Endgame

Looking forward to the thought experiment the Republicans must elucidate.

They must explain the endgame of Jan 6.

So let’s begin. It’s Jan 6.

Assume the Vice President is now dead. And the Speaker of the House is kidnapped or held hostage. Or tortured and murdered.

Imagine Senator Hawley has prevailed. The certification of electoral votes is halted. There are dead Americans everywhere in the Capitol.

The electoral votes are seized. Congress disbanded.

The president declared martial law, as was discussed with his top advisors.

The election is declared “on hold”.

Election equipment is seized in every state and data is sealed.

The 45th President is still in power.

Then what?

Incapacitated and incapable of governing in the midst of four existential crises, then what, Republicans?

Explain, Sen Josh Hawley. Explain the plan. Because you’re an integral part of it. You played a key role.

So the Capitol is seized. Congress disbanded.

And Trump is still president. He’s still golfing and ranting and the pandemic is roaring and unrest spreads like wildfire across the country.

Then what, Senator Graham?

Senators: Did you read about the Russian Revolution? That’s what Steve Bannon advocated, hoped would occur: the destruction of the “administrative state.”

And everything that had occurred was inevitable.

There is no scenario that doesn’t include storming the Capitol. It’s a historical inevitability, an absolute, a Reality.

It would have to result in a military dictatorship- this too would be an inevitable chapter, by default. Power vacuum.

So, Senator Hawley, you’d have to be jailed or somehow disappeared. Your ambitions are too…inconvenient for the long term. You are a hack, a beginner. The oligarchs will eat you for lunch and spit you out.

And the powers of Trump? They evaporate- his power was never legitimate. It was granted by an electorate that no longer exists after a violent insurgency breaks up the government. He’s a coward, and those with brute force and true malevolence would take his place.

Maybe that most malevolent one, seizing power would be Senator Graham. For a minute. He’d be Commissioner Graham over the temporary military district.

Or perhaps merely de-legitimizing the US government was the plan. And somehow Senator Hawley, the genius from Missouri, was right and President Lincoln was wrong.

And Mike Pence in this likely scenario would be dead. So no, it’s not a peaceful transition to a second term. That’s over.

It’s bullets -not ballots- that will prevail.

No, Republicans can’t just “take over” on behalf of the oligarchs. The military wing support a coup. Not this one.

So Senator Hawley, you’re telling us to go ahead, fire on Fort Sumter, that Lincoln’s murder was no big deal. That JFK was in the way, so a crossfire was a good idea. That the Cold War was stupid. Let things take care of themselves. Business as usual.

That’s the genius of Lindsey Graham and Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley.

But they wouldn’t survive their own Insurrection. There is no place for them in the new authoritarian state. They’re incompetent, so they would be sidelined or imprisoned- if they were lucky.

Because without a system of balanced powers and good faith agreements we have violence. And we do have that, even before the Insurrection, in proportion to the injustice in the land.

There is no happy ending here for the Republicans.

Useful terms of address for the “president”*

1. occupant*
2. footnote*
3. asterisk*
4. mini-Mussolini*
5. mighty mouth*
6. herr helmet*
   5.mr melania*
7. the tic tac troll*
8. mr melania, sir* (correction}

The Happy Tourists of Terror Would Like the Non-Smoking Section of the Capitol Please

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Ok this is a little off-topic I know but I think I saw something no other American has noticed, or noted, or even for one minute considered.

Fair warning: It’s about the Capitol attack.

I know: oy. Yuk. Damnit.

But hear me out.

Among the violent insurgents of the January 6 Insurrection- no one was smoking.

I don’t believe I saw one cigarette smoker in the Capitol. They broke every single regulation except that.

So that’s nice. I don’t think they smoked in the Rotunda after they broke in. It’s against the rules.

This is progress.

Americans used to smoke like chimneys. I’m not kidding. Decades ago it was thought smoking was good for you.

Why didn’t the rioters light up? They smashed windows, battered doors, and took a giant dump in the citadel of freedom. But no smoking. None.

-Oh they lit shit on fire, alright, but not butts.

Why? Why didn’t they smoke in the Capitol?

You and I know exactly why.

Because it’s against the rules, there’s a regulation, a social stigma, a public health concern, and, frankly, it’s really bad for you.

Stupid!

The Insurrectionists know one thing for sure: smoking is bad, and you can’t smoke in public spaces- especially civic buildings.

