What will come of these Capitol Police telling their stories ?

Like my late father the army officer, their intentions are beyond reproach: they are patriots who have devoted their careers to protecting the country and us, their families. Heck, they are a lot like most workers within the horrific  ‘deep state’ — Americans with families and mortgages and unruly kids, just like you and me, people who just happen to work for the government. People who work for us every day. Everyday people.

Unless you’re mentally ill or a GOP member of congress (or both). Then you believe they are ‘dupes’ working for George Soros and the elite pedophile ring of industrialists and world leaders responsible for Pizza-gate, and Obama tapping phones, and Hillary eating babies. I believe this is why the Trumpers attacking the officers were heard to say “kill him with his own gun.” 

Oh wait, that’s only the mentally ill ones. Other GOP members of congress are simply using these unfortunate insane people (i.e. their conspiracy-addled insurrectionists, would-be bombers, gun-toting fanatics and kidnap planners) to advance their political power agenda and, once and for all, make sure that only the ‘right’ people get to choose the government, judge court cases, pass laws, and be the president. Because as we’ve been witnessing since last November, the ‘new’ GOP under Trump does not believe in the two-party system. According to them, Democrats are unfit to govern (see “Pizza-gate” above), so they must bypass democracy for now and set things right by ‘whatever means necessary’. 

Yes, a healthy majority of Republicans recently told pollsters they agreed that it’s likely violence will be “necessary” to correct the course of the country. 

So how do these members of congress and their Fox News constituents feel about these officers telling their harrowing stories? After all, THEY are the ones who either beat these officers nearly to death or (if they’re in congress) egged on the criminals who did. Will they feel chastened? Will they break down and admit they were fostering a pack of lies  – a tale told by an idiot, as the rational among us already know – out of fear for their political lives, and that they are sorry they helped incite a violent, treasonous mob to go ahead with their pathetic attempt to take the capitol in the name of a sore  loser, a walking icon of failure who has never once admitted he failed? 

No. Like my father, poisoned by Agent Orange for years in Vietnam and then put on a shelf, these officers will learn that their lives, their safety and indeed the safety of all of us is a secondary concern to some in power – or really no concern at all. It’s plain these agitators are tired of the electoral process. They see the pluralistic future that it will bring, and they want revolution instead. They want violence, they and their Proud Boys and their Boogaloo Boys and their whatever boys, their idiot brigade, their stupidity regiment, their Trump treason express – they all want it. They know they came close to stripping away the thin veneer we call society during the Floyd riots. For a few hours in the dead of night, CNN banner headlines declared “CHAOS IN THE STREETS’, and it was true – not because of the protesters but because of the violent PB/Boogaloo infiltrators and the response from both official and “unofficial” Trump world. (I refer to the bloated, militarized federal police forces like ATF, abuse of the National Guard, and those everyday psychos like the young murderous GOP hero now awaiting his murder trial. For local flavor, think of Jake Gardner.)  It is All or Nothing now for the ‘new’ GOP, the desperate minority White Supremacist party, the diseased shell of what was once a conservative political party but is now a political pariah, a bag of dicks, an asshole club, a virus itself called ‘Q’ —and finally an insurrectionist stain on this well-stained nation, brothers to their treasonous ancestors who had their own disgraceful four-year meltdown in defense of dominating (and in that case enslaving)  people different than — and more intelligent than — themselves. 

It’s important we understand this now. It’s important to remember that — as Jesus discovered — the state decides who is a criminal. History can go any way, it’s not a movie with a focus-grouped happy ending. It’s chaos, and decent people trying to impose a little order on the chaos while indecent people try to turn up the chaos to the point of no return, when indeed violence WILL seem like the only recourse. That’s when they’ve won – they will have finally destroyed the rule-based, deliberative, authoritative (as opposed to authoritarian), relatively honest and relatively civil attempts to govern a massive pluralistic nation via the law and democratic consensus that we have seen attempted off and on for the last sixty years or so (since the end of state-sanctioned Jim Crow). They want to replace this grand effort of decades with an instant authoritarian theocracy, an American Taliban composed of insane ‘Christians’ [sic] who defile everything Christ was about and who believe (apparently) that Christ was made in their image, and is ready to take up his sword along with them. 

