The Bully Circus

There was a time when Teddy Roosevelt declared the presidency as a kind of "bully pulpit," a means of preaching and advocating for issues that mattered. As Taegan Goddard notes at his Political Dictionary site:

The bully pulpit in Roosevelt’s mind wasn’t about pummeling legislators with presidential authority; rather, he believed the president could encourage the public to push their legislators on behalf of his agenda.

In these times, however, bullying means something darker. Under donald trump, the bullying is a means to treat people not in his circle of power with cruel, insulting, threatening, and aggressive actions.

trump's assaults on Venezuela - not only killing boat crews on dubious accusations, but also seizing oil tankers and running an illegal military operation to capture that nation's president - is but one example of the aggression trump wants to inflict on others.

Here at home, trump's pumped-up immigration police in ICE/Border Patrol under the aegis of "Homeland Security" are committing acts of violence and attempts at intimidation towards the cities of DC, Los Angeles, Portland OR, Chicago, and lately Minneapolis-St. Paul where the escalation has turned bloody (via Edith Olmsted at New Republic):

Following the news that Minnesota and the Twin Cities were suing to stop the Trump administration’s “Operation Metro Surge,” the president took to Truth Social to air his frustration with his besieged constituents.

“Do the people of Minnesota really want to live in a community in which there are thousands of already convicted murderers, drug dealers and addicts, rapists, violent released and escaped prisoners, dangerous people from foreign mental institutions and insane asylums, and other deadly criminals too dangerous to even mention,” Trump wrote. (note: trump is gaslighting again to fearmonger to his flock) 

He claimed that all the “patriots of ICE” wanted was to “remove” these individuals. But last week, the residents of Minneapolis saw something entirely different: an ICE agent senselessly killed a U.S. citizen, Renee Good, and was then defended by every level of government.

Good’s death sparked civil unrest in Minneapolis (and nationwide), as well as requests for federal immigration forces to take their leave. But the Trump administration has doubled down on its occupation, deploying roughly 1,000 more U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers.

Instead of toning down on the rhetoric - the agent who shot Good was caught on his own body cam calling her a "f-cking b-tch" - and violence towards our own communities, the government thugs are crowing and acting worse (from Ashley Vega at People (yes, they're covering this)):

A Minneapolis pastor said he was detained by ICE after heading toward protests near his church. Pastor Kenny Callaghan of All God’s Children MCC shared his account with Fox 9 Minneapolis, saying the encounter unfolded on the morning of Wednesday, Jan. 7.

Callaghan told the outlet he realized something was happening nearby when he heard whistles and car horns outside. He said he grabbed his own whistles and moved toward the commotion, only for the situation to escalate quickly.

He told Fox 9 he managed to take a few photos as the vehicle drove down Portland Avenue before pocketing his phone when he noticed agents surrounding a “brown-skinned woman.”

Callaghan said he joined in as a crowd chanted, “We are not afraid,” and tried to redirect attention toward himself, telling the agents to arrest him instead of the woman they were surrounding.

“Before I knew it, they were putting handcuffs on my arms and they asked me, ‘Are you afraid now?’ ” he recalled.

He said he answered, “No, I am not,” as agents continued detaining him. Callaghan told Fox 9 he was held in the SUV with two other detainees as agents returned multiple times to question him.

Callaghan said the message stayed the same during those check-ins, with agents repeatedly asking if he was afraid. He also said they asked for his ID and his phone while he remained in the back of the vehicle.

At one point, Callaghan said he asked whether he was under arrest and was left alone for a period of time afterward. He also told Fox 9 that an agent allegedly waved a gun in his face, and while fear flickered for a moment, it was quickly overtaken by outrage.

“And then they came back the last time and they said, ‘Are you afraid yet?’ ” he said. “And I said, ‘No.’”

Meanwhile, the ICE and Border thugs are firing tear gas canisters in nearly every crowd and sometimes right in people's faces.

