant-shut-up-about-his-alleged-crimes

Another Day, Another Accused Capitol Rioter Who Can’t Shut Up About His Alleged Crimes


So, it happened again. Another accused Capitol rioter has self-incriminated himself to jail. Daniel Warmus, of Buffalo, New York, was arrested Tuesday and charged with what GOP Rep. Andrew Clyde might call aggravated tourism or, if you're not a doofus, "knowingly entering or remaining in any restricted building, knowingly and with intent to impede or disrupt the orderly conduct of government business or official functions, and violent entry." Those are crimes, and you don't get to stop at the gift shop on your way out.

A tipster reportedly contacted authorities after hearing Warmus bragging about his misadventures during a dentist's appointment. These people just won't shut up about their attempted coup. It was like they'd each scored four touchdowns in a single game.

The witness heard Warmus he brag that he'd "breached the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021, and smoked a marijuana cigarette while inside the building." If you've watched a lot of "Law & Order," you'll recognize this as a “confession." Warmus was also overheard showing someone video of himself at the Capitol. The witness helped the federal investigators identify Warmus, arguably to the relief of the dental hygienist who'll no longer have to listen to his crap while cleaning his teeth.

Investigators discovered Warmus in amateur film footage of the riots. Warmus is seen wearing a sweatshirt stating "CNN is fake news" and a dark "Trump 2020" hat. He also carried a tree branch with a “Fuck Antifa" flag. Wisconsin's Sen. Ron Johnson and Georgia's Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene might still argue that Warmus was secretly Antifa in disguise, but they're both idiots. You should never listen to them.

At one point, Warmus tells the camera that he runs "an auto shop in Orchard Park, New York." You wonder if the feds thought this was a trap. Could even a proud Trump 2020 voter be that dumb? Turns out the answer is yes.

According to authorities, a Capitol Police officer grabbed Warmus by his backpack but he shook him off, which is resisting arrest and what most conservatives consider a capital offense if the perpetrator's a POC. Strange that the cop didn't just shoot a fleeing Warmus in the back. That's how North Carolina sheriff's deputies killed Andrew Brown, and the DA just ruled that the shooting was justified. No one really treated these thugs like the domestic terrorists they were. You can almost forgive the police during the attack, who were outnumbered and unprepared, but in the months since the attack, conservative media and Republican politicians seem intent on waving away the MAGA mob's actions. It's the post-riot pity party, and everyone's invited who's willing to ignore what happened in front of their own eyes.

Last week, Arizona Rep. Paul Gosar defended his fellow seditionists, who were innocent victims of their failed coup.

Outright propaganda and lies are being used to unleash the national security state against law-abiding US citizens, especially Trump voters. The FBI is fishing through homes of veterans and citizens with no criminal records and restricting the liberties of individuals that have never been accused of a crime.

I'd whip out my tiny violin, but I don't think the truly persecuted brag about their misdeeds at the dentist's office.

The so-called “law and order" GOP has made clear that it's pro-law enforcement only when the police are choking out Black people on city streets. White folks can do whatever they want. The GOP's downplaying of the January 6 attack only feeds the arrogance and entitlement of the insurrectionists. It's why Warmus and so many other MAGA idiots brag about storming the Capitol. They feel emboldened. The five or so Republicans who aren't opportunists and traitors might understand this, but the rest are hopeless.

Oh, and WJLA ABC-7 brings us the important news: Authorities didn't find "evidence" supporting Warmus's "claim" that he smoked "marijuana" inside or near the "Capitol," as if they would have found a stubbed-out joint in that mess. Also, possession of marijuana is legal in Washington DC, so if it's not a crime, why would authorities bother looking for evidence of Warmus not committing a crime while he's committing all the other crimes. It was just silly, we are just saying.

[ABC 7]

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Mitch McConnell Opposes January 6 Commission, May Now Be Open To Hanging Mike Pence


The House voted last night, 252 to 175, to set up an independent, 9/11-style commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol. Thirty-five Republicans joined all the Democrats in the vote, which in saner times should have been unanimous.

Then again, in saner times, a president wouldn't have incited a mob to try to overturn an election he'd lost, and 147 members of Congress wouldn't have voted to endorse the attempted sedition. So maybe the rest of the Republicans were simply voting for a better hypothetical reality in which no such insurrection would even exist to be investigated. They're such idealists!

Now the bill goes to the Senate, where Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has announced his opposition to the commission. McConnell had said Tuesday afternoon that Senate Republicans were "undecided" on approving a commission, and that they'd need to "read the fine print." McConnell said that the commission "needs to be clearly balanced and not tilted one way or the other so we have an objective evaluation."

