January 6th was my birthday. My husband and I were scheduled to have my birthday cake--just the two of us--around 3pm that day. I checked the CNN news app on my phone about 2:30 pm, and saw that the Capitol had been breached. I plopped myself in front of the TV, turned on CNN, and for the next 7 hrs, I watched the horror unfold. Exhausted and not able to watch anymore, I got ready for bed...but before I ended the day, I threw my birthday cake, whole, into the trash. Nothing to celebrate here.
Love the perspective you bring to the coup attempt. I’m amazed that it failed, frankly. I know it’s really really embarrassing to misspell a word in your opening sentence, but I, for one, find enough value in your words to forgive you.This time. But don’t expect it “sic semper.” 😉
The zealotry is indicative of mental illness, akin to that of followers who met their excruciating end at Jonestown. Trump refers to “the movement” in the same terms and with the same fervor and fanaticism as the leader who commanded those troubled souls to leave their happy homes, follow him blindly and drink his kool-aid. There is NO difference.
Expose “the movement”. Then pull its legs off. The process has begun: Trump is losing his beloved golf tournament. The name will be a curse and the brand pure garbage. Those who stood by his side and enabled the squandering of America will find it impossible to return to any vestige of a happy and reasonable life. Jared called Hollywood looking to resituate his flailing staff. Unless it’s Hollywood UAE he doesn’t have a shot and neither do they. Corporate America says NIMBY. And so go the rest of us.
Those who commit crimes must be held to account. Our laws must be enforced. Our police must be protected. All those who incited, encouraged or enabled them (including members of Congress) must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When they leave prison they should be banned and shunned, lose all privileges and wear an invisible Scarlet T for treason.
But we cannot hate them all.
This is the time we must look to medicine and brain science for answers. Dr Bandy Lee and others have them. Once treated with disdain and scorned by even the most open minded of media, she is finally being credited as the visionary she is.
We cannot shame and shun them all. Our country needs mass deprogramming. Let the experts lead.
First of all, I want to say that Greg, you don't have to present your case from a defensive position. I presume you are getting flak for your case elsewhere in your world, perhaps Twitter, wherever you hang out in your favorite forum, hence the defensive posture.
You haven't presented anything questionable or unjustifiable.
The problem is this: all of us are in shock. No one wants to believe, present company included, that an armed and organized insurrection against our democratic institutions and democratically elected leaders has just occurred. It takes time to move from denial and disbelief to acceptance of an unpleasant (horrifying, shocking, disturbing, deeply distressing) reality.
We are learning more and more about the workings of Trump's U.S. Capitol attack with each passing day. So from one day to the next, new information is coming out about the extent of the attack. Each day, we are having to adjust our perspective of what really happened here.
It takes time to accept a truth so horrible.
It is Day 9 after the attack. Someone out there should be keeping count, like Brian Williams on MSNBC keeps count of Day XXX of the Trump Administration.
I say again, it is Day 9 of the U.S. Capitol Attack.
From the day of the attack, I have been deeply disturbed. So has my wife. So have a lot of people. Long before we had any real information at all about the nature of the attack, we have been deeply disturbed. This event is all-consuming. This event has pushed aside other projects and activities in our lives, because it's such a big deal.
Now we are all beginning to understand the reason for the depth of the shock, the reason why we have felt so deeply disturbed. Notice I use the word "beginning." We are still in the beginning stages of seeing the depth and breadth of this horrifying event.
When was the last time members of Congress conspired with radicals and extremists, oh, and just an afterthought, the President himself, to attempt to overthrow our democracy in order to get their way?
The Civil War.
The Civil War is an apt historical reference point, because maybe we didn't realize it, but the Civil War is still alive and well. The Civil War never ended. It just turned into a Cold War, an underground war.
You may think, "What is this fool saying? We don't have slavery anymore. We don't have Union generals fighting Confederate generals."
