Militia Within Mob, Inside Help, Stacey, Loudly Censored, Christian Terrorism

  • Ant Farmer’s Almanac summarizes, with a headline and brief comment, last week’s violent almost-takeover of the US government.
     
  • I don’t invest much anguish in my speculation about what went on inside the lynch mob, what planning was involved, or what inside help there was. Investigations are beginning to reveal the truth. More will be spilling out soon. So far, it does appear that there were two simultaneous insurrections on January 6. One was the public lynch mob, sometimes clownish, always dangerous, that eventually broke into the Senate and House. The other was a trained, organized militia hidden within the excitement, targeting individual legislators for capture and assassination. They did have a model for success from American history, as the government of North Carolina was overthrown and taken over by similar White supremacists in 1898.

  • As new details are broadcast showing how close the Trump militia cadre, operating within the more general lynch mob, came to fulfilling their plan to capture and execute legislators, investigations continue and arrests accumulate.
     
    Perhaps it simply demonstrates how different selection strategies, or different phraseology can get somewhat different results. Or perhaps it shows how opinions shift as news and pictures get through to public consciousness. A poll by the Wall Street Journal and ABC News has Donald Trump drifting down in popularity below the 40’s threshold he previous occupied, with 35% of the public approving. That’s a downdraft. A little later, the highly respected scientific Pew Research organization has Trump plummeting past the 40% mark AND down through the 30% mark to land for the moment at 29%.
     
    But, listen to that 29%: It’s all fake news because he’s still Landslide Don who could not have lost an election.
     
  • It appears a President cannot issue a pardon to himself. Ted McLaughlin at jobsanger examines the idea that Trump might resign in exchange for a pardon, and reports one little problem.

  • nojo of ever insightful mind suggests a turn in national consciousness. The cloak of Trump is no longer prized. It is now something to avoid. It was all fun and games until someone got hurt, people died, and our form of government came to violence and near collapse. That private organizations no longer provide a megaphone for a while seems a moderate response.
     
  • So Trump walks off in menial disgrace, but Green Eagle notices he has managed one triumph over new President Joe Biden.
     
  • Wonderful elderly friends, Margaret and Helen, often exchange notes. Friendship is a wonderful mainstay. Helen wishes she had just 5 minutes with Donald Trump. She would like to explain that he is a racist, a misogynist, and an idiot; in short why he is despised and should just leave. You know, a gentle nudge in the right direction.
     
  • John Scalzi at Whatever provides a bit of reflection about the failed character of Donald Trump. What took him from a freed from office Goliath on the morning of the 6th, coasting to another nomination, ready to fight against anyone for the Oval Office, to a week later: a shrunken old man fighting for his pension?
     
  • Frances Langum invites us to a tour of the violent rhetoric leading to the breaking into the Capitol building that resulted in 5 deaths and almost a bunch of assassinations. The rhetoric some conservatives describe as conservative free speech.
     
  • Remember that horror movie a few years ago in which the police tell the terrified babysitter that the threatening calls are coming from inside the house? Well here’s another remake. In Hackwhackers Nancy Pelosi, after reviewing ongoing investigations, warns that House members who are found to have assisted the lynch mob will face prosecution.
     
  • At The Onion, having started on January 6, Congressional member Lauren Boebert has become addicted to posting Nancy Pelosi’s location. As in “She’s now eating a muffin in the commissary.” Poor thing can’t quit.
     
  • The Moderate Voice watches the security buildup in our nation’s Capitol in preparation for a new President, and recalls the stay-in-place glee as my current president stood before the television watching the attempted violent overthrow.
     
  • A president has an affirmative duty to put an end to a January 6 type event, whether it comes from foreign or domestic enemies, as the oath to God says. So Vixen Strangely’s note at Strangely Blogged pertains. She also noticed that my president was watching every moment of violence on television and enjoying the hell out of it. End it? End it! Are you kidding? This is great!!
     
    Would that merit, I dunno, some sort of removal from office?
     
  • So Trumpers, including my president, insist that the mob that killed 5, and nearly more, was supposed to demonstrate only outside the Capitol Building, protesting peacefully. It was not Mr. Trump’s intent, certainly not his fault, definitely not his plan, that they do any more than that. Dave Dubya listened to my president instruct the crowd to force the count to go Trump’s way with a show of strength. Dave asks someone, anyone, to explain. Just how was all this force, all this changing of the count supposed to work, if the mob was to stay outside?
     
    It does sound like all the current innocence amounts to We insist we were stupid and Honest, we expected the mob to be more stupid. Go inside? We NEVER wanted that! We wanted them to stop the count with a sort of psychic presence.
     
    Okay: everyone who believes they were going to use psychic energy, raise my hand.
     
  • M. Bouffant at Web of Evil shows us video of one of this year’s bizarre conservative theories. The Biden inauguration on January 20 is illegal. The Presidential term doesn’t begin until March, and it will be Trump taking the oath. A parallel America of sorts, I suppose, if we assume the 20th Amendment never happened. Note from the video: some death will result, but a quantum computer will be involved so all will be well under Trump.
     
  • CalicoJack in The Psy of Life digs into the attempted violent overthrow and discovers roots going back to the unfinished Civil War. Sound research.
     
  • Infidel753 points out the hidden weakness of the violent fringes – fragmentation. There is a reason those grounded in reality have an intellectual cohesion, and the delusional tend fly into individual pieces.
     