You might think such balance might result from the agreed-upon structure of the commission, with each party naming five members of the panel, and the requirement that subpoenas be agreed upon by both parties. But McConnell suddenly discovered the whole thing was rigged Tuesday evening, after former president Lieface McFascist called the proposal a "Democrat trap" and called on McConnell and congressional Republicans to "get much tougher and much smarter, and stop being used by the Radical Left." Trump, like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, said that any commission on January 6 would also have to investigate things that didn't happen on January 6, for balance.

So McConnell dutifully announced Wednesday he'd decided he'd decided to oppose "the House Democrats' slanted and unbalanced proposal for another commission to study the events of January 6th." This is where we remind you once more the proposal had been negotiated by the Democratic and Republican heads of the House Homeland Security Committee, incorporating multiple Republican suggestions, and that "another" is doing a lot of work for "one."

On the Senate floor, McConnell offered some perfectly reality-based, good-faith objections to the commission legislation. For one thing there are already law enforcement investigations, and some committee investigations in both the House and Senate, so wouldn't a comprehensive, independent commission just be a waste of time and money?


There is, has been, and there will continue to be no shortage ― no shortage — of robust investigations by two separate branches of the federal government ... It's not at all clear what new facts or additional investigation yet another commission could actually lay on top of existing efforts by law enforcement and Congress.

The facts have come out, they'll continue to come out. What is clear is that House Democrats have handled this proposal in partisan bad faith going right back to the beginning, from initially offering a laughably partisan starting point to continuing to insist on various other features under the hood that are designed to centralize control over the commission's process and its conclusions in Democratic hands.

Gentle reader, we do hope you will not spill your tea when we point out to you that Sen. McConnell is not telling the truth here. For one thing, as the Washington Post points out, the current investigations are fairly limited in scope. A Senate investigation is only looking at security at the Capitol, and what lapses in security should be corrected, and the Justice Department's prosecutions of individual seditionists are only concerned with the actions of those people, not an overall understanding of the event.

The Post points out that the text of the House bill passed last night, by contrast, calls for an examination of "the influencing factors that fomented such attack on American representative democracy while engaged in a constitutional process," as well as for recommendations for possible action in response.

It could, for instance, seek to find out what role Trump played in encouraging the attack, as well as his response once it was taking place — something that could lead to members of Congress themselves being subpoenaed.

Ah, well then, we can see why McConnell might object to that, particularly since that would almost certainly include his esteemed colleague in the House, Kevin McCarthy, who begged Trump on the phone to call off the rioters who were touring the Capitol and got only the response, "Well Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are."

As for the rest of McConnell's objections, they're just more of his usual Upside Down bullshit; if House Democrats had wanted to simply pass a "laughably partisan" bill, they'd have done that without four months of negotiations with Republicans. The bill that passed last night, with all of 35 Republican votes, truly was bipartisan, for all the good it did.

Sen John Thune (R-South Dakota) said yesterday that he opposed the commission because he worried it might become a "political weapon in the hands of the Democrats," which would be a very bad thing indeed. Particularly since that might distract from Republicans' own partisan warfare:

Anything that gets us rehashing the 2020 election, I think, is a day lost on being able to draw contrast between us and the Democrats' very radical left wing agenda.

We're fairly sure that after that impressive bit of rhetoric, Sen. Thune was whisked away to a hospital to check for whiplash, and possibly a sprained tongue resulting from talking too rapidly from both sides of his mouth.

The Republican opposition to a real investigation also prompted an anonymous letter to all members of Congress from anonymous members of the US Capitol Police, calling for Congress to fully investigate the insurrection:

On Jan 6th, where some officers served their last day in US Capitol Police uniform, and not by choice, we would hope that Members whom we took an oath to protect, would at the very minimum support an investigation to get to the bottom of EVERYONE responsible and hold them 100 percent accountable no matter the title of position they hold or held. [...]

It is inconceivable that some of the Members we protect, would downplay the events of January 6th. Member safety was dependent upon the heroic actions of the USCP.

The letter was on police letterhead but was not an official statement; the department later said it definitely "does NOT take positions on legislation." It had been distributed by the office of Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Maryland); staffers vouched for its authenticity and said it was written by multiple officers who'd experienced "mental aguish" resulting from the riot, and who stayed anonymous out of fear of retribution. Gosh darn it, don't those police realize that calling too much attention to their trauma is terribly partisan of them, and will just get in the way of Republicans' efforts to combat the Democrats' radical left wing agenda?