It’s time to stop them! And all we have to do is make sure we vote. That’s it. They are a minority, like the National Socialist party was in 1933. Still, that party found a way to power. It was, of course, the way of propaganda, intimidation, violence and finally mass murder.

So unless people like us finally learn to distinguish distasteful ‘politics’ from necessary ‘survival’ tactics —unless we learn to vote for freedom with the same fervor as the insane zealots who will vote for chaos until it comes — I am afraid history may repeat itself right here and now.

Feeling paralyzed by the endless string of horrific events, deranged world-views, endless lies, and soul-killing policies? Feeling powerless? If so, then their plan is working. It’s how every fascist movement works–by intimidation and a constant wearing down of a weary electorate.

You have one great power left – use it now.

Coming on the heels of last week’s right-wing mail bomb terror campaign conducted against the president’s declared enemies, the race-hatred murders this week of two African Americans out shopping and eleven Jews practicing their faith–this is your October surprise. The president’s bid to upend the Constitution by fiat is just the kicker, timed to exploit these events for maximum hate-mongering.

Blame is meaningless. VOTE accordingly. You can vote for reason, or you can vote for white nationalist authoritarianism unleashed on a soon-to-be-former democratic republic.

There is no equivalence. Unless you consider it a crisis of law (or even formal Democratic party policy) that a few unhinged leftist protesters have verbally harassed public officials in elevators and restaurants, or that a few anti-fascist rebels meeting the “fine people” with swastikas on their helmets in mutual battle is a crisis of law—unless you believe that lie–you know from documented events that only one “side” is conducting a coordinated war on American norms and values, ginning up white paranoia and spreading bald-faced lies for political gain,  then refusing to respond when their lies are corrected by the press.

Only one side’s populist figurehead is exhorting racial animus and fanning its flames at Nuremberg-style populist rallies soaked in hate–and has been for years. Only one side’s figurehead tried for eight years to spread “birtherism” nonsense about an African-American president, convincing a sizeable (racist) portion of  the country that the president was “not a real American”–not because of where he was born, but because he is black.

Only one side’s figurehead is celebrating political violence and hate speech at these rallies, later reading condemnations of the same, in a listless monotone, a teleprompter’s canned words rather than his own, when such violence is carried out in his name. These condemnations are read in that slow, robotic manner as if to impart the coded message that “They’re making me say this snowflake stuff – for now”. And for all that, such statements are usually undermined quickly with an impromptu speech from the “heart” [sic] that erases any vestiges of human feeling that might have been found in the original statement prepared by his handlers. Because the president does not really believe in mercy or tolerance or sympathy–these are the qualities of the weak. He believes only in strength, power, and dominance over one’s enemies. 

Only one side is characterizing refugees fleeing violence and crippling poverty as some kind of military invasion requiring a military response. This tactic supports American white nationalist/neo-Nazi philosophy as promulgated through “Storm Front” and other hate groups—i.e., that multicultural Democrats led by “globalist” Jews like George Soros are organizing immigrants/refugees to “take over” the US and wipe out the “white race,” whatever that is. It matters not that the president’s son-in-law is a Jew; Jared and the kids are safe in the White House, and the president believes he can “use” such support to maintain his power–the only thing that matters–which is why he has praised white supremacists and neo-Nazis as “good people” and recently referred to himself as a “_____ Nationalist” (fill in the blank). He does not waste time pondering how the cavalier political use–and social elevation–of dangerous shadow groups dedicated to mayhem steeped in anti-Semitism may affect–or in the case of this week, how it has affected–the lives of “ordinary” American Jews.

