Boy howdy, shit went down: domestic terrorists, and a Blue Georgia
/Alrighty, y’all. very tired and upset and stressed on January 5, I melted down to you and felt so much better. As my friend Liz says, “writing is catharsis.” I do appreciate all who checked in on me. I love you! And then Wednesday came, lawd a mercy. I’m still wiping my brow.
I stayed up so late watching the Georgia returns before waking a few hours later and:
seeing confirmation that Reverend Warnock had ousted Barbie Loeffler;
starting to make enthusiastic calls to Georgia canvassers volunteering to cure ballots;
starting to feel real hope about Ossoff beating the jackass who pretended he couldn’t pronounce Kamala;
watching with disgust as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz sought to decertify Arizona’s votes;
seeing some news about a mob;
opening Twitter to find that insane domestic terrorists, aka MAGAs, were five miles from my house storming the Capitol with pitchforks, guns, flags, IEDs, war paint, and other paraphernalia of war;
becoming riveted to every news source and their video feeds;
Wait, hold up. WHAT? Yes. It was like watching a psychotic game of Olympic-level ping pong. And it was still just 1pm.
As you all know, trump’s people took his directive and planned an insurrection. They flew and drove here from all over the country. Hotels rented them rooms. It seems that some Capitol Police even opened perimeter gates* and actual Capitol building doors* for them, inviting them in to desecrate one of the symbols of America they -the police and the mob- purport to love. Footage shows rioters breaking windows and doors, sitting in Congressional chambers and office chairs, stealing podiums and who knows what else, all while screaming “This is OUR house!” I don’t know about y’all, but that is just not how I treat my home.
A woman wearing a trump flag was shot and later died. A video she shared a few days before this treasonous insurrection shows that she was really deep down the right wing cult wormhole. I haven’t been able to watch it in full because it is so insane and vitriolic and sincerely terrifying. She is now being heralded as a martyr for far right groups. Ivanka called these people “American patriots,” while Cheeto Satan said, “you’re very special. We love you.”
Prior to the arrival of various national guards and DC police, Capitol Police (not under DC jurisdiction) didn’t seem to do too much about the rampant mob whose behavior resulted in:
the American flag being replaced by a Trump flag;
a giant cross being erected outside which was, purportedly, to be burned;
a noose erected on the Capitol’s west side (apparently, these seditious thugs wanted to lynch Pence);
the DC mayor frantically issuing a city-wide curfew;
MD Rep Steny Hoyer frantically calling MD Gov Hogan to ask he deploy the state’s police and National Guard (which we now know Hogan tried to do but was delayed for some time before being granted permission to send);
Pence being hurried away to safety;
Congress being hurried away to a different, crowded place of safety in which some REFUSED to wear masks;
among other hideous actions.
All of this was and is domestic terrorism. And yet, later, after a measly 52 arrests (and that was SO much later; for comparison, more than 14,000 were arrested during protests against George Floyd’s murder), we saw footage of some of the insurrectionists back at their hotels, drinking and “celebrating” in lobby bars, sans masks, natch, flags and such resting on their chairs. Not arrested. If they were black, they would have been hours dead. White supremacy, anyone?
We also found that WHILE they were being safely guarded from the thugs they incited and encouraged, Hawley and Cruz, yes those two, sent fundraising emails to their supporter lists. Can you even fathom the depths of soullessness and cravenness that would enable a person to behave in such a way? In any of these ways?
I should fess up here and say that in my rage, I responded to Ivanka’s claim that these criminals were “American patriots” by tweeting, “You did this, you hideous whore.” On the same day that Twitter finally suspended Cheeto Satan, they also suspended me for hateful speech. Bless their hearts. To be welcomed back into the grand Twitterverse, I had to delete my tweet and “browse only” for 12 hours. Should we call people names? No. But I do find it a bit hysterical that a fairly factual, subjective tweet -mine- was met with the same punishment as the multi-year destructive, full-of-lies-and-hate, “Obama is a Kenyan muslim,” “Lock her up,” “the election was rigged” feed of spray tan mc ketchup face. Now I’m back, and trump has just been permanently banned. I guess there’s some justice after all.
I maintain that Ivanka is complicit in all of this. Of course she is. The whole family is. Just watch this recording of them watching, from a safe space, as the insurrection commenced -AFTER Evil Yam and his degenerate son WELCOMED and spoke to the thug mob- and played out. Kimberly is dancing. Jr looks wrecked and crazed as ever. Ivanka’s hair is coiffed. It’s The Hunger Games, a la Trumpian America and with less intelligence. A hat tip to Laura Branigan whose agents subsequently stated, very publicly, that she neither gave permission for or condoned, the hooligan family’s use of her song, Gloria.
After a five-hour delay, the Capitol was declared safe and Congress resumed what has previously, always been a perfunctory, symbolic tradition: the certification of the winning presidential candidate. Hawley and Cruz continued their shenanigans, but just before 4a on Thursday, Biden was officially declared the winner of the 2020 election. NO SHIT.
During said largely symbolic tradition, trump continued saying inflammatory things, refusing to acknowledge he’d lost. Matt Gaetz had the gall to say the mob was antifa in disguise (nope) and, get this, was applauded by fellow House republicans. And, Ossoff was declared the official winner in his race against Perdue. I have a lot of family in Georgia, and though it pains me deeply, most of them are ardent trump lovers. In part because of that and in part because of Georgia’s history of grotesquely racist behavior, it is a special thrill that the state not only voted for Biden but also that it replaced two white assholes with a Black man and a Jew. Thank you, Stacey Abrams and Latosha Brown and all others who made this happen by enfranchising (FFS, finally) black Georgians.
This has been an enormously unsettling time. I beg everyone to stop saying, “this isn’t who we are.” It IS who we are, almost half of us, and we MUST do and be better. The only response to trump, hawley, cruz, and the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol, are planning to do so again, and who support such behavior is to squash them completely, a la Germany post-WWII. There must be full consequence for the traitors; we must not give one inch. Not one.
While it’s good that since Wednesday many more have been arrested and/or fired from their jobs, not least because the idiots didn’t cover their faces and so have been readily identifiable, many are still out there, at least 6 were elected legislators, and, per NPR and other sources, intelligence suggests that more attacks are being planned for near-future dates. If you are thinking of coming to DC for the inauguration, I beg you to cancel those plans. Stay home. If you live in DC, stay in your home. I am not an alarmist. I have a fairly high risk tolerance. But this is all not remotely a joke. They wanted to LYNCH Mike Pence. Mike Pence!! Plus, more than 4,000 Americans died from Covid yesterday alone, so please, wear a mask, stay at home, be safe.
To be continued…
*There is video footage of both of these things happening. Many people are saying this was intentional assistance, suggesting Cap Police support for and enabling of easy access/infiltration; others are saying the Cap Police were just wholly overwhelmed by the size and anger of the mob and so couldn’t hold them back. I find this almost 100% improbably. I’ve protested MANY times at the Capitol and have even been directly pushed back by its police and threatened with arrest. They do not fuck around and they don’t get intimidated. They arrested an enormous chunk of a group I protested with one day (the day my friend K and I participated in the Remove Trump movement in the Cannon building; wearing shirts, each with a letter on it.)