This is what they want, what trump wants, what the Far Right has wanted for decades. They want the thrill and elation of making the rest of us terrified of them, of their authority and their potential for violence.

trump wants the violence to escalate: it will justify any plans he has of suspending the Constitution under "emergency powers" and make himself Dear Leader For Life. While the protesters will do everything proper and avoid conflict whenever possible, expect the armed and body-armored ICE gangs to reenact the worst of police violence that would make Chicago 1968 seem like a block party.

And this all happening here in the U.S. Outside our borders, trump is busy waving his big stick towards Iran (again), Syria, Cuba, and worst of all Denmark in a brazen attempt to seize Greenland from one of our NATO allies. If we do invade Greenland, it would break that alliance and drive Europe - already coping with a belligerent and desperate Russia - into chaos.

Instead of a bully pulpit, what we have is a bully circus. trump and his Far Right allies are running amok behaving like Alpha Male Wannabes, mistaking arrogance for leadership and violence for success. The problem is they don't show any genuine thought or planning into what they're actually doing. They kidnaped Maduro from Venezuela from the looks of things thinking it would immediately collapse that government. Instead, Maduro's party promoted his veep Delcy Rodríguez into acting presidency leaving trump on the outside threatening more attacks and demanding she bend to his will.

If trump thinks there won't be any consequences if he sends an invasion force into Greenland, he's ignoring the reality that the end of NATO would end our military presence across most of Europe: Our extensive overseas base network is a major reason why our logistics and military effectiveness is the best in the world, and if that goes so too goes our military dominance.

Instead of projecting themselves as Alpha Males, trump and his lackeys are posing as clowns... albeit clowns armed with assault weapons, flashbang grenades, and long-range missiles that can ruin anybody's day.

The world tonight is a circus of fear, stained with the blood of innocent lives and propped up by the violent fantasies of an aging, addled narcissist. 

Stay safe, America. Stay safe, people of Venezuela and Greenland and Iran and everywhere else trump is bullying us all.

trump Normalizing Terror

Update: Thank you again Batocchio, for including this blog at Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! To everyone showing up, I hope you're getting the vote out for Democrats across every ballot. I'm heading to the Florida Early Voting poll place in a few minutes. Balz to the Walz, America! And uh, please ask your friends to buy my book. (hey if trump can grift, so can I and with better product!) --->

While my part of the world of Central Florida is recovering from the wreckage of Hurricane Milton, other states are still recovering from the damage left by the previous storm Helene. Places like upper Georgia and the mountain regions of North Carolina and Tennessee were ravaged by mass flooding and erasure of entire towns.

At least, some of those places ought to be recovering with help from the federal government, except that recovery officers are avoiding efforts in areas suddenly swarming with so-called "militias" convinced that FEMA is a threat to "their liberty and property" (via Gary D. Robertson and Sarah Brumfield at AP News):

Federal disaster workers paused and then changed some of their hurricane-recovery efforts in North Carolina, including abandoning door-to-door visits, after receiving threats that they could be targeted by a militia, officials said, as the government response to Helene is targeted by runaway disinformation.

The threats emerged over the weekend. The Rutherford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Monday that it received a call Saturday about a man with an assault rifle who made a comment “about possibly harming” employees of the Federal Emergency Management Agency working in the hard-hit areas of Lake Lure and Chimney Rock, in the North Carolina mountains.

Authorities got a description of a suspect’s vehicle and license plate and later identified him as William Jacob Parsons, 44, of Bostic, a small community about 60 miles west of Charlotte. Sheriff’s officials said in a statement that Parsons — who was armed with a handgun and a rifle — was charged with “going armed to the terror of the public,” a misdemeanor. He was released after posting bond.

Threatening harm with firearms is a MISDEMEANOR???

FEMA confirmed in a statement Monday that it adjusted operations. It emphasized that disaster-recovery centers remain open and that FEMA continues “to help the people of North Carolina with their recovery.”

