A lot of people have been heaving sighs of relief over the inauguration of Joe Biden. Donald Trump—the lying, dim-witted criminal psychopath who preceded him has, at last, been forced out of the nation’s capital. Our national nightmare is over…or so some people think. They’re wrong.
The malignancy known as Trumpism is still festering in our body politic and people who care about our constitutional democracy have to wage another ballot box fight or maybe more, and destroy it once and for all.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi:
“We will probably need a supplemental for more security for members when the enemy is within the House of Representatives.”
For the second time in the history of the United States of America, we are fighting an armed and dedicated domestic enemy. Insurrectionists, treasonous seditionists and domestic terrorists from all over the country are being aided, abetted and encouraged by certain members of Congress.
Ali Alexander, previously Ali Akbar, is one of the self-proclaimed leaders of Trump’s fraudulent Stop the Steal movement to overturn the presidential election.
In a trio of online videos in December, Alexander claimed he plotted the January 6th Insurrection incident with the help of three Congressmen: Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona and Mo Brooks of Alabama.
“I was the person who came up with the January 6th idea, and I’m the guy who came up with idea of January 6th when I was talking with Congressman Gosar, Congressman Andy Biggs and Congressman Mo Brooks.”
If all this depended on the word of Ali Akbar Alexander, the allegations might be suspect. But there’s a video where one of the three suspect Congressmen is quoted by an admirer as saying we are in a civil war. The speaker on the video is Jim Arroyo, an Arizona member of the extremist right-wing group who call themselves the Oath Keepers:
Jim Arroyo:
“We did a meetings (sic) a couple of years ago where our elected representative from Washington, Paul Gosar, came out, and we asked him flat-out at that time, ‘Do you think we are heading in to a civil war?’ and his response to the group was just flat-out, ‘We’re in it. We just haven’t started shooting at each other yet.’”
CNN reported that Representatives Gosar, Biggs and Brooks wanted Trump to give them presidential pardons on his way out the door. Trump, always focused on saving his own skin, decided pardons for radical ass-kissing Congressmen would look bad considering his own rabble-rousing, so he turned them down.
Like rats deserting a ship, the three Congressmen who have been cozy with the White Supremacy movement have either denied involvement or refused comment. Nevertheless, Gosar reportedly provided Alexander with incriminating videos of himself.
Gosar can’t even count on family support. Six of his brothers and sisters have branded him an extremist danger to the nation who shouldn’t be in Congress.
But what if the three Congressmen didn’t actively participate in the Insurrection at the Capitol? A law professor and former Supreme Court law clerk wrote in a blog that an individual can engage in insurrection or rebellion without actually taking up arms.
For the first time in the nation’s history, a flag of traitors was paraded through the halls of Congress. A full investigation will determine if Gosar, Biggs and Brooks should face criminal charges for betrayal of the country.
Regardless, the Radical Right is working to elect nut jobs like themselves to Congress. In some cases, they’re succeeding.
Representative Marjorie Taylor-Greene of Georgia spouts vile hatred and lies about staged mass shootings at schools and Jewish space lasers starting California’s wildfires. Even Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell, who never sticks his neck out, suggested her loony lies and conspiracy theories are a cancer on the Republican party. Colorado’s Lauren Boebert, who seems to have a gun fetish and may have penis-envy, makes a lot of noise about wanting to carry her Glock pistol through the halls of Congress.
Many people dislike Hillary Clinton, but as far back as 1998, she nailed the growing political cancer of the Radical Right:
“This is, the great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it, is this vast right-wing conspiracy.”
Two decades later, it’s a conspiracy on steroids.
The very things that have defined the United States of America since its founding are the things the Republican neo-Fascist Radical Christian Right hates.
The democracy-destroying White Supremacists continue to believe Trump’s Big Lie that the election was stolen from him through widespread voter fraud. Eighty-six judges—Democrat and Republican—have rejected Trump’s claim, ruling there is no evidence to support him. Political pundits are coming around to an assertion I made in several commentaries last year: we’re dealing with the rise of an ugly new strain of American Fascism.