  • In Scotties Toy Box, a few graphic artists draw out observations about unity, healing, and putting the past behind us. (Okay so there was that little incident of insurrection, and yeah that lynch mob, and – I know, I know – the gallows, and – NO, DAMMIT – I haven’t forgotten the nearly successful assassinations. Sheesh)
     
  • On January 6, North Carolina pastor John Pavlovitz could hear on national broadcasts the faint sounds of religiosity from the edges of the mob. The contrast causes him to point out that white terrorism in the name of Jesus is not Christianity.
     
  • Remember the 2016 Trump terrorism reasoning? Putting all Muslims on no-fly lists because we can’t tell friendlies from hostiles? Or condemning all Muslims because they don’t root out the fanatics among themselves? Our favorite Earth-Bound Misfit cooks a bit of goose and gander. If that logic was reasonable with Muslims then, why isn’t it reasonable with Republicans now? And if we should not similarly condemn all Republicans after last week, is it possible that hating all Muslims was wrong back then, has been wrong since, and is still wrong now?
     
  • Andy Borowitz reports that Liz Cheney is in trouble with the Republican base since she voted to impeach Trump. The issue was something about facing a lynch mob in the Capitol building, I believe. At least that’s one rumor. But some conservatives are accusing her of actually reading the Constitution.
     
  • Max’s Dad watches as my president puffs out his chest, proclaims his innocence, and scurries off to Texas to point to a little bit of wall. Meanwhile, the Governor of Nebraska learns all he can from recent history. He’s unconcerned with a similar armed crowd coming to Lincoln, the capitol of Nebraska, and surrounding the legislature, while legislators are in session. Why would we suspect anything might go wrong? You get extra points for the correct answer.
     
  • Iron Knee at Political Irony watches as new Republican Senator Tommy Tuberville (no, the name is not from a low-budget sitcom) explains government branches and the Constitution to the folks back home in Alabama. A weary nation seeking relief from harsh times can turn its lonely eyes and ears this guy for the next half dozen years years. Just pray no Senate votes are close.
     
  • driftglass stomps on House member Rodney Davis who has been a typical tax-cuts-for-the-wealthy, kick-at-the-rest, Republican for all his life. Faced personally with a right wing lynch mob that was not examining his resume, and looking at national revulsion, he now wants a bi-partisan committee to study how the overthrow of democracy almost happened. A study. A sort of joint classroom. driftglass does not suggest an anatomical improbability, but you can detect the undercurrent.
     
  • When crazed TikTok star Tiagz remixed into Muffins in the Freezer, he may not have suspected that @momwino98 might remix again into a brief song on bringing democracy to the Georgia electorate (beware: it’s auto-SOUNDED). Guess who is the star!
     
  • My long-time friend Darrell at Unabashedly American laments how the recent DC riot gave vicious liberals just the opening we need to close down conservative free speech.
     
    Seems Twitter, Facebook, Google, and Amazon will not allow calls for violence, insurrection, assassination, or various disproven, harmful, conspiracy theories intended to provoke, you know, violence, insurrection, and assassination. Look how those nerds have risen up to oppress us. Orwellian, he says.
     
    I dunno. I do have a couple of thoughts.
     
    On the surface, since the violent overthrow of government was attempted largely on the strength of all those platforms, including notes from my president, the banning strikes me as moderate and reasonable.
     
    When conservatives scream in public that they are being prevented from screaming in public, it strikes me as undercutting their own argument.
     
    And when they insist that banning the promotion of violence, insurrection, and assassination censors conservatism, it is less a complaint than an admission.
     
    I’ve been trolling Twitter a little since the newest New Year, and I sense no shortage of conservatives. Perhaps they no longer qualify as conservatives, not advocating the violent overthrow of the US government.
     
    All these years I thought of Orwell’s dystopia as a bit more harsh. Silly me.
     
    When Twitter (not troops) comes searching for you, when Facebook (not fascists) is about to put you in prison, when Amazon (not anarchists) violently installs a Google government, wake me up so I can check to see if Niemöller’s cry is appropriate.
     
    In the meantime, a right wing lynch mob concealing an organized White supremacist militia came within a few minutes of assassinating a few hundred of our representatives, pretty much ending our democracy.
     
    The mobilization of troops around the inaugural next week is to protect our new President, and our nation, from our current president and his mobs. Disrupting their communications may seem too little too late, but it is something.
     
  • Reductress introduces us to a friend of Darrell (okay I’m stretching things a bit here – I haven’t introduced them) who decides to learn what Orwellian means by watching Animal Farm, and misses by just a little.
     
  • tengrain at Mock Paper Scissors offers video evidence that conservative voices are being silenced. Orwellian!
     
  • Cato’s Julian Sanchez has a brief part in a brief video about Parler, the platform having trouble finding a platform. He has a solution that does not require private platforms involuntarily to provide a free megaphone.
     
  • PragerU is a pretend university with no curriculum, no faculty, and no students. It exists to provide a platform to right wing voices that my friend Darrell insists can’t be heard. Misinformation presented in academic garb. Former Senator Mike Gravel (Alaska) decided he had had enough. The Propaganda Professor celebrates the success of Gravel Institute (astonishing growth and short, fact-packed videos) but suggests it all become more entertaining.
     
  • Nan’s Notebook has pity on those suffering from Trump violence fatigue: an extraterrestrial escape link to declassified government documents.
     
  • The Journal of Improbable Research links to a joint study by researchers in London and Paris discovering that, when random musicians are tossed together to just play, “harmony, in its many meanings, might emerge.” Around my neighborhood, we have developed a name for similar research into improvisation: jazz.
     
  • Vincent at A Wayfarer’s Notes defines part of the existential problem with growing old is finding a way to fit into the space you imagined. Okay. I begin to relate.
     

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