Workers from the agency’s disaster-assistance teams — who help survivors apply for FEMA aid and connect them with additional state and local resources — have stopped going door to door and instead are working from fixed locations while the potential threats are assessed, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because they could not publicly discuss details of the operations...

The Washington Post reported Sunday that the U.S. Forest Service, which is supporting hurricane recovery work, sent a message to multiple federal agencies, warning that FEMA had advised all federal responders in Rutherford County to leave the county immediately.

The message stated that National Guard troops had encountered “armed militia” saying they were “out hunting FEMA.”

Which begs the question "WHY are they hunting federal agents who are working on RECOVERING devastated communities in their literal neck of the woods?"

Because those "militias" are getting hit by "runaway disinformation" coming directly from donald trump himself (via Barbara L. McQuade at Bloomberg): 

Shortly after the storm, presidential candidate Donald Trump told rallygoers in Michigan that the Biden administration “stole the FEMA money, just like they stole it from a bank, so they could give it to their illegal immigrants that they want to have vote for them this season.” This is not true (and undocumented immigrants can’t vote). Yet these claims have been amplified on social media by billionaire Elon Musk, Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. and former Trump adviser Stephen Miller. A scroll through the replies to FEMA’s posts on the Musk-owned social media platform known as X shows a slew of ugly insults and statements echoing their lies.

In addition, Trump has also baselessly alleged that the Biden-Harris administration has failed to communicate with the affected states, a claim refuted by their governors, both Democrats and Republicans. Trump has also said without evidence that Biden and North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, a Democrat, denied relief to Republican communities...

trump is lying because he knows enough members of his wingnut voting base already believe the worst about federal support - thanks to decades of anti-government narratives pushed by conservative Republicans from Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich to today's GOP leadership - and will believe whatever he says they're doing is criminal even without any proof to his allegations.

trump wants his followers angry: Angry enough to make vile insults and threats on social media and government websites; Angry enough to arm themselves and go "hunting" for those agency workers to commit whatever level of violence they wish to inflict.

trump's objective with demonizing federal relief efforts - more than just trying to weaken those efforts to make Biden (and Harris by proxy) look bad to the national voter base - is to normalize violence towards our government. he's making it easier for these self-appointed "revolutionaries" to go on the warpath should he lose this November.

trump is trying to terrorize us. To make us cower or whimper for his mercy. To make us too afraid to do anything to stop him.

The only honest response is to stop him, and deny his effort to bully and steal his way back into the White House. These threats of violence are acts of desperation: trump cannot appeal to the broad base of American voters and so he's lashing out the only way he can. He's more afraid of us than we need to be of him.

The MAGA factions are already riled up to the point where they will attack their fellow neighbors, their communities, their fellow Americans - in victory, convinced trump will sanction their violence towards Latinos, Blacks, and women; in defeat, convinced they need to force insurrection and ruin - no matter what. In some respects, there's no stopping the wave of violence that's about to hit our communities.

But we need to be ready. We need to prepare to stand up for what we know is right and true about America, to deny trump's angry mobs any power over us.

You want to help people affected by the hurricanes? Provide aid to the recovery efforts as best you can. And get the vote out for Democrats from Harris on down who will deny trump and his ilk any future chance to threaten us again. 

Indictment Day In Miami, Again the Question: Will There Be Violence?

Back in March, when the New York Manhattan's District Attorney's Office was set to indict donald trump at the state level, I wrote Will There Be Violence? as trump was signaling to his MAGA followers to show up at the courthouse to start a ruckus.

It was clear trump wanted the same disruption as he had gotten on January 6th, but with better results (reminder about the adage "insanity is repeating the same mistake and expecting different results"). 

When those indictments came, the protest turnout was by all accounts meager: There were more reporters than Proud Boys. No violence took place, no officers of the court were intimidated, and people went back in line to wait for the new Super Mario movie at the cinemas.