The new American Fascists want “their” people embedded at all levels of government.
After their cult leader lost the election, the Trump cult has moved quickly in state after state to revise election laws to make it harder to vote by mail or absentee ballot. We need to move immediately to identify the vote suppressors in our states and put the heat of public exposure and public pressure on them.
History may look back on the deadly January episode as the eruption of the Great White Revolt. Millions of Whites are pissed off. They are sharing power and privilege with minorities and they don’t like it one bit. They want white privilege back.
They’re using the same tactics militant blacks used in the 1960s.
Consider this observation by the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“I think that we’ve got to see that a riot is the language of the unheard.”
That was 1966 and the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was talking about deadly and destructive riots by blacks frustrated with the lack of progress on civil rights. Ironically, what he said then can be applied now to the mostly white riot and insurrection at our nation’s capital on January 6th, 2021.
Hordes of whites feel unheard in their gripes about losing their historic status as members of the Middle Class and as the supreme, privileged ruling ethnic group in America.
Their sense of being victims has turned to hate fueled by the paid propagandists of Right-Wing media who tell them non-Evangelical immigrants and people of color are responsible for the loss of white privilege. The response of the mostly White Radical Right has been Resistance—Protests—Riots—Violence.
Most of them know the U.S. white population is shrinking to minority status.
True democracy was a fine idea and ideal—until minorities started gaining political clout at the ballot box and voted to scale back White Supremacy.
The Trumpers want White Minority Rule similar to what South Africa had during the era of apartheid.
We can’t have a nation of united states if millions of people want to overthrow our national system of government.
What can we do if we love our country and its Constitution and want to save it? Begin by understanding this infection in our political system starts at the local level.
Thomas P. “Tip” O’Neill, the legendary Democrat Speaker of the House during the Reagan years, was fond of saying “All Politics is Local.”
He’s right. Most laws, most political issues, begin at the local level. And so do extremists. Consider the braggadocio of Ali Alexander, the Capitol Insurrection guy:
“I’m pretty optimistic. We own all of Arizona except for the Secretary of State.”
Don’t forget many so-called Evangelicals are deeply involved in this effort to overthrow our Constitutional government. They’re perverting the Bible to support murderous authoritarianism and they need to be called out their sins.
With all of this in mind, you—me—we—all of us must become political surgeons at the local and state level. We must remove the cancerous growth known as Trumpism in our city councils, our courts, our school boards, our county commissions, wherever it is a malignancy on democracy.
Get involved early. Find out who is running for office. Begin with the primaries. That’s where the nut jobs get their start. Over the next few months there will be primaries in Wisconsin, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Virginia and Washington State. Some of the Trump cult are certain to be candidates.
When you find a likely domestic enemy, tell others. Put the traitors on the radar.
Like all weeds and blight, the best treatment is to find it early and get after it.
Fighting the Trump cult may take the rest of this decade. Get used to it.
It’s going to be hard for 75 million people to admit they’ve been fools marks and suckers. That’s a heap of crow to have to eat.
We didn’t choose this fight. But we’re in it, just the same.
It’s the Law-and-Order White Supremacists who conspired to kidnap and execute the Governor of Michigan. It’s the Law-and-Order White Supremacists who wanted to assassinate House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. It’s the Law-and-Order White Supremacists who wanted to lynch the Vice President of the United States. And it’s the Law-and-Order White Supremacists who killed a Capitol Police officer.
We didn’t choose this fight. But we’re in it, just the same.
Now, more than ever, we need to heed the wisdom of John Philpot Curran, an Irish politician and lawyer. In a speech in 1790 Curran said, “The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.”
Donald Trump, our former Traitor-in-Chief and his cult of brainwashed followers, have shown Curran was right.
We must guard our freedom from those Americans who want to live in a dictatorship. Trump is gone, but they are still among us.
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