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End Days For An Evil Man - January 17th, 2021

  
By:  Bob Nelson  •  3 years ago  •  9 comments


End Days For An Evil Man - January 17th, 2021



Good stuff:

A rioter who thinks Trump owes her a pardon

A woman who remembers her Dad - a small town police chief

and a thoughtful, hard-hitting essay from a morally healthy Republican!

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 ♦ We have met the enemy and it is us (poll)

 ♦ Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators? (op-ed)

 ♦ My Grandfather Was a Good Cop. Or Was He? (perso, long-form, good writing!)

 ♦ 'I feel wronged': US Capitol rioter asks Donald Trump for pardon after arrest (privilege!)

 ♦ House Democrats launch investigation into Capitol riot security failures (good/bad idea)

 ♦ Boebert’s Comms Director Is Resigning After Capitol Attack (worked for Boebert??)

 ♦ QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within, by Ben Sasse








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We have met the enemy and it is us
More than half of Americans polled say that other Americans are the "biggest threat" to the nation

original An American Flag flies at half staff at the U.S. Capitol
Stefani Reynolds/Getty Images

More than half of all Americans say the greatest danger to America's way of life comes from their fellow citizens, according to   a CBS News poll   released Sunday.

A total of 54 percent of those surveyed said that "other people in America, and domestic enemies" posed the "biggest threat" to American society at this point in time ahead of "economic forces" at 20 percent, "the natural world" at 17 percent and "foreign countries" at 8 percent. The category of "natural world" was a catch-all that included hazardous weather and other natural disasters, as well as lethal viruses, a nod to the coronavirus pandemic.

The most pessimistic respondents among those surveyed were those age 65 and older: About two-thirds (66 percent) saw their fellow Americans as the nation's greatest threat. There was not, however, much difference regardless of age group between Democrats (53 percent) and Republicans (56 percent) on the subject, nor a notable difference between men (53 percent) and women (55 percent).

The polling was conducted one week after the widespread alarm in the country over the rioting Jan. 6 at the Capitol. That insurrection left five people dead and temporarily halted the certification of Joe Biden as the victor of the November election over President Donald Trump.

In the aftermath of that insurrection, 51 percent of those surveyed said they expected political violence in the country to increase, and 71 percent said they believed democracy in the United States was "threatened" now, as opposed to 29 percent who thought it was "secure" or "very secure."

Despite all the pessimism, there were some signs of hope expressed. A total of 58 percent said they were optimistic about Biden's presidency, which is to begin Wednesday, and 74 percent said they considered him to be the legitimate winner of November's election.

A majority (51 percent) also said they expected the coronavirus situation to improve during Biden's presidency; as of Sunday morning, almost 400,000 Americans   have died during the pandemic.

The CBS News survey of 2,166 adults in the U.S. was conducted by YouGov from Jan. 13 to Jan. 15. The margin of error was listed as approximately 2.5 percent; it was 2.8 percent on questions just addressed to registered voters.



Why Are There So Few Courageous Senators?
Here’s what we need to do if we want more Mitt Romneys and fewer Josh Hawleys

512 Now that Donald Trump has been defanged, leading Republicans are rushing to denounce him. It’s a little late. The circumstances were different then, but a year ago, only one Republican senator, Mitt Romney, backed impeachment. In a party that has been largely servile, Mr. Romney’s courage stands out.

Two of the few Republican senators willing to defy President Trump: Mitt Romney, left, and John McCain.
Brooks Kraft/Corbis, via Getty Images

Why, in the face of immense pressure, did Mr. Romney defend the rule of law? And what would it take to produce more senators like him? These questions are crucial if America’s constitutional system, which has been exposed as shockingly fragile, is to survive. The answer may be surprising: To get more courageous senators, Americans should elect more who are near the end of their political careers.

This doesn’t just mean old politicians — today’s average senator is, after all, over 60. It means senators with the stature to stand alone.

As a septuagenarian who entered the Senate after serving as his party’s presidential nominee, Mr. Romney contrasts sharply with up-and-comers like Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz, who seem to view the institution as little more than a steppingstone to the White House. But historically, senators like Mr. Romney who have reached a stage of life where popularity matters less and legacy matters more have often proved better able to defy public pressure.

In 1956, Senator John F. Kennedy — despite himself skipping a vote two years earlier on censuring the demagogue Joseph McCarthy — chronicled senators who represented “profiles in courage.” Among his examples were two legendary Southerners, Thomas Hart Benton and Sam Houston, who a century earlier had become pariahs for opposing the drive toward secession.

