Now That The Dust Has Settled (regarding January 6th)

[Yppej]

I don't pay much attention to it. Politics is cyclical though and I can see the Trumpsters coming back. Biden is slipping in popularity because covid restrictions continue and his attempts to deal with it by forcing private businesses to be his vaccine police are not popular.

If the government switched to treating covid as endemic rather than a pandemic that would do him a lot of good. Stop the mask requirements at Federal buildings, stop the vaccine mandates, reverse the CDC recommendations local public health officials latch onto in order to justify restrictions. Stop the endless testing and quarantining of asymptomatic people.

Florida with no restrictions is only at substantial level of community transmission right now whereas Massachusetts with many restrictions by local governments is at high rate of transmission. Go figure!

[beckyliz]

I can't believe we're (as a nation) not more horrified at it than we are. As far as I'm concerned, they committed treason and should be prosecuted as such.

[gimmethesimplelife]

I can't believe we're (as a nation) not more horrified at it than we are. As far as I'm concerned, they committed treason and should be prosecuted as such.

I agree 100 percent. Rob

[frugal-one]

It is very shocking.

[jp1]

I can't believe we're (as a nation) not more horrified at it than we are. As far as I'm concerned, they committed treason and should be prosecuted as such.

We’re still in the first innings of this ballgame. People like Steve bannon still haven’t testified before the house commission. At least some of them will undoubtedly have interesting things to say about what happened and what plans were in place.

And on the civilian track, Marcy wheeler at emptywheel.net has been doing a great job of tracking the individual traitors. That ballgame is still in the early/mid stages as the various justice agencies do their thing and put it all together.

Will the traitor in chief be held to account? That’s unclear at this point but just like the Lord of the Rings movies* a lot of patience is needed before we get to the good part and see how it all plays out.

*I still can’t believe the first of those movies won the editing award. I heard that and was like ‘wtf?’ As long as that movie was and the fact that nothing happened are clear indicators that no editing occurred…

[iris lilies]

We’re still in the first innings of this ballgame. People like Steve bannon still haven’t testified before the house commission. At least some of them will undoubtedly have interesting things to say about what happened and what plans were in place.

And on the civilian track, Marcy wheeler at emptywheel.net has been doing a great job of tracking the individual traitors. That ballgame is still in the early/mid stages as the various justice agencies do their thing and put it all together.

Will the traitor in chief be held to account? That’s unclear at this point but just like the Lord of the Rings movies* a lot of patience is needed before we get to the good part and see how it all plays out.

*I still can’t believe the first of those movies won the editing award. I heard that and was like ‘wtf?’ As long as that movie was and the fact that nothing happened are clear indicators that no editing occurred…

Of course editing occurred. Editing means many many aspects of a film besides making it short. You just mean that you want it shorter. Just like I think J. K. Rowling needed an editor to firmly slash some of the harry potter text.

[jp1]

Of course editing occurred. Editing means many many aspects of a film besides making it short. You just mean that you want it shorter. Just like I think J. K. Rowling needed an editor to firmly slash some of the harry potter text.

Truthfully I’m glad that I hated that movie. I met SO on the night that my friends were going to see the second one. If I’d been going to it instead of Inviting him
to my home who knows what my life would be today.

[jp1]

Apparently the dust is still getting stirred up. Today we learned that the traitor in the White House’s family was communicating with the traitors on the ground at the capitol via burner phones bought by the on the ground traitors. Presumably the first traitor family was in in this on they wouldn’t have answered the calls. Is it time to start chanting ‘lock them up. Lock them up’ yet?

[GL from QC]

My degree is in political science. It's a strange field: it doesn't prepare you for any specific job (unlike, say, nursing or engineering fields) but it teaches you to spot opportunities, weak points, and predict the future. Over my weird and long career, some of the highest-ranked coworkers I encountered in my company were fellow poli-sci majors, somehow succeeding in fields that were not designed with poli-sci folks in mind.

All of this is to say that I had seen a lot of this coming as early as February 2016... Once I saw that Trump had a good chance of getting the Republican nomination, I knew that something was fundamentally off, and that such an irrational electorate (come on, he is no Eisenhower or even Bush Sr) would lead to something bizarre and disturbing down the line. After I saw how the aftermath of the Hurricane Maria was mishandled (remember, the one that destroyed Puerto Rico?), I knew that the government would fail if a large disaster would hit the mainland United States. I never figured it would be the worst pandemic since 1918, but I was right in the broad terms. I'm glad I managed to secure that work transfer and move to Canada in early 2019...

As for the actual events - just random thoughts in no particular order:
1. When the sitting president riles up his supporters to overthrow the legislative branch - sorry, but that's an attempted coup, so your democracy counter resets. The American democracy is less than 11 months old now. :P I hope that more mature and established nations, such as Mongolia or Micronesia, will provide their sage guidance to this struggling new democracy.

2. The fact that citizen groups had to pool their resources to identify the idiots that stormed the Congress... That's a really big blow to the whole "omnipotent and omnipresent surveillance state" concept that's been promoted all these years. If random internet addicts and housewives and retirees can do a better job identifying those domestic terrorists than the FBI/NSA/whomever, then maybe it's time to cut their funding by, say, 90%? Yeah, 90% would be a good start.

3. Just days before the attempted coup, military bigwigs (Joint Chiefs of Staff, IIRC) issued a strange public statement reminding the military that they do not take sides in politics. There was also a very long delay with sending the National Guard to DC: one of the evacuated congress-critters had to start making calls on their phone before that process even got started. Whatever happened, it stinks. A lot. That wasn't just a bunch of yahoos going on a little tour. (This isn't a conspiracy theory - all of this is a matter of public record, just like the videos of certain members of the Capitol Hill police aiding the domestic terrorists.)

4. Several hundred domestic terrorists got caught and will go on trial. (Even though their sentences are alarmingly short - as short as 30 days in some cases.) But there are also very many that did not get identified... In certain circles, those folks (or those who served their month-long sentence and returned) will be viewed as local heroes, and examples to follow... If you tried to write a fiction book describing the events of 1/06 just 10 years ago, you would've been laughed out of every publishing house. Now that the unthinkable actually happened, it'll be a lot easier to pull it off again. (Just as an example, suicide bombing used to be incredibly rare until about the 1980s. Now it's everywhere.)

5. Lack of consequences is an invitation to keep trying. If people get away with this, and if the organizers and people behind the scenes suffer zero consequences (I mean, Henry Kissinger still walks the earth, and that guy committed some legitimate war crimes...), then there's a very high likelihood of something similar happening in the future. Maybe not the same exact scenario, but storming a state capitol? Absolutely. Rushing a federal courthouse? Not impossible.

As always, I hope that I am very wrong, but I have this disturbing tendency of being right, at least in general terms. The curse of being a poli-sci major, eh? So, long story long - I'll just stay here in Canada, where we'll continue chugging the maple syrup and looking at our deranged downstairs neighbour with morbid fascination hahaha

[iris lilies]

Seriously? They wanted to hang the VP!

Yes, seriously, I am making comparisons of violent idiots in crowds. In our last riot here they shot a cop dead and burned a building named in my will.