Extra! Barbarians at the Gate

Editor’s Note: Facebook is hard to like (Mark Zuckerberg has wormed his way into owning even that simple word). But for speed and reach it has its advantages. These pieces are expanded from my page, one as barbarians stormed the gates, others looking upward and ahead.

Lock Them Up. Immediately.

The first thing a reporter learns when covering a gulag or shithole run by a mad king is how to read signals to the aroused rabble and gestures to the Gestapo. It’s harder in Romanian, Serbo-Croatian or Lingala. But Trump’s pidgin English is so unmistakably clear he might as well have bright red flash cards and an interpreter signing at his shoulder. I watched him on Fox, as usual, making sure no blunt movable objects were nearby to ruin yet another TV set.

As in every speech, he hammered away at a favorite line. Any anarchist commie terrorist who disrespected the statue of an America hero, enslavers and Indian exterminators included, would be jailed for 10 years. He berated the three Supreme Court justices he put on the bench for siding with the people over him. Then, after an avalanche of horseshit about a stolen election, he ordered his howling mob to the Capitol, saying he’d be there with them. Fat chance. He went back to our White House to watch.

Throughout Trump’s term we’ve seen police in Washington operate with higher authority. A favorite tactic is the “kettle,” herding protesters, reporters and hapless tourists passing by into clusters to be carried off in paddy wagons. Journalists only doing their jobs spent months on end fighting charges that could have put them away for decades. We all saw Trump’s insane foray to hold a Bible upside down, protected by a four-star general in combat fatigues among cops in riot gear flailing batons with high-tech sonic weapons at the ready.

Yesterday, the world watched, stupefied, as louts in battle costume swarmed into the Capitol unhindered, trashing our representatives’ offices, pawing through their files, stealing computers with classified data, taking selfies and slapping high fives before filing out unhindered to ignore a 6 p.m. curfew. Grinning assholes smirked at TV cameras, flipping us all the finger. Video shows lone cops fleeing in panic, under assault or, in some cases, standing back in apparent approval.

In the District of Columbia, the National Guard responds to a Pentagon that Trump has packed with his shameless sycophants. Neighboring Guard units stood by, but no one gave the order. As the mob ransacked America’s seat of power, Virginia state police eventually rolled up in soft cars. By the time serious reinforcements arrived, a woman rioter was shot dead and three people died of medical conditions. (Later, a Capitol police officer died; he’d been smashed by a fire extinquisher.)

Remember those fiery demands for harsh punishment when a handful of Portland protesters tossed the odd projectile at a federal building guarded by heavily armed DHS stormtroopers?  

I watched Hong Kong protests erupt in 2019 and followed them closely. At the peak, crowds swarmed into the Legislative Council as disciplined police phalanxes stood by with shields – and cameras. They allowed protesters to wear themselves out, but every face was registered. When Beijing had enough, jail cells filled. The Capitol assault was uncontrolled bedlam, hardly an uprising of courageous citizens fighting to retain a modicum of freedom. It was flat-out terrorism instigated by an elected president who should have been impeached or removed by the 25th Amendment years ago.

Congress did us proud by reemerging from hiding to finish its ceremonial role of confirming the people’s choice. But still. It was an eerie scene of business-as-usual. Ben Sasse spoke with his usual folksy homilies. Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and a few other faithless hypocrites continued their treacherous demand for a 10-day review of election results that 60-plus court cases upheld.

Arrests need to begin immediately. Everyone who flouted the law in plain sight needs to answer for it. On January 21, prosecutors in New York, Georgia, Florida – and Washington D.C. – need to hold Trump, his family and their criminal entourage to account. If not, our claim to “rule of law” government is a pathetic joke. None of our allies is laughing, but each of our adversaries is popping Champagne corks.

Yes, Nancy. Exactly. STFA

Nancy Pelosi is now defying those empowered to invoke the 25th Amendment to do it. If they are too treacherous and treasonous to act, the House has to impeach, immediately. Like last time, we will then see how each senator votes. This is not about expediency, or politics or whether there is time. A loose-cannon madman is bouncing around in our White House, clearly out of control and capable of anything. If impeached, he cannot run in 2024.

Of course, this is an attempted coup, and anyone who has lived through takeovers, military or otherwise, saw that long ago. A week before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, I began a Mort Report like this:

“Now it is clear: we are seeing a coup d’etat. And its perpetrators, aided by citizens’ apathy and wishful thinking, don’t need to gas up tanks or muzzle the media. This is exactly how democracies die. We can stop this and emerge stronger – but only if enough of us grasp what is at stake and take action. Put aside political leanings and polemics to spend a moment assessing for yourself what is unfolding.”

It has unfolded. Long ago, I began ending FB posts “WTFU,” Samuel L. Jackson’s exhortation back when the danger was only George W. Bush: Wake the Fuck Up. We voted Trump out but, I’m convinced, only because of his depraved heart massacre. The coronavirus he let run wild and now ignores is killing 1,000 more Americans each day than Osama bin Laden managed to kill on 9/11. And yet nearly 150 of what Heather Cox Richardson calls “Congress critters” are still trying to keep him in office.

We all need to act now, in whatever way we each can. At the very minimum we need to STFA: Stay the Fuck Awake.

The Enemy Is Us

With all that’s gone wrong, we Americans have a gods-given shot at getting thing right. Let’s not blow it this time. Walt Kelly’s classic line – “We have met the enemy, and he is us.” -- has never been more apt.