Benton, who had joined the Senate when Missouri became a state, had by 1851 been serving in that role for an unprecedented 30 years. Benton’s commitment to the Union led him to be repudiated by his state party, stripped of most of his committee assignments, defeated for re-election and almost assassinated. In his last statement to his constituents, he wrote, “I despise the bubble popularity that is won without merit and lost without crime.”

Houston enjoyed similar renown in his home state, Texas. He had served as commander in chief of the army that won independence from Mexico, and as the first president of the Republic of Texas. In 1854, he became the   only Southern Democratic senator   to oppose the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which he feared might break the country apart over the expansion of slavery. He did so “in spite of all the intimidations, or threats, or discountenances that may be thrown upon me,” which included being denounced by his state’s legislature, and later almost shot. Houston called it “the most unpopular vote I ever gave” but also “the wisest and most patriotic.”

It’s easy to see the parallels with Mr. Romney. Asked in 2019 why he was behaving differently from other Republican senators, he   responded , “Because I’m old and have done other things.” His Democratic colleague Chris Murphy   noted   that Mr. Romney was no longer “hoping to be president someday.”

Nor was John McCain, one of the few other Republican senators to meaningfully challenge President Trump. By contrast, Mr. Hawley and Mr. Cruz — desperate to curry favor with Mr. Trump’s base — led the effort to challenge the results of last fall’s election.

Not every Republican senator nearing retirement exhibited Mr. Romney or Mr. McCain’s bravery. Lamar Alexander of Tennessee, an octogenarian former presidential candidate himself, voted not only against convicting Mr. Trump last February, but against even   subpoenaing witnesses .

Courage cannot be explained by a single variable. Politicians whose communities have suffered disproportionately from government tyranny may show disproportionate bravery in opposing it. Mr. Romney, like the Arizona Republican Jeff Flake — whose opposition to Mr. Trump likely   ended his senatorial career   — belongs to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, which was once persecuted on American soil. In the fevered days after Sept. 11, the only member of Congress to oppose authorizing the “war on terror” was a Black woman, Barbara Lee.

But during that era, too, ambition undermined political courage, and stature fortified it. John Kerry, John Edwards and Joe Lieberman, Democratic senators who went on to run for president in 2004, voted for the Iraq war.

By contrast, Mr. Kerry’s Massachusetts colleague, Ted Kennedy, who had been elected to the Senate in 1962, voted against it. The most dogged opposition came from a man who had entered the Senate three years before that, Robert Byrd of West Virginia. Despite hailing from a state George W. Bush had won, and seeing his junior colleague support the war, the 84-year-old Mr. Byrd, a former majority leader, tried to prevent the Senate from voting during the heat of a midterm campaign. His effort   failed   by a vote of 95 to 1.

If Americans want our constitutional system to withstand the next authoritarian attack, we should look for men and women like Senators Romney, Benton and Byrd, who worry more about how they will be judged by history than by their peers. George W. Bush was a terrible president — but might have proved a useful post-presidential senator because he would have been less cowed than his colleagues by Mr. Trump.

John Quincy Adams served in Congress for 17 years after leaving the White House. Given how vulnerable America’s governing institutions are, maybe Barack Obama could be convinced to do something similar.

Like most people, I’d prefer senators who do what I think is right. But I’d take comfort if more at least did what   they   think is right. That’s more likely when you’ve reached a phase of life when the prospect of losing an election — or being screamed at in an airport — no longer seems so important. America needs more senators who can say — as Daniel Webster did to his constituents in Massachusetts — “I should indeed like to please you; but I prefer to save you, whatever be your attitude toward me.”



 

My Grandfather Was a Good Cop. Or Was He?
I idolized him and his larger-than-life role in law enforcement. It’s more complicated now.


800 When my son crawls into my closet , he finds my grandfather’s police star. He flips open the heavy leather billfold. Etched into gold metal are the words “Chief, Stickney, Illinois.” When he moves onto another toy, I lift the suede protecting the star and slide out the ID card. There’s my grandfather’s signature, his cursive E, blue ink that still looks wet: Edward — a name I’ve passed on to my son.

I grew up proud of my grandfather. In a world of adults who vanished into dull, anonymous offices, my grandfather was   someone . See the pictures? His starched collar, his pins, his boots; his trooper’s hat, his squad car. Always in uniform. My mother told me he’d wired the police radio into his Oldsmobile.

Illustration by Anthony Gerace;
photographs from JoAnna Novak, Village of Stickney,
Berwyn Life and Stickney Life/Shaw Media

Now, as the horrible images of the Capitol attack proliferate, my grandfather is wired into my vision. I see him in the police beaten by rioters, in the troops pulled out of formation by the mob, in the more than 50 officers who suffered injuries, in the Capitol Police officer who died from his injuries that day and the one who died soon after by suicide. I see him in the faces of the two members of the Rocky Mount Police Department in Virginia who came to the riot, broke into the Capitol, then posed for a photograph they later shared on social media. And I am reminded of my complicated feelings toward him again and again.

