…I feel like I ought to start this with a pre-emptive apology…or maybe several…generally speaking…even in the face of the overtly terrible shit we’ve come to consider just-another-day in a world where there’s a pandemic going on & the worst US president in the history of there being a US to have presidents of…I try not to go overboard on the speculation…& I try to at least finish up with a tune or two in a fashion vaguely reminiscent of the lollipops they used to give kids when they had to visit the doctor…& I might manage one of those before I’m done today but I rather suspect not both…& for that I’m sorry
…I know a number of people who from time to time like to remind me that the phenomenon that’s come to be referred to as “doomscrolling” is unhealthy…& that were I to radically curtail my intake of news I’d find that I was happier & the world seemed like a better place to me…but I don’t seem to be able to follow that advice without feeling like I’m burying my head in the sand while things go from bad to worse…which I suspect at least some of you who are kind enough to read these may tend to agree with to at least some extent…but at the same time I don’t relish being part of that voice-of-doom chorus & today I feel like that’s kind of unavoidably the way this is inexorably going to go…so I want to remind folks that the “OT” part of the “DOT” acronym stands for Open Thread & you can skip right on down to the comments & talk about whatever you like…really…I’m not gonna get offended or anything…but if you don’t then this is liable to risk that going overboard thing I just said I try to avoid…though I’d argue not without reason
In the weeks, days and hours ahead of Wednesday’s siege on the Capitol by President Donald Trump’s zealous supporters, the warning signs were clear: online posts from hate groups and right-wing provocateurs agitating for civil war, the deaths of top lawmakers and attacks on law enforcement.
And now, as the dust settles and the country struggles to make sense of the violence that left five dead — including an officer with the US Capitol Police — experts warn that the calls for violence have only intensified ahead of Inauguration Day, when President-elect Joe Biden will be sworn in as commander in chief.
“We are seeing … chatter from these white supremacists, from these far-right extremists — they feel emboldened in this moment,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which tracks and counters hate. “We fully expect that this violence could actually get worse before it gets better.”
Extremists intensify calls for violence ahead of Inauguration Day [CNN]
Two weeks before the election, Mary Trump described her uncle Donald’s campaign to me in stark terms: “He knows he’s in desperate shape, so he’s going to burn it all down, sow more chaos and division…[and] if he’s going down, he’s going to take us all down with him.” In the Observer’s Biden/Harris victory edition, as she considered the loser’s remaining weeks in office, her tone was still edgy. “I worry about what Donald’s going to do in that time to lash out.”
The storming of the Capitol still shocked her. “What struck me first was how degrading it was. That amount of desecration. The tawdriness of it. Tawdriness is who Donald is, but playing out in the halls of Congress.” She describes the people vandalising offices, carrying Confederate flags, wearing Camp Auschwitz T-shirts – and yet Trump’s message to them was how much they were loved.
“It was the last four years in real time, distilled to its very essence, proving how much the very worst people among us have been so enabled and emboldened. It hit me later that the next people in line for the presidency were in the same room, and how unfathomably dangerous that was.”
[…]
“Every person that stormed – or should I say, strolled, and meandered, with impunity, arrogance and disdain – into the Capitol needs to be arrested, indicted, convicted and given serious sentences,” she adds. “They desecrated the foundations of our democracy.”The instability of her uncle right now remains the most pressing issue. “Remember: this is the man who tried to invalidate mail-in ballots in the middle of a pandemic. This is the man who forced resignations of high-level officers in the Pentagon, replacing them with sycophants. This is why, for six hours on Wednesday, the Pentagon blocked the National Guard from containing an insurrectionist mob. Our system failed miserably because this man’s been allowed to dismantle every institution this country counts on.”
And it’s not that her uncle believes he won legitimately, she argues. “He’s never had a legitimate win in his life. All that matters is getting the win, no matter if there’s an asterisk next to it.”
