I’ve never seen it, the actual live broadcast feed- I was working that day.
I have to say the commentary is absolutely extraordinary.
I was stunned at the real time assessment of the commentators who knew right away what they were seeing: the potential end of Democracy in America.
This is how authoritarian regimes work, they said. It remained to be seen whether the Republic would survive the day.
This was pretty much at the beginning of it and it was absolutely obvious how immediate the danger was. Even the first milling around of the crowd and the first incursion of insurgents strolling through the Rotunda posed a potential threat.
One commentator noted in the first hour that the President had long prepared the ground with recent violent tweets and public statements – even noting that the violence had been stoked by Trump since his very first speech.
All noted that the President of the United States had just tweeted about Pence, and that the vice president now “had a target on his back”.
No one had yet seen the actual footage of violence that ensued, with one exception: the battering of the Capitol door.
But you didn’t need to see the violence.
The violence was the very presence of that crowd. The danger was immense.
No security in sight. The lawmakers in lockdown. The Capitol, said one commentator, “appears to be besieged.”
That was by 2:30 that day.
I was at work so we only saw moments. Our jaw dropped when we saw even isolated moments.
And it just got worse.
Remember: no crowd was to be allowed anywhere near the Capitol that day. Not on the steps, not on the grounds, not anywhere near. And Covid protocols were all in effect.
Seeing the footage of the day tells me so much.
I can see how people who watched images could have mistaken an authoritarian putsch as simply a bunch of people walking around. Until you see them attempt to batter the Capitol door down.
The “security” protocol was simple- for the government to flee the Capitol. Through underground exits etc.
You know things are bad when a joint session of Congress has to consider fleeing the Capitol.
The following little poem is the second Primeval Poem, after one called “Moon Party.” August 2001.
They were both “instant poems”- I just wrote whatever was there to write.
This one has an image which was actually a precognition of the World Trade Center on 9/11, which occurred little more than one week after the writing of this: it’s the inscrutable line about the air turning to sand.
I thought, I can’t write that. But then later I knew exactly what this was about.
These first draft poems have their own drawbacks, mawkish perhaps, but a nice movement toward life as well.
I’m thinking of kids going to school and hoping that everyone stays safe.
Two pages from an old notebook.
Primeval Poem #2
Ferry Bldg, Bridge, afternoon
Poem:
Out on the pier I saw a little boy chasing seagulls. He did the baby dinosaur dance for his ancient cousins.
They squawked their appreciation hopped to one side or up to the pier or beat the air gaily with one wing.
The green water smiled its flat square smile, cool to its deep deep bottom.
The bridge continued its yoga stretch and relaxed.
Then, because it’s the modern world and I’d seen it so many times
the boy did his warrior dance in slow motion, the air turned to grains of sand, and I began to cry.
Each star came out to watch, waited patiently as God filled in its brightness, and then, set free, the air shown with gold.
The green water was thirsty for that nice gold color, I noticed.
The bridge held back the night sky for one more minute; one last ship, a giant, red and black pulled out to sea every wrinkle.
We have to be very still now. No one move.
Solemnly a gull hops to one side though, And up on a pier and lifts its wing.
“Attack of the Murder Robots!” (or How a Congressional Science Lab blew up Democracy.)
A light- hearted parody- or weird actuality? You decide.
Kids, don’t try this at home.
Democracy is under attack by robots.
Congress could have prevented this situation in which we find ourselves, this historical cliffhanger, in which an authoritarian megalomaniacal criminal plays footsie with the fate of humanity and unleashes robots to attack our democratic values, but no.
Supreme Court also left the door open, to Fascist/friendly operatives and robot/ friendly outcomes. Now we see what can happen.
sigh.
They have unleashed the robots on our political system!
Unlike my contemporaries, I believe the Framers of the US constitutional system sensed the potential robot-problem. They were well aware of it, but admitted that, in order to function, a certain amount of good faith and luck was involved.
The Framers hoped we would do the right thing, and not invent robots to send to Congress with a mission to self-destruct and sabotage the command structure, so that rich people might be free.
Wrong!
So if Smith actually prevails, the judgement could ensure voter rights where Congress has failed to do so.
(Duh!)
This IS personal.
Roger Stone, top advisor, with Steve Bannon, to Trump, well before the election of 2020 said the voter intimidation and the proposed fraudulent schemes would be aimed specifically at California voters- to override the liberal vote which he knew would win in 2020.
“Fuck you, California!” said Stone. That’s a quote. From his mouth to God’s ears.
And that means I was an actual targeted victim of the multivalent and malevolent scheme to overturn the 2020 presidential election.
I, and every other voter in America, was/ were made victims, representatives of whom would be replaced in public office -by robots.
