IMPEACHAPALOOZA 2: COUP COUP KACHOO
I do keep up with current events. I just can’t blog about them in real time. Blame it on deadlines, moving house and kidney stones.
Anyway:
1. Trump is now the only POTUS to be impeached twice. Which is braggable.
Is it too little too late? Well, we had that discussion during Impeachapalooza 1, where the argument was (1) there was no point impeaching him if the Senate was going to acquit him anyway, or (2) there has to be consequences for Presidential shenanigans or we might as well say the POTUS is above the law and can do anything they want.
Granted, it’s not much of a punishment. Trump probably regards his Twitter suspension as more severe than being impeached. Which is why we do need to rethink our current mechanisms for dealing with criminal presidents.
2. Yes, it damn well was a coup - or, as it’s technically known, a ‘self-coup’. Dr Fiona Hill lays it all out for you here. And there’s little room for doubt that Trump encouraged it, even if he didn’t actively organize it.
Meanwhile, each passing day seems to reveal that while the storming of the Capitol was a mix of planning and improv, at least some of them intended to kidnap and kill people in the name of keeping Trump in power. It was a poorly executed self-coup, but a self-coup nonetheless.
3. Moreover, it also seems clear that the Capitol Police and some GOP Congresspeople were complicit to some degree. Compare the security at the Capitol Building during a nearby BLM protest last year to the security on Jan 6, and it’s hard to believe any of these yahoos got within 50 yards of the entrance, let alone inside. We don’t know the full story yet, but frankly it doesn't look good.
On a related note, it’s pretty clear that after a couple of years of BLM protests - that featured massive police brutality and people being plucked off the streets and hustled into unmarked vans - there’s an obvious double standard in how police handle protests based on the racial makeup and political affiliation of the protesters.
4. As others have pointed out, the bigger problem is the complicity of the GOP. They played along with Trump’s “Democrats stole the election” meme despite zero evidence in the clear hope that it would work. Even after the self-coup, 146 Republicans voted to reject the electoral votes to deny Biden the White House, and most are still parroting the stolen-election meme. Meanwhile, the conservative white evangelical leadership that gives Trump much of his power is generally sticking with him. So.
I’m also not impressed with those Republicans now distancing themselves from Trump and saying the Capitol riot was awful and terrible and that’s not who we are, etc. Well, no - we’ve always known who Trump was and what he stood for, and he spent the entire 2020 campaign making it clear he would accept no result that didn’t result in re-election.
It’s also clear few of them take any responsibility for the coup, whether they're claiming it was really antifa in disguise or that Trump only did what he did because liberals bullied him for four years and it drove him mad, or that they have to overturn the election because Trump’s mob will come after them if they don’t. So pardon me if I doubt their sincerity.
5. The same goes for all of the corporations now saying they won’t support Trump businesses or Republicans who supported overturning the election. I mean, you know, great. But after every awful thing he’s done and said in the last four years, NOW you’re having an epiphany?
Point being, I think it’s worth asking if the people turning on him now would be doing so if the self-coup had actually worked. Maybe a few. But I suspect most of them would have cheerfully strapped themselves to the post-democracy Trump Train, because why wouldn't they?
6. Will there be martial law on Tuesday? No idea. I doubt it, in that Trump needs military support to pull that off, and it’s not clear he has it. I’m also not convinced the MyPillow guy will change that equation, although if he does, it won’t even be the weirdest episode in this sorry excuse for a Netflix series. I’m not saying Trump won't try it - or that his cult won’t try something on their own. I’m saying I think it will fail.
But again, that won’t mean we’ve seen the last of Trump and his MAGA cult. While it will be nice having an adult in the White House again, we’ve got a long road ahead of us, and it’s not going to be a pleasant one. These people are not going to magically go away when Biden is inaugurated. Trump may be out of power, but his legacy will remain a cancer in US politics and society for a long time.
BONUS TRACK: Here’s an interesting local angle to the Capitol mob - not unsurprisingly, HK chief Carrie Lam and Chinese state media are trying to compare the coup to that time in 2019 when HK protesters broke into the LegCo chambers and trashed the place. The objective is a half-assed attempt to call out the US govt as hypocrites: “Oh, you loved it when rioters invaded LegCo - not so much fun now that it’s happened to Congress, huh? So maybe shut up about HK violating everyone’s human rights because now you understand why we are justified in cracking down on them.”
It is, of course, a bad and inaccurate comparison. But then the wonderful thing about state propaganda is that it doesn't have to make sense.
White riot,
This is dF
This entry was originally posted at https://defrog.dreamwidth.org/1655258.html. Please comment there using OpenID.