The Civil War is a social struggle, a power struggle between two social orders. The old social order of whites-first, males-first, straights-first vs. the new egalitarian social order. Red and Blue. Red = whites, males and straights come first, they get special privileges and benefits over non-whites, females, and non-straights. Conversely, Blue = human equality, all humans have equal rights and privileges.
Of course we are not limited to just the 3 categories listed here. Ancestry and ethnicity goes along with racial heritage.
My wife was watching all this on TV as it happened. She saw the man with the Camp Auschwitz T-shirt in motion, in action. She saw the back of his T-shirt. Know what it says?
"Staff"
Camp Auschwitz Staff
What do Lauren Boebert, the other members of Congress who are complicit, the men with the plastic handcuffs destined to capture Pence and Pelosi and others, our dearly beloved and dearly departed President, and Mr. Staff Person at Auschwitz have in common?
They want desperately to maintain the old social order.
They want to return to the past, when whites came first and when Blacks, Jews, women and non-straights (and yes non-Christians) could be dominated and persecuted.
Yes, we are in the middle of a civil war, a war in our society, a war between 2 opposing sides with mutually exclusive positions.
As I wrote in my long post on this page, it's Red vs. Blue. MAGA vs. non-MAGA. 74 million voters for Trump, the most votes in history for an incumbent President. Maybe double that many people in the US who are actually in that camp. At a bare minimum we have his 88 million Twitter followers.
We are experiencing a social crisis, a crisis in our society. Two sides of an issue, the issue of whether to have an egalitarian society, a society where every person gets equal rights and privileges and treatment.
My father is a Trump supporter. Family members, workmates, schoolmates, neighbors, in-laws, everywhere in society we have the belief that one class of people, be they white or male or straight or Christian or rich, should have the edge on everyone else.
Where we go from here is this: we keep fighting it out until, as a society, equality and egalitarian treatment is the national standard. Until it is widely accepted as such.
The writing is on the wall. The die is cast. We are not going back to a place where white police can kill blacks (and others) with impunity. We are not going back to the 1950s family model that old-school reactionary Christians cling to, with a dominant father and submissive mother and only straights are allowed and single female parents are ridiculed as old maids and all that crap, you know the story, I don't have to spell it all out. We are not going back to ostracizing and persecuting people because of their ancestry or ethnicity. We are not going back to the past, back to below the glass ceilings, we are breaking those glass ceilings.
The inexorable path towards a national society, and of course a global society, where all humans have equal value and treatment and privileges will not be stopped. This juggernaut grinds slowly, but it grinds thoroughly and cannot be reversed. You either ride the beast, or you try to stop it and get crushed.
In practical terms, the society has now set itself up with the international spectacle of the Egalitarian Resistance Movement being reviled. "They're calling me a domestic terrorist, I'm on the no-fly list!" says a crybaby white male putz in a DC airport after the Attack who only now is realizing that he and his racist and sexist views are no longer acceptable, nor even legal.
For a change, MAGA-ts are now seeing themselves ostracized, persecuted, mocked and ridiculed. And charged with felony.
This event is precisely the crucible, the focus, that this society needs in order to shine light on the dark corners of the old values which need to be cleaned.
A Study of English: perfectly good words turned ugly
Witch. Liberal. Socialist. Fascist.
Only a few of the many many words that have been demonized, that have been used as epithets and insults.
Look on the back of any dime, any American 10 cent piece with FDR on the front, and you will see a fasces. It's an old Roman symbol, and perhaps even older than that. You can break one stick at a time. You can maybe break two sticks at a time, but it's harder to do. An entire bundle of sticks cannot be broken, they are firm, they are fast, they are strong.
Fascism, before it became a dirty word, was the same concept that inspires a Union. There is power and strength in the many. United we stand, divided we fall.
Then Mussolini came along, and his corrupt dictatorship turn a fascist into, not a union member, not a citizen who is part of a group that has integrity, not a citizen of the United States of liberty and justice for all, but a common corrupt criminal. Worse, a citizen with nasty social values.
