REPEAT QUOTATIONS, DRAW CONCLUSIONS ON THE WALL
As the 8th century BCE wound down, the people of Judah were scared. The revived Assyrian Empire had conquered the Kingdom of Israel, and an invasion force was headed south, towards Jerusalem. Maybe they should simply surrender and join the empire. Rumors swept the land, to the point where the Good Lord apparently felt it was necessary to summon the prophet Isaiah (8:12 NKJV), essentially instructing him to tell the Judeans to chill: “Do not say, ‘A conspiracy,’ concerning all that this people call a conspiracy, Nor be afraid of their [j]threats, nor be]troubled.” Put your faith in God, in other words, and stop scheming about which set of bad outcomes you prefer.
Let’s fast forward 2500 years or so, and listen to the words of Ulysses S. Grant: "There are but two parties now: traitors and patriots. I want hereafter to be ranked with the latter.”
Having repeated a couple of quotations, I will now proceed to draw some conclusions on my FB wall. I don’t have Grant’s perspective, much less that of the Prophet Isaiah. I could be wrong. It’s happened before. Time will tell.
And with that out of the way, whew, what a week. I must say that some of Trump’s seemingly random actions right after he lost the election now make more sense, and appear to be part of a pattern connected to the January 6 coup. (I’m not going to call it an “attempted coup” or a “failed coup,” because I don’t think it’s over yet. I think there will be at least one more big attempt to stop, or at least disrupt, the inauguration. It’s way too soon to declare victory.)
I’m not saying that Trump masterminded the January 6 scheme, or even understood it in any great detail. But I believe he knew something illegal would go down on January 6, and it’s a matter of public record that he invited his thugs to come to Washington on that day and get “wild.” When Mike Pence decided that he’d rather stay out of jail than help Trump steal the election, Trump concluded that Pence had outlived his usefulness. And now the VP seems to have a price on his head. One of Trump’s lawyers even suggested that Pence be executed by a firing squad for refusing to assist with Trump’s coup.
Trump also took steps to make sure that once the violence started, it would be allowed to run its course. His firing of Secretary of Defense Mark Esper on November 9 – the day that all the swing states were called for Joe Biden – makes sense in that context. He couldn’t risk having some Goody Two Shoes calling up the National Guard before the Proud Boys had a chance to reason with members of Congress. Or hang them. Whatever. In addition, coup preparation also explains why Trump pardoned a raft of rogue cops and war criminals right before Christmas. Gotta let the troops know the general will have their backs.
Don’t be fooled by the clownish aspects of this practice coup. While some of the January 6 mob were generic Deplorables, content to shout slogans and take selfies, there was among them a cadre of men dressed in tactical gear that weren’t fooling around. They were on a coordinated hunt for specific people – Nancy Pelosi and Mike Pence, in particular. They carried weapons, IEDs, and flex cuffs to restrain prisoners, so they probably weren’t autograph seekers. My totally speculative guess? They were going eliminate as many people in the line of presidential succession as possible, giving Trump an opportunity to pick someone like QAnon favorite Mike Flynn as his new VP.
Or maybe they were just probing, seeing what they could get away with. Could they get into the Capitol building? Could they get into the Capitol wearing military outfits and carrying weapons? Could they count on help from some of the law enforcement personnel on the scene? On January 6, the answers to those questions were yes, yes, and yes. If and when they decide to stage another raid on Congress, they can hunt their prey more efficiently.
The death toll from the insurrection has already exceeded that of the infamous attack on Benghazi. Republicans spent four years investigating Benghazi. Remarkably, though, those same Republicans have shown very little interest in getting to the bottom of the January 6 coup. It’s a time for healing now, that’s the ticket. Maybe they’re afraid of what an investigation might find. Or – this is my theory – they already know what it will find, and they’re scared shitless. I’ll bet that when the dust settles, we’ll learn that more than one Republican congressman/woman actively assisted the coup plotters.
And the cherry on top of that particular sundae is the report that at least one person arrested required a Russian translator. Computer security in Congressional offices and meeting rooms must be presumed to be completely compromised. That, all by itself, should enrage every Republican who complained about Hillary Clinton’s email problems.
