The 3 historic Wednesdays in January must include, in my opinion, the Tuesday night before that 1st Wednesday of the U.S. Capitol riot. I was driving all night, my truck driving job, and I listened in astonishment and incredulity and shock as Stacey Abrams and her partners somehow managed to flip the Senate blue (barely) by voting in the 2 Georgia Democratic Senate candidates. Against all the odds. So I went from unbridled joy straight into shock and horror in less than 6 hours. It was emotional whiplash.
I spent the entirety of Wednesday in front of the TV, watching the Inauguration, watching Kamala Harris, the new DEMOCRATIC leader of the Senate, swear in Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Alex Padilla. YAY California!! YAY Stacey Abrams and Voto Latino and all that hard work registering Georgia voters and getting them to submit a ballot!!
It is therapy. It is catharsis. It is a bit grueling making the adjustment back to a semblance of decency in high office, of competence in government, of true public service. Watching the new ethics plan is like getting over a bout of a particularly nasty disease, because we have to purge the corruption out of our system. Out of our minds and souls. I haven't seen this much govt. corruption since I visited my parents in Nigeria back in the 1970s. It is a rough pivot, returning to what we are calling normalcy.
Believe it or not, it was even therapy to watch Joe and Jill walk into the White House, and then to watch Kamala and Doug walk into the WH, even though they don't live there. I assume they were walking into the WH, what do I know, maybe it was the Capitol, maybe it was the Lincoln Memorial, but it was therapy anyway, that's how my fevered mind saw it, they were entering the halls of political power and replacing old Orange Jumpsuit.
I'm still making the transition, the adjustment, the pivot. It's rough.
I have posted this before, perhaps elsewhere, but it bears repeating: January 2021 has put me through more emotions than I usually experience in months, perhaps an entire year. This has been an epic month, at least for me. Completely unforgettable. Stark, vivid, and crass.
Another point I should make: DT is skilled at attacking and obscuring and neutering what he doesn't like. He also wanted to divert attention away from the Inauguration, to delegitimize it, by holding a massive event of his own, some kind of huge send-off. But he didn't have the power anymore to pull it off, after his link to his cult followers was severed.
No one can overstate the significance of Twitter and FB cutting him off from those millions of people. The neutralizing power of those account suspensions is tremendous. It cannot be overstated, it might have been the single most important event of this month. I can only speculate what the last 4 years might have been like, and even what January 2021 might have been like, had those "social media" companies applied their rules evenly to DT like they do to everyone else.
DT's tactic of attacking the strengths of the democratic system mirror Hitler precisely. A few days ago, I dropped a profanity-laden (at least it was in my mind, might not have come out that way on paper), impassioned post saying that DT learned from Hitler to attack the judiciary, the press, the intelligentsia (Democrats, liberals), the election system itself, everything that opposes a dictator's attempts to secure absolute power.
Everything that stands in the way of your absolute power, you attack. In other countries, like Russia, like Belarus, a dictator can get away with corrupting the election process, by tampering with the statistics.
Donald John Trump is America's most powerful and probably only attack on our system of democracy. People in the press have called it a "stress test," which minimizes it in a way, and makes it sound like an academic exercise. He tried everything he could think of to become dictator here. He used every lawyer and knowledgeable career expert he could lay his hands on to find ways to make it happen, explored every loophole, attempted every legal and technical strategy.
We survived. Democracy survived. In a way, the U.S. Capitol riot had several silver linings. The most effective beneficial consequence, in my opinion, is that it made it real for Americans, and most particularly and most vividly for members of Congress, what a dictatorship actually looks like. We have been spoiled. We have been complacent. All over the world, all through history, and even today in what we condescendingly call "banana republics," dictators can rule. Kings and monarchs and monarchic oligarchies like Saudi Arabia can dominate a society. Ultimate powermongers like Putin can control an entire nation, and they do.
Now we know what it looks like, those pages out of history books, those news reports from "banana republics" like Russia and Belarus and China (think Tiananmen).
I have also said here, and I will say it again, the journalists who belatedly compared the U.S. Capitol riot to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch need to grow up and become diaper trained. Let's pay attention to the journalists who belatedly compare the U.S. Capitol Riot to Kristallnacht. Thank you, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others. Hitler learned to attack the strengths of a democratic society. Trump's attack on the U.S. Capitol is a wake-up call for a compalcent, sleepy society that doesn't think it can happen here.
