Fascists are winning, democrats are losing
Americans live in the twilight of a democracy that will not defend itself.
One question tells the whole story: Why has Trump not been indicted?
Read MoreCapitol Insurrection
Should Trump be indicted?
Dispatch from an imagined future: The Fascist Victory in America (2021-2025)
WE SHOULD NEVER FORGET–What really happened on January 6: Molly Ball’s article in TIME on Mike Fanone
The dog days of August and the Olympic Games: Time to act on Trump and the Republican fascist threat
The indictment of Trump: The Democratic wall of silence begins to break
Should Trump be indicted? REVISED — A comprehensive evaluation of the arguments
IMPUNITY: The biggrest and most important story no one will cover
REPRISE: When will Trump be indicted?
America has become a Country of the Absurd
Reprinted, with permission, from ABSURARAMA! June 6, 2021. In the United States, perhaps 50-70 million voters, including a vast majority of Republican voters and almost…
The U.S. doesn’t need investigations or commissions. It needs prosecutions.
Republicans have done the Democrats and the ciountry a huge favor by blocking the creation of a special joint commission to investigate the January 6 insurrection. ..
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No, we don’t need any further commissions of inquiry to distract us from the real issues and stakes in American politics today.
What we need is a Justice Department Task Force to launch and coordinate the prosecutions of Donald Trump and his Republican co-conspirators who committed many serious felonies in their efforts to overthrow the election and the Constitution in 2020-2021. Trump should also be prosecuted for his many egregious crimes in office, including the instances of obstruction of justice detailed–with a summary of the evidence–in the Mueller Report, and the many instances of obstruction of justice through witness tampering and retaliation against witnesses for truthfully testifying in impeachment investigations.
The rule of law is at stake here.
Congress, and in particular the House, has an important role to play. Instead of spinning their wheels in yet another congressional inquiry into the insurrection on January 6, the Democrats in the House should be holding hearings into why the Justice Department has not proceeded with prosecuting Donald Trump and his co-conspirators for the many crimes he and they committed in office, including the rash of election-related crimes committed after November 3, 2021.
When will Trump be indicted?
Putting all of these actions together, it appears that Donald Trump led a vast conspiracy, in which he enlisted the support and cooperation of Republican federal, state, and local legislators and officials, to overthrow the results of the November 3 presidential election and, consequently, the Constitution of the United States.
Why have we heard virtually nothing about federal or state grand juries investigating these alleged crimes?
There have been only a few exceptions, such as the grand jury in Atlanta where a courageous prosecutor is investigating a blatant case of apparent election interference for which there is recorded and public evidence.
Why indeed has former President Donald Trump not yet been indicted for the many crimes he has apparently committed?
When will he be indicted?
Moreover, when will his many Republican co-conspirators and accomplices in these apparent crimes be investigated and themselves indicted?
What is going on?
We are all tired of thinking about Trump and his crimes. However, democracy is a very fragile flower, and we have just seen how close we can come to losing it. If America’s first fascist president, and the many members of the Republican Party who engaged in a vast conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, are not held accountable before the courts for the very numerous crimes which they committed, the lesson of political impunity will not be lost on others.
Americans who are too cowardly to defend American democracy by prosecuting, and insisting on the prosecution of, those who have committed criminal acts in furtherance of the Republican conspiracy to overthrow the Constitution, will have only themselves and their own passivity to blame if it is lost.
Living offline for a year; and the author’s Twitter experience
Aaron Rosenberg lived offline for a year, trying to understand what it was like in order to help him understand the subject of his academic research.
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I myself experienced some of the extraordinary pull of Twitter while following in extremely close fashion political developments related to Donald Trump’s attempts to hang on to power after losing the election on November 3, 2021.
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Aaron Rosenberg’s experience is instructive. When thinking about my Twitter experience, I recall reading somewhere that the average life of a tweet is about 15 minutes.
Forget bipartisanship. The task before us is to extirpate the fascist threat, and to defeat all fascists.
Developing Sometimes it is too hard to look an existential threat directly in the eye. Sometimes it is too hard to call out by its…
In Memoriam: The Republican Party (March 20, 1854-February 13, 2021)
While severely ailing for the last four years, The Republican Party entered its death throes and died on February 13, 2021.
This constitutional argument had been twice rejected by the full Senate, which under the Constitution has the sole authority to determine how it will proceed in impeachment cases.
Consequently, not only did the 43 Republican Senators violate their oaths of office and their oaths to do impartial justice, but they also violated the Constitution’s provision that the Senate is the sole arbiter of how it should proceed in an impeachment case, and the decision on constitutionality the Senate reached in exercising that power.
Journalist’s have been too intellectually lazy to understand and
report these details. Instead, they glibly write that Republican Senators who voted to acquit Trump justified their actions on a “technicality”.
Far from being a “technicality”, the bad-faith argument these apologists for Trump used to try to hide their craven cowardice involved fundamental precepts of the Constitution, including binding Senate determinations of whether the trial was constitutional or not.
Although the House Impeachment Managers lost their case for conviction in the Senate, they put forth a brilliant case, which convinced 57 of the 100 Senators to vote to impeach Trump.
Now, the battle must be taken to the court of public opinion, and to the polls in 1922, 1924, 1926, and beyond.
Democrats blow huge opportunity at impeachment trial, losing 57-43. But work must continue to tear down Trump’s propaganda wall.
The great political challenge we all now face is to find a way to dismantle Trump’s propaganda bubble and alternative universe, so that rational people, no longer fearful of fascist mobs and voters, can resume a politics of reason.
Yet let us not lose sight of the great success of the House Impeachment Managers in presenting a compelling case, Let us also not lose sight of the fascist challenge that America faces, and the hard work that remains to be done to overcome it.
SLOW DOWN. Give Republican Senators time to change their minds
Democratic Impeachment Managers need to slow down, and give Republican Senators time to change their minds. Brilliant lawyering. Not so good on understanding psychology. The…
The Republican cancer on the American body politic
Let there be no doubt about it. The American body politic is infected by a cancer. That cancer threatens the existence and survival of American democracy. Currently all of the antibodies and forces defending the body politic are fully engaged in fighting the cancer.
The cancer on the American body politic must be killed, with the political equivalents of chemotherapy, radiation, and even surgery where necessary.
Unlike a human body, the American body politic does not have the expected lifespan of a single human life. In the case of an individual fighting cancer, remission for five or ten years might, in some cases, be regarded as a “success”.
This is not the case with the American body politic, however. A five or ten year remission of the cancer would not be sufficient to save the life of a democracy that is already 244 years old.
The cancer is represented by the current Republican Party, and most but not all of its Senators and Representatives in Congress.
Now, 50 Republican senators face a similar moment of truth.
Will they honor their oaths of office to uphold the Constitution and to defend their country against all enemies foreign and domestics, “so help me God”?
Will they honor their solemn oaths to do impartial justice in accordance with constitutions and laws in the impeachment trail of Donald J. Trump, “so help me God”?
Or will they betray their oaths, the American people, and their country, kowtowing and genuflecting instead before the false god who threatened our democracy, who attempted to stay in power through a coup d’état, the last act of which was the Capitol Insurrection?
…But you know that they have sold their souls to the Devil, that they have entered into Mephistophelean bargains they hope will give them continued political life, just as Goethe’s Faust sought to prolong his life.
These 50 Republican Senators have one last shot at redemption: they can honestly evaluate the charges in the Article o impeachment and weigh the evidence, which will lead them ineluctably to a decision to convict Donald Trump for the his attempted coup and the Capitol Insurrection on January 6, 2021.
Their decisions will mark their lives and careers for all time. It is as if their children and grandchildren, and further descendants could read on their tombstones, “He (or she) voted to honor his (or her) oaths and to save the Republic,” or “He (or she) voted to betray the Constitution and his (or her) country, and for the false god Donald Trump.
Throughout their lives, they will have to face their children and grandchildren, and every one they know or may come to know, and answer that question.
If they make the wrong choice, the shame of that choice will mark them for the rest of their days.