With this in mind, we shouldn’t underestimate him. “In less than two weeks, he won’t have the Oval Office to protect him from lawsuits, bankruptcies and criminal indictments. I don’t know what he’s going to do, but we need to understand he’s capable of doing anything. And the clock is ticking.”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jan/10/mary-trump-my-uncle-is-unstable-he-needs-to-be-removed-immediately
“People were willing to die for this man and he just threw them all under the bus. That’s the only thing that’s shameful about the events of the past 36 hours,” Nick Fuentes, the host of the America First podcast and the unofficial leader of the white nationalist Groyper Army, angrily tweeted, shortly after Trump released a video Thursday night in which he conceded that Biden would be the next president and called for political reconciliation.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/01/08/maga-internet-turns-on-trump
…see how that works just like the lady said in that thread…the “only thing that’s shameful” is maybe the one thing the alleged president did in all of this that could be argued to not be exactly that…& I’m sure the asshole in question is quite aware of that fact…like this one knew he had the damn virus
…they say ignorance is no defense…but…well…it seems like sometimes forewarned isn’t as forearmed as you’d think, either
Pramila Jayapal: We all were aware of the danger. Ten days ago, Maxine Waters had raised the issue of our security on a caucus call to the Speaker and asked what the plans would be. And 48 hours before, we had gotten instructions from Capitol police about all the threats: that we had to be on high alert, that we had to get to the Capitol by 9 a.m. before the protesters, that we couldn’t plan on going out, that we should have overnight bags. It was very clear, and everyone understood what the threats were.
[…]
They came with guns. They were armed. They were clothed in bulletproof vests; they were shooting towards the chamber in the Capitol. They desecrated the Capitol, broke into offices, the office of the parliamentarian. Had the Electoral College certification votes been there, they would’ve taken them. No question.
[…]
And they had talked about hostages. This was all done in the open! They’ve been planning this in the open, and Donald Trump has been encouraging this in the open for days. Actually, he’s been encouraging it pretty much for his whole presidency.The lack of security at the Capitol is not an accident. It is very clear to me that there were breaches of our law-enforcement agencies. The fact that there were no barriers, that they were essentially allowed in. And again, the discrepancy of what would have happened if these had been peaceful Black Lives Matter protesters … Believe me, they would not have been anywhere near that building. And there would have been a lot of arrests.
[…]
Rebecca Traister: You yourself have had the experience of being arrested within the Capitol complex, right? You were one of 600 people arrested during a protest against the family separation at the Hart Senate Office Building in 2018.JP: [Laughs] Yes!
RT: And you were a sitting congresswoman at the time.
JP: Yes, I was. We were all peaceful. There were 500 women singing and refusing to leave. We were warned that if we didn’t, we would be arrested, and we all agreed to be arrested because we wanted to draw attention to the travesty of thousands of children being separated from their parents.
Then there were 250 people arrested during the Kavanaugh hearings. And then, of course, we know what happened during the Black Lives Matter protests and the National Guard being called in. Yet on Wednesday, there were no barricades. The National Guard didn’t show up until very late in the day. And Capitol police essentially allowed protesters to come in. We’re a country that, to my great chagrin, spends $750 billion on the military. And yet we can’t protect our own U.S. Capitol? To me, that’s no accident.
https://www.thecut.com/2021/01/pramila-jayapal-surviving-capitol-riots.html
[…]
Those insurrectionists got on planes and are laughing all the way back to wherever they came from. Members of Congress ended up on those same planes, and I’ve been hearing reports, from women primarily, of how they were mocked and taunted by these people who see [Wednesday’s events] as a great victory, the fact that they’ve got all these videos of them bashing windows and taking over Pelosi’s desk, with no consequence. So we need to get this president out.
[…]
Trump is both a problem in and of himself but also a symptom of all the things that the government has not done for people. That’s what led people to lose faith. It’s led people to somebody they think is just going to throw things into chaos, like Trump, or it’s led to people staying home. And we did a lot of work — Stacey Abrams, Latosha Brown, so many activists across the country in Arizona, Georgia, who built infrastructure — to convince people that they should give us one more shot to trust that the government will step in and do something that matters. We’ve got to deliver.
