The Clown Car Insurrection January 6 th is a day that will live in incredulity. The clown car attack on the Capitol of the United States, orchestrated by the sitting President of the United States and his cronies will go down in history as the most incompetent and laughable “insurrection” imaginable.
Had it been competent, Vice President Pence, Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell, and Chuck Schumer would probably have been killed by the mob. Most of the rest of the House and Senate would have been rounded up and the eight dead-end Senators and 139 members of the House who supported Trump to the end would have established a (T)rump session of parliament. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=stR1SniChqc (Watch especially the segment after 29 minutes and 30 seconds) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toVgNIZDAiw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Fsf4aWudJk&bpctr=1610208704 That it could happen at all is testimony to the senility of the ruling political parties, the class that they represent, and the system that they have spent nearly 250 years building. Trump’s opponents watched passively as the mob assault was openly organized on the internet. Despite Trump’s violent rhetoric, despite his defiant rejection of his loss at the polls, despite Trump’s delusional calls to his supporters to “defend” his “landslide”, the Democrats and the responsible institutions did almost nothing to prepare for the eventuality of the attack. The rioters had no discernible plan of attack, despite months of online discussions of the event. They did not arrest the leaders of the House, the Senate, or Vice President Pence; they did not confiscate the documents certifying the election victory of Joseph Biden. They did not pronounce that Donald Trump would continue as President while they formed a new government for the restored White Republic. They did not have a plan to take over the police stations, they did not have a plan to take over the pentagon. Unlike the Nazis whose 1923 Beer Hall Putsch in Munich had long held the title of most incompetent coup ever, these people seemed to think that Donald Trump would beam some reinforcements to them from a secret QAnon base somewhere near Rock Candy Mountain. Instead they wandered around looking like befuddled tourists in a grand museum, taking selfies in between chasing the outnumbered capitol police officers. The rapid and miserable disintegration of this Trump orchestrated attack not only demonstrated total incompetence, it showed the truly small size and depth of their movement. They could only mobilize 30,000 people in a country of 350,000,000 people after years of organizing with the help of the President of the United States! 30,000 people drawn from all over the country. Of those 30,000 only a few hundred were prepared to join in the assault on the capitol building. It could not have happened at all without complicity from some capitol police and the Acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller. It had no visible support from the military, and the military’s antipathy for Trump had been visible almost from the day of his inauguration four years ago. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEifvx4DL9w https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ES6234jV_4 It also has to be said, that this could not have happened if a real left existed in the United States. Where was the mass counterdemonstration? Where were the unions? Where was the women’s movement which was able to mobilize millions after Trump was elected? Where were the supporters of Bernie Sanders and the DSA? Where was Black Lives Matter? Nowhere. At home watching CNN. The left protest movements, the social democratic political movements, and even the revolutionary grouplets revealed their own passivity and confidence in the system. For the moment, total and absolute political incompetence on all sides rules the day. Nevertheless, this event and its aftermath are of great importance. Trump and his followers have been building a white racist, patriarchal movement against democracy. Their greatest fear is that the democratic principle of one person one vote will really become the law of the land in the United States. Trump and other Republican leaders like Lyndsey Graham have spoken publicly about the need to restrict voting rights to save the Republican party from permanent minority status in the United States. For the moment, they have hit the wall, and the failure of the MAGA coup has opened the doors of opportunity for the left in the United States. Trump’s control of the Republican Party had already begun to hemorrhage before the assault. His verbal assault on the Republican election officials in Georgia certainly contributed to the defeat of the two Republican candidates there which handed control of the senate to the Democrats. Trump, the reality show clown nearly drove the American constitutional system over a cliff. He had, ironically, been responsible for the Democrats Trifecta win – the House, the Senate, and the White House. The dysfunctionality of Trump’s administration had been evident since day one. Rats had been jumping off Trump’s ship of state ever since he was elected in 2016. His revolving door cabinet had become stocked with acting Secretaries because his nominees could not pass muster even with the Republican controlled Senate. At the end, even Betsy Devos, Elaine Chao and Mick Mulvaney defected. To add to the ignominy, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook, which had provided Trump with his best PR tools, have blocked Trump’s accounts. The Republican Party is now split. One on side you have Trump plus Republican Senators Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley, Cindy Hyde-Smith, Roger Marshall, John Kennedy, Cynthia Lummis and Tommy Tuberville, and 139 Republican members of the House of Representatives. On the other side you have Pence, Mitch McConnel, 42 other Republican Senators, and 97 Republican members of the House. This division runs down through the Republican party to the state, county, and city level all over the country. Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has called for the removal of Trump through the 25 th amendment, impeachment or resignation, and says she will leave the GOP if they stick with Trump. The evangelicals are now split: Pence and many others have abandoned Trump but want to keep as many of his followers as possible. Pence has positioned himself to put Humpty Dumpty back together again – but without Trumpty. Lindsey Graham would like to replace Pence in this role, but so far is running second for this honor. Cruz and Hawley find themselves in the awkward positions of wanting to replace Trump at the head of the dazed and confused fragments of MAGA before Trump himself has left the stage. Faced with this unprecedented melt down of Trump’s political hold over the GOP, Democratic President elect, Joseph Biden is grasping even harder to latch on to the Mitch McConnel fragment. Unfortunately for bipartisan Joe, the Democrat’s own victory in the Georgia special election has complicated his plans. Biden can no longer blame the Republicans for blocking his appointments or legislation. This is why he went ahead with the appointment of Merrick Garland to be the next Attorney General just days after the Georgia election results. And, he no longer needs the Republicans for blocking most of his appointments and legislation. This is why Biden spent so much time praising his great friend Bernie Sanders in his speech announcing cabinet appointments (that did not include Sanders). Constitutionalism, the secular religion of the United States, is also and importantly, in crisis. Believers in the constitution really have a moral imperative to remove Trump from office through forcing him to resign, using the 25 th Amendment, or impeachment. But believers in democratic rights, starting with the principle of one person one vote, who understand the Constitution of the United States is an antidemocratic slaveholders document, and who understand the institutions established by it are obstacles to the achievement of democracy, also have a moral imperative to support removal of Trump. I will continue with more later, but for now, the most important lesson I think that we should draw from this incident is that defense of the democratic rights that Trump and MAGA were attacking is the next step needed toward rebuilding a serious left in the United States. -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. 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