Sedition

President Donald J. Trump speaking at his "Stop the Steal" rally in Washington D.C., January 6, 2021.

On January 6, 2021, Donald J. Trump, the sitting President of the United States, incited a riot that resulted in the storming of the U.S. Capital, and the successful breaching of its defenses by domestic terrorists, led by a “huge contingent of Proud Boys.” This occurred as the Congress, with Vice-President Pence presiding, was counting the 2020 Electoral College votes.

This count was to be a ceremonial function celebrating America’s democratic institution of free and fair elections, as Congress has no power to change the vote of the electors chosen by the 50 states. Joe Biden had amassed 306 electoral votes to Trump’s 232.

Trump told a crowd of raucous supporters on the Ellipse just south of the White House, “All of us here today do not want to see our election victory stolen by emboldened radical Democrats.”

Trump went on to reiterate his evidence-free charges of fraud, made erroneous statements about how elections were run in swing states “by Democrats," and in a rambling aside bragged about his “history-making” achievements, berated the Media’s corruption, asked where Hunter Biden was, berated Georgia Governor Brian Kemp for not overturning the Georgia result, as well as the U.S. Supreme Court, and commended Rudy Giuliani as a “real fighter.”

Trump concluded by exhorting his followers, “We will never give up. We will never concede. It will never happen…" Pointing at the crowd with his black-gloved hand he said, "We’re going to walk down to the Capitol. And I’ll be with you…because you'll never take back our country with weakness, you have to show strength and you have to be strong.”

And they did as the President asked them. They marched to the Capital, and stormed the Capital, and desecrated the Capital. People died.

Trump did not go with them. He was driven back to the White House where he watched what he had wrought on television.

The U.S. Capital, January 6, 2021

 

Overcoming the Trump Presidency Has Taken an Enormous Toll

 

I wrote a blog post in June of 2016, leading up to the Presidential Election, assessing how Donald J. Trump became the Republican candidate for President. The fact that he was elected was a shock to me -- maybe it shouldn't have been -- and it made me reassess my assumption about the character of the American people. Fundamentally, I concluded that there was no monolithic "American people," no defined American culture [outside of fast food], and no "pledge of allegiance" to equality or democracy, Alexis de Tocqueville be damned.

Trump's term in office has served as an emetic, causing the vomiting up of every despicable element of the American underbelly, including white supremacists -- one side of the "very fine people" in Charlottesville, Virginia.

 

These disaffected, under-educated, previously disorganized rabble formed an unholy alliance with the reliable single-issue voters, such as the evangelicals, whose only focus was abortion, and who ignored the homeless, the children in cages, and the "huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

They joined arms with "freedom-loving" militias from Oregon to Michigan, from “sea to shining sea.” And to the gun-rights fanatics, who failed to see in the blood-soaked schools, dance floors, festivals, football games, and streets of America any reason to limit access to lethal firearms.

Unable to divine connective tissue for their targeted misanthropy, some of the more suggestive elements of Trump’s followers found, buried within the "Deep State," an oracle, Q -- and Qanon was formed. Its conspiracy theories became so influential, and so disruptive, that even Facebook finally imposed restrictions. Still, a Qanon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, won the Republican primary for Georgia's 14th Congressional District. President Trump congratulated Greene and called her “a real winner.” The FBI has labeled Qanon as a potential domestic terrorism threat.

 

And here we are, awaiting the results of the 2020 Election, in which Donald Trump, after having exhibited all the worst behaviors we had anticipated, and more, has so far amassed some 70 million votes, 7 million more than his 2016 total, and counting. Joe Biden, with over 74 million votes, has already broken Barack Obama's record vote total, and the margin with which Hillary Clinton exceeded Trump's 2016 popular vote, and yet he clings to a razor thin lead in states he needed to win the electoral college.

Trump still had a narrow path to victory, but his demands to stop counting votes [but only in states where he is ahead] are being dismissed, leaving him to fall back on law suits, which are also being dismissed. His hope to have the Supreme Court, which, with Mitch McConnell's help, he has succeeded in moving to a six to three conservative majority, seems Sisyphean.

In the end, Joe Biden won the battle for the American Presidency, but in a sense it is a Pyrrhic victory. The fight to overcome the Trump Presidency has taken an enormous toll on the vision of America as somehow “exceptional,” as somehow worthy to lead the world towards freedom and justice, worthy of emulation — an America, her good “crowned with brotherhood.”

How long will it take us to reclaim that lofty vision?

Crow for Thanksgiving

I spent some time over the weekend researching recipes for cooking crow, which I’ll be having for Thanksgiving. I’ll share what I find with media journalists and pundits, who like me, were outspoken in our belief that Americans would never elect a person like Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States of America — that “shining city on a hill.”

In an earlier post (and in the Tri-City Herald), I discussed how Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders launched insurgent campaigns against the major parties, and why Trump won and Sanders lost. Essentially, the Republican Party was more ‘democratic’ than the Democratic Party.

As a result, I opined that the GOP was stuck with a candidate they didn’t really want; a candidate whose chances of winning were “slim to none,” and, as Jeff Greenfield wrote in Politico Magazine, “whose temperament and character might put a dangerous, unfit person into the Oval Office.”

I also said, “there’s a very good chance the GOP may lose the Senate,” and concluded by saying that, “What happens to the Republican Party after the election depends on what the Republican Party leadership does now.”

What happened instead is history. Trump won.

Hillary supporters are consoling themselves with the fact that she won the popular vote. If this were a popularity contest, Hillary would win the title of the least disliked candidate.

Not only did Trump become President-Elect, but Republicans retained control of the Senate and the House, and gained another “trifecta” — a situation where one party holds the governorship, and majorities in both state legislative houses. Republicans now have 25 trifectas, while Democrats have only 6.

The map of America is glaringly red. This does not bode well for those seeking an end to, or even a rollback of restrictive voting rights laws, nor to the gerrymandering that disenfranchises voters of a particular “persuasion” (i.e., minorities). Furthermore, when President Trump pushes through his SCOTUS nominee(s), relief from a court that already gutted the Voting Rights Act will be unlikely.

So instead of the Republican Party reexamining what it did wrong to end up with a candidate like Donald Trump, they’ll congratulate themselves on how democratic they were in allowing an open nominating process that resulted in nominating a “man of the people.”

Meanwhile, democrats will spend the next six weeks wailing about how unfair the Electoral College is. Then the DNC will begin strategy sessions on how they can emulate the RNC and obstruct Trump and the Republican Congress at every opportunity. At the same time, they’ll be asking their supporters to sign President Obama’s “Thank You Card,” while simultaneously dunning them for contributions to the cause — whatever that is.

I may be eating crow this Thanksgiving, but I’ll still have something to be thankful for — the end of this election.

Sing a song of six pence,
a pocketful of rye.
Four and twenty blackbirds
baked in a pie.
When the pie was opened,
the birds began to sing.
Wasn’t that a dainty dish
to set before the king?