This is America
We have never been better than what we were yesterday.
President-elect Joe Biden, a man who tried to shame a shameless man into doing the right thing yesterday, tweeted that “America is better than this.”
Make no mistake, this country has never been been better than what we saw yesterday. We eradicated the Indigenous people that stood in our way. We needed to fight an entire war to rid our country of chattel slavery. Not to mention Jim Crow that followed and the racism that haunts our country to this day. Just to name historical atrocities for which we have never atoned.
Commentators of both stripes went on CNN yesterday and said scenes from the Capitol Building were something “we’d usually see in a third world country.” Well, that’s in large part because we have incited those scenes in countries in every corner of the globe. (Here’s one egregious example.)
Americans love to think fascism can’t happen here. From a very young age, it is drilled into us that we are a beacon of democracy that shines bright across the world. Maybe we were at one time when we helped the Soviets clean up the Nazis and Japanese in World War II. But America has never been a beacon at any time during my time in my life other than maybe on 9-12-01 but we threw all that away by expanding the surveillance state, surrendering civil rights and launching two forever wars in two countries that had nothing to do with the attack.
We are told from a very young age that what separates us from a dictatorship is that we are a country of “norms” and “institutions.” Well, we saw how much those were worth yesterday.
And make no mistake, Donald Trump, or somebody like him, was always inevitable in this country. It makes perfect sense that cheap trucker hats are our version of the Nazi armband.
Every Republican pretending to be outraged is full of a shit. They made a deal with the devil in exchange for tax cuts and federal judges and stood aside and aided and abetted a crazed criminal run roughshod over the U.S. Constitution that they claimed to love. And Trump gained votes in the last four years after letting a pandemic ravage our country.
Trump has been planning this scene for over a month as he gradually became more obsessed with the idea that the election he lost by seven million votes was actually stolen from him, and it’s a message his supporters received loud and clear:
Since then, he has pardoned war criminals and corrupt political cronies. He has engaged in wild conspiracy theories and agitated his base in a way that would be familiar to anyone who has watched more than five minutes of any of his hate rallies the last four years.
So, it’s comical to me that the Capitol Police claim they were not prepared for insurrection considering what they looked like when Black Lives Matters protestors came to the nation’s capital during the George Floyd uprising this summer:
And then you remember, police and right-wing freaks that descended on the Capitol Building are on the same team. Perhaps you don’t agree with that assessment; well, please consider these two videos below:
On one hand I am jealous of the Trumpsters. Ransacking the Capitol Building and putting the fear of God into slugs like Nacy Pelosi or Mitch McConnell sounds like the only reason I would ever go back to Hollywood for Ugly People.
But like Trump rioters told the police when they left the Capitol Building, “You didn’t take it back. We gave it to you.” Well, that’s because the police didn’t bring the full weight of the American government down upon them, via The New York Times:
A Capitol Police officer tried to reason with the crowd: “You guys just need to go outside,” he pleaded with a man in a green backpack. When asked why they weren’t expelling the protesters, the officer said, “We’ve just got to let them do their thing now.”
Wish we could have gotten treatment like that this summer in Columbus when the National Guard unleashed tear gas and sound cannons on us two hours before curfew.
But at least now we have proven that cops do not need any of these weapons to curtail a riot, let alone a peaceful protest.
The crazy thing is this freak President Business Deals has two weeks left in his term, which may not seem like a lot until CNN reports a source close to the President says he’s “out of his mind.”
In a functioning democracy, the 25th Amendment would be invoked before the country wakes up today. Somehow I doubt that will happen, and Trump will be allowed to sew chaos for the next two weeks.
Joe Biden may need to be the first president inaugurated via Zoom call. Because Trump’s people are only going to feel emboldened by what they did yesterday considering they all got away with it. This pox has been unleashed upon us and it is here to stay.
THOSE WMDs. The time of revelations has finally come for (a minority) of Republicans… Why nobody answers their phones anymore… The Jackie Robinson of Rodeo… The four keys that could unlock procrastination… Why water is weird.