A brief observation concerning today's mob attack on Congress
Perhaps the worst thing the party has done is to aid, encourage, and pander to the wingnut media's brainwashing of tens of millions of low-information Americans into the paranoid and violent "fever dream" alternate reality we see today. This process began long before Trump entered politics. They created a dangerous monster they believed would be useful against us. Now the monster has found, in Trump, a master more to its liking, and is starting to turn on its creator, as such monsters tend to do. Now Republicans deemed insufficiently devoted to Trump are starting to get death threats and armed mobs outside their houses.
And I feel no sympathy. None. They knew the party was fomenting this madness, and by remaining members of the party, they endorsed it. Now they need to learn -- via gut fear of their own monster, not via pointless genteel debate from us -- that the party was wrong to do it and that they were wrong to stay.
As anyone who reads wingnut sites and blogs knows, the kind of enraged delusionals who comprised today's mob hate and despise "RINOs" -- Republicans deemed not Trump-loyal enough -- at least as much as they hate Democrats. There are any number of Republican senators and congressmen who, if the mob had gotten its hands on them, might well be dead now. Let's hope that the leaders of that rotted-out party, from McConnell on down, learned a lesson today about what happens when you feed a whole sub-population on lies and rage in order to turn them into a weapon.
This is what you've raised up, Republicans. And you'd damn well better hope that someone can figure out how to put it down.
posted by Infidel753 at 3:54 PM
22 Comments:
Absolute madness. The whole world is stunned. I told my husband this evening that being as close as we are to the U.S. border (just a few minutes) is suddenly way too close for comfort. Never thought I'd live to see the day that I'd feel this way. And I never believed it would get to this point. My husband called it. He said this would happen and so it has. Wishing your country a peaceful resolution to this. Not sure how you will tame this rabid beast.
So thousands of armed white boys storm the US Capitol, hundreds break in and occupy the place and the sum total of arrests looks to be less than 15 (hoping I'm wrong here). I'd say that's about as close to ignoring the problem as one can get in this situation. So, yeah, not looking good on the opposing insurrection "messaging" front.
Martha: It left me feeling stunned as well. This was a frontal attack on the nerve center of the republic. Our Christianity-rotted other-cheek-turning society doesn't have the stomach for what I would consider a proper response, but I think this will at least mark a turning point which will wake up many on-the-fence people to the menace posed by this fever-dream right-wing alternate reality.
As to the left, they need to stop bringing everything back to Trump and treating him as the prime instigator of the problem. It runs far deeper than just him.
Kwark: It's a fairly common police tactic, in volatile situations, to refrain from making many arrests on the spot -- knowing that the bad guys are identifiable from pictures and video and can be arrested later at home or elsewhere when they won't have a lot of fellow thugs around them. Time will tell, but I suspect that's what's going on here.
I don't believe the House and Senate Republicans are going to be left unshaken by this. Those who stood up to Trump even to the extent of affirming the election result, from McConnell and Pence on down, must know well that if that mob had gotten its hands on them, they could easily be dead now. They're not going to ignore that.
I sat here alone, watching events unfold. Alternately screaming, "What the FUCK??" and saying things like, "Well what the hell did they expect?"
The Republicans who are suddenly distancing themselves today when they were walking around with their noses in Trump's ass just a few days ago aren't fooling anyone.
The thing that makes me the most angry, at least right now, is that it hasn't just been four years. Things didn't just suddenly turn to shit when that vomitous mass was elected. (Yeah, I read your post earlier today, but really... I thought that already. You were just more eloquent.)
And although the events of the day have been bigger than a lot of other things, I am full of joy over the election of Jon Ossoff and Rev. Warnock.
Thank you for being a voice of sanity and reason the last few years.
Sane Republicans need to put the nation's interest before their own lust for power. Can they do it?
Republican politicians are afraid of their own base. That's how tRUMP got in. And now we have dickheads like my Senator, Josh Hawley, helping incite today's riot by fist pumping up the crowd. I'm stuck in a red state but at least I'm in a blue county.
Appalling.
Infuriating.
Depressing.
Those are the adjectives that came to mind while I watched the MAGAts swarm the Capitol. The GOP is the IMPOTUS party now. There's no difference. There's no 'sane' Repugs right now. Cheeto will face no repercussions.
XOXO
>>They created a dangerous monster they believed would be useful against us. Now the monster has found, in Trump, a master more to its liking, and is starting to turn on its creator, as such monsters tend to do. Now Republicans deemed insufficiently devoted to Trump are starting to get death threats and armed mobs outside their houses.<<
A perfect illustration of the ancient cliché, "Lie down with dogs, waken with fleas."
Yours crankily,
The New York Crank
I think the best we can hope for from Republicans is that a handful of them, having been shaken to their core, will realize that they must shun their colleagues who spout/espouse alternate views of reality. And after Jan 20, the Justice Dept. should investigate the roles of the Hawleys and Cruzes to see if they were guilty of insurrection—and thus subject to expulsion. And kudos to the US attorney who is exploring charges against trump for inciting insurrection.
White supremacy is a large and growing problem in our country—and it’s throughout our institutions, including Congress, the police, etc. There should have been buses carting those terrorists off to jail.
We have to start winnowing law enforcement . It's apparent that the nazis/klan have been infiltrating for some time (German police are seeing the same thing).President-elect Biden referenced this in his remarks that the capitol would have been well defended had BLM been outside the gates.I don't think it's possible to de-nazify law enforcement, but some heads should roll "pour encourager les autres"
Wow - that is what it is to be so wrapped up in my own misery that I did not even know this all came down. At least we won the senate!
Yesterday was either the fever breaking, or a tipping point beyond which the country cannot return. I hope it was the former and not the latter, but I have little faith. The forces that produced Trump and Hawley and Cruz are not the same as those silly "patriots" who attacked the capitol yesterday. Those people yesterday were just the mindless product of too much collective misinformation and poor civic education. They believed Donald Trump and believed Cruz and Hawley. It is the moneyed interests, corporations and even foreign powers behind politicians like Trump and Cruz and Hawley who pull the strings. Those entities and the pressure they impart on our politicians and politics have not gone away. I fear they will continue to infest and inflict this nation for the sake of more.
Ami: Yeah, the Republicans in office were fine with all this insanity until they personally were threatened by it.
The Georgia elections will have far more long-term significance than the mob attack, even if they're being overshadowed by it now.
Thank you for the kind words. It will be nice having some voices of sanity and reason in the actual government for a change.
Debra: If it turns out there are still any sane Republicans, I guess we'll find out.
Mike: Hawley is now being roundly condemned by the mainstream media and by establishment Republican politicians. So he's probably pretty much got a lock on the 2024 Republican presidential nomination if Trump doesn't run.
Sixpence: Yep, the party of Lincoln has become the party of Trump. What an ignominious degeneration.
Crank: And of course these fleas have guns.
Annie: I hope those who helped incite this will be prosecuted, but I'd think insurrection would be hard to prove, except perhaps in Trump's case.
The lax treatment of the mob was bizarre. I don't think they were even searched to see if they had removed any sensitive or classified documents from the Capitol.
MarkS: Very true. That's a serious problem with police culture all over the country.
Lady M: I'm sorry to hear that. But I know how all-consuming taking care of an elderly parent can be.
Shaw: Those corporations and moneyed interests are certainly backing right-wing politicians, but I'm not convinced they're pulling the strings all that much. Trump doesn't behave as if he had somebody competent pulling his strings. These guys are influenced by their donors, yes, but they're basically autonomous actors.
Identifying the rioters will be easy, a simple cell tower dump of the pings from that location during that timeframe will tell law enforcement who was there, whether their face was on video or not. Delete from that list the numbers of people who work there and the police and you have a list of phone numbers of the rioters, easy to track down.
Standing Ovation for this Post, it says it all! Low-Information Americans and a PINO Prez were the perfect storm once weaponized as they have been. I don't know how they'll manage to put down what they've bred, I honestly don't, once you've created Monsters they propagate and now you have a whole new Species of Human who isn't going to behave with Humanity or Reason. You can't reason someone out of what took no reason to get into. I'm very concerned.
Nicely stated. I hope that the audio released today, where rioters were shouting "Hang Pence", serves as another reminder to these cynical abettors that their attempts at garnering loyalty from the extremist wackos have achieved nothing other than putting us all in greater danger.
Beloved Infidel, I suspect Mary Shelly has been under-read lately.
Excellent post and comments, as always. We will know in 6 months if there is hope or if we are doomed to the dustbin of fallen countries. The problem is so deep and accountability so rare, and greed, ignorance and corruption so profound, that I suspect the latter.
I agree with Geo.
The Republican Party has truly created a Frankenstein and now they can't control it.
Looking back, you can see how this originated. Back last April, Donald Trump tweeted LIBERATE MICHIGAN! and in response, a large number or armed individuals barged into the Michigan State House. Not long after that, some of them were arrested for plotting to kidnap Governor Whitmer. That it was so easy to occupy the Michigan State House must have made it occur to Trump and his supporters that it could be replicated in the Capitol Building.
Anon: You'd think it would be possible to do that, but they seem to be relying on tips and visual identification. Maybe some of the mob were at least smart enough to not bring smartphones with them.
Bohemian: Thanks! I did a post here about how I expect they'll eventually be deprogrammed. I don't expect most people to believe it, though.
Carol: As I expected, this does seem to have thrown quite a scare into Republican politicians. We'll see how much it really changes their behavior.
Geo: If these people read more, maybe they'd stop making such predictable mistakes.
Mary: Thanks. Yes, the next few months will tell us a lot. But already we've seen the voters give Congress and the presidency back to the Democrats. That's something.
Kay: Let's hope they learn a lesson that will last long.
Tommykey: That may well have been an influence. We need to improve security at these places. I'm hearing there may be as many as 13,000 National Guard troops at Biden's inauguration. That would be a good start.
As you know, I don't talk about politics online,(I leave that to you-lol) but I do talk about cruelty, verbal abuse and physical violence. I've said it before - if someone refuses to wear a mask, or disagrees with an outcome, or cooks dinner the wrong way, road rage, beating someone up, cursing them out, or worse - killing them is not gong to solve anything at all. So horrible to see the mean-spirited behavior that goes on and on and on here in the US and around the world. Will it ever end? I'm sending some hugs your way and hope that you are well! RO
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