Nowadays, dummies want to demonize the word "liberal." Liberals, and union members, are the people who gave us the weekend, the 40-hour work week, overtime, mandatory medical coverage, safety requirements, and much more. Before we had liberals, we had corporations who worked people to death with no safety precautions. People died on the job, this is not an exaggeration.
Anyone who lives in Canada or Europe, like Stuart Attewell and Chris Durban, knows full well that socialism is a very good thing for regular people. Like Chris says elsewhere on this page, the Socialist Party exists in France and elsewhere. Americans have been brainwashed by capitalist corporations into thinking that socialism is unfavorable, but it is propaganda designed to benefit corporations. They are almost universally stingy as hell. The capitalist system is upside down. The money is concentrated in a few people at the "top." The true value, the most important players, are the workers on the front line, what people falsely call the "bottom." The true Top of a financial entity is the people who provide the actual service, not the current parasites who siphon off as much money for themselves as they can. Tellers at a bank. Anyone in a grocery store or other retail store. You get the idea.
Oh, and have you noticed that Medicare and Social Security keep hanging around? The parrots who have been brainwashed by corporate America, especially the older retired Republicans who vote reliably, nevertheless keep socialism intact. It is well known by politicians that if you want to win an election, you have to please and appease the AARP crowd, or you're a goner. Medicare and Social Security will never disappear for that very reason.
Notice the long, long distance between the word "witch" and the words "bewitched" and "bewitching"? Ever wonder about the odd contrast?
Beautiful independent oracles, seers, and healers from earlier eras in history were demonized by ignorant masses, the MAGA crowd of their generation. Evil, despicable things were done to people in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, all of that. Too ugly to print.
A witch is a beautiful person dedicated to magic and healing and self-sacrifice. Just saying.
January 6th was my birthday. My husband and I were scheduled to have my birthday cake--just the two of us--around 3pm that day. I checked the CNN news app on my phone about 2:30 pm, and saw that the Capitol had been breached. I plopped myself in front of the TV, turned on CNN, and for the next 7 hrs, I watched the horror unfold. Exhausted and not able to watch anymore, I got ready for bed...but before I ended the day, I threw my birthday cake, whole, into the trash. Nothing to celebrate here.
Love the perspective you bring to the coup attempt. I’m amazed that it failed, frankly. I know it’s really really embarrassing to misspell a word in your opening sentence, but I, for one, find enough value in your words to forgive you.This time. But don’t expect it “sic semper.” 😉
The zealotry is indicative of mental illness, akin to that of followers who met their excruciating end at Jonestown. Trump refers to “the movement” in the same terms and with the same fervor and fanaticism as the leader who commanded those troubled souls to leave their happy homes, follow him blindly and drink his kool-aid. There is NO difference.
Expose “the movement”. Then pull its legs off. The process has begun: Trump is losing his beloved golf tournament. The name will be a curse and the brand pure garbage. Those who stood by his side and enabled the squandering of America will find it impossible to return to any vestige of a happy and reasonable life. Jared called Hollywood looking to resituate his flailing staff. Unless it’s Hollywood UAE he doesn’t have a shot and neither do they. Corporate America says NIMBY. And so go the rest of us.
Those who commit crimes must be held to account. Our laws must be enforced. Our police must be protected. All those who incited, encouraged or enabled them (including members of Congress) must be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. When they leave prison they should be banned and shunned, lose all privileges and wear an invisible Scarlet T for treason.
But we cannot hate them all.
This is the time we must look to medicine and brain science for answers. Dr Bandy Lee and others have them. Once treated with disdain and scorned by even the most open minded of media, she is finally being credited as the visionary she is.
We cannot shame and shun them all. Our country needs mass deprogramming. Let the experts lead.
Can someone assure me that these people will actually be prosecuted and not walk away with simply a hand slap?
It just seems that the arrests are moving along very slowly, and we have heard so little (so late) from FBI & other agencies.
DAY 9 of the U.S. CAPITOL ATTACK
First of all, I want to say that Greg, you don't have to present your case from a defensive position. I presume you are getting flak for your case elsewhere in your world, perhaps Twitter, wherever you hang out in your favorite forum, hence the defensive posture.
