Finally. Months too late, but we have reached another milestone. The past few months have been so jam-packed with news of Republicans becoming more criminal and Democrats continuing to enable them, that I have a number of posts I haven't finished writing yet. However, this new milestone is something to pay very close attention to and deserves immediate coverage, especially as the floodgates open and more mainstream reporters start using the same rhetoric.
"The Biden administration is enabling a Trump comeback
Democrats think enforcing the law on their opponents is somehow unfair
Democrats have had what any sane political party would consider a remarkable stroke of luck: Donald Trump, the leader of their opposition has (allegedly) committed many, many crimes, both while serving as president and before, and Democrats now control the federal law enforcement apparatus. As Barbara McQuade and Joyce White Vance write in The Washington Post, Trump is almost certainly guilty of obstruction of justice during the Mueller investigation, of attempting to solicit bribes from Ukraine, and of multiple campaign finance violations (and likely much, much more).
But so far, Attorney General Merrick Garland is resisting a full-scale investigation of Trump. For instance, he declined to open a criminal investigation of the recent revelation that the Trump Department of Justice spied on journalists and his political enemies (instead handing the issue over to the comparatively toothless inspector general). On the contrary, Garland's DOJ is continuing to spend public money defending Trump from a defamation suit filed by writer E. Jean Carroll (who accused Trump of rape). At the same time they are arguing that suits against Trump and his attorney general Bill Barr over the brutal attack on Lafayette Square protesters should be thrown out, and as Greg Sargent writes at the Post, actively concealing multiple documents related to Trump's abuses of power and alleged crimes. So far, Garland is effectively conspiring with Trump to help him escape accountability.
[...]Republicans look for any way to camouflage their ruthless will-to-power with a tiny fig leaf of neutrality — just look at Mitch McConnell's ever-evolving "rules" for Supreme Court confirmations — and if they can't find one, they proceed anyway. Meanwhile Democrats shrink from action if they imagine Chuck Todd scolding them, even if they are remedying some historic injustice in the process.
By the same token, conducting an investigation that even appears to be politically motivated gives most establishment liberals the vapors. "One of Trump's most flagrant and dangerous norm breaches was his repeated, publicly stated desire that the Justice Department prosecute his real and perceived political enemies," wrote law professor Andrew Kent at the liberal establishment website Lawfare in December. He then developed an explicit argument to allow Trump to get away with breaking the law:
Avoiding any hint of perpetuating this kind of awfulness, so reminiscent of tyrannies and banana republics, is an entirely plausible reason why Biden could want to avert criminal enforcement action against Trump and his circle. [Lawfare]
For some reason Kent does not discuss the fact that powerful people being able to break the law with impunity is also highly characteristic of "tyrannies and banana republics" — indeed arguably more so than politically motivated prosecutions, because those could still be directed at actual legal violations, even if motivations were not completely pure (such as, to pick an example at random, if the previous president committed a bunch of clumsily obvious crimes). By definition, the rule of law means that nobody, not even presidents or former presidents, should be able to break the law without consequence.
Any nine-year-old could instantly understand this point, but jingoist chauvinism runs so deep in the liberal legal establishment that it is basically impossible for them to imagine American politicians being really corrupt and deserving of jail time.
[...]But it seems fecklessness runs so deep in the Democratic Party that not even basic self-preservation can motivate them to enforce the law against the rich and powerful. Garland should discover some principles or he should resign."
https://theweek.com/donald-trump/1001705/why-is-attorney-general-garland-covering-for-trump
Although Garland is in control of the Department of Justice, he is not the only one who could have enforced basic consequences on Republicans who committed the highest crimes possible against the state.
Back in December, Representative Bill Pascrell correctly declared that Republicans who tried to throw out legal electoral votes in order to change the outcome of the election were not qualified to be seated in Congress on the basis of the 14th Amendment.
"Pascrell wrote a letter to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and House Chairwoman Zoe Lofgren, explaining his reasoning by citing the 14th Amendment, which states no person should hold any civil or military office who has “engaged insurrection or rebellion” against the US.
“Men and women who would act to tear the United States government apart cannot serve as members of Congress,” Pascrell wrote. “These lawsuits seeking to obliterate public confidence in our democratic system by invalidating the clear results of the 2020 presidential election attack the text and spirit of the Constitution, which each member swears to support and defend.”"
"14th Amendment. Section 3. No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may, by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability."
