The Big Liars Are Still Lying… Still On the Loose… and the Big Lie Lives On.
Can America Survive if the “Witch” continues to dole out poison and cast his evil spells?
The conservative attempt to overthrow American democracy following the 2020 election will be among the most infamous and discussed topics in near and long-term future America (presuming it survives). With regard to the culmination (i.e. inevitable conclusion) of that coup attempt, the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, part and parcel of that discussion will be how conservatives subsequently tried to 1) minimize it, 2) ignore it, 3) claim it was just a bunch of “tourists,” 4) blame it on the other side, 5) double-down on branding it a heroic act of “patriotism.”
The head of that traitorous snake is, of course, Donald Trump. But he found it incredibly easy to enlist a host of accomplices to scramble to do his evil bidding, even as his wild proclamations of a “corrupt” election “stolen” by Democrats were accompanied by zero — absolutely zero — evidence. Trump knew he had lost the election. All of his official advisors told him so, including his own family (except for sons Don Jr. and Eric… both of whom reflect and refract daddy’s narcissism, egocentrism and lust for privilege and power). Everywhere he turned, people who actually knew what was going on explained that he needed to concede and prepare for the sacrosanct American tradition of the peaceful transfer of power.
But Trump is Trump: he gets what he wants. To hell with rules… or laws. Like the tempestuous toddler that is his true personality, he wanted to keep his toy: the United States of America. He was actually willing — no, make that eager — to throw the United States of America into chaos, even civil war, to “conserve” his own advantage, privilege and power. No purer conservative ever existed. His entire life had primed him for just such an audacious power grab. He has gotten away with most of the rule-breaking gambits he has tried before. Why not again?
Trump turned away from his family and knowledgeable advisors, and sought out sycophants who were more than happy to do his bidding, No proof of anything was needed with this gang. All that was needed was people wanting to believe. With their assistance, Trump tried everything, from wanting to stop the counting of votes in this state, recount the vote in that state, assembled a slate of sleazy lawyers to file suits in court, all of which, including many presided by judges that Trump had appointed, were almost immediately tossed out. He pressured state party chairs, election officials, attorneys general, even governors to revoke the election in their states or “find” enough votes to overcome Biden’s lead, and turning to state legislatures to find a way to overturn the vote.
When none of these strategies worked, one particularly odious lawyer, John Eastman, stepped forth with the plan that would. It was based on the (erroneous) idea that state legislatures had the power, if they so chose, to challenge elections and select a new slate of “electors” to support the candidate they preferred. This strategy would allow Republicans in Congress to refuse to certify the election on January 6. On what basis? All the “doubt” that surrounds the election in these states. You know, the “doubt” that Trump and his minions have spawned. There still would not be enough of them to stop the certification — they would be out-voted by those with some semblance of allegiance to the Constitution— but their call for rejecting certification based on the “doubt” that they concocted would sow even greater “doubt” here at the highest level of government. The final official act in the certification process in Congress is announced by the vice-president. He simply verifies that Congress has certified the election. Trump instructed Mike Pence to derail Biden’s election at that last possible point. On the sole basis of the great “doubt” (all ginned up by Republicans) about the election, Pence was to single-handedly refuse to certify an American presidential election, and refer it back to the contested states so that their legislatures could send back a pro-Trump slate of electors. That, ladies and gentlemen, is how Trump and his Republican allies meant to stay in power: to instantly transform the United States of America into a banana republic run by a cabal of traitors. Aren’t conservatives supposed to be the defenders of tradition, and institutions, and law and order, and rationality, and ethics, and morality, and purity, and family values, and all those upstanding, patriotic things they always ballyhoo? Not when it’s time to conserve what they actually are always conserving: their own advantage, privilege and power.
So America was that close to utter catastrophe, hanging on the decision of one man, a conservative, a member in good standing of the Ideology of Selfishness, a would-be theocrat, no less, with the wrath of his boss and his political future as a Republican at stake. It must have been very tempting. In one fell-swoop, conservatives could take over the country for good. Every election from then onward would be a legit as one of Putin’s. Trump and his sycophants put enormous pressure on Pence to kill the certification, insisting it was all legal.
Mike Pence is no hero. He is an opportunistic coward, willingly signing up to be the running mate of a blatantly reprehensible person almost every Republican had, at one time or another, declared to be incompetent, unserious and in no way intellectually, emotionally or morally fit to be President of the United States. He was the smiling, even-keeled, soft-spoken, Christian explainer-apologist, often visibly uncomfortable as he twisted like a pretzel to cover for Trump’s meanest and stupidest ideas or any of the 30,000 lies he spewed. He was the yin to Trump’s yang, but went along with everything Trump wanted to do… up until that point. On that fateful day, Pence rose to the occasion, refusing to be the fulcrum of an actual overthrow of American democracy. He had checked with several trustworthy legal scholars and lawyers. What Trump was requesting was not legal. Duh! The vice-president does not have the power to derail an election. If he followed the command of the Commander-in-Chief, he would be complicit in a coup.