…in the final analysis it’s hard not to see it as a question of who gets included in that “serve & protect” column
…not that it’s just the capitol police that are looking suspect around about now
Police officers and at least one police chief from departments across the United States are facing termination, suspension or other discipline for their proximity to or alleged involvement in a chaotic gathering in Washington on Wednesday that ended in a riot at the U.S. Capitol and left five people dead.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2021/01/09/investigating-police-rioters
…all the same…fucked up as the whole “some of those that work forces” bit is ultimately it’s just one symptom of what you might call a systemic infection of the body politic
Inequality, racism and polarisation set stage for Trump’s ‘American carnage’ [Guardian]
There was a terrible paradox in the images of Republican members of Congress driven into safe rooms by insurrectionists whom President Trump had whipped into a frenzy. As a lawyer for the Democratic House managers at Trump’s impeachment and trial, I sat on the floor of the House and the Senate as these same lawmakers refused to hold him accountable, knowingly unleashing the storm that swept over them, their Democratic colleagues and the nation on Wednesday. Impeachment manager Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), the House Judiciary Committee chairman, had warned them: “President Trump has made clear in word and deed that he will persist in such conduct if he is not removed from power. He poses a continuing threat to our nation, to the integrity of our elections and to our democratic order. He must not remain in power one moment longer.”
This last week’s events — and indeed all the president’s abuses during this election cycle and the last year — are a consequence of their refusal to convict him in his impeachment trial. With the sole exception of Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah), not a single Republican in the Senate or the House would recognize the threat then. On the contrary.
The riot happened because the Senate acquitted Trump [WaPo]
‘Our President Wants Us Here’: The Mob That Stormed the Capitol [NYT]
Call me old-fashioned, but when the president of the United States encourages armed insurgents to breach the Capitol and threaten the physical safety of Congress, in order to remain in power, I call it an attempted coup.
[…]
That the attempted coup failed shouldn’t blind us to its significance or the stain it has left on America. Nor to the importance of holding those responsible fully accountable.Trump’s culpability is beyond dispute.
“There’s no question the president formed the mob, the president incited the mob, the president addressed the mob. He lit the flame,” said Elizabeth Cheney, the No3 House Republican.
[…]
To let the clock run out on his presidency and allow Trump to seek the office again would signal that attempted coups are part of the American system. If Senate Republicans can install a new supreme court justice in eight days, Trump can be removed from office within 12.He should then be arrested and tried for inciting violence and sedition – along with Donald Trump Jr and Rudy “trial-by-combat” Giuliani.
Those who attacked the Capitol should also be prosecuted. They have no first amendment right to try to overthrow the US government.
[…]
The United States constitution says “no Person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress” who “shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” the constitution, “or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof”.
[…]
For four years, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube have functioned as Trump’s megaphones, amplifying his every lie and rant. When pressured to remove Trump’s fabrications about the election, they labeled them “disputed”.
[…]
Many business leaders now denouncing the violence enthusiastically bankrolled Trump’s re-election campaign, knowing full well who he was and what he was capable of doing. And they’ve had no qualms about advertising on his largest megaphones, including Fox News. All are complicit because they knew Trump would stop at nothing.
[…]
All are parts of the ecosystem that led to Trump’s sedition. That ecosystem is still in place.Those who say we should “look forward” to a new administration and forget or dismiss what occurred last week are delusional. Unless all who participated in or abetted the attempted overthrow of the US government are held accountable, it will happen again. Next time it may succeed.