Stickney people knew him. For most of four decades, his name evoked law and order, generosity and service. At church, parishioners would come over to greet him and my grandmother. The same thing happened at Moldau, a local Bohemian restaurant, where he went to eat pork, dumplings and sauerkraut. When my brother was 4, he dressed as a policeman for Halloween, wielding my grandfather’s billy club.

A first-generation Czech-American, Edward Stromski was synonymous with Stickney, a village eight miles from Chicago. I heard hints of gangsters, but I didn’t know   Ralph Capone   commanded the village’s brothels and taverns and tunnels. I didn’t know Stickney’s nickname once was “oasis for the thirsty” — if I had, I would’ve credited my grandfather with eradicating Stickney corruption.

He seemed that good.

For a long time, that’s the story I believed. And last week, that mythic goodness, the police as protectors, was reinforced in the Capitol attack. We can imagine the mob at our own doors now, rampaging on our streets. Who would protect us if not the police?

And yet, the other version of the story persists. The one that flared yet again when a police officer mercilessly killed George Floyd in full view of all of us. When police officers in military-style riot gear assaulted and beat unarmed protesters in the weeks that followed. Some   90 percent of voters   cited protests over police violence as a factor in their voting, and mistrust of police has grown in the face of overt brutality. So how do I make sense of my grandfather’s legacy? Can I reconcile the public good with the biased policing practices and the systemic racism in which he was probably complicit? What story will I tell my son about his great-grandfather?

Not long ago, I decided to scour a scrapbook assembled by one of my uncles and a very patient microfiche operator, undertaking what   Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick , a gender studies scholar, might have called a “tracing-and-exposure project.” I read yearbook pages and telephone book listings, but mostly I studied scans of local newspapers: Berwyn Life and Stickney Life. Ten pounds of copied pages, thicker than a Bible, 25 years of my grandfather’s footprint.

Here I find him on the 1942 Morton East boxing team, biceps too big for a welterweight. He’s punching on the amateur circuit, Eddie Starr, “promising Stickney slugger.” I glimpse him in Arkansas and North Carolina, in paratrooper training with the 517th Infantry.

By 1949, he’s back in Stickney, appointed as a patrolman on the police force. This is also the year he marries my grandmother. The township still has 522 acres of tillable farmland, 27 apple trees bearing fruit.

He makes “a career of being among the ‘front-runners’” in his endeavors, I read, and is named chief in 1953. I learn facts — I think they’re facts — information I never knew: graduated from two F.B.I. courses, membership in eight policing organizations. One of those, the Stickney Police Association, provided coal to destitute families during the Depression and outfitted “all patrol boys of Haley School with raincoat uniforms.”

I see a photo of my grandfather and his fellow patrolmen — his best friend, his brother-in-law — “giving the village of Stickney Christmas tree its final touch”; showing off the squad car radio transmitter to a troop of Girl Scouts; administering bicycle safety tests; donating tanks of helium to a sixth-grade class to write self-addressed, stamped postcards, launching them off in balloons.

I try to coax him out of the pages. I stare down the barrel of the pistol he points at the camera, holding his eye: He is a marksman on Stickney’s pistol team, so decorated by 1960 that they get approval from the village board of trustees to install a trophy case.

That pistol. It complicates things. Is this the whole story?

I get to August 1964 and come across a headline that makes me reconsider my grandfather. Here is a narrative I recognize: “Police Personnel and Equipment Ready for Riot Control Action.”

This article reports that the southwest suburban police forces of Stickney and Forest View are preparing with “special riot and crowd control classes to prevent such outbreaks as Dixmoor’s.” That my grandfather is on vacation, but he is spending it at the police station. That his force has received civil rights training. He says, “We have the protective headgear and other equipment for our regulars as well as reserves.”

In the wake of the police shooting of Michael Brown, an 18-year-old Black man, and the subsequent unrest in Ferguson, Mo.,   Ron Grossman at The Chicago Tribune   reflected on the Dixmoor Gin Bottle Riot . It began on Aug. 16, 1964, with a petty theft. Nineteen miles from Stickney, south on Harlem Avenue along the Cal-Sag Trail, past the Cook County Forest Preserve. At Foremost Liquor in Dixmoor, “a blue-collar, mixed-race community,” Blondella Woods, a 21-year-old African-American woman, was accused of stashing a bottle of gin under her clothes. The store’s owner and several employees tackled her, allegedly to prevent her from destroying bottles.