Since then, over 1,000 people have been arrested for their traitorous crimes on Jan. 6. Around half of those have been sentenced. Others still await trial. Most of those tried and convicted have been contrite, admitting how gullible, stupid and misled they were as Trump spent weeks goading them into distrust, disbelief and, finally, traitorous violence. Some, however, have sought to double-down, sometimes using their court appearances as opportunities to spew more conservative bullshit and bile. And why not? So far, the longest sentence has been 18 years in prison for Oath Keepers grand poobah, Stewart Rhodes. Seems pretty light for someone determined to unmake America. Methinks the founding fathers would have tanned his ass and made a mule feed-bag with it. With good behavior he might be out in eight years. So these worst of the worst can serve their sentence and come out a right-wing hero.
A trial has just concluded for a conservative dolt named Alan Hostetter, a former police chief in California. Figures. Lord knows many (most?) police don’t really think the law applies to them. Hostetter proudly posted on Instagram as he and a riot buddy, Russell Taylor, mugged during the violent invasion, perceiving themselves as just like the Patriots who instigated the Boston Tea Party in 1776, oblivious to just a few minor errors in his judgment. The Tea Party attacked a corporation — the British East India Company — not any government entity, much less the United States Capitol; they bore malice to no particular individual on hand and brought few or no weapons along, no one was injured in that episode, nothing but a shipment of tea was damaged (the ship, itself far more valuable, was left intact), and it happened in 1773, not 1776. Yet many of the Jan. 6 rioters — as ill-informed of history and confused about their own cause as Hostetter and Taylor— came ready for real violence. Hostetter brought with him bear spray, hatchets, knives and stun batons. On a video he proclaimed that “tyrants and traitors need to be executed as an example.” Others in that invasion were of like mind. These mindless, arrogant, anti-American, fake patriots, oozing toxic masculinity and craving mayhem and violence, would be the ones who determined who was tyrant and traitor, totally oblivious to the fact that these deplorables (Hillary had it right) had been sent by and were doing the bidding of the actual tyrant and traitor! A hangman’s noose was set up outside the Capitol. Crazy zealots prowled the halls of the building looking for politicians to kidnap, torture or kill. Including Pence. In the minds of the traitors, these politicians were the deserving of a traitor’s penalty: death.
That day came very, very, very close to an absolute tragedy, which would have been quickly followed by a national crisis at the least, all-out anarchy sweeping across the country at worse. Donald Trump watched it on TV from the White House, delighted, thrilled, at this manifestation of his power and drinking in the deliciousness of the unbounded allegiance of his rabble, refusing the pleas of his advisors and daughter and son-in-law and multiple political officials’ (some under siege in the Capitol) to call off his rabid dogs. For hours he indulged his deepest and darkest psychopathy… as heads were being cracked and people were dying at the Capitol (and others would commit suicide in the days that followed).
In court, Hostetter’s riot buddy, Taylor, testified against him, admitting that all of the rioters had been misled by Trump and his lies, were dead-wrong about believing they were the real “patriots,” and had, indeed, committed grave crimes in their attack on the Capitol.
Hostetter’s self-defense jumped several sharks. He refused to let go of his persecuted “real patriot” self-description, quoting Thomas Jefferson: “When governments fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.” As with Hostetter’s ignorance of the Boston Tea Party, it seems that Jefferson never actually said this. He opened his defense by declaring that “Patriots broke into Capitol Hill. I was one of them. Thousands stormed that cesspool of corruption.” Again, these doofusses have it back-assward: they are the cesspool.
That prideful, righteous bravado was followed by the assertion that government agents had identified him as a “special project” because he had “shown some leadership ability” as police chief. From there he flipflopped, saying that, far from being a righteous movement, the riot had been “staged,” and that most of the crowd was not even conservatives or Republicans. The whole day had been a setup, by the deep state, to identify, capture and persecute these real patriots. Dupes, it turned out. No word on how Trump’s two month, non-stop, incitement of disbelief, distrust and call for angry action might have tied into such a federal government “setup” or “staging.”
Predictably, Hostetter’s self-defense did not fly. He was convicted of four felonies: conspiring to obstruct and obstructing an official proceeding, and trespassing and engaging in disorderly conduct with a dangerous weapon. I predict he will get a sentence far less than the majority of marijuana possession convictions over the past 70 years. He’ll be out soon and back to peddling conservative conspiracy theories and seeking ways to put those weapons to use.