Trump attempted a coup: he must be removed while those who aided him pay [Guardian]
Now it’s sinking in: Wednesday’s Capitol Hill riot was even more violent than it first appeared [CNN]
…take, for example the footage of the lone police officer who was pursued up multiple flights of stairs by a crowd of these assholes…which you probably already saw…especially if you caught this comment from @emmerdoesnotrepresentme yesterday
…just think about that for a moment…I know ACAB is a popular acronym these days…& a couple or three of the links I already used on the way down here are seemingly persuasive in that regard, even…but that’s a lone black police officer baiting a mob of racist bigots into pursuing him in one direction to distract them from literally walking through an open door in another one that would have led them into the senate where they would have done who-knows-what-but-nothing-good…if you ask me in this case it would need to stand for Actual Cop: Actual Badass…but that is one hell of a thin blue line…it’s not a pleasant thought but this could have been so much worse
The Man Who Saw Yesterday’s Coup Attempt Coming Is Only Surprised It Wasn’t Much Worse [GQ]
A man who had an assault rifle was charged with threatening Nancy Pelosi, the House speaker, after he traveled to Washington for the pro-Trump rally on Wednesday and sent a text message saying he would put “a bullet in her noggin on Live TV,” the federal authorities said.
Federal agents said the man, Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr., had been staying at a Holiday Inn in Washington and had weapons in his camper-style trailer, including a Glock handgun, a pistol, a Tavor X95 assault rifle and hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
Man With Assault Rifle Charged With Threatening Pelosi, Officials Say [NYT]
By mid-December, President Trump’s fraudulent claims of a rigged election were failing in humiliating fashion. Lawsuits were being laughed out of courts. State officials, including Republicans, were refusing to bend to his will and alter the vote. And in a seemingly decisive blow on Dec. 14, the electoral college certified the win for Joe Biden.
[…]
Some clung to the hope that Vice President Pence would use his procedural role on Jan. 6 to write an alternative ending. But as it became clear that Pence would refuse with the backing of most Senate Republicans, Trump’s most ardent abettors began planning the siege of the Capitol.“War it is,” read a post on TheDonald.win, a rabid pro-Trump forum that exploded in fury at post-election realities. “We kill now,” said another user identified only as “AngloMercia.”
Sam Andrews, a Missouri gun-range manager and former member of the Oath Keepers movement, appeared on a video that spread rapidly on right-wing sites urging followers to descend on Washington “armed, in large groups.” A Trump army, Andrews said, needed to arrive “en-masse in D.C., armed, demanding, not asking, that we get a peaceful resolution on these voter corruption issues.”
By Dec. 19, Trump was, as he so often does, feeding these flames with accelerant. “Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” he tweeted. “Be there, will be wild!”
[…]
Some Americans have traveled a path to radicalization that reminds current and former U.S. national security officials of the indoctrination of Islamist militants.Cindy Storer, a former CIA counterterrorism analyst, said that adherents in both cases were drawn to an ideology that emphasizes a loss in control or status. “We had this glorious past and it got screwed up and now we need to do something about it,” she said, summarizing the mind-set. What makes such movements turn violent, she said, is the additional belief that some other entity — usually based on race, religion, or nationality — is to blame for perceived humiliation.
“The world used to be a better place and it’s someone else’s fault that it isn’t any longer,” Storer said, noting that Trump’s entire approach to politics employs this pervasive sense of victimhood and demonization of enemies.
[…]
By early January, raiding Congress had emerged as a clear objective in dozens of far-right forums.“If Congress illegally certifies Biden,” a Jan. 4 post on TheDonald.win said, “Trump would have absolutely no choice but to demand us to storm Congress and kill/beat them up for it.” Some referred to Trump as GEOTUS: “God Emperor of the United States.”
Discussion boards filled with messages on implements to bring for violent confrontation, including riot shields and flagsticks that could also serve as bayonets or clubs for breaking windows. Some sought guidance on how to smuggle weapons into the District of Columbia with its strict gun possession restrictions.
[…]
Trump continued to goad them. “JANUARY SIXTH, SEE YOU IN DC!” he tweeted on Dec. 30. But his scheme to derail certification would have remained in the realm of fringe fantasy were it not legitimized by some Republican lawmakers.