The next day, 150 protesters gathered outside Foremost Liquor. Chants and posters grew into rioting — cars rocking, boulders flying. The crowd grew to 1,000 people, as church officials and civil rights leaders called for peace. In Dixmoor, windows were shattered, shopping centers looted and torched, and the police were called in. More than 200 members of state, local and county law enforcement, with tear-gas guns, German shepherds and hoses, faces covered with plastic visors that look like the shields people are wearing right now to protect themselves from the coronavirus. The Cook County sheriff, Richard Ogilvie, bullhorned, “If you shoot, we’re going to fire back.”

While reports say   most shots were fired in the air , the rioting in Dixmoor raged on and off for three days, resulting in 37 serious injuries. I hold my breath as I return to the scrapbook. I’ve seen photos of gas masks. An article on Aug. 21, 1964, confirms the Stickney force had helmets. Headline: “Stickney Ready to Quell Riots.”

But just like that, the foreshadowing of today is gone. There is a brief article about my grandfather’s 7-year-old son (my uncle) fracturing his skull in a bicycle accident. A groom nipped by a horse, a cook deknuckled by a cleaver, a 200-pound youth sending his mother to MacNeal Hospital after injuring her with a frying pan.

I asked my mother if she remembers my grandfather killing anyone or shooting anyone while on the job. No, she told me, though he always got excited when he found “a stiff.”

Maybe he had a morbid streak. Switchblades, pistols, BB guns, a pitchfork a man jabbed at his wife — he kept them in an arsenal in the basement of the Stickney Police Station. He planned to dump them in the Illinois and Michigan Canal.

But that doesn’t satisfy my need for answers I can’t have: for an unequivocal judgment. Twenty years of his tenure as chief are unaccounted for by the scrapbook. Part of me knows what I would see. As Ms. Sedgwick wrote, “Paranoia knows some things well and others poorly.”

My grandfather was good, and he wasn’t. He beat his children beyond adolescence with a horsetail whip. He made them kneel in trays of rice. He cursed in a Cagney jabber, or he sulked, stomping around, not speaking to my grandmother, letting gravy congeal on her bread dumplings. Later, I learned he cheated on her with an officer’s wife.

Maybe I can’t dismantle the monument to my grandfather — maybe I can only etch a few new lines into the plaque. Maybe all I can do is accept the bias I carry. I was his favorite, my grandmother repeated, until she died last year. The way he brandished his judgment meant something. If he held me in esteem, he must’ve seen potential, I thought, a decency of character. I was important by virtue of his title, his position, his star — my own love for him is complicit.

What will I tell my son?

There is one story. I’m tempted to name it “Fact”: Edward Stromski served as the 12th police chief of Stickney, Ill., a village of roughly 6,000 people, pinched between Cicero and Riverside. He’d been chief for 11 years when the Dixmoor Gin Bottle Riots broke out. Fact: Edward Stromski whipped his children. Fact: He also jumped rope with me every day before second grade.

But maybe, just as he had different names — Chief, Jake, Eddie Spaghetti, Eddie Starr, Edward Starzomski — he had different lives.

I’ll probably tell my son about the hours I spent in my grandfather’s garden after his retirement. He kept it meticulous, mounded beds hemmed by railroad ties. I’ll tell my son how I plucked weeds or clover while my grandfather pushed a hand mower. How I would shadow him as he raised the flagpole, every minute alive with duty. Inevitably, in the middle of the morning, a squad car would pull up across from the iron horse hitch. A sergeant, uniform crisply pressed, would step out. They never drank the warm, sticky cans of RC Cola we offered from the garage. The men came to consult my grandfather, to say, “How are you doing, Chief?”

When he died 10 years ago, they kept coming by, to check in on my grandmother.



'I feel wronged': US Capitol rioter asks Donald Trump for pardon after arrest
North Texan Jenna Ryan Tells CBS 11 She Deserves Pardon After Arrest For Alleged Role In Capitol Riot

Jenna Ryan, a Texas real estate broker who took a private jet to Washington to join the attack on the US Capitol, pleaded with Donald Trump to pardon her after she was arrested by federal authorities. Ryan said she thought she was following what her president ‘asked us to do’ and that she had been 'displaying my patriotism' in travelling to Washington DC, where she filmed herself entering the Capitol building. 'I'm facing a prison sentence,'  she told CBS 11 News  at her home in Dallas. 'I do not deserve that'



House Democrats launch investigation into Capitol riot security failures
“Security and logistical preparations before January 6 were not consistent with the prospect of serious and widespread violence.”

512 Four US House committees have jointly opened an investigation into what law enforcement and intelligence agencies knew about the potential for violence against Congress in the days and weeks leading up to the January 6 riot at the US Capitol.

