Troubles (1/6, One Year Later, Part Three.)

To state the obvious, one year ago today, in this sacred place, democracy was attacked — simply attacked. The will of the people was under assault. The Constitution — our Constitution — faced the gravest of threats.

Outnumbered and in the face of a brutal attack, the Capitol Police, the D.C. Metropolitan Police Department, the National Guard, and other brave law enforcement officials saved the rule of law.
Our democracy held. We the people endured. And we the people prevailed.
For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.
But they failed. They failed. And on this day of remembrance, we must make sure that such an attack never, never happens again. ~President Joe Biden

It's been a year since Trump supporters stormed the Capitol in an effort to disrupt the counting of electoral votes and a normally-ceremonial ratification of election results.

I don't feel like we're that much better off now than we were then, even though in measurable, physical ways a lot of us are. Certainly, the daily drama and uncertainty of the Trump years has been reduced.

But we have people, not least of all in the media...who miss that bullshit.

It's been a year and going on three months now, and when I go to town tomorrow for my doctor's appointment I'll still pass a dozen or so Trump flags or signs. I mean, what the fuck? Nobody was still putting Bush 41vsigns up in January of 1994/ The very idea would have been considered ridiculous.

If anything, following his election loss, Trump's cult has deepened its faith in the Hamburger Hutt and hardened its collective heart to...well, anything other than their Mango Messiah. There are literally images of a crucified Donald Trump that you can find on the internet. 

And these Trump Supporters openly hate the rest of America for rejecting their god. They are, likewise in the clear, plotting to wage some kind of a civil war or right-wing insurgency against the rest of us. I saw today that somebody at The Bulwark commissioned a poll which determined that something like 2% of Trump Supporters would be fine with taking up arms against their own country to restore Donald Trump to power.

Doesn't sound like a lot, but it still adds up to being at least three and a half million people. In terms of a pool from which to draw insurgent fighters...it's enough. 

Maybe in conventional terms it's not going to get them more than a state or two, and that much probably not for long, but using insurgent tactics, with at least some of the media on their side and even a little political support, it's problematic.

Especially when you consider that the number of active Taliban fighters throughout much of the war in Afghanistan while US and NATO forces were still present hovered at around 30,000. If they're competently led...that is enough.

And maybe they wouldn't be at first, but insurgency and war are the most Darwinian environment you can imagine.

The enemy wouldn't be1/6 rioter types in their various cosplay outfits or raggedy-ass militia nuts or some other variant of These Fucking People for long. Either they'd get smart and learn some skills the hard way or they'd end up dead or in jail. The next wave would likely be a mix of legitimate bad actors and people looking for revenge because somebody they care about got killed or arrested and incarcerated in the first wave, and so on as the situation snowballs and more people in different groups become radicalized.. 

You bet they'd attract foreign help, media attention, and political support of both domestic and foreign varieties.

And those are three things that define a successful insurgent movement.

If you think Ted Cruz, who's trying to walk back what he said yesterday about 1/6 being a violent terrorist attack merely when faced with Tucker Carlson...do you think he's going to stand up for your country, much less your ass, when the enemy is car bombs, drive-by shootings and snipers in some kind of American version of The Troubles?

Of course, given Ted's heritage, he would know that Fidel Castro, along with his brother Raul and Che Guevara conquered Cuba with basically just a few hundred guys...and they started with only a few dozen dudes packed onto a leaky, overloaded boat. If you value your own corruption and position and wealth more than the country that gave it to you...well, stuff like that is how Ted ended up being born in Canada.

You can't roll over in the face of an insurgency.

And quite likely, Ted Cruz and those like him would vote to give Alabama or Idaho to the right-wing insurgents if that meant that said insurgents wouldn't come after them.

I mean, for fuck's sake Karl Rove denounced these motherfuckers, so did Liz Cheney. Not that there's very much left of the old guard Republicans these days. When you've lost those fucking people, it's safe to say you're probably not really in Republican-land anymore. Or at least, you've gone somewhere that I don't recognize as Republicanism.

And we really need to start doing something about this shit, on a serious level, before these people decide that they can pull the same shit and take over the State House in Idaho or something, in the hope that both State government and local forces might be more sympathetic to what they want, and start trying to accomplish their goals more incrementally. 

They're figuring out that they're not going to get the whole country by their current tactics of political manipulation. The day will come when they're going to make their move somewhere, and hope that the next time, somebody might blink, or think "Oh, hey, it's only Idaho" and not handle the problem in a serious way. 

Or worse...and this is the problem with people like Ted Cruz...they might view appeasement as a valid strategy.

Well, when you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to want a glass of milk.

And how did that shit work against Nazis the last time somebody tried it?

We'd best hammer down these sons of bitches now, and that means holding conspirators and ringleaders like Donald Trump. Lauren Boebert, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Steve Bannon accountable too.

'Cause it's going to get a lot harder later, if we don't.

Either you believe in civilization, democracy and freedom or you don't.

It's really that simple.

That's all.

Part II.

If we lose freedom here, there is no place to escape to. This is the last stand on Earth. And this idea that government is beholden to the people, that it has no other source of power except to sovereign people, is still the newest and most unique idea in all the long history of man's relation to man. This is the issue of this election. Whether we believe in our capacity for self-government or whether we abandon the American revolution and confess that a little intellectual elite in a far-distant capital can plan our lives for us better than we can plan them ourselves. ~Ronald Reagan