The riot/insurrection/coup on January 6, 2021 was violent. We know that various members of law enforcement were beaten, gassed, cut, crushed, and more. We know that a great deal of property was damaged. If you had been on the receiving end of it, it would have fucked you up. And if you had been a Democratic member of Congress or Mike Pence, you would have shit yourself when you heard the violent herd of morons yipping in gleeful rage as they tried to get to you so they could...what? I'm pretty sure that once someone's beaten a cop with a pole that has an American flag on it, they're not there to have a calm discussion about election law.
But that violence and threat of violence isn't enough for too many Americans, including members of Congress, who crawled on their bellies and invited Donald Trump to jack off on their backs as they begged for forgiveness for ever saying a truthful word or two about his complicity. No, we're told by right-wing media figures and by insane and/or opportunistic politicians, this wasn't violent, this was just people expressing their anger over an election loss, calm down, nobody died. And all I can think when I hear that shit is that they're saying that they need corpses to even consider the seriousness of what happened. They're saying they need to have had Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mike Pence hanging in the rotunda in order for it to have been more than a bit of overzealousness. And even then, those motherfuckers would still be yelling, "False flag" or "Lies" or whatever because to admit that the actions of the insurrectionists were wrong would be to have to grapple with their role in the insurrection.
There are things I get and things I will never understand about January 6.
For instance, I understand why law enforcement didn't just open fire on those who were trying to breach the Capitol (with the exception of the barking mad Ashli Babbit). I get the fear that they would then be overwhelmed by a tide of racist yahoos, many of whom had weapons of their own or were improvising with things like the shields they took from riot cops. While I fully believe that 90% of the rioters would have scampered away like surprised squirrels, it would have been a bloodbath. And, with the exceptions of those who may have helped the yahoos, law enforcement ended up preventing the absolute worst from happening, at the cost of their bodies and minds.
On the other hand, I will never understand why Donald Trump and his staff and advisors weren't immediately arrested. Don't fucking tell me that he was the president. The idea of a goddamn president was always that no person is above the law. And Trump had already taken the presidency and pissed on its face before telling it to sign an NDA about his water sports fetish. Arresting him would have been saving the presidency.
I'm not saying that Trump shouldn't have had a trial or been denied any due process. But he should have immediately been jailed without bail until his trial, along with Giuliani and Bannon and Kerik and anyone else who was trying to figure out a way to steal the 2020 presidential election. But fuck them because fuck them. None of this happens without Trump refusing to accept the court-approved, state-approved election results. He's the goddamned ringleader. You put him the fuck away and tell the others, "We're not afraid to lock any of you up." Treat people who try to overthrow the government like they fucking tried to overthrow the government. And if Trump's people wouldn't do it, then it should have happened right after Biden was inaugurated. Frankly, Trump should have been handcuffed and frogmarched after the phone call with the Georgia Secretary of State where he begged Raffensperger to conjure up enough votes to just get past the margin of Biden's victory became known.
But there's one thing I am perfectly clear on: The assholes and mental invalids and Confederacy humpers who ragegasmed at the Capitol before smearing the walls with shit were doing it based on fucking lies about the election. Anyone who defends or excuses them is saying that the fucking lies are truth. The fucking liars themselves need to be punished, not just the fucknuts who decided they could finally live out their pornographically violent racist Christian nationalist militia fantasies in DC because the chief fucking liar told them it was go time. The lie part of this needs to be taken as seriously as possible because not squelching the fucking lies like they're goddamn mosquitoes is going to drain the blood of this weakening democracy.
The problem, of course, is that the fucking lies have metastasized because, as ever, Democrats acted as if they just let passions calm down that everyone could Come Together and Be Reasonable. That did not happen. We accommodated our abusers so they wouldn't abuse us more. There are so many woulda-coulda situations from January 6. What if the House and Senate had not adjourned after the Electoral College vote? What if they had decided right then and there to stay in the wrecked Capitol and impeach and remove Trump from office, convicting him of high crimes and misdemeanors? (And, yes, there was a chance then that the Senate might convict.)
But, no, no, every decision has been made slowly and with great consideration so as not to upset the violent dickholes and their rhetorical enablers any more than they are. The time called for action and everyone just went home. Thus Republicans had a chance to get all the attacks from Trump and his idiot hordes and any spine they might have had softened into jelly and collapsed. With no prosecutions so far of the leaders of the coup attempt, including Trump, President Biden risks making another of President Obama's mistakes: letting the evil fucks get away with it and letting them set the narrative.
President Joe Biden's speech today was a good start. He was clear and forceful, stating plainly that the coup attempt was Trump's fault and that the idea that the election was fraudulent or rigged or stolen is just a fucking lie. He gave as good a talking point as any to demonstrate how stupid those spouting the fucking lies are: "The former president and his supporters have never been able to explain how they accept as accurate the other election results that took place on November 3rd — the elections for governor, United States Senate, the House of Representatives — elections in which they closed the gap in the House. They challenge none of that." Biden still holds the irrational belief that there are decent Republicans left. The motherfuckers were indecent before January 6. They are indecent to their filthy, rotting core. Stop trying to pretend there's goodness there, like you can find some cure for evil. But his definitive statements about that day are a solid, even inspiring foundation upon which we can fight back.
And we should all be as angry all the time about what was done to us on January 6. In the midst of a deadly pandemic, in the midst of despairing about the economy, we held the fairest, best-run election anyone has seen. That should have inspired confidence in us that we could survive all this shit and get back to something like normalcy.It wasn't perfect by any stretch, but, fuck, it went so much better than anyone expected. That feeling was taken away from us by Donald Trump. Our security about the stability of our nation was undermined further. Goddamnit, every fucking day should be an expression of our anger about that until we are made whole with his ass in prison. Or else just toss the fucking country out into the trash heap of history.
Still, yeah, we're a little antsy about what Attorney General Merrick Garland and the January 6 committee are finding and what they're gonna do. It's not just because the clock is running out should the GOP win back at least one chamber of Congress. It's because everything that the GOP is doing, at the local, state, and national level, everything that their media accomplices are doing in nutzoid online videos and on Fox "news" and elsewhere points to them just fucking doing it again in 2024 if not to re-install Trump, then to put in some other deranged monument to incompetence and madness like Josh Hawley. As we learn time and time and time and time again, if you let the powerful go unpunished, they take that as permission to get more powerful and do it again. Appeasement is not an option. Even today, the right is screeching with outrage that people would dare be angry at Trump. Fuck all of them with wooden scroll holding the Constitution.
If I'm being completely honest, the only thing we should be arguing over at this point is if Trump should die in prison or be executed. (I'm for life in prison only because I oppose the death penalty.)
On this one-year anniversary of the Yahoo Coup, we can say with quite a bit of evidence that the morons lost the battle but have a real chance of winning the war.