[…]
On the eve of the assault on the Capitol, Flynn delivered an incendiary speech riddled with falsehoods, claiming that more dead voters had cast ballots for Biden than filled the cemeteries of Gettysburg and Normandy.He then issued a veiled threat to members of Congress. “Those of you who are feeling weak tonight, those of you who don’t have the moral fiber in your body — get some tonight because tomorrow we the people are going to be here,” Flynn said.
The next morning, Giuliani appeared before the same crowd and called for a “trial by combat.” Then, as Pence made his way to the Senate chamber, Trump took the stage — behind sheets of bulletproof glass — and instructed the sea of red-clad supporters to follow the vice president and refuse to accept anything short of victory.
A mob insurrection stoked by false claims of election fraud and promises of violent restoration [WaPo]
[…]
Clint Watts, a former FBI counterterrorism analyst, compared the rhetoric of Flynn, Giuliani and Trump with the radicalizing messages from leaders of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State that so worried U.S. security officials in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
The question left unanswered is why authorities didn’t prepare more effectively for a storm that many outsiders saw looming on the horizon — especially when those planning the assault were so open about their intentions.
“Given the very clear and explicit warning signs — with Trump supporters expressing prior intent to ‘storm and occupy Congress’ and use ‘handcuffs and zip ties,’ clear plans being laid out on public forums, and the recent precedent of the plot to storm the Michigan Capitol building while the legislature was in session — it is truly mind-boggling that the police were not better prepared,” said Rita Katz, executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which was among the research groups that detailed what was coming in the weeks before the Capitol was attacked. It recapped much of this evidence in a report published Saturday.
Capitol siege was planned online. Trump supporters now planning the next one. [WaPo]
This week, Bellingcat plunged into an investigation of the pro-Trump mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday, asking volunteers to help catalogue and preserve the hundreds of videos and photos of the event that have circulated freely online — before the posters choose to remove them — to aid efforts to identify suspects. “At the very least what we’re trying to do here is provide preservation” for the sake of future analysis, Aric Toler, who heads up Bellingcat’s training and research, told The Washington Post on Thursday.
Bellingcat breaks stories that newsrooms envy — using methods newsrooms avoid [WaPo]
…& that brings us more or less inexorably to the places most of us fear to tread…like parler
…anyway…in lieu of what might be called real good news & since I seem to have gone with a lot of twitter links today…here’s a couple of threads that explain why amazon denying parler the use of their cloud storage isn’t the kind of empty gesture booting them from an app store came off as
[edit to add]…seems I took my eye off yesterday’s DOT before @emmerdoesnotrepresentme was done with it…so here’s a bit of parler-related hilarity from reddit-via-twitter
Thank you @SplinterRIP – should any of us need a record of the downfall of a democracy, you have provided it here. I remain horrified but unsurprised; the years-long aggrandization of ignorance, cruelty, injustice, racism, graft, smarminess…allowed out from under the rocks where it has festered for centuries…has led this country to a new nadir. On an up-note, your musical choices were most excellent today, on theme and good listening.
“but I don’t seem to be able to follow that advice without feeling like I’m burying my head in the sand while things go from bad to worse…”
Oh, Hello!
It me!😉😆😂🤣🤣🤣
I SOOOOOOOOOO feel ya on this one, Rip!!! It sucks sometimes, but I definitely get it!
Basically all I did for most of yesterday, was to catch myself up on what’s been going on the last few days.
Doomscrolling to some, but also–for me, just kinda feeling “back in the loop” on what’s been happening, and getting a handle on how things are.
The nazi dreams that happened last night/early this morning are the ONLY part that really sucked…
But tbh? I’d probably have had them, because of what’s going on, even without the doomscrolling.🙃😉💖
I had one of those dreams last night too @EmmerdoesNOTrepresentme
Burying our heads in the sand may make us feel better in the short term. But it allows the malignancy to metastasize.
I had some this weekend where I was trying to lead DJTx45 through some dungeon-game water traps and just when I thought I had him he’d just walk right across the fucking water instead of falling in. Stupid friggin’ cheat-coding gold-plated messiah bullshit.