One wonders why less than a quarter of the DC police force was on duty when the riot started. One also wonders, for the cops who were on duty, which side they were on. Video from different points of the mob action suggests that some officers did their best to hold the line, while others appeared to be helping the insurrectionists – opening doors open, giving directions to congressional offices, even helping one member of the mob make it down a set of stairs. For sure, local law enforcement wasn’t being aggressive in arresting people at the scene of the crime.
Oh, and by the way, the heads of the police departments of the DC Metro and the Capitol police have resigned or been fired. I look forward to finding out the rules of engagement those cops were working under. Something seems a little fishy on the law enforcement end of things.
Of course, there’s dark money behind the January 6 coup, and some of it has already come to light. Seems there’s this group called the Republican Attorneys General Association (RAGA), which has a “Rule of Law Defense Fund,” full of large contributions from the usual suspects – Koch, Walmart, NRA, etc. One hears that the Republican attorneys general of Alabama and Utah helped organize the “protest” that turned into June 6 coup. People like Rudy Giuliani, Gini Thomas (Mrs. Clarence Thomas), Paul Gosar, Andy Biggs, Mo Brooks, and Lauren Boebert also encouraged the mob. They have blood on their hands, and they’re unrepentant.
Donald Trump still has eight days to wreak havoc, and his acting head of Homeland Security just resigned unexpectedly. One wonders what plans Trump might have shared that made one of his loyalists quit on the spot. Homeland Security oversees the Secret Service, so Biden people and Congressional Democrats might want to watch their backs for a few weeks.
There has been some good news as well – over and above seeing Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz incinerate their presidential ambitions. It looks like House Democrats will impeach Trump again. There are complexities around the timing of the Senate trial, but I believe there are also workarounds. The larger question is whether there are 17 Republican senators who’ll have the integrity to vote to convict this time around. But even if this second effort falls short, it’s worth doing just to force members of the RAC (Republican Asshole Caucus) to take a public position on sedition.
Here’s my personal advice for the first month of the Biden Administration. I’ll waive my usual consulting fee.
It’s time to teach the bad guys a lesson. Prosecute the hell out of them. If a few hundred, or even a few dozen, of the January 6 mob wind up spending the next ten years in a federal prison, it will scare off the dilettantes and deprive the committed traitors of some of their protective cover.
Next, censure and expel any member of the House or Senate who actively supported the coup. And prosecute them, if their support amounted to anything more tangible than the junior senator from Missouri’s patented Heil Hawley fist pump. Censure and expel the House Republicans who refused to wear masks while they were waiting to be rescued, and passed COVID on to some Democratic colleagues in the process.
And definitely impeach and convict Trump, invoking the ban on holding public office ever again.
Once we settle the score for January 6, I hope AG Garland will follow up on Trump’s corrupt pardons (of which there will surely be many more), investigate issues left hanging in the Mueller Report, and prosecute the guilty. And on a parallel track in New York and other jurisdictions, I want local prosecutors to investigate money laundering and other illegal activity on the part of the Trump Crime Family. I want justice, in other words.
Republicans have suddenly become passionate about “healing,” by which they mean “let us get away with it one more time.” But America has been sweeping its dirt under the rug for too long. At least since Reconstruction, we’ve avoided looking too closely at our mistakes. We’d rather outrun our problems than solve them. And so we’ve played whack-a-mole with bad guys from Nathan Bedford Forrest to Donald Trump. The names of the generals change, but the war drags on.
On a recent podcast, James Carville said that Joe Biden’s top three priorities should be: 1) Get Merrick Garland confirmed and get him working on bringing the coup plotters to justice; 2) implement a crash COVID vaccination program; 3) make sure Mitch McConnell doesn’t talk Joe Manchin into switching parties. To which I would add 4) see if any of the GOP senators who’ve expressed outrage about the coup might be interested in switching parties, or becoming independents and caucusing with the Democrats. Will Senators Romney, Murkowski, Collins, and Toomey be enthusiastic about caucusing with the likes of Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz? Seems to me it’d be worth asking.
Really, it’s not that complicated. No justice, no peace. Honesty is the best policy. Let’s try to get it right this time.