“Security and logistical preparations before January 6 were not consistent with the prospect of serious and widespread violence,” reads a Saturday letter cosigned by the chairs of the Intelligence Committee (Adam Schiff, D-CA), Homeland Security Committee (Bennie Thompson, D-MS), Oversight Committee (Carolyn Maloney, D-NY), and Judiciary Committee (Jerry Nadler, D-NY).

The letter was addressed to the leaders of the FBI, National Counterterrorism Center, Department of Homeland Security, and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“Yet, according to media accounts that have surfaced in recent days, federal and other authorities earlier on possessed — and may have shared with some parties — intelligence and other information forecasting a dire security threat against the Congress’s meeting to certify the election results,” the letter continues. “These latter reports, if acted upon, might have prompted more extensive planning for the event, and the infusion of far greater security and other resources.”

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The letter, which asks for “relevant documents” and other information from the agencies, comes one day after the Washington Post   broke the news   of a memo from the Capitol Police’s intelligence division warning of violence on January 6.

The memo,   dated three days before the riot , cautioned that the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” event protesting Congress finalizing Trump’s Electoral College loss to President-elect Joe Biden could turn violent — a warning that apparently went unheeded.


“Supporters of the current president see January 6, 2021, as the last opportunity to overturn the results of the presidential election,” the memo read, according to a portion seen by the Post. “This sense of desperation and disappointment may lead to more of an incentive to become violent. Unlike previous post-election protests, the targets of the pro-Trump supporters are not necessarily the counter-protesters as they were previously, but rather Congress itself is the target on the 6th.”


But despite this and other warnings, including a January internal FBI document that warned about calls for “ war ” on right-wing internet forums, Capitol Police on January 6 were quickly overwhelmed by rioters who breached the US Capitol and ultimately occupied the Senate chamber.

Five people died, including a police officer, but it could’ve been much worse. On Friday, the Washington Post   reported   that a mob of rioters came within 100 feet of Vice President Mike Pence as he was being hastily evacuated from the Senate chamber, where he was overseeing the certification of the Electoral College vote results.

Pence’s refusal to cooperate with a scheme Trump and hardcore supporters like Rudy Giuliani cooked up to reject the Electoral College results made him a target, and some rioters could be heard chanting, “ Hang Mike Pence! ” as they marauded into the Capitol.

Other videos from the mayhem show   how perilously close rioters came to reaching   members of the House of Representatives as they were being evacuated from the premises.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY)   said   during an Instagram livestream on Wednesday that “it’s not an exaggeration to say that many many members of the House were nearly assassinated,” adding that she had a “close encounter” during the riot during which she “thought [she] was going to die,” though she didn’t provide details of what happened.

The joint House investigation is one of many into the circumstances surrounding the Capitol riot, which happened shortly after Trump finished delivering a speech to his supporters in which   he invoked “fight” or “fighting” more than 20 times   (Trump has since been impeached in a bipartisan vote for encouraging the unrest).

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As Cameron Peters   detailed   for Vox, the inspectors general of the Justice, Defense, Interior, and Homeland Security departments announced on Friday the launch of “internal investigations into how officials prepared for January 6 and where failures occurred.” Also on Friday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced that she had appointed   retired Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré   to investigate security at the Capitol complex.

Furthermore, Pelosi and more than 30 of her House colleagues earlier this week requested that top Capitol security officials investigate whether pro-Trump Republican members of Congress may have helped the rioters do reconnaissance of the Capitol by giving them access to tours of the Capitol on January 5.

“If, in fact, it is found that members of Congress were accomplices to this insurrection — if they aided and abetted the crime — there may have to be actions taken beyond the Congress, in terms of prosecution for that,” Pelosi said during a news conference on Friday.



Boebert’s Comms Director Is Resigning After Capitol Attack

512 The communications director for Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is resigning after less than two weeks in the role,  Axios reported on Saturday .

Lauren Boebert, the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives seat in Colorado's 3rd Congressional District, addresses supporters during a campaign rally in Colona, Colorado on October 10, 2020.
JASON CONNOLLY/AFP via Getty Images

Ben Goldey reportedly tied his decision to step down from the post to last week’s insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. His boss, Boebert, and other Republican lawmakers have been sharply criticized for fueling the attacks by objecting to the reaffirmation of President-elect Joe Biden’s electoral victory. 

 “Following the events of January 6th, I’ve decided to part ways with the office. I wish her and the people of Colorado’s Third District the best,” Goldey, said in an apparent reference to Boebert in a statement to Axios.

Goldey had previously served as press secretary at the Department of Interior and prior to that worked for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY).

In a floor speech before the Capitol riot, Boebert referred to  “having constituents outside this building right now”  who she would support in opposition to Electoral College votes for Biden in Arizona and Pennsylvania. 