It’s good Smith sees that, as one disclosed indictment, in the hoped-for soon-to-be-released charging document, is expected to address the rights of all voters as infringed by the GOP crime spree.
And I feel that victimization keenly. Especially when, so soon after the election, the Supreme Court found no human rights in the Constitution worthy of respect.
That stung, since we won that election and those Supreme Court seats were, virtually, ours.
Trump, incidentally, was activity recruiting militias (“stand back/stand by”) and courting QAnon, the same week in September that he nominated Coney Barrett to the US Supreme Court. This was just weeks before the presidential election. Which Trump lost on November 7, 2020.
And that month also he and his Attorney General Wm Barr- who is tasked with defending the rights of all Americans- disparaged mail- in ballots and normal voting procedures as fraudulent then also. And then Trump and Barr both attacked the USPS, founded by Ben Franklin.
Remember how Trump had Covid at that debate? The “stand back/stand by” debate?Nice.)
And then they unleashed the robot hordes.
(Hey, remember when Trump invoked the Second Amendment as a threat to Hilary Clinton on the campaign trail? No robots picked up on that, than god.)
So who is or are the true Enemy (-ies) of the People, again?
Benjamin Franklin knew the answer, but you do not need a Ouija Board to figure this out.
A cream pie in the face of Trump on tv would be a nice first step right about now. That’s about all I could hope for. It would disarm him entirely. But don’t bother the Secret Service. They have enough to worry about right now.
Sadly there can’t be justice because the damage done is so extensive and ongoing and fascists are working still on the disestablishment of Congress.
Taylor Green and Jordan in Congress – and RFK Jr, too- are much like Survival Research Laboratory projects, each like a robot designed to destroy itself with mechanical arms equipped with hammers and maces and chains that bash its own carapace and bounce around destroying the entire field, so that the damage left overwhelms the ability of the institution to recover.
Tell me they’re not robots, or robot/equivalent. I’m listening.
Putin won that hand nicely. I no longer consider the Republican Party a thing.
Speaking of robots, there is a distinction without a difference between robot warfare and actual random mass shootings. If random robots were dispatched, invented by a Sci-fi obsessed mastermind, and went around blasting shopping malls, the effect would be identical to what we have in real life. The statistical inevitability, the same.
Interesting, that destabilizing democracy using frail humans heavily armed would be a thing to advertise and uphold and wave a flag from a shiny truck over.
Fricking murder robots everywhere. I speak in metaphors, Meta. Don’t freak out. I come in peace.
Discuss.
Come to think of it, I’ve been sitting next to an ocean of information my entire life.
Started out as a trickle. Howdy Doody was just off the air. Before my time. Miss Barbara had a magic mirror. There was that. There were ten books for sale at May Company. And there was a Carnegie Library. Jack Parr was on the tv. Not more than one rotary dial telephone. There was quiet talk.
In lieu of information, parcheesi.
Transition. Pulse. Satellite. Bathysphere. Iron lung. Iron curtain.
It’s possible that ocean overwhelmed everything around 1968. I won’t go into it. It was bad it got worse and worse massive maverick waves of information. It became abysmal throughout the decades. As in, falling into the abyss: an imaginary maelstrom in which imagination is really the foundation stone of reality one grasps to one’s heart like a life preserver made of pure lead. It came out of pencils and file cabinets in the workshop. Next to the tool chest. There was a Texas Instruments calculator and a roll of tape.
How to Make Friends and Influence People.
I said influence “people”- not the weather.
Still, oceans of information.
Now I’m bobbing around the surface again and there’s RFK Jr floating by on a log.
This is a wave. A fantastic, skyward-rising wave, of political and religious influence.
It moves in direction with force. It seems overwhelming. Perhaps, for a brief time, it is.
Waves have crests and troughs. They scrape like bulldozers and crash through barriers.
Waves pick up whatever is there, detritus, seaweed, shells, and hoist it all heavenward.
They reflect a spark and sparkle and glimmer and roar. Terrifying immensity. A moving skyscraper of energy and absolute solidity, magnifying the sun.
One doesn’t hear the roar of tigers in America, but one can hear it in the sea.
Those riding the wave at the crest right now must feel a sense of power and dominance- of victory.
Until the wave breaks- and all that wave energy recedes.
And that wave energy will recede.
The tide is going out -for that political movement.
Perhaps not today. But that is not mere prophesy. It’s a law of nature that governs our survival.
Is Marjorie Taylor Green riding the crest, Kristi Noem? The Gang of Pirates, with exhilaration, that can see their houses from here, from there, from the crest of an ever-moving churning force, quite beyond human control?
Fame and fortune. Roe. Guns. The Anti-environmental movement. Tictoc politicians.
That tide is going to go out.
If you live by the sea it makes you wonder and reflect on its power.
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