What about the head of the snake? And his closest associates who concocted and executed this diabolically un-American attack on our nation? Well, you know the story. The “justice for all” idea? We haven’t yet achieved that (because elite conservatives don’t want it). It’s the little guy who gets punished. The big wigs get a slap on the wrist, or nothing at all. Trump, of course, the central scoundrel — who will go down in history as America’s Villain — is now running for president again… even as he faces a gauntlet of legal problems that may put him in jail. Yeah, right. We’ll believe that when we see it. With every new indictment, his popularity among Republicans increases! As with 2016, there doesn’t seem to be a Republican alive who can touch or confound him. He has his cult, and it’s not accepting any new leader. A mini-anti-Christ has become a great anti-hero for the religious right, which, if you know anything about history is entirely predictable. Meanwhile, his “Elite Strike Force” of lawyers (who accomplished absolutely nothing) are all still on the loose, most of them now pulling in piles of cash helping other Republican efforts.
There is anxiety on the part of both liberals and moderates as to whether Trump should be brought to justice at all. What will the world think of America locking up politicians it doesn’t like, like some third world banana republic? Will it make matters even worse? Will it inflame the conservatives even more?
Well, yeah, there’s that. But 1) I don’t think the law generally gives a damn about what others “think” of it, and 2) what far more horrible repercussions are coming down the line if we allow Trump and his minions to get away with an actual coup attempt? Trump and the Republicans now blare that the Democrats are on a “witch hunt,” that this “vendetta” is “unprecedented.” It damned sure is unprecedented… because what Trump tried to do is unprecedented. He was, and still is, a wrecking ball toward precedent, tradition, civility, decency, ethics, morality, truth, American ideals, religious tenets, family values. It is not a “vendetta” to seek to hold him fully accountable for his grievously over-the-top transgressions; it’s the friggin’ law! As to “witch hunt,” when the “wicked witch” turns out to be a foul, deranged, orange-faced, duck-tailed caricature of a human being determined to dole out evil potions and cast an evil spell upon a third of the citizenry, the still-sane portion of society better damn well hunt him down and fling him in the dungeon where he can only bedazzle cockroaches.
That hasn’t happened… yet. The cult leader, the anti-hero, the villain, the witch, is free as a bird to continue his profaning and poisoning. He is still refusing to concede the 2020 election, still promoting the Big Lie, still spewing a wide range of other untruths, still sowing doubt, disbelief, distrust, still dividing American from American, still calling for insurrection, still undermining America. Attempting to overthrow American democracy is already on his resume. He has transformed tens of millions of Americans into mindless, un-American automotons (OK, he had decades of help on that score). He has already inspired individuals to go hyper-violent in his service. He has given the proverbial green light to a wide range of un-American, un-Christian, beliefs and behaviors, including misogyny, racism, anti-Semitism, LGBTQ phobias, anti-immigrant fears, anti-liberal hostility, along with other features of toxic (and militant) masculinity. As president he appointed three ultra-conservative hacks to the Supreme Court. There is simply no telling, and no limit to, what he might try next. The only thing we know for sure is that it will be whatever whim he believes will elevate and aggrandize him, and him alone, regardless of the damage done to literally every other life form on the planet. He is the clearest and most present danger this nation has ever seen.
Yet even scarier is the legacy he has already established. The real problem goes far beyond Trump. He is merely the latest incarnation of radical conservatism. There will be others if and until this ideology itself is not delegitimized and debased. If he does nothing more, Donald Trump has left a big, beautiful blueprint for “how to take over and destroy America” to future villains and tyrants, who will almost assuredly be far more intelligent and competent than he is. It’s absurdly simple. The instructions are crystal clear. Pretend to be strong, successful and patriotic, no lie is too big to get away with, there is no such thing as too many lies, tell people what they want to believe, assure them you will share advantage, privilege and power with them, and don’t let anything deter you from the most outrageous claims and objectives. You’ll soon have your own cult… that will do anything — anything — to fulfill your ambitions.
The part of the equation the cultists are blind to is what happens if they succeed. You see, after the Big Man has vanquished all enemies and conquered all doubters, he can then deal with the cultists as he sees fit. A few will reap great rewards. The rest he doesn’t need anymore.
Good luck all you conservative idiots. You’ve had a swell time living in a LIBERAL democracy. You want to try a conservative autocracy/kleptocracy/oligarchy/theocracy? Instead of trying to ignore, deny, subvert, rewrite or cover over actual history, you should consider reading it.