Ever since the insurrection and Coup Vote which took place on January 6th, and Trump's impeachment for INCITEMENT OF INSURRECTION, it has become undeniable that the Republicans who organized, engaged in, and aided an insurrection are illegally serving in our government. Democratic party leadership was well aware of this Amendment, but nevertheless allowed them to be sworn in, making Democrats complicit in the whole affair by ILLEGALLY ALLOWING TERRORISTS TO BE SWORN IN TO CONGRESS.
"On January 10, 2021, Nancy Pelosi, the Speaker of the House, formally requested Representatives' input as to whether to pursue Section 3 disqualification of former US president Donald Trump because of his role in the storming of the United States Capitol on January 6.[188][186] Unlike impeachment, which requires a supermajority to convict, disqualification under Section 3 would only require a simple majority of each house of Congress.[187][189]
The Section 3 disqualification could be imposed by Congress passing a law or a nonbinding resolution stating that the January 6 riot was an insurrection, and that anyone who swore to uphold the Constitution and who incited or participated in the riot is disqualified under Section 3.[186]
[...]On January 11, 2021, Representative Cori Bush (Democrat from Missouri) and 47 cosponsors introduced a resolution calling for expulsion, under Section 3, of members of Congress who voted against certifying the results of the 2020 US presidential election or incited the January 6 riot. Those named in the resolution included Republican Representatives Mo Brooks of Alabama and Louie Gohmert of Texas, who took part in the rally that preceded the riot, and Republican Senators Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas, who objected to counting electoral votes to certify the 2020 presidential election result.[188][186]"
Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene was removed from her House committee positions in early February 2020 (just a few weeks after Democrats took back control of Congress) due to advocating for an insurrection and murder of political opponents long before January 6th. Why can't Congress do the same for all the other Republicans who did the same thing with respect to the January 6th insurrection??? While we need Garland to pursue criminal charges against all these treasonous politicians, the Democrat party, by controlling Congress, has many things they could do to reduce the power of the politicians who tried to overthrow our government.
Ffs, back in August 2020, Representative Eric Swalwell advocated for Congress to set up a Crimes Commission to investigate all of the criminal behavior that took place during the Trump administration. That was almost a year ago. He said that around the same time Republicans began attempting their massive campaign to steal the 2020 election by sabotaging mail-in voting. I think a lot of us have forgotten about that since the insurrection has taken center stage...
Since August 2020, Democrats should have been planning and organizing the legislation to enact the Crimes Commission and implemented it immediately after taking back control of the government. Instead, Democratic politicians are ACTIVELY ALLOWING TERRORISTS TO REMAIN IN GOVERNMENT AND MAKE OUR LAWS. We have terrorists making our laws because the Democratic party wants them there.
***
Over the past year, the media has been slow, but left-leaning and non-treasonous writers have independently come to many of the same conclusions and reiterated nearly every major talking point I've posted on this blog. Millions and millions of everyday Americans have come to the same conclusions as well.
The media is always a few steps behind when it comes to saying things that the most strongly-opinionated bloggers and everyday people are already saying. It doesn't look like Democrats are going to change their course and do their duty. So, what are the next rhetorical milestones the media will escalate to?
Currently, the media is just now beginning to grapple with the fact that not only did we not have a functional government under Trump, but we still don't have one under the Democrat party. A few weeks ago, the media already reached the milestone of acknowledging that Republicans are going to try a coup again in the future. (One of the many topics I haven't had a chance to cover yet).
What's next? Concerningly, I think the only new talking points the media could escalate to next are that non-treasonous Americans, left-wing Americans, and "non-white" Americans need to utilize their 2nd Amendment duties to defend themselves and their communities from the impending far-right tyranny.
The mainstream media has already told us to stay calm and that multiple "blue waves" would fix our government and hold all the criminals accountable. But voting did nothing. The Democratic party is helping the Republicans cover up their crimes by refusing to hold them accountable for literally trying to overthrow the government via a terrorist attack. Republicans have purged their party of leaders who dare to say Trump fairly lost the election. (Another topic I haven't had a chance to cover yet.) Republicans openly declare again and again that their followers need to become more violent and that the party itself has no remorse for the tactics they employed to steal the 2020 election (from sabotaging mail-in voting, to nullifying electoral results at the local level, and even launching a bloody insurrection to kidnap and kill anyone who refused to illegally reinstate Trump). State-level Republican politicians in numerous states have passed laws making it more difficult to vote and stripped power from the types of election officials who helped thwart their coup attempt in 2020.