Today, there's a new indictment drama playing out, this time in Miami FL, with higher stakes as trump is facing federal indictments on major felonies like Obstruction and Espionage.

trump and his MAGA allies spent the weekend since last Thursday's reveal making the same noises made back in March, calling on protestors to show up in big numbers and with the implied threats that violence will happen. So again, we're playing a repeat: Will there be violence from trump's Far Right base?

It would be nice to say "It'll be as quiet as Manhattan," except there are different factors at play for Miami.

Above all, there's a stronger, more organized conservative (and pro-trump) faction in South Florida, due to the high number of anti-Castro Cuban-Americans who view anything to the left of Ronald Reagan as Communism.

There's the history: Miami is where the Brooks Brothers Riot took place in 2000, successfully disrupting the recount efforts in Dade County to where it virtually guaranteed Bush the Lesser would win the contested state. Even though that riot - of Far Right men in business suits led by Roger Stone - clearly interfered with election officials in violation of federal and state laws, no one was ever held accountable for that, and so there's that baseline of thinking "we can get away with this."

Also remember the mad pipe bomber of 2018? Turned out to be a South Florida trumpian supporter with anger management issues. And across much of Florida itself (oh Gods, trust me on this), you'll have hundreds of angry MAGA guys (and gals) just like him.

To counter-argue, there's the fact that - just like the swift indictment announcement in New York - there hasn't been a lot of time to plan and organize for the MAGA protestors to get an idea of how they'll react once they get to the Miami courthouse. On the flip side of that, ever since January 6th local and federal law enforcement are taking the threats of MAGA violence more serious and are likely to ramp up security around downtown Miami to prevent another riot (it helps that trump and his handlers are in no position to interfere with security like they did ahead of January 6).

There's also the paranoia among the MAGA faithful that this will be a trap. trump promised them a revolution on January 6, but instead the Far Right witnessed Congress still approving Biden's election while half of the MAGA protestors ended up in jail (with trump failing to mass-pardon the insurrectionists as they had hoped). There are individuals on social media and reportedly in the Dark Web making open calls to violence, but the overall sense is that in-person rioting is too high risk.

I am wary of the overall situation. I had hoped the January 6 situation wouldn't erupt into violence, and yet it did. I have lived most of my life in Florida and I can get a certain understanding of the goddamned wingnuts who surround me. This is a state on mental edge, dominated by elected Republican leaders who fearmonger at the citizenry daily and with constant displays of Florida Man forms of violence.

I doubt there will be an organized or planned riot, but a chaotic one will be just as dangerous. If trump protestors do show up, they will likely be constrained by a more prepared police/federal presence. But the spillage from contained spaces into the streets of downtown Miami itself will increase the likelihood of assaults towards innocent passers-by or local workers/residents caught in the storm.

If you have no business being in downtown Miami today, DON'T GO. There are perfectly good beaches to visit instead. If you have business in downtown Miami today, call in sick and enjoy the beaches. If you can't avoid being in downtown Miami, stay safe, move in numbers, and keep your heads down.

Crazy Tuesday today. 

Will There Be Violence?

As I was writing yesterday about the expectations of when donald trump would get indicted in New York City (at least, for all we know the Fulton County DA's office may jump in first) some time next week, trump himself hopped onto social media screaming (CAPS LOCK is his friend!) how it was going to happen on Tuesday and that his followers needed to "PROTEST, TAKE OUR NATION BACK!"

(You might also notice trump's media rant name-drops George Soros which is dog-whistle for anti-Semitism. trump is clearly signaling the haters of his MAGA base.)

You might wonder how trump could be so specific about the day the grand jury indictments will drop, but apparently the prosecutors give defense lawyers a heads-up when to have their clients ready to turn themselves in for custody and arraignment. Still, even the reality that it's going to happen has gotten trump to the point of open panic.

trump's call for protests echoes the same calls he made after the 2020 election results went against him, and he summoned up a protest rally that turned into an insurrection meant to disrupt the Electoral Count in Congress. Now, he's calling for protests to start riots in the streets of Manhattan to bully the legal system into submission.