Kelly used that caption on a Pogo poster for Earth Day in 1971 when scientists began banging the alarms to warn against ecocide. It was a play on Oliver Perry’s report when American ships defeated the British Navy: “We have met the enemy, and they are ours.” That was during the 1812 War, the last time a hostile anti-American force trashed our Capitol and hauled down our colors.

Think about it. In the Soviet Union, people waited for photos of a changing Politburo to learn who ruled them. Their newspapers, Pravda (Truth) and Izvestia (News), provided their government’s version of reality. Families risked the gulag to hide shortwave radios to hear Radio Free Europe and shared samizdat literature smuggled through an Iron Curtain. Russia is better today, but not by a lot. 

For all of the bitching about our leaders and our “news media,” nothing is forced upon us. We read and listen to what we choose. In our representative democracy, skewed as it is, we elect those who govern us, from the president down to county sheriffs and school boards. And had it not been for a deadly plague that too many of us let flair out of control, on Jan. 20 we’d be crowning King Donald I, with a monstrous prince and a princess eager to succeed him.

Sanity prevailed. Joe Biden’s Cabinet picks are stunning: a multihued pack of experts in their fields, with Merrick Garland tapped to run our Department of Justice after McConnell, soon to be minority leader, deprived him of a Supreme Court seat.

But Congress remains infested by greedy faithless opportunists. Under Trump, the national deficit rose to $3.3 trillion in FY2020, three times the previous year. Yet Republicans’ first priority in 2017 was to loot our treasury for half that amount to cut taxes for the rich. A lucky few used that windfall to buy stocks that since March have skyrocketed their earnings, while much of America waited in endless lines for food staples. These same legislators, sworn to protect us from domestic and foreign harm, spent most of 2020 refusing even a pittance of aid. Instead, they worked hard to deprive desperate Americans of healthcare.

Consider who is still occupying our Capitol: Josh Hawley, a wannabe Trump with a working brain, who thrust his fist up in support as barbarians stormed our gates; Ted Cruz, about whom I can no longer find words. And don’t forget Devin Nunes, now recipient of our Presidential Medal of Freedom. He, among others, pilloried Hillary Clinton endlessly for an unavoidable attack in Benghazi that killed fewer people than domestic terrorists at the Capitol.

Fresh footage shows a police officer bellowing in pain and fear as surging crowds crushed his head against heavy doors. Reporters found messages among insurrectionists who wanted to lynch Mike Pence for answering to the people, not the president. One terrorist carried a noose. Others had zip-tie cuffs. A plan to hold legislators as hostages might have succeeded; a large group of congressmen heard a marauding group just outside of their hiding place as they phoned their families to say what might have been goodbye.

Today is the 10th anniversary of a massacre down the road here in Tucson. A home-grown deviant opened fire at a Safeway shopping mall where Rep. Gabby Giffords was doing what our legislators are supposed to do. Constituents crowded around for her “Congress on Your Corner.” The man pumped bullets into her head. She miraculously survived, still struggling to speak, yet still devoted to what makes America great. But six others didn’t, including a 9-year-old girl and a respected judge. Thirteen others were wounded.

Trump claims, falsely as usual, that he ordered out the National Guard. He had nothing to do with it. Senior officers deployed guardsmen but only at checkpoints around the city. It took two and a half hours of confused commands to get troops to the Capitol after much of the mob had dispersed to celebrate their triumph.

Today, Arizona is awash in guns, home to that pile of steaming jackal shit in horns who made himself famous in the onslaught. Congressman Paul Gosar, as despicable as sub-humans get, is a leader in that treasonous attempt to pretend Democrats stole the election.

In yesterday’s Arizona Daily Star, a (adjectives deleted to avoid libel) Tucsonan named Robert Whitehead wrote: “Obviously many of your readers suffer from ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ This is not surprising since 90 percent of the news coverage is nastily anti-Trump.” The Star is included, he said, because it relies on “a totally biased Associated Press.” Letters call Trump “profane, a bully and divisive…but never is evidence of this provided.”  

Whitehead says Trump has no need to pardon himself because he has done nothing wrong. His shreds of evidence are that tax cut, “fixing our porous borders, taking on China, making a good start on peace in the Middle East, etc.” If this somehow reaches you, Mr. Whitehead, please note: our border problem is worse than ever; China is eclipsing us globally, stamping out cultures and trampling human rights, and Trump has splashed nitro-glycerin across the Middle East.”

I was infuriated by his slam at AP, where I worked for 39 years with men and women who routinely risk their lives to get the story straight. Whipped up by Trump’s incendiary slurs, thugs shouting “Murder the media” stomped on AP’s John Minchillo, stealing a camera and smashing a lens until others stepped out to, most likely, save his life.

But it’s his last line that gets me: “Does anyone know what Joe Biden’s objectives are?”

Yes, 81 million people cast ballots to show that they do. But, true, 74 million others voted for Trump. Biden’s objectives are to restore America to what it is meant to be: a nation of decent people who try to do the right thing, with the humanity and experience to help Americans see what the right thing is.  

Much is made of the old folks who dominate our leadership, mocked as has-beens out of touch with a different America. But power to them. Nancy Pelosi, born in 1940 in the last years of America’s “greatest generation” has seen what happens when apathy and ignorance let evil prevail. Impeachment can be swift. We are all firsthand eyewitnesses to outright deadly insurrection, whipped into flame by a mentally unbalanced despot-in-waiting.

Here in bluish Arizona, our new senator is Mark Kelly, Gabby Gifford’s husband. His campaign pledge reflects what I know to be his personal beliefs. He wants to see Congress, like the rest of government, represent all of America. But Biden, Kelly and all the others are only term-limit hired hands. It’s up to the rest to us to outvote the enemy, who is us.