I dunno. It's kind of a feeling, you know? Just a sense that everything is kind of shitty, even when it objectively isn't. It's really more of a zeitgeist sort of thing, that what's in the air is a sense of impending doom. Maybe not doom. Maybe impending malaise, like everything is going to stagnate. Or maybe, yeah, doom, if you're thinking in other ways. Like I said, I dunno, but I guess I should try to explain.
Perhaps the most obvious way of conveying what I feel is through the quick fall of Twitter. For many, many, many of us, Twitter was our virtual street corner of choice. No, we didn't always feel safe, but we carved out a place where, for a lot of us, it worked. We could talk to large numbers of people at once. We could occasionally meet cool strangers and even interact with those we admire or despise. Honestly, I know of no other opportunity I would have ever had to converse with David Simon, get attacked by a former speechwriter for a president, and be able to trade ideas with Washington Post and New York Times writers. But since Elon musked up the joint, it just feels like a shit bar, like a place you used to go but now assholes have taken over and they've changed the jukebox from cool shit to bro tunes (Goddamnit, you don't have to play "Mr. Brightside" for the tenth fuckin' time). For a lot of us on the left, Elon Musk's Twitter is not just an unfriendly place, like someone took the bodega on our corner and turned it into a gun shop, but it's made us be more paranoid about what we say and who we interact with. For me, I'm more likely to block some whiny tittybaby right-winger if I think they might report me for calling Tucker Carlson "a cum-gobbling little bitch" (which he is). I mean, what about my freedom of speech?
But the real reason I think that feeling's hanging over us is the lack of prosecutions of leaders for the January 6 insurrection or, really, when it comes to Trump, for anything. The agonizingly slow pace of the investigations by the Justice Department, the Attorney General of Georgia, and even the just-concluded 1/6 Committee has been frustrating, despite some on the left telling us to be patient, that justice and Justice, however delayed, are coming, in almost the same tone that assured us the Mueller Report would do Trump in finally and forever . Yeah, the final report of the January 6 Committee is a compelling summation of the treachery and fuckery done by a fascist farrago of white supremacists, Trumpenistas, and Republican politicians. Yes, the committee collected a pile of witness testimony that ought to add up to...something.
And yet it's not enough. The only elected official directly called out for criminal referral is Trump (along with skeevy lawyer John Eastman). Other Republicans were referred to the House Ethics Committee for what will almost certainly be, at best, a finger wave and a wink. I mean, there are at least a dozen people committing obstruction of justice during the investigation mentioned in the report, let alone what they did up to and on January 6, 2020, including Kayleigh McEnany, Ivanka Trump, and Mark Meadows. Jesus fuck, how could you not suggest that Cassidy Hutchinson's attorney, Stefan Passantino, be strung up by his balls for telling Hutchinson to lie to the committee. That's the top ethics lawyer for the White House advising a White House aide to commit perjury.
As for me, I still can't fucking get my head around the fact that Trump wasn't arrested as soon as the phone call with Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger was revealed. That shit isn't vague. It's not open for interpretation. It's an attempted criminal conspiracy by the President of the United States. (And, honestly, I have more hope that the Georgia case will have actual consequences for Trump than just about any other political one.)
I get it. I fucking get it that the Biden administration and Democrats in Congress have accomplished a legitimately impressive legislative record, despite the savagely conservative Supreme Court and the bullshit of the filibuster in the Senate. I understand that there is much to appreciate, celebrate, even, on that account, along with the success in getting judges confirmed and more. But, goddamnit, I can't get over this dark cloud, this sense that the motherfuckers are gonna get away with it. For some, it's enough that the revelations of the 1/6 Committee ensure a permanent historical stain on the Trump presidency and the Republican Party, but no one gives a damn about that because it doesn't change a thing.
We need to know that some shit we believe in matters. We need to know that laws matter. We need to know that the legal system is capable of punishing people who wanted to torch democracy, who still want to do it. We need to know that something is fucking sacred. We just need to know that it's worth it to fucking care. Shit has to have meaning. We can't keep "moving on" when our leaders do something awful. We saw what that accomplished when President Obama implored us to move on from the vast crimes of the Bush Administration. Now, Bush is seen as some revered elder, not that fuckclown who wrecked two nations and degraded the country in the world and should have been in cuffs at the Hague. No, no, no. Not again. We can't let the compromising bastards tell us to suck it up for the good of the country. It's not for the good of the country. It's for the good of those telling us to suck it up. Fucking hell, we just need to know that some shit we believe in matters.
So, yeah, sincerely, great work, January 6 Committee, even though I'm convinced that a fuck-ton was compromised to satisfy Liz Cheney, a genuinely evil person in every other way. Despite that, we have a record in one place of a bunch of stuff we mostly knew or understood or believed about the events of the insurrection. But it's good to see it laid out so clearly.
Now we need the indictments. We need the prosecutions. Like I said yesterday, sometimes we have to be who we say we are.
It might not be all that's needed to get rid of this feeling that the joint's gone to shit. I mean, I haven't brought up all the other stresses around us, including the fact that we still are in a pandemic and we still haven't figured out what that means, not to mention that the kids in America are not doing okay, and, really, neither are the adults, and that's not to mention the constant barrage of horrors from right-wing media that is inescapable in this stupid media environment. No, prosecuting and imprisoning Donald Trump won't solve everything. But it sure would show that you can't try to tear the place down and get away with it. And, goddamn, that's something.