You haven't presented anything questionable or unjustifiable.
The problem is this: all of us are in shock. No one wants to believe, present company included, that an armed and organized insurrection against our democratic institutions and democratically elected leaders has just occurred. It takes time to move from denial and disbelief to acceptance of an unpleasant (horrifying, shocking, disturbing, deeply distressing) reality.
We are learning more and more about the workings of Trump's U.S. Capitol attack with each passing day. So from one day to the next, new information is coming out about the extent of the attack. Each day, we are having to adjust our perspective of what really happened here.
It takes time to accept a truth so horrible.
It is Day 9 after the attack. Someone out there should be keeping count, like Brian Williams on MSNBC keeps count of Day XXX of the Trump Administration.
I say again, it is Day 9 of the U.S. Capitol Attack.
From the day of the attack, I have been deeply disturbed. So has my wife. So have a lot of people. Long before we had any real information at all about the nature of the attack, we have been deeply disturbed. This event is all-consuming. This event has pushed aside other projects and activities in our lives, because it's such a big deal.
Now we are all beginning to understand the reason for the depth of the shock, the reason why we have felt so deeply disturbed. Notice I use the word "beginning." We are still in the beginning stages of seeing the depth and breadth of this horrifying event.
When was the last time members of Congress conspired with radicals and extremists, oh, and just an afterthought, the President himself, to attempt to overthrow our democracy in order to get their way?
The Civil War.
The Civil War is an apt historical reference point, because maybe we didn't realize it, but the Civil War is still alive and well. The Civil War never ended. It just turned into a Cold War, an underground war.
You may think, "What is this fool saying? We don't have slavery anymore. We don't have Union generals fighting Confederate generals."
The Civil War is a social struggle, a power struggle between two social orders. The old social order of whites-first, males-first, straights-first vs. the new egalitarian social order. Red and Blue. Red = whites, males and straights come first, they get special privileges and benefits over non-whites, females, and non-straights. Conversely, Blue = human equality, all humans have equal rights and privileges.
Of course we are not limited to just the 3 categories listed here. Ancestry and ethnicity goes along with racial heritage.
My wife was watching all this on TV as it happened. She saw the man with the Camp Auschwitz T-shirt in motion, in action. She saw the back of his T-shirt. Know what it says?
"Staff"
Camp Auschwitz Staff
What do Lauren Boebert, the other members of Congress who are complicit, the men with the plastic handcuffs destined to capture Pence and Pelosi and others, our dearly beloved and dearly departed President, and Mr. Staff Person at Auschwitz have in common?
They want desperately to maintain the old social order.
They want to return to the past, when whites came first and when Blacks, Jews, women and non-straights (and yes non-Christians) could be dominated and persecuted.
Yes, we are in the middle of a civil war, a war in our society, a war between 2 opposing sides with mutually exclusive positions.
Which side are you on?
The Wilkes-Boothers in congress need to speak the truth or be punished.
"Where do we go from here?"
As I wrote in my long post on this page, it's Red vs. Blue. MAGA vs. non-MAGA. 74 million voters for Trump, the most votes in history for an incumbent President. Maybe double that many people in the US who are actually in that camp. At a bare minimum we have his 88 million Twitter followers.
We are experiencing a social crisis, a crisis in our society. Two sides of an issue, the issue of whether to have an egalitarian society, a society where every person gets equal rights and privileges and treatment.
My father is a Trump supporter. Family members, workmates, schoolmates, neighbors, in-laws, everywhere in society we have the belief that one class of people, be they white or male or straight or Christian or rich, should have the edge on everyone else.
Where we go from here is this: we keep fighting it out until, as a society, equality and egalitarian treatment is the national standard. Until it is widely accepted as such.
The writing is on the wall. The die is cast. We are not going back to a place where white police can kill blacks (and others) with impunity. We are not going back to the 1950s family model that old-school reactionary Christians cling to, with a dominant father and submissive mother and only straights are allowed and single female parents are ridiculed as old maids and all that crap, you know the story, I don't have to spell it all out. We are not going back to ostracizing and persecuting people because of their ancestry or ethnicity. We are not going back to the past, back to below the glass ceilings, we are breaking those glass ceilings.