Only one side is ignoring the Constitution in its pursuit of power, threatening extra-Constitutional executive orders and legislation to strip Americans of the rights they are born with. Only one side abrogated their duty under the Constitution by ignoring a Supreme Court nomination by the sitting president in order to steal that seat for Republicans. Only one side is seeking to disenfranchise minority voters and actively suppressing their right to vote, then defending this criminality as a remedy for a proven-to-be-fake “voter fraud” crisis they refuse to acknowledge is fake (because they don’t want to). Only one side is ignoring the clanging alarm bells of global climate change in favor of the next quarter’s balance sheet. Only one side risks bankrupting the nation with irresponsible, unnecessary tax cuts, transferring over a trillion dollars in (borrowed) wealth from ordinary citizens’ future earnings to their ultra-wealthy donors who prop them up in Congress. Only one side is systematically dismantling women’s access to reproductive health care bit by bit–endangering millions of non-wealthy women’s lives–all in the name of “life”. Only one side is publicly calling the other side “evil” and “corrupt” at its figurehead’s political rallies. Only one side’s frothing arena denizens scream “LOCK THEM UP” about former US leaders and the press, indeed about any and all political opponents the figurehead cares to name, people guilty of no crime save being a political threat to the promised new order. Only one side’s figurehead is fomenting widespread mistrust of the free press in favor of his proven lies. Only one side is encouraging the belief that the free press is the “enemy of the people.”

This is not a culture war with two “sides” seeking political advantage. This is an assault by a white nationalist insurgency, which has captured a major political party and, with help from America’s geopolitical foes, installed a selfish, uncaring, willfully ignorant narcissist figurehead in the White House. It is an assault by a powerful, paranoid minority on the principles and institutions of the United States, a group that has decided the only way to preserve white power is to bring about an end to democratically administered rule of law via a “post-truth” philosophy of white hegemony at all costs. They mouth support for the “rule of law” only in regard to laws they like, laws that restrict freedoms rather than grant them. The first and fourteenth amendments are suspect. Non-corporate speech should be “controlled,” mosques “monitored,” protests “outlawed”. Citizenship is fluid, not defined by the Constitution; it is to be defined by them once power is consolidated. Laws enacted by the “evil” Democrats and bench legislation from “activist” (i.e. liberal/moderate) judges are suspect. The very truth of the law is suspect–their may be “alternative facts” to support another interpretation of its plain words.

Reason and fealty to the law are not their priorities–the constant lying about what the law is demonstrates this. They are driven by fear–fear of the “other”, fear of retribution at the hands of those they now oppress and relegate to the margins of society, a fear stoked daily by their former reality show star and leader, fear that has–as it has in so many places in the past–metastasized into a deep hatred of all who oppose them. And wherever this philosophy of a “strongman” who will protect Us from Them presides or looms large–be it Russia, North Korea, Poland, Hungary, Brazil, the Philippines or anywhere else–they find fast friends. Where freedom reigns–Canada, the EU, Japan, France, Germany–they see the enemy.

The other “side”—though nearly powerless at this point—is simply trying to stop them. No amount of threats, ridicule, sarcasm, lies or “whataboutism” changes these truths. One side is trying to destroy what we are and remake us in the fear-mongering, hate-filled, paranoid image of their irrational, ignorant, lying reality show star. The other is trying to preserve our freedoms and our dignity, and to prevent this descent into authoritarian nationalism. It is not a Republican thing. It is not a Democrat thing. It is an American thing.

Don’t vote like a party member. Vote like an American–like a Pennsylvania Jew at worship or an African-American out shopping. Vote like an American Muslim whose mosque was burned down. Vote like a journalist, caged in Trump’s arena with thousands mocking you, threatening you for telling the truth about their golden calf. Vote like a poor working single mother with a pre-existing condition. Vote like a senior depending on Medicare. Vote like a refugee fleeing violence, locked in a cage, your children locked in another cage, a “kinder” cage. Vote like your life depends on the outcome. Because it does.