Ideally, in the 2022 election, non-treasonous Democratic politicians would be able to win primaries and take control of the party away from the current "leadership" who are enabling Republican terrorism. But the fact that the Democrats have had two "blue waves" and literally did less than the bare minimum legal duty isn't going to inspire voters to show up to the polls. Hell, Trump would have won the 2020 election if he wasn't a moron and didn't intentionally make the pandemic worse. Trump could have won if he wasn't a complete moron and didn't publicly announce his plan to sabotage mail-in voting multiple times and instead did it all silently. Despite Biden's record-breaking numbers in the overall vote totals, the margin of victory in "swing states" was closer in 2020 than in 2016--in what should have been the largest landslide in US history, Biden almost lost. He won by only 44,000 votes in the "swing states" determining the electoral vote outcome. In 2016, the margin was 80,000. Despite technically controlling the Senate, Democrats de facto have given up control of it to the Republicans (another topic I haven't had a chance to cover), and Democrats only have the slimmest majority in the House at the moment.
Even if, against all odds, Democrats maintain a majority after the 2022 election, bureaucracy probably won't save us. Since people are sick of placing their hope in the bureaucracy, the media is running out of talking points to escalate to.
Currently, Republican politicians like Cawthorn and Gaetz are advocating that their followers utilize the 2nd Amendment to fight the supposedly-tyrannical government that they are currently part of. Rightists have been utilizing rhetoric like this non-stop for decades. So it really isn't that crazy to think that left-leaning mainstream news outlets and politicians might soon start saying the same things.
"Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn Casually Suggests Armed Citizens Should Overthrow the Government.
The GOP lawmaker insisted assault weapons should be legal so people can stop “tyrannical government[s],” like the one he’s employed by.
The modern Republican Party talks a big game about being the party of “law and order,” yet strangely it’s they—and not Democrats—who’ve been involved in all the coups and insurrections of late. [...] Meanwhile, on Wednesday, Republican representative Madison Cawthorn suggested that assault rifles must stay legal so that civilians can overthrow the U.S. government, i.e. his current employer.
Appearing on Newsmax to discuss AR-15s and military weapons, the North Carolina lawmaker told host Chris Salcedo that “The Second Amendment is not written for sporting. The Second Amendment is so that if a tyrannical government ever wants to rise up, we can stop them.” Then he made a…rather strange historical reference! “If anybody ever wants to say, ‘Oh, well you know what? Citizens with a few small firearms would never be able to stop the federal government,’ I absolutely disagree, he said. “Ask the Viet Cong how they handled the Marines and the Army in Vietnam.”"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/madison-cawthorn-viet-cong
Cawthorn is correct regarding the importance of the 2nd Amendment. But non-treasonous Americans aren't going to be able to stop Cawthorn and the Republicans once they overthrow the US government, because left-wing Americans barely own any guns compared to far-rightists or the leftist Viet Cong. Left-wing and "non-white" Americans won't even be able to defend themselves when the far-right militias come hunting for them.
If you think that's insane, that's literally what the QAnon cult had been prophesizing and waiting for--Trump's call to action to begin the purge of all left-wing Americans in "The Storm". In 2005, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, far-right militias literally went "hunting" for "blacks". Over a year ago Ahmaud Arbery was lynched in broad daylight. ...And let's not even get started on what the KKK and other groups did during the Civil Rights era and Jim Crow era. Far-right psychopaths are heavily-armed and lying in wait all across the country, training, and ready to rise up when the time comes.
If I haven't convinced you of the intentions of rightists, last month Representative Matt Gaetz told rightists they have an "obligation" to use the 2nd Amendment against tech companies who don't want far-rightists on their platforms. They aren't even trying to talk with dog-whistles or euphemisms anymore. They simply state their criminal intentions directly and plainly. Republican politicians are openly telling their followers to murder people who disagree with them.
"Cawthorn’s comments follow remarks from Rep. Matt Gaetz wherein the Florida lawmaker lashed out at tech companies for harboring alleged conservative biases, telling supporters: “The internet’s hall monitors out in Silicon Valley, they think they can suppress us, discourage us. Maybe if you’re just a little less patriotic, maybe if you just conform to their way of thinking a little more, then you’ll be allowed to participate in the digital world. Well, you know what? Silicon Valley can’t cancel this movement, or this rally, or this congressman. We have a Second Amendment in this country, and I think we have an obligation to use it.”"