Sprots!
https://twitter.com/TowerLightsCLE/status/1348467684984442887?s=20
…this is one of those things that makes me feel clueless on account of the whole sports-heathen thing…but I’m going to take a stab & guess it’s one of those underdog-beats-odds-on-favorite kind of things?
…either way, I’m hitting star on principle just for it being non-doom content
As a Ravens fan, I concur.
Also, fuck Jim Rome.
Yeah, if Jim Rome’s happy, America can’t be happy.
Twitter shares are down more than 7% over the weekend, heading into this morning’s trading day. This is precisely why they (and other social media companies) ignored Trump and the other psychopaths for so long. I still hold that had the Democrats not won both Georgia races, none of the social media companies would have gone so far with their banning spree. They ONLY reason why they’re doing this now is because they’re afraid of looming regulation–NOT because they have suddenly found religion.
Agree with your sentiments on the censoring, WHOLEHEARTEDLY, Bbtm!
The four words Zuck left off the end of his statement about “clamping down” on Facebook were the words “…for OUR bottom line.”
That’s the ONLY reason they’ve cut Trump off… he’s like the drunk asshat regular in a low-rent bar, who a bad manager will TOTALLY *not* 86, because they see that half+ of the other patrons are just hanging around there “to watch the show”… the one who gets served for WAY too long, because the asshat M.O.D. *thinks* they “have a handle on it,” and that *the show* is bringing them “too much revenue” to shut down….
And then the riot happens… and suddenly the bar’s TRASHED, and the stupid MOD is trying to explain to the owners & the cops how “that customer just snapped all of a sudden, and that the situation was COMPLETELY unexpected and unavoidable!!!”
🙄🙄🙄
Yes. It’s not coincidence that Zuck, Dorsey, Bezos, et al. chose to wait until after the Georgia Senate runoff to act to muzzle Trump and deplatform the lunatics in Parler and other places. It’s just coincidence that the runoff happened the same day as the DC insurrection. So they get to claim “patriotism” instead of naked self-interest.
The nutty thing is that there is such a disconnect between the big traders who drive short term stock swings and reality.
Nothing would drive a spike into Twitter and Facebook more than the GOP taking power. The twin threats of Section 230 repeal and widespread defamation suits would pretty much wipe them out, along with much of the media landscape — multinational media conglomorates would be Gawkerized.
The analysts who drive this stuff are the dumbest, shallowest thinkers out there — the big firms basically grab a bunch of 25 year old Harvard government school masters degree holders with no real experience who sit around reading the NY Times and regurgitate the common wisdom previously spewed by 28 year old Columbia Journalism School reoorters who also have no real experience.
They are wildly, miserably unable to process the real world because they live in an insular world incapable of original thought or deep analysis.
I also think the petition signed by Twitter employees was another push on top of the political tides turning. Or, at least that helps me have some faith in the power of organized labor.
Excellent thread, as ALWAYS, Rip!!
Thanks for the links, on some stuff I didn’t catch on yesterday’s deep dive/catch up,
I also wanna share this one with y’all;
Iirc, Gwen Snyder is someone I learned about, because of our Rooo. Like Rooo, she’s brilliant, and super informative.💖
And I couldn’t help but think, as I read, and retweeted damn hear that whole thread yesterday, how over on GT, we TALKED about all these things, since 2015.🙃
But back then, no one would listen, because we were deemed paranoid/tinfoil hatters, etc.
The ONLY things I was afraid of, which *havent* (thank god!), come to fruition yet, were direct assassination attempts/a “successful” one, on TrumpCo’s “enemies” (most likely D members of Congress, tbh), and a nuke drop somewhere, as an attempt at Wagging the Dog…
I honestly NEVER saw “Pandemic” and especially not the denial of it, anywhere on the “terrible bingo” cards, and if I’m truly honest?
As bad as i *thought* things could get, and as TERRIBLE as i thought things *might* be under Trump?