Goldey’s abrupt resignation comes as Boebert offered a  “thousand apologies”  to Rep. Sean Maloney (D-NY) who she accused of making comments that “implied” she had conspired in the Capitol riot.

Earlier this week, Boebert, a proud gun-slinger, also  pushed back on  heightened security measures in the Capitol complex, suggesting that newly installed metal detectors at the entrance of the House chamber were a “political stunt” by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).

The staffer’s resignation comes as  10 House Republicans , voted to impeach President Trump on Wednesday after Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) urged her colleagues to make a  “vote of conscience”  in the wake of the Capitol attack inflamed by President Trump last week that left five people including a Capitol police officer dead.

The news of the sudden departure of Boebert’s communications chief follows a similar move on Monday by Sen. Ted Cruz’s communications director, Lauren Blair Bianchi, who also  resigned from her role , reportedly making the decision in defiance of Cruz’s involvement in the Electoral College charade that turned deadly.



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QAnon Is Destroying the GOP From Within, by Ben Sasse
Until last week, too many in the Republican Party thought they could preach the Constitution and wink at QAnon. They can’t.

E ugene Goodman is   an American hero. At a pivotal moment on January 6, the veteran United States Capitol Police officer single-handedly prevented untold bloodshed. Staring down an angry, advancing mob, he retreated up a marble staircase, calmly wielding his baton to delay his pursuers while calling out their position to his fellow officers. At the top of the steps, still alone and standing just a few yards from the chamber where senators and Vice President Mike Pence had been certifying the Electoral College’s vote, Goodman strategically lured dozens of the mayhem-minded away from an unguarded door to the Senate floor.

The leader of that flank of the mob, later   identified by   the   FBI   as Douglas Jensen, wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a red-white-and-blue Q—the insignia of the delusional QAnon conspiracy theory. Its supporters believe that a righteous Donald Trump is leading them in a historic quest to expose the U.S. government’s capture by a global network of cannibalistic pedophiles: not just “deep state” actors in the intelligence community, but Chief Justice John Roberts and a dozen-plus senators, including me. Now Trump’s own vice president is supposedly in on it, too. According to the FBI, Jensen “wanted to have his T-shirt seen on video so that ‘Q’ could ‘get the credit.’”

January 6 is a new red-letter day in U.S. history, not just because it was the first time that the Capitol had been ransacked since the War of 1812, but because a subset of the invaders apparently were attempting to disrupt a constitutionally mandated meeting of Congress, kidnap the vice president, and somehow force him to declare Trump the victor in an election he lost. En route, the mob ultimately injured scores of law-enforcement officers. The attack led to the deaths of two officers and four other Americans. But the toll could have been much worse: Police   located pipe bombs   at the headquarters of both the Republican and Democratic National Committees. Investigators discovered a vehicle fully loaded with weaponry and what   prosecutors are calling   “homemade napalm bombs.”

The violence that Americans witnessed—and that might recur in the coming days—is not a protest gone awry or the work of “a few bad apples.” It is the blossoming of a rotten seed that took root in the Republican Party some time ago and has been nourished by treachery, poor political judgment, and cowardice. When Trump leaves office, my party faces a choice: We can dedicate ourselves to defending the Constitution and perpetuating our best American institutions and traditions, or we can be a party of conspiracy theories, cable-news fantasies, and the ruin that comes with them. We can be the party of Eisenhower, or the party of the conspiracist Alex Jones. We can applaud Officer Goodman or side with the mob he outwitted. We cannot do both.

If and when the House sends its article of impeachment against Trump to the Senate, I will be a juror in his trial, and thus what I can say in advance is limited. But no matter what happens in that trial, the Republican Party faces a separate reckoning. Until last week, many party leaders and consultants thought they could preach the Constitution while winking at QAnon. They can’t. The GOP must reject conspiracy theories or be consumed by them. Now is the time to decide what this party is about.

The newly elected   Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene is cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs. She   once ranted   that “there’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.” During her campaign, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy had a choice: disavow her campaign and potentially lose a Republican seat, or welcome her into his caucus and try to keep a lid on her ludicrous ideas. McCarthy failed the leadership test and sat on the sidelines. Now in Congress, Greene isn’t going to just back McCarthy as leader and stay quiet. She’s already announced plans to try to impeach Joe Biden on his first full day as president. She’ll keep making fools out of herself, her constituents, and the Republican Party.

If the GOP is to have a future outside the fever dreams of internet trolls, we have to call out falsehoods and conspiracy theories unequivocally. We have to repudiate people who peddle those lies.