[NBC News / WaPo WSJ Politico]



  • The House voted to create a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, with 35 Republicans voting in favor. But Mitch McConnell, minority leader in the Senate, said he opposed it.




Opinion: Why Republican opposition to a Jan. 6 commission could be a blessing in disguise



Opinion by 
Columnist
May 19, 2021 at 1:37 p.m. PDT

Another week, another milestone in the GOP’s transformation into an authoritarian party — an American version of Poland’s Law and Justice, Hungary’s Fidesz, or Turkey’s Justice and Development.

Last week, it was the ouster of Liz Cheney (Wyo.) from the No. 3 spot in Republican House leadership because she refused to go along with the “big lie” that the election was stolen from former president Donald Trump. This week, it’s the decisions of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) to oppose the formation of a bipartisan commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

The stated reasons for the GOP opposition to a 1/6 Commission are incoherent and implausible. Both Republican leaders denounced the commission as a partisan Democratic plot. McCarthy accused House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) of not negotiating “in good faith” and wasting “time playing political games.” McConnell chimed in to accuse House Democrats of having “handled this proposal in partisan bad faith going back to the beginning.”


This will play well on Fox “News” but, like much of what the right says these days, it simply isn’t so. The bill to establish a January 6 commission was negotiated in good faith between Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), the chairman of the Homeland Security Committee, and the ranking Republican member, Rep. John Katko (N.Y.).

The proposed version of the 1/6 Commission is scrupulously bipartisan with five members, including the chair, appointed by Democratic leaders, and five members, including the vice chair, appointed by Republican leaders. While the chairman would be allowed to appoint senior staff members and demand information from the federal government, the panel could only issue subpoenas if both the chair and vice chair agreed, or if a majority of the members voted to do so. The bill also set Dec. 31 as a deadline to issue a report — far too little time to litigate subpoenas if potential witnesses (such as Trump and McCarthy) refuse to voluntarily testify.

Even if this bill were passed — which now appears unlikely — it would have still allowed considerable room for Republican obstructionism if all of the GOP-appointed commissioners voted in lockstep. There would have been nothing to stop McCarthy and McConnell from appointing rabid Trumpkins for precisely this purpose. (Imagine if, say, former Trump White House aide Stephen Miller were the vice chair.)


That McConnell and McCarthy are opposing even this balanced approach suggests they are intent on simply covering up what was arguably the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. Both Republicans, while voting not to impeach Trump, also strongly indicted him. Just days after the assault, McCarthy said: “The president bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters.” McConnell later called Trump’s conduct “a disgraceful dereliction of duty.”

But now, the Republican leaders have become Trump’s collaborators in a coverup. Without a thorough investigation, we will never learn exactly what Trump did prior to, and during, the riot. There was a gap of three hours and 19 minutes between the time Capitol Police requested military assistance and the time when the military was finally ordered to respond. Was Trump responsible for the delay? What did the president know and when did he know it?

And what about the role of Republican members of Congress in fomenting this insurrection? We know the disgraceful things they have said in public. For example, Rep. Paul A. Gosar (Ariz.) accused Democrats of staging a “coup d’etat” and told his followers: “Be ready to defend the Constitution and the White House.” But what links did GOP members of Congress have behind-the-scenes with the insurrectionists?


These are only a few of the many questions that remain unanswered despite ongoing congressional hearings and law enforcement investigations. McConnell and McCarthy must be concerned that the answers would prove embarrassing to their party. But Democrats can get the truth out by following the example that Republicans themselves set.

In 2014, the Republican House majority voted to create a select committee to investigate the Benghazi attack — a terrorist assault that killed the U.S. ambassador to Libya and three other Americans. Republicans treated this as a scandal akin to Iran-contra or Watergate — largely, as McCarthy later boasted, because they wanted to hurt the presidential prospects of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The committee was heavily stacked for the majority party: It had seven Republican members and only five Democrats. Republicans were able to do what they wanted — and they did. The Benghazi Committee spent 2½ years and $7.8 million in its investigation — and still did not find any wrongdoing by Clinton.



The Republican refusal to agree to the bipartisan 1/6 Commission bill could actually be a blessing in disguise. It will free Pelosi to set up a January 6 Select Committee in which Democrats will be more firmly in charge — as Republicans were on the Benghazi committee. The Benghazi investigation was a political stunt, but this investigation is deadly serious. We must get a full accounting of the events of Jan. 6 despite Republican attempts to bury the truth. If we do, Republicans may come to regret their opposition to the bipartisan 1/6 Commission.

Read more:



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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2105.20 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2148 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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