The reality of it has still been worse. 🙃
Because I naïvely thought there would be some guardrails… I never–if I’m honest–thought that McConnell and the vast majority of the rest of the Republicans in office would roll over and simply ignore the Constitution like they have, or all the laws Trump violated.
I thought that at least a few of them would actually stand up to “protect and defend the constitution of the United States, from all enemies–foreign and domestic.”
And I was unequivocally WRONG.😕
That Mittens, “Binders Full of Women!” Romney, is the ONLY one who occasionally finds & is able to use his spine, is definitely not lost on me….
And booooooy HOWDY, do I have conflicting feels about that!!! Because Romney WAS the “Big Bad” a few years ago–the out of touch, corporatist, DUMBASS, who now–because of the Overton… god–what does one even CALL it–annihilation???
Is now the “Dignified Elder Statesman, Honest American Patriot, and Model Citizen”🙃😳🤯😱
…that thread from gwen snyder is frankly a marvel & ought to be required reading for anyone with access to anything resembling a front page in the post-internet age
…it almost makes me wish I had taken the time to get to grips with twitter so I’d know to follow people like that without relying on the kindness of internet-strangers like yourself to dig these diamonds out of the rough…but there are only so many hours in even an insomniac’s day
…so on balance I’ll stick to saying thank you kindly for dropping that off
I think her analysis is spot-on, but I still think she stops too soon. No, the mob was not organized within itself. It was disparate groups of assholes as she states. But the mob was aimed. If I drop a hungry tiger in a room full of people, I don’t know which ones it will kill. But it’s damn sure gonna kill somebody.
I still think the goal was somebody in government dies so Trump could declare martial law, stop the electoral college certification, and declare himself the winner. Didn’t matter who got killed: Pence, Pelosi, McConnell, whoever. Anyone would have served as an excuse. So they pissed off the tiger and turned it loose. And Trump’s cabal made sure there was NOBODY around to stop the tiger. Somehow, the tiger didn’t kill any officials, but that was just dumb luck.
And now Trump enablers are rushing to cover this shit up. Some because I think they were involved, and some because they’re seeing their political fortunes evaporate.
And from what I’m seeing as far as statements from members of Congress, I’m pretty sure a BUNCH of them have reached the same conclusion.
The stupid rhetorical trick that the deniers try to pull is they try to stretch “who could have seen THIS happen” into “who could have seen ANY OF THIS happen”
The truth is that one particular incident is awfully hard to predict, and the attack on January 6 could have been an Inauguration Day attack or an attack on the Pennsylvania and Michigan Electoral College meetings earlier.
So the deniers act like the difficulty in knowing the specific date and time of a specific attack frees them from any blame for denying the bigger picture.
They also try to individualize each attack into such a specific, narrowly defined event that it can’t be credited to a bigger pattern. Which is why none of them want to think about the Nashville suicide bomber as a part of this. They don’t even want to connect him to the Trump supporter who sent mail bombs to CNN and people Trump identified as his enemies,
CNN itself is incapable of making the connection.
Roger Stone’s minions were literally going on a stabbing rampage in DC after a Trump rally just days before, but the deniers don’t want to connect those attacks to this attack because of several differences between the mobs involved.
The level of analysis is rotten, but of course it gets flipped for ideological reasons to use flimsy evidence and coincidence to scapegoat liberal activists or justify US military attacks. The density that passes for wisdom in some quarters is astounding.
Yes, it’s the fallacy of reductionism and it’s used frequently to deny reality. In essence, you split an event into its parts. If one part isn’t true, then that’s used to justify declaring the whole thing false. Example: Billy Bob was at the DC insurrection. Billy Bob didn’t murder anyone at the DC insurrection. Therefore no one was murdered at the DC insurrection. Except they take it a step further: No crimes were committed at the DC insurrection, because Billy Bob didn’t murder anyone.
Trump’s stochastic terrorism is behind all of the incidents you cite and more. There are dozens of examples of idiots saying that “The President said this, so everything we did was justified” like that grants them some sort of dispensation to commit crimes.