We also have to show a healthier path forward. The frustrations that caused so many people to turn in desperate directions for a political voice are not going away when Trump leaves the White House for Mar-a-Lago, because deception and demagoguery are the inevitable consequences of a politics that is profoundly, systemically dysfunctional. We must begin by asking how we got to such a discontented place, where we are mired in lies, rage, and now violence. In this essay, I am focusing on the maladies of the right, but Americans across the political spectrum are falling prey to the siren song of conspiracism. Here are three reasons.

America’s junk-food media diet


The way Americans are consuming and producing news—or what passes for it these days—is driving us mad. This has been said many times, but the problem has worsened in the past five years. On the supply side, media outlets have discovered that dialing up the rhetoric increases clicks, eyeballs, and revenue. On the demand side, readers and viewers like to see their opinions affirmed, rather than challenged. When everybody’s outraged, everybody wins—at least in the short term.

This is not a problem only on the right or only on obscure blogs. The underlying economics that drive Fox News and upstarts such as One America News to cultivate and serve ideologically distinct audiences also drive MSNBC, CNN, and   The New York Times . More and more fiercely, media outlets rally their audience behind the latest cause du jour, whether it’s battling supposed election fraud or abolishing local police departments.

The conservative swaths of this media landscape were primed for Trump’s “Stop the steal” lie, which lit the fuse for the January 6 riot. For nine weeks, the president consistently lied that he had “won in a landslide.” Despite the fact that his lawyers and allies were laughed out of court   more than   60   times , he spread one conspiracy theory after another across television, radio, and the web. For anyone who wanted to hear that Trump won, a machine of grifters was turning clicks into cash by telling their audiences what they wanted to hear. The liars got rich, their marks got angry, and things got out of control.

America’s institutional collapse


Traditional media outlets are only some of the long-standing institutions collapsing as the digital revolution erodes geographic communities in favor of placeless ones. Many people who yell at strangers on Twitter don’t know their own local officials or even their neighbors across the street. The loss of rootedness and institutional authority has created an opening for populists on the right and the left. It’s not a coincidence that in 2016, millions of Republicans threw in their lot behind a man who for almost all of his life had been a Democratic voter and donor, and millions of Democrats wanted as their nominee a senator who staunchly refused to join their party. On both sides, conventional politicians were being told they had lost the thread.

The anger being directed today at major internet platforms—Twitter, Facebook, and Google, especially—is, in part, a consequence of the fading of traditional political authority. Sometimes intentionally, sometimes inadvertently, Americans have outsourced key parts of political life to Silicon Valley behemoths that were not designed to, and are not competent to, execute functions traditionally in the province of the government. The failure of our traditional political institutions and our traditional media to function as spaces for genuine political conversation has created a vacuum now filled by the social-media giants—who are even worse at the job.

Civic authority has ebbed in other ways. Political incompetence and malpractice around the COVID-19 pandemic have only deepened suspicions that some politicians will never let a crisis go to waste. The decisions in California to keep churches closed but to keep open strip clubs and marijuana dispensaries baffle Main Street. Similarly, the jolting juxtaposition of a media-addict mayor breaking up Hasidic funerals while marching in Black Lives Matter protests not only deepens the cynicism of many Americans, but it indisputably undermined institutions of public health that should have been cautiously protecting their standing.

America’s loss of meaning


Our political sickness has a third cause. At least since World War II, sociologists and political scientists have been tracing the erosion of the institutions and habits that joined neighbors together in bonds of friendship and mutual responsibility. Little Leagues were not just pastimes; soup kitchens were not just service organizations; they were also venues in which people found shared purpose. Today, in many places, those bonds have been severed.

In 1922, G. K. Chesterton called America “a nation with the soul of a church.” But according to a   recent study of dozens of countries , none has ditched religious belief faster since 2007 than the U.S. Without going into the causes, we can at least acknowledge one cost: For generations, most Americans understood themselves as children of a loving God, and all had a role to play in loving their neighbors. But today, many Americans have no role in any common story.

Conspiracy theories are a substitute. Support Donald Trump and you are not merely participating in a mundane political process—that’s boring. Rather, you are waging war on a global sex-trafficking conspiracy! No one should be surprised that QAnon has found a partner in the empty, hypocritical, made-for-TV deviant strain of evangelicalism that runs on dopey apocalypse-mongering. (I still consider myself an evangelical, even though so many of my nominal co-religionists have emptied the term of all historic and theological meaning.) A conspiracy theory offers its devotees a way of inserting themselves into a cosmic battle pitting good against evil. This sense of vocation that makes it dangerous is also precisely what makes it attractive in our era of isolated, alienated consumerism.

Whatever the republican   Party does, it faces an ugly fight. The fracture that so many politicians on the right have been trying desperately to avoid may soon happen. But if the party has any hope of playing a constructive, rather than destructive, part in America’s future, it must do two things.

First, Republicans must repudiate the nonsense that has set our party on fire. Putting it out will take courage—and I don’t mean merely political courage. This week, after realizing that some Capitol insurrectionists wanted to capture the vice president, several Republican House members   said privately   that they believed a vote to impeach the president would put their lives, or the lives of their families, at risk. That is not the “constituent engagement” that elected officials are duty-bound to deal with on a daily basis. That is simply tyranny, just from the bottom up, instead of the top down. When arsonists are inside our house, can we just stand by and hope that they’ll depart quietly?

Second, the party has to rebuild itself. It must offer a genuine answer to the frustrations of the past decade. Other than by indulging Trump’s fantasies about building iPhones in America, Republicans have not figured out how to address Americans’ anger about community erosion, massive dislocations in the labor force, or Big Tech’s historically unprecedented role in governing de facto public squares.

Sensing a chance at tribal expansion, some on the left are thrilled by the chaos on the right, and they’re eager to seize the moment to banish from polite society not just those who participated and encouraged violence, but anyone with an   R   next to his or her name. Already on Twitter, a conservative position as long-standing as opposition to abortion   has been recast   as “domestic terrorism.” An MSNBC host   talked about   the “de-Baathification” of the GOP, comparing rank-and-file Republicans to supporters of Saddam Hussein. In an exchange on CNN, a host   accused Republican voters   of making common cause with Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. Yet the exploitative overreaction by the left should not allow an underreaction by the right.

The past four years have wounded our country in grievous, long-lasting ways. The mob that rushed the Capitol had been fed a steady diet of lies and conspiracy theories. It is very possible that the QAnon devotee Douglas Jensen believed the junk he’d been sold—that he was a valued foot soldier in Trump’s war against shadowy forces of darkness. So, according to the FBI, he put on his Q T-shirt and acted like a foot soldier. Right up until he ran into Officer Goodman.

In a standoff between the Constitution and madness, both men picked a side. It’s the GOP’s turn to do the same.







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Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
1  author  Bob Nelson    3 years ago

... and a reminder:

Today we hit 397K covid deaths.

Tomorrow we will surely hit FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEATHS

 
 
 
Krishna
Professor Expert
1.1  Krishna  replied to  Bob Nelson @1    3 years ago
Today we hit 397K covid deaths. Tomorrow we will surely hit FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEATHS

But...but... Fox News has assured us that the Virus is..a hoax!

 
 
 
Bob Nelson
Professor Guide
1.1.1  author  Bob Nelson  replied to  Krishna @1.1    3 years ago

But TrumpTrueBelievers have cleared their "minds" of such memories. They literally are unaware that Trump ever lied about the virus.

 
 
 
Paula Bartholomew
Professor Participates
2  Paula Bartholomew    3 years ago

The only thing that one bitch deserves is a nice long stay at a gray bar hotel.

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
3  Kavika     3 years ago

The nut case Qanon from GA has been suspended from twitter for going after a GA election official. 

This is now the GOP, how sad it has become.

 
 
 
JohnRussell
Professor Principal
3.1  JohnRussell  replied to  Kavika @3    3 years ago

So many Trump voters say they don't like him, they just like his policies. 

I wonder if they would vote for Marjorie Taylor-Greene if she ran for president.  She has the same policies Trump has had I'm sure. So presumably they would vote for her even though she sounds nuts. 

Same thing as Trump. 

 
 
 
Kavika
Professor Principal
3.1.1  Kavika   replied to  JohnRussell @3.1    3 years ago

Yeah, his so-called policies. This is what he is leaving us with. 

A pandemic out of control and nearing 400,000 deaths

An economy in shambles

A White supremacist attack on our government. 

What is happening to the GOP is bizarre at best. She is the perfect example of the ''inmates are running the asylum''.

 
 
 
CB
Professor Principal
4  CB    3 years ago
 "other people in America, and domestic enemies" posed the "biggest threat" to American society at this point in time ahead of "economic forces" at 20 percent, "the natural world" at 17 percent and "foreign countries" at 8 percent. The category of "natural world" was a catch-all that included hazardous weather and other natural disasters, as well as lethal viruses, a nod to the coronavirus pandemic.

What does not kill you makes you stronger, the song says. C'mon people, don't kill (me); we're better than this. So what if the other nations of the world are not our "natural enemies" able to take us down anymore! There is never a good time to "eat the teacher"!

 
 
 
CB
Professor Principal
5  CB    3 years ago
Donald Trump has been defanged. . . .

But does Donald know it? And will he respect the power of others? Or will he have to be politically 'put-down' for the count. Keep an eye out for another uprising from the heirs in waiting.

 
 

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