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2021/06/madison-cawthorn-viet-cong
The Republican party is openly encouraging terrorism and feels no remorse for their coup attempt. General Flynn and other members of the Trump administration keep advocating for another coup. This is going to keep getting worse in the following years. They will keep getting bolder and bolder, because they have faced zero consequences and the Democratic party doesn't even seem like they want to stop them.
***
The media has always been too little too late when it came to their analysis of the Republican coup attempt and all other political developments. What I predict will happen next is that (Republican-instigated) far-right terrorist attacks will continue to kill us, and once enough of us have been "sacrificed", the media will pose the disingenuous rhetorical question that maybe left-wing Americans should consider owning guns to defend ourselves. Once the violence against us becomes too regular to ignore, the left-leaning media will then start to encourage gun ownership. However, by then it will be too late. Rightists will have such an extreme advantage in terms of training, organization, and rates of gun ownership that the odds will continue to be stacked dramatically in their favor. This is not even considering the fact that countless police forces throughout the nation are filled with far-rightists who have defended far-right militias while left-wing protestors are routinely mutilated by police firing "non-lethal" weapons directly into their faces. Nor is this considering that, by the time things get this chaotic, Republicans will likely be in the position to carry out another coup.
Once that happens, the tyranny that will be unleashed might even make us nostalgic for the do-nothing Democrats. Once that happens, left-wing Americans won't even be able to get a gun and we will probably be shipped off to concentration camps. Once that happens, and QAnon cultists are able to carry out their purge of all liberal-leaning news reporters, there won't even be a mainstream media left to belatedly tell us what we already knew.
If you remember back to the Bush and Obama presidencies, conspiracy theorists complained non-stop that the government would send all non-compliant people to "FEMA concentration camps". Obviously that was never going to happen. But, today, we literally have QAnon followers in Congress and countless more politicians and other government officials who have been so brainwashed by "alternative facts" that they would likely have no problem implementing such things against their perceived enemies. They are literally living in a different reality than us and think we are just NPCs and not real humans. The Trump administration already put immigrant children in concentration camps. Why would Republicans stop there? (All of this, of course, assumes they won't just launch a full-on civil war with Bosnia-style mass killings.)
If you don't think things will actually get "that bad"...you were alive during the bloody coup attempt a few months ago, yeah? I never thought we'd be living in this reality either, but here we are. Right-wing politicians and militias are telling us the future is only going to continue to get much worse, and Democratic party politicians are perfectly fine with allowing that. Welcome to the New Normal. We criticized Trump for his "magical thinking" that simply wishing bad things would go away would actually make it into a reality, yet the False Left is doing the exact same thing when they believe things will just get better spontaneously, rather than continuing to get much worse.
Every non-treasonous American has a duty to arm themselves, train, and organize with community members so we can protect ourselves from whatever tyranny and terror will be inflicted on us in the near future. For a glimpse at how chaotic things can get in "developed" nations within recent memory, go look up what happened during The Troubles in Ireland or the Yugoslav Civil War. Or you can go look up what happened in Charleston, South Carolina, in 2015, or in Michigan in 2020 for what's already happening in the US...
The world doesn't have to be like this. But we need to take our present reality seriously if we are going to have any hope of changing the future. The world would have been better off if guns were never invented, but anti-2nd Amendment Democrat politicians are leading sheep to the slaughter. Every left-wing American, every "non-white" American, and every non-treasonous American needs to get armed with whatever means are legally available to you. Being armed is not enough--you also need to train. Training is not enough, you also need to organize with your community so you can defend one another when the time comes.
I sincerely hope that the Democratic party begins following the law, but we are not safe until they do. We are not safe when Republican politicians and far-right militias constantly warn us that even more violence is coming. We can ignore their warnings at our own peril.
...And when this nightmare is over, we will still have to approach the difficult question of reframing our government on a new system that isn't fundamentally prone to tyranny of the majority. Democracy gave us slavery, Jim Crow, and Trumpism. Voters who were upset about the end of slavery gave us Jim Crow. Voters who were upset about the end of Jim Crow gave us Trumpism. As long as people like that can vote, this shit isn't ever going to go away.