I’ve constantly been reminded during Trump’s terror reign over the last four years of Asimov’s psychohistory, which was part of his Foundation novels. The basis of psychohistory is that you can’t predict the actions of individuals, but you can predict the actions of statistically significant groups of people. Trump inviting people to murder his opponents* is stochastic terrorism, but it’s denied by his supporters and enablers because “no one would think he actually meant for someone to do that.”
Yes, he absolutely meant for someone to do that and furthermore he does understand that articulating it makes the event more likely, and he’s just cunning enough to realize there’s some plausible deniability there. He’s an idiot, but he still possesses a degree of dangerous craftiness and deceit that he’s cultivated over his worthless life. He’s never read Asimov or any book, but he’s managed to pick up the principle that you can get some deranged idiot within a larger population to take reprehensible actions with the right encouragement.
*https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html
Trump has been taking the Henry II approach… “Will no one rid me of this turbulent priest?”
…it’s generally an exaggeration when people say “you took the words right out of my mouth” but in this case I was exactly one accidental page refresh away from a jinx
History nerds unite! Great minds, and all that 😉
Re that “never reading a book” bit–apparently there is *one* book he read (supposedly annually-or-so!), “My New Order,” the book on Hitler’s propaganda & speeches. It was referenced in a Vanity Fair article, just over 30 years ago;
https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/1990/9/after-the-gold-rush
It’s the one that MANY folks seem to confuse for “Mein Kampf,” the book that is often said to have been kept on/in his bedside table.
Judging by Trumpty-dumpty’s decades of leaning into “The Big Lie” as his main operating tactic, I’d buy that he at least skimmed the book…
As for the plausible deniability, craftiness, and “riling up & aiming” (and everything ELSE, too, tbh!), I COMPLETELY agree!!!
I think that’s honestly why Dolt45 was SO upset (probably even incensed!), and complained about the rioters looking “low class.”
Not because what they did was “low class.”
But because they literally looked like the bunch of army-man-cosplayers they are, and not the “highly-trained, heavily-armed” militia he believed them to BE.
DonnyDumbass doesn’t *get* that “militia” members won’t “look” like a SWAT team/Police Force/Army/Combat Unit, because they don’t have the budget for matching gear…
THAT *aesthetically pleasing to the eye* thing/ “not looking like a *REAL* troop unit” thing was what had him mad….
They didn’t “look classy” with matching combat boots, weaponry, camp patterns (or–let’s be HONEST here, regarding Trump’s adoration of “Dictator Chic”!), in his opinion, they probably *ought* to have been wearing black/red/white with LOTS of goldwork trim.🤨🤨🤨
He didn’t CARE that they did what they did… he ONLY cared that they weren’t strapping young men, who looked polished and ready for a parade.
*camo-patterns* not camp patterns!😖
This is a very old article but from the guy that wrote “Trump on the Couch” and really helps to understand the mind of this psychopath and his followers.
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/16/psychoanalyst-justin-frank-on-why-trump-hates-reality-and-must-be-quarantined/
I was coming here to check that you had all heard the news about parler security being so poorly set up that now the identities of everyone on there is in the hands of the FBI. Idiots.
Got my own head spinning today about how people who swear up and down they love the constitution and their country have absolutely no historical context that would tell them that maybe barreling in and trashing the seat of our nation’s laws is not such a good way to demonstrate that affection. And then the asshole enablers who stood there as lawmakers and said, “we have to listen to them because there’s so many” when it was deeply clear the many had no idea what the fuck they were talking about. And this, from the same party that thinks straight majority rule is a bad enough thing that they gerrymander the shit out of every district they can so their increasingly smaller voice gets precedence. Even if your numbers were making any damned sense, you can’t argue for your numbers when you have to cheat at math to get them. AND THEN SAY EVERYONE ELSE IS CHEATING. It’s just a deep spiral of logic fails. No wonder they love for the common doofus to be suspicious of teh edjicated elite.