The inexorable path towards a national society, and of course a global society, where all humans have equal value and treatment and privileges will not be stopped. This juggernaut grinds slowly, but it grinds thoroughly and cannot be reversed. You either ride the beast, or you try to stop it and get crushed.
In practical terms, the society has now set itself up with the international spectacle of the Egalitarian Resistance Movement being reviled. "They're calling me a domestic terrorist, I'm on the no-fly list!" says a crybaby white male putz in a DC airport after the Attack who only now is realizing that he and his racist and sexist views are no longer acceptable, nor even legal.
For a change, MAGA-ts are now seeing themselves ostracized, persecuted, mocked and ridiculed. And charged with felony.
This event is precisely the crucible, the focus, that this society needs in order to shine light on the dark corners of the old values which need to be cleaned.
We are beginning a major house cleaning.
Greg, only one question for you.
Why did you choose the title "Capitol Records"?
https://www.discoverlosangeles.com/sites/default/files/media/Activities/Points%20of%20Interest/capitol-records-building.jpg
;>)
Greg, I don't believe that guy in the second video brought the shield with him - at the end, he says you have to take it from a cop's hands.
A Study of English: perfectly good words turned ugly
Witch. Liberal. Socialist. Fascist.
Only a few of the many many words that have been demonized, that have been used as epithets and insults.
Look on the back of any dime, any American 10 cent piece with FDR on the front, and you will see a fasces. It's an old Roman symbol, and perhaps even older than that. You can break one stick at a time. You can maybe break two sticks at a time, but it's harder to do. An entire bundle of sticks cannot be broken, they are firm, they are fast, they are strong.
Fascism, before it became a dirty word, was the same concept that inspires a Union. There is power and strength in the many. United we stand, divided we fall.
Then Mussolini came along, and his corrupt dictatorship turn a fascist into, not a union member, not a citizen who is part of a group that has integrity, not a citizen of the United States of liberty and justice for all, but a common corrupt criminal. Worse, a citizen with nasty social values.
Nowadays, dummies want to demonize the word "liberal." Liberals, and union members, are the people who gave us the weekend, the 40-hour work week, overtime, mandatory medical coverage, safety requirements, and much more. Before we had liberals, we had corporations who worked people to death with no safety precautions. People died on the job, this is not an exaggeration.
Anyone who lives in Canada or Europe, like Stuart Attewell and Chris Durban, knows full well that socialism is a very good thing for regular people. Like Chris says elsewhere on this page, the Socialist Party exists in France and elsewhere. Americans have been brainwashed by capitalist corporations into thinking that socialism is unfavorable, but it is propaganda designed to benefit corporations. They are almost universally stingy as hell. The capitalist system is upside down. The money is concentrated in a few people at the "top." The true value, the most important players, are the workers on the front line, what people falsely call the "bottom." The true Top of a financial entity is the people who provide the actual service, not the current parasites who siphon off as much money for themselves as they can. Tellers at a bank. Anyone in a grocery store or other retail store. You get the idea.
Oh, and have you noticed that Medicare and Social Security keep hanging around? The parrots who have been brainwashed by corporate America, especially the older retired Republicans who vote reliably, nevertheless keep socialism intact. It is well known by politicians that if you want to win an election, you have to please and appease the AARP crowd, or you're a goner. Medicare and Social Security will never disappear for that very reason.
Notice the long, long distance between the word "witch" and the words "bewitched" and "bewitching"? Ever wonder about the odd contrast?
Beautiful independent oracles, seers, and healers from earlier eras in history were demonized by ignorant masses, the MAGA crowd of their generation. Evil, despicable things were done to people in the Middle Ages, the Inquisition, all of that. Too ugly to print.
A witch is a beautiful person dedicated to magic and healing and self-sacrifice. Just saying.