The other thing the Insurrectionists know is that you can’t smoke in school or in museums or even at church- which makes no sense since there is no mention of smoking cigarettes in the B-i-b-l-e, of which I am aware.

There is holy smoke, of course, and incense, and possibly Old Testament smoking of some sort, I would think. But no commandment, among the Twenty Commandments- (on Mel Brooks’ authority) shalling or thou-shalt-notting smoking.

There are churchly ideas of “be ye sacred” and of purity, so that might indicate a path, a virtual spin down Non-Smoking Avenue for some rioters, for the prodigiously and religiously addicted, but there is absolutely no such prohibition against the macho pro-cancer wing of the Right Wing of Wings, the Cargo Shorts Coalition. There’s no mandate, religious or political, to bring back the traditional value of huffing nicotine.

There was no smoking by the Tourists of Terror despite the liberty thing.

Maybe they vaped.

At the January 6 Wingding, non-smoking section please.

Trucks and cargo shorts notwithstanding, most rioters checked their firearms in Virginia and adhered to strict non-smoking regulation upon Entering the Capitol.

You know why.

Americans of the type that attacked the Capitol are conformists.

They are conditioned.

(…And laws and mandates forbidding smoking were largely successful and became self-enforcing. Again, why? You know why.)

Because Americans of the Capitol-Crapping Persuasion are conformists.
They are followers. Just like me, in my stupid blue jeans.

(Why the fuck do I even wear blue jeans? God damn it! And why do I refer to them as simply “jeans” and drop the word “blue”? And say stuff like “God damn it”?

Because I am a complete conformist, too.

Please God, just tell me what to do, give me a simple repetitive task that I can claim to do perfectly, to please the Boss, who is probably in orbit somewhere and doesn’t know I exist, but anyway, I’m proud in my absolute conformity. There’s a payoff. And a hidden price, for such an attitude.

The price is that eventually you end up screaming in a store, in public, on the Internet, finally in Warshinton DC, because you are a conformist and you hang around with Like-Minded People.

Fuck, excuse me, but I must use my words:

Like-minded People are now the absolute worst kind of people, in this reverse-engineered Burt Bacharach tune that is Life.

Like-Minded People thought attacking the US Government was ok, but remembered, they don’t allow smoking in the Rotunda.

We learned something fairly recent, not many decades ago, which one could only have learned in the years since the temporary defeat of the tobacco industry and the almost total banning of cigarettes in work spaces, beginning in 1995.

We saw that a habit, deeply engrained and corporately and legally subsidized, can be affected by change. Boring. But here’s the thing. Conformity kicks in.

So the Insurrectionists followed an important government regulation, in not smoking in the Capitol. There are limits.

Where is liberty, in the Land of Conformity?

Conformity seems like what happened back there in history leading up to and including World War Two in Europe. And supposedly we went there to fight that. 2 cents.

Not smoking on the path to anarchy due to rigorous conformity. Happy campers on the path to perdition, following directions from a lunatic. Makes alot of sense.

Lock step and then follow along. Do what they do. I thought it was ok. Everyone says so.

A Final Thought:

For the top One Percent in the US economy, this has been a good day. January 6, a good day. Every day a good day. Conformity is good business, insurrection is good tv.

Thank you, Insurrectionists, for not smoking.

Americans, let’s consider these few significant issues which demand immediate attention:

The cashing in on public office, the pay for play politics, the nuclear arms profiteering with Russia, the use of US intelligence leaks to a foreign adversary to tamper with the Presidential election, the intention to use fraudulent claims to restrict voting rights based on race, the attempt to place an unconstitutional establishment of religion to erase civil rights of all Americans, the tacit support of armed domestic enemies of the state who are opposed to our system of government for and by the people, the threat to freedom of the press, and speech, and independent judiciary…

The use of falsehoods to taint the rational debate on issues critical to the public interest, an attack on the tradition of informed consent. The pledge to destabilize the national security and weaken our standing in the world, to serve the corporate interest at citizen’s expense and to profit those st the very top of the economy.

The will to squander, lay waste and despoil the national treasure of parks and resources for short term market gain, to profit the few at the expense of all citizens. The use of patently false assertions to avert the looming environmental crisis which threatens the well being of generations of Americans to come, and so an evasion of the most pressing critical importance to the country,

Which Republicans wish to pledge their sacred honor to all this? We’re coming, and by “We” I mean “We the People”

Impeach!

Jk 2/7/17