Thank God this nightmare is over. Finally our heightened anxiety level can start to come down.
"with the vim of a bird just released from a fishing net." 😆 What a perfect line. Fauci's smile and coy answers to the press about Trump vs Biden covid response yesterday made me so happy. He's got his groove back.
Ok, now that I have all that out of my system, a response to Greg's article.
I love the artwork, the imagery of St. Augustine. Without knowing a thing about this person from the 5th Century, the artwork and the references inside the article bring love and sweetness into the discussion. Really beautiful. Sets a very lovely tone.
Joe Biden is growing on me. Of course, when you don't really know someone, you form your opinion based on the few facts you have, and you fill in the blanks with conjecture. I really don't know Joe at all, but I'm learning quickly. Other people can nit-pick and criticize his Cabinet choices, but the intent is as clear as daylight: we are seeing the most diverse and interesting group of high officials we have ever seen. And, in keeping with the Obama Administration that Joe knows so intimately and so well, they are COMPETENT. They have experience and skills.
And listen to the man talk. He is plain-spoken, as befits a man from Scranton and Delaware who grew up working class, but boy, he has principles, he lives his religious convictions.
This guy is good. The more I watch, the more I like.
Kamala Harris requires no reflection, she is just a gem. Another Californian in high office in Washington, another godsend.
It’s comforting to know that we are in more experienced hands, that we can go to bed knowing we won’t wake up to war with another country because they insulted the fool in the White House or didn’t kowtow to his every whim. It’s notable that Qanon was waiting for Trump to move on the inauguration, to arrest every democrat on the dais on Thursday, but when that didn’t happen the cold truth dawned when their leader said, “we’ve been duped”. That will be the refrain going forward when all if Trumps base realizes that his propaganda was just lies to get them to part with their money.
The 3 historic Wednesdays in January must include, in my opinion, the Tuesday night before that 1st Wednesday of the U.S. Capitol riot. I was driving all night, my truck driving job, and I listened in astonishment and incredulity and shock as Stacey Abrams and her partners somehow managed to flip the Senate blue (barely) by voting in the 2 Georgia Democratic Senate candidates. Against all the odds. So I went from unbridled joy straight into shock and horror in less than 6 hours. It was emotional whiplash.
I spent the entirety of Wednesday in front of the TV, watching the Inauguration, watching Kamala Harris, the new DEMOCRATIC leader of the Senate, swear in Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff and Alex Padilla. YAY California!! YAY Stacey Abrams and Voto Latino and all that hard work registering Georgia voters and getting them to submit a ballot!!
It is therapy. It is catharsis. It is a bit grueling making the adjustment back to a semblance of decency in high office, of competence in government, of true public service. Watching the new ethics plan is like getting over a bout of a particularly nasty disease, because we have to purge the corruption out of our system. Out of our minds and souls. I haven't seen this much govt. corruption since I visited my parents in Nigeria back in the 1970s. It is a rough pivot, returning to what we are calling normalcy.
Believe it or not, it was even therapy to watch Joe and Jill walk into the White House, and then to watch Kamala and Doug walk into the WH, even though they don't live there. I assume they were walking into the WH, what do I know, maybe it was the Capitol, maybe it was the Lincoln Memorial, but it was therapy anyway, that's how my fevered mind saw it, they were entering the halls of political power and replacing old Orange Jumpsuit.
I'm still making the transition, the adjustment, the pivot. It's rough.
I have posted this before, perhaps elsewhere, but it bears repeating: January 2021 has put me through more emotions than I usually experience in months, perhaps an entire year. This has been an epic month, at least for me. Completely unforgettable. Stark, vivid, and crass.
Another point I should make: DT is skilled at attacking and obscuring and neutering what he doesn't like. He also wanted to divert attention away from the Inauguration, to delegitimize it, by holding a massive event of his own, some kind of huge send-off. But he didn't have the power anymore to pull it off, after his link to his cult followers was severed.
No one can overstate the significance of Twitter and FB cutting him off from those millions of people. The neutralizing power of those account suspensions is tremendous. It cannot be overstated, it might have been the single most important event of this month. I can only speculate what the last 4 years might have been like, and even what January 2021 might have been like, had those "social media" companies applied their rules evenly to DT like they do to everyone else.
DT's tactic of attacking the strengths of the democratic system mirror Hitler precisely. A few days ago, I dropped a profanity-laden (at least it was in my mind, might not have come out that way on paper), impassioned post saying that DT learned from Hitler to attack the judiciary, the press, the intelligentsia (Democrats, liberals), the election system itself, everything that opposes a dictator's attempts to secure absolute power.
Everything that stands in the way of your absolute power, you attack. In other countries, like Russia, like Belarus, a dictator can get away with corrupting the election process, by tampering with the statistics.
Donald John Trump is America's most powerful and probably only attack on our system of democracy. People in the press have called it a "stress test," which minimizes it in a way, and makes it sound like an academic exercise. He tried everything he could think of to become dictator here. He used every lawyer and knowledgeable career expert he could lay his hands on to find ways to make it happen, explored every loophole, attempted every legal and technical strategy.
We survived. Democracy survived. In a way, the U.S. Capitol riot had several silver linings. The most effective beneficial consequence, in my opinion, is that it made it real for Americans, and most particularly and most vividly for members of Congress, what a dictatorship actually looks like. We have been spoiled. We have been complacent. All over the world, all through history, and even today in what we condescendingly call "banana republics," dictators can rule. Kings and monarchs and monarchic oligarchies like Saudi Arabia can dominate a society. Ultimate powermongers like Putin can control an entire nation, and they do.
Now we know what it looks like, those pages out of history books, those news reports from "banana republics" like Russia and Belarus and China (think Tiananmen).
I have also said here, and I will say it again, the journalists who belatedly compared the U.S. Capitol riot to Hitler's Beer Hall Putsch need to grow up and become diaper trained. Let's pay attention to the journalists who belatedly compare the U.S. Capitol Riot to Kristallnacht. Thank you, Arnold Schwarzenegger and others. Hitler learned to attack the strengths of a democratic society. Trump's attack on the U.S. Capitol is a wake-up call for a compalcent, sleepy society that doesn't think it can happen here.
Thank God this nightmare is over. Finally our heightened anxiety level can start to come down.
"with the vim of a bird just released from a fishing net." 😆 What a perfect line. Fauci's smile and coy answers to the press about Trump vs Biden covid response yesterday made me so happy. He's got his groove back.
Ok, now that I have all that out of my system, a response to Greg's article.
I love the artwork, the imagery of St. Augustine. Without knowing a thing about this person from the 5th Century, the artwork and the references inside the article bring love and sweetness into the discussion. Really beautiful. Sets a very lovely tone.
Joe Biden is growing on me. Of course, when you don't really know someone, you form your opinion based on the few facts you have, and you fill in the blanks with conjecture. I really don't know Joe at all, but I'm learning quickly. Other people can nit-pick and criticize his Cabinet choices, but the intent is as clear as daylight: we are seeing the most diverse and interesting group of high officials we have ever seen. And, in keeping with the Obama Administration that Joe knows so intimately and so well, they are COMPETENT. They have experience and skills.
And listen to the man talk. He is plain-spoken, as befits a man from Scranton and Delaware who grew up working class, but boy, he has principles, he lives his religious convictions.
This guy is good. The more I watch, the more I like.
Kamala Harris requires no reflection, she is just a gem. Another Californian in high office in Washington, another godsend.
Hey Hey Goodbye! Out with the Old, in with the New!
This video is awesome, unfortunately the only YouTube version I found is poor quality. See if you can get hold of the high quality version.
https://youtu.be/IP-R-QdXC3A
I learned two new words today: Weal and antipode. ☺️ Thanks, Greg. Excellent writing.
Beautifully written. Perfectly captures the mojo of the moment.
It’s comforting to know that we are in more experienced hands, that we can go to bed knowing we won’t wake up to war with another country because they insulted the fool in the White House or didn’t kowtow to his every whim. It’s notable that Qanon was waiting for Trump to move on the inauguration, to arrest every democrat on the dais on Thursday, but when that didn’t happen the cold truth dawned when their leader said, “we’ve been duped”. That will be the refrain going forward when all if Trumps base realizes that his propaganda was just lies to get them to part with their money.
Truth will win in the end. That’s no malarkey