“The coup is still rolling”
That was Beto O’Rourke, talking to Lawrence O’Donnell tonight on MSNBC. O’Rourke has joined the growing chorus for the resignation of seditionist Senators Cruz and Hawley, the impeachment and expulsion of Trump, and a more robust U.S. democracy. All well and good. But in the meantime, the new Confederates are unrepentant (except coup clowns like the one who posed with a shit-eating grin carrying off Speaker Pelosi’s office sign, who has expensively lawyered up — thanks to his doctor wife — and is now pleading for mercy. Some brave freedom fighter.) There are plans for pro-Trump uprisings across America on Inauguration Day. And you have to forgive combat veterans like Rep. Jason Crow (D-Co.) for not having complete faith in capital security on Jan. 20. Crow had to hunker down in the House gallery during the mob riot, reassuring terrified fellow House members and wondering urgently if he needed to take a gun off one of the nervous Capitol officers and get ready to start shooting.
And so it’s come to this, America. To weaponized rebellion against U.S. democracy and the rule of law. The liberal class is understandably outraged, as are most Americans. CNN’s Chris Cuomo. Don Lemon and Jake Tapper, the Washington Post, The New Republic, Atlantic all demand a swift and devastating justice for the Trump cabal and the army of right-wing extremists. But their demands are late in coming. Meanwhile, Time magazine (which is still a bastion of conventional thought under tech mogul owner Marc Benioff, but now features deeply-reported features) includes a very disturbing article about the Azov Battalion, a white supremacist militia in Ukraine which has used Facebook to recruit thousands of Americans and other foreigners into its military-training programs.
After 9/11, the media and the national security state became violently incensed about Al Qaeda and other militant Islamists, focusing their wrath on their financing, training and political support systems. Only now is this wrath finally being directed at white nationalist terrorism — a much bigger threat to domestic tranquility than angry Islamists — and their political enablers.
I welcome the rising anger within the media and the Democratic Party about the combatants who consider them enemies of the people. The danger to democracy is real and it’s growing.
But Trumpism did not fall from the sky. It has burst from its chrysalis after decades of contempt and neglect by the liberal elites. Will these special media reports and Congressional investigations also examine the many ways that the liberal establishment sold out the nation’s “deplorables” and made then fight and die in calamitous wars, from the phony Gulf of Tonkin to the phony WMD of Saddam Hussein.
It’s important to note that a number of those at the “spear tip” of the Capitol invasion were military veterans, including Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot and killed while trying to be the first one through a shattered Congressional chamber window. How much of a breeding ground for neofascism has our military culture become, with its endless wars for senseless reasons?
We need a reckoning in this country, alright — but one much deeper than the New York Times or Chuck Schumer has in mind.
