Indeed, a fascist's butthurt response was how I found an amazing piece of literature. Remind them: "Facts don't care about your fascist little dicks." I'm so done with Striving For Unity, and I'm happy that Biden's address will at least give license to people who needed it to realize that their rose-tinted attempts at reconciliation have been ruthlessly weaponized against them. Actual violence is for pussies, but it's time we used our words to properly stigmatize white nationalist fuckwads. Regretfully, we might have to co-opt some of their language to be effective (maybe you noticed?). I'm afraid things will get a whole lot worse before they get better. Some of the bullies will back down, agreed, but not enough. "Ohhhhh, ohhhhhhhhh nooooo, he warned that they will threaten political violence and they responded by threatening political violence, Biden should not have done that!". - A coward unfit to work in domestic counterterrorism. Speaking of, did you hear about ya boi Newt, back in the news? And what the hell was this?? I watched that before J6, and I knew he didn't truly believe the words he said about Blackness. Obviously.“I fear he is lighting a fuse that is not going to go well,” one senior Biden counterterrorism official said. “Sadly this is not a united speech but a very divisive one.”
The biggest correction to my worldview due to COVID is that in the before-times, I thought people will generally do the right thing. I now know that people will generally do what they see other people doing. 2016 allowed everyone with antisocial, fascist worldviews to ape the behavior of their leader. January 6 was all about "who is leader." Everything since has been about showing the MAGAts that they are once again leaderless. Our culture has, since Reconstruction, been about defining our politics as chocolate or vanilla. Red or blue. Left or right. Barry Goldwater started the slide towards "right or wrong" but it was arrested for a time by the embarrassment of Nixon. Fast forward to Richard Mellon Scaife and the Endless Quest To Destroy The Clintons and the right fully normalized "right or wrong." Trump took it an extra step - it went from "right or wrong" to "good or evil." The press is still recoiling from Watergate; you gotta give both sides or you're partisan. The Republicans care more about unity than philosophy; a democrat has to be correct to be followed while a Republican who is followed must be correct. It's okay being called evil by your enemies when you have a team. It's quite another when you're all alone. A bunch of MAGAts together will shit on Nancy Pelosi's desk. A lone MAGAt crouched over his phone? History records the Beer Hall Putsch as a failed coup attempt that magnified the legend of Adolf Hitler. History records the Battle of Cable Street as a protest that led to the decline of Oswald Mosely. I think we'll see January 6th as both a failed coup attempt that led to the decline of Donald Trump. More importantly, however, I think we'll see it as the moment the Republican Party corrected from grievance politics. Not completely? Not immediately? But I think they're out of road on this one. If your current platform attracts Laura Loomer and Marjorie Taylor Greene, you have no future in legislature.
Agree with almost all of that. To beat my dead horse again, perhaps the portside haunches area this time (poor guy [both you and the horse]), they know that they have no future in legislature under the current rules. Hence the coordinated assault on state-level election machinations and laws. And SCOTUS capture. They know how unpopular they are. They know they have no good legislative ideas. Let us hope they'll be cowed like Mosely's crowd, but my god are they still trying anything they can to Hitler it out. It truly is bizarre how closely history rhymes, right? And so sad that all these lessons the collective "us" thought we once learned can be forgotten within just a few generations. Over and over. BTW, Shapiro & co. have already laid the guide rails for the next phase; "Biden actually welcomes political violence from the right, to help him get re-elected". That's some T-Swift "Look What U Made Me Do" bullshit.