Tom Nichols at the Atlantic can see trump's agitation for what it is: 

Let us begin with the obvious thing that just happened: This morning, Donald Trump threatened to summon a mob—for the second time in two years—to his defense. The former president of the United States and a leading candidate for the Republican nomination for the White House in 2024, facing a possible indictment in New York, claimed to know the exact day on which he would be arrested and then called on his supporters to “protest.” Trump and his cult know what a call for “protest” means: The last time he rallied his faithful supporters this way, they stormed the U.S. Capitol, which resulted in death and destruction and many, many prison sentences.

Spokespeople from the former president’s office have already walked back Trump’s statement, noting that they have not been told of any specific date for an indictment or an arrest. Indeed, any attempt to book Trump is unlikely to happen as soon as Tuesday, for many reasons. But that’s not the point. Trump’s message today to the American people has already come through loud and clear: I am too dangerous to arrest.

There's debate out there whether these indictments are actually good for trump. It's been done: trump uses the attacks on him to market himself to his followers as both Martyr and Hero. Getting charged for crimes trump can claim as "Witch Hunts" will inspire his base - already believing all the other lies he's sold them - to support him even more. There's an argument that trump's rage-tweets are merely more marketing efforts to boost his viability (to trump, even bad press is good for him).

But trump's panic should be considered real, and dangerous.

Nearly all of trump's previous clashes with the legal system have been Civil cases: lawsuits by defrauded victims, appearances in bankruptcy courts to avoid creditors, sexual harassment claims, and fights over business deals trump broke time and again. 

This time, trump is facing Criminal indictment, likely on various charges just in the Manhattan district case alone. Criminal cases are vastly different from Civil ones, and the punishments if found Guilty in criminal cases more harsh than being found Liable in civil cases. 

In a criminal matter, trump is not going up against a small business owner or a disgruntled victim, ones he can bully and harass into settlements where trump can avoid admission of liability: He's going up against a government aka The State (technically a City level in this matter) with more resources and less patience for delay tactics that trump's lawyers could play in civil matters. trump can't make any settlement in a criminal matter: the State is going to want at least minimum jail time on at least one charge, and a public confession in open court (something that trump as a narcissist can never admit) to the things trump would have to plead guilty to make the deal stick.

trump may enjoy the benefits of campaigning to his MAGA base as a Martyr to a Librul Legal System. But campaigning at worst as a convicted felon, at best as a confessed criminal on even a misdemeanor plea deal will likely scare away the Independent voters both he and the Republicans dare not lose in 2024, and could even dissuade the non-MAGA Republican voters from voting at all. The other side of that situation is increased voter turnout by Democrats unwilling to let a confessed or convicted criminal like trump anywhere near the White House again.

trump does have an advantage in criminal matters in that the burden of proof for the State is stricter than civil matters. However, trump is facing the reality that the grand jury's review of the evidence suggests more than enough proof existed for the DA to proceed. It'll all come down to trial jury by "peers" that trump can't officially bully or tamper with. trump - or at least his lawyers - can't run the risk of testifying on the stand, even though trump likely believes he can charm anybody and gaslight his way out of trouble (in reality trump's bragging arrogance on the stand is a huge turn-off to juries). In a case like this, trump's lawyers could fight the allegations without trump's testimony, but without it they run the risk of the jury agreeing with the DA's versions of events (and believing witnesses Michael Cohen and Stormy Daniels and several others regarding trump's culpability). 

In short: trump can't handle the high risks of facing a criminal court indictment.

Threatening the DA's office, threatening violent protests like January 6th only this time in the streets of New York City, is the best option trump has to avoid the risk altogether. Like the Sicilian mob bosses who order hits on Italian judges, trump wants to spill enough blood