As of 21:46 PST today over 3,746 Americans died today from COVID-19. They join a total of 361,123 confirmed deaths and up to a half of a million more deaths likely to have been caused by the coronavirus. Mobs of fascist Far Right and Alt-Right puppets rioted in the national capital city today. They also demonstrated, often with violence, in other cities around the country, especially in state capitals. At the same time, the fascist violence stoked by Donald J. Trump, who usurped the presidency in 2016 via manipulation in plain view of arcane legal procedures, climaxed earlier today with his supporters storming the Capitol in Washington, D.C. It was an insurrection to allow an incompetent and criminal president to seize power. This was an assault on our constitutional democratic republic, not a demonstration for justice and reform. Enough is enough. Enough is enough! Remove this psychopathic, narcissistic, cowardly, and dangerous idiot at once! My God, this same man commands the most powerful military forces in the world. Think about the consequences!
Leaders of these United States of America! You in the Congress! Especially you groveling, irresponsible Republicans and moderate, afraid-to-rock-the-boat Democrats! Hey! Find your spines! Sit up! Stand up! Brave losing your jobs to vote against this would-be tyrant and his gangs of racist, sexist, conspiracy-swilling thugs and impeach Trump. Now! Impeach him again. This time convict him. Leaders of America, those of you in the Cabinet, and you, Mr. Vice President, gather up your courage and invoke the 25th Amendment. It’s in our Constitution for a significant reason. Use it. Remove this man from the White House. Install VP Mike Pence as Acting President until the moment Joe Biden is rightfully inaugurated on the 20th of January.
We must continue to call out the hypocrisy of the police and the so-called “law and order” crowd. There are major differences between the Black Lives Matter protests, however violent, and the pro-Trump “Stop the Steal” protests. Black Lives Matter and their allies demonstrate for justice, for reform, to call attention to the realities of institutional racism and White priviledge, and to defund the police. The cops retaliated swiftly and often with brutality. We saw it over and over again. Republican leaders and Far Right media outlets keep screeching, “Antifa! Antifa!” As Antifa stands for, “Anti-fascist,” who do you think are the fascists? The Alt-Right and the unpatriotic “Patriot” militias. They’re obsessed with ghosts. Where were any major groupings of Antifa? None. They’re small, scattered, temporary bands of random, roaming anarchists and not any large, organized militia such as any one of those on the Far Right.
There is a distinction between the racism of the White oppressor and the hostility, hurt, and anger by the oppressed of all colors towards their oppressors. Who among you is unable to see this? Refuses to listen to the truth of their experiences? Again, there is a difference between the racism of the oppressor and the hostility of the oppressed. One is rooted in the belief and customs of their own biological and cultural superiority and the practices to maintain power and priviledge. The other is rooted in the reality of being enslaved, sold, liberated only to be tokenized and abandoned, impoverished, ridiculed, shamed, given pretty words without deeds, and ground into blood, dirt, and cute ghosts.
There is a distinction between protests for justice and reform, even radical revolutionary reforms, and the demonstrations of those who seek via violent insurrection to overthrow a democratically elected republican government. Whenever those among the Far Right point fingers at all the violence on the Left, show them the vast majority of people who protested for Civil Rights, against the Vietnam, Iraq, and other wars, against the WTO, and stood with BLM against institutional racism were peaceful if raucous. Show them those groups engaged in deliberate violence and destruction such as the Weather Underground, the Symbionese Liberation Army, and those few Antifa bands practicing Black Bloc tactics were and are small in number, in fact tiny in number. The Ku Klux Klan alone numbers somewhere between 5,000 to 8,000 real members these days according to various reports, but once numbered in the low millions at its 1920s peak. Antifa is much smaller, so small it’s difficult to count and categorize as it’s such a decentralized, anti-organization organization, unlike the far more organized Far Right/Alt-Right militias. Both sides have more online followers and digital yappers than actual members.
There is another vital distinction to be made as well. We must see and understand the man who incited the rioters and threatened to lead them before hiding out in the West Wing for what he is…truly see this man Trump who would be king as the wannabe-tyrant who ignites an insurrection to overthrow the constitutional system he openly despises. The man doesn’t even want to work and do his job. He simply wants to win and gloat over his image in the mirror as Narcissus did as he gazed upon his reflection in the clear waters of a spring. Those who denied the reality of civil warfare and insurrection being possible within the United States of America suffer from the hubris of empire, from the dark side of American exceptionalism. Many of my fellow citizens would be wise to spend time studying the history of our nation-state. Few know our history is a banal list of rebellions, bloody riots, race massacres, and mini-civil wars. The list is as tedious as it is outrageous. All naïveté will fall away. We pride ourselves as somehow better than all other countries even tho we are but human beings no different from any others from all around the planet. We feel we are too exceptional to stoop to the same horrors endured by others across Earth. The thing is we already have. Over and over again. The Usurper in the White House is a danger to the world we already struggle to live in. He is himself ignorant of his own history yet believes in the truth of his own monstrous delusions.
Donald J. Trump must be removed from the Presidency. He must not be pardoned. His alleged crimes are far worse than anything Richard M. Nixon ever did. Joe Biden, once President, must exhibit the courage to have Trump arrested and put on trial. Our constitutional democratic republic must experience this tribulation the Republicans have brought on themselves in order to heal. Trump must stand trial for multiple counts of treason, for murder as an accomplice if he knowingly allowed Russian, Chinese, and Iranian bounty hunters to pay for the assassination of US and UK troops, for murder by negligence of hundreds of thousands of Americans dying of COVID-19 while he goes golfing, for multiple cases of fraud, for rape, for pedophilia, for perjury, and, my God, the list keeps going. Yet another compelling case can be made for those with the guts to even look at it is how Trump usurped the Presidency in 2016. Even if the death penalty is not on the table, there is plenty to lock this man away for the rest of his life and ban him from running for office or owning a business ever again.
Do you not feel ashamed for our nation? Our allies far and near profess to be embarrassed and alarmed. Our enemies struggle to hide their gleefulness. We Americans do abide within a constitutional democratic republic within a capitalistic, corporatocratic economy. It’s messy. Our nation has made many mistakes. Our history books spill over with the glory and magnificent legacies of our past, but remember what horrors dwell where we refuse to look: our country engaged in invasions, conquests, genocides, in the slave trade, in chattel slavery itself. We engaged in class oppression, in wage and debt slavery, and in overthrowing democratic governments of the left to install authoritarian dictators of the right. Our nation institutionalized racism and environmental destruction. As messy and as imperfect as it is, it still works better than most other systems. It works by mass consensus for a peaceful transfer of power via constitutional system that slows things down so we may properly deliberate. Such a process robs demagogues of emotional urgency and keeps their mobs of little tyrants at bay. We agree to disagree, the winner takes all, and we go on about our business. We protest and demonstrate when justice fails to work, but not to overthrow the system itself. Reform it, even radically revolutionize it, yes, and it is still our system. If we no longer hold to such sacred norms, however, the glue holding all our disparate parts together so we identify above all else as Americans dissolves and evaporates. When our American glue vanishes we will no longer be Americans. Then we’ll become as mere beasts of any other fallen nation competing with each other as whom can slouch to Bethlehem in the most savage way.
It doesn’t have to be this way. It never had to be this way. Remove this would-be tyrant now. Legally. Impeach. Invoke the 25th. Arrest and put on trial for his alleged crimes. Save our United States from itself by shining the light down onto all the shadows, down into our shadows. By doing so we can truly show the world and remind ourselves of the strength and resilience of our constitutional democratic republic in spite of our messes, contradictions, and imperfections.
UPDATE: Bernie Sanders on “Precedence”
Bernie Sanders said it best. Two days ago on Friday the Senator from Vermont issued the following statement on Twitter:
“Some people ask: Why would you impeach and convict a president who has only a few days left in office? The answer: Precedent. It must be made clear that no president, now or in the future, can lead an insurrection against the U.S. government.” – from @BernieSanders, Twitter, 11:26 AM EST, 8 Jan 2021, https://twitter.com/BernieSanders/status/1347625769242140675.
Meanwhile the confirmed death toll from Trump’s negligent and deadly response to the COVID-19 Pandemic rose from 361,123 last Thursday evening to 372,508 as of this Saturday evening.
William Dudley Bass
Thursday 7 January 2021
Updated Saturday 9 January 2021
Seattle, Washington
USA
Copyright © 2021 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved by the Author & his Descendants until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship over and for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.