Welcome friends!
I wasn’t really intending to post on this site again so soon, but my oh my, did you happen to watch TV yesterday and witness the violent mob storming the US Capitol? It was something I certainly never thought I’d see in my lifetime. It was horrifying, of course, but also weirdly entertaining. Certainly an unusual sight to see the unwashed hordes of fascist fanatics and homegrown American terrorists running riot in those august surroundings, hanging from the balconies, making off with the speaker’s podium, awkwardly slouching behind desks, muddy clodhoppers plonked proudly atop papers they likely could never comprehend if they had a thousand years to study them. What an amazing spectacle. We had comical figures like the semi-clad fellow with the face paint and Viking horns who apparently thought he was going to a football match. We had pretend policemen and pretend soldiers. We had ominous, vaguely Middle Eastern style hooded figures with zip ties in hand apparently looking for victims to kidnap and murder, an echo of the similar anti-democracy criminality that took place recently in Lansing, the state capital of Michigan, in which a similar mob was intent on kidnapping and murdering the governor of the state. And so many flags. You’d think our fascist nation within a nation would settle on one or the other. We had the incongruously blue flag of Trump Country, of course, but also the flag of the old Confederacy, what looked like a flag of Texas but with an assault rifle superimposed, a flag with a cross that looked vaguely like the Iron Cross of Germany, the flag of Mr. Trump done up as a character from the Rambo movies, the state flag of Michigan, and many, many others. I even saw, rather comically, a few US flags, the stars and stripes, being carried by what one can only presume were the most colossally clueless of the bunch. We had secret hand signals being flashed for the cameras. No, not that one. I mean weird groupings of fingers flashed in a particular sequence in the manner of childhood clubhouses and drug gangs everywhere. We had Neo-Nazis with T-shirts extolling Auschwitz and carrying large, hand scrawled placards about circumcision and so on. I’m telling you, it was a regular three ring circus. For all my foreign readers, who I sometimes suspect may not have an accurate idea of what the USA is really like, please do take a look at some videos of the remarkable event so you can get up to speed on the real America, as opposed to the fake, honey glazed, Hollywood version.
In addition to our public airing of the seamy underside of violent, right wing, anti-democracy, American redneck culture, the event was interesting because it had been immediately preceded by a rabble rousing speech by the outgoing president of the USA, billionaire puppet master Donald Trump, who apparently wanted a demonstration of popular support for his latest con: stealing the recent presidential election after the fact with the help of Congressional Republicans on the risibly flimsy pretext of alleged voting irregularities, which have already been thoroughly vetted by our legal system and basically thrown out of every court in which they have appeared for lack of evidence. Don’t exactly see that every day either. Mr. Trump, a former spoiled rich boy, bankruptcy artist, TV reality show star, and in the past several years Twitter personality, has always prided himself on his ability to whip up large crowds of imbeciles, and he was certainly in his element on the day, hamming it up for the crowd, exhorting the rabble to “fight like hell,” declaring in his best feeble minded American parody of Mr. Churchill, “We will never give up! We will never concede!,” and encouraging his base to be strong. No, not strong in the sense of having the emotional maturity to graciously accept defeat in a democratic election. Are you kidding me? Nazi strong. Willing to bash as many innocent heads as necessary, at least until confronted by an equal or stronger opposing force. His redoubtable stagecraft was augmented by an appearance of his personal ghoul, a ghastly apparition many call Rudy Giuliani, who backed up the president by calling for a “trial by combat.” Actually, that was pretty comical. Can one imagine that nitwit as a medieval knight going to a joust only to show up at the wrong venue, makeup running down his face, babbling nonsense? Or I guess the actual combat was meant to be undertaken by the mob of angry peasants, not by Mr. Giuliani himself, which seems even more comically misinformed. Of course, after the event, during which four of Mr. Trump’s minions died for one reason or another, one from the rather obvious cause of being shot by a guard, Mr. Trump did appear to pledge to what he called a peaceful transition using someone else’s Twitter account, as his own Twitter account had been shut down indefinitely for spreading dangerous and fact free conspiracy theories. Apparently, his felt his people had made his point. However, he was not so uncouth as to just let them die and say nothing at all. He thanked them for their service, saying, “You’re very special,” which is a phrase often used to comic effect here in the USA. He also noted his struggle to topple American democracy had really just begun, noting “it’s only the beginning of our fight.”
Interestingly, on the day, a total of one hundred and forty-seven Republicans in Congress ended up supporting Mr. Trump’s scheme to do away with American democracy, agreeing with Nazi youth leader impersonator Sen. Hawley (Republican - Missouri) and professional right wing agitator and southern good old boy first class, Sen. Cruz (Republican - Texas), that the US Congress should throw out the actual votes delivered from the states in favor of their own opinions or feelings about who should prevail in the election based apparently on their gut feelings, “people are talking,” or on a political calculus of some sort or other, but anyway certainly not for the ostensible reason proffered as the official rationale. As I mentioned earlier, it’s been well established at this point there is no factual basis or real substance to any of Mr. Trump’s various whoppers and tall tales about voting irregularities, which he may or may not sincerely believe, and which he seems to have gotten off the internet from sources unknown. Although it’s difficult to determine if Mr. Trump’s apparent ignorance and enthusiasm is the result of stupidity or a foxy feigned stupidity, one must presume the latter based on his history of business scams and cons of various sorts, there can be no such uncertainty about the one hundred and forty-seven Republicans in the US Congress. One can rest assured they harbor no illusions about the facts of the matter. Whether these politicians felt the mob trashing the Capitol helped or hindered their cause is anyone’s bet. The events certainly didn’t seem to bother them to any great degree, that much seems clear. One supposes they were satisfied with how it all played out on the various crackpot and fake news media that cater exclusively to right wingers, conservatives, and Republicans here in the USA.
So there you have it. The slide from a problematic, big money saturated, not entirely representational but moderately functioning political democracy to a fascistic, anything goes power grab supported by violent street mobs, took only four short years of conservative and Republican leadership to engineer. Seems they can do something after all, when they set their minds to it. On the bright side, the results do not appear to be what they had in mind, as they’ve managed to lose control of the White House and both houses of Congress in the process. One senses if they’re going to seize power in the future it won’t be through our democratic political institutions. No, seems there’s still some fight in the old USA after all. One imagines foreign despots like Tsar Vladimir of Russia being convinced if they helped Mr. Trump and our right wing conservatives and Republicans win the 2016 elections, if they gave American democracy a little nudge toward the abyss, the entire thing would collapse in short order, but seems we’re not quite as bad off as all that. There’s still some fight left in American liberals, progressives, and democratic leftists of all stripes. We’re not ready to accept conservative and Republican plutocratic, market-based fascism just yet. Long live democracy in the USA!
Addendum
After I wrote my post, the always unpredictable Mr. Trump finally delivered a video address in which he promised a “smooth, orderly, seamless transition of power” and referenced his presidency in the past tense. One must give credit when credit is due, no matter how late in the day nor how routine the activity may be for others. In the immortal words of President Trump, “America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy ... To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction: You do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law: You will pay.” So there you have it, again. Oh yes, and the body count increased by one, as a member of the Capitol Police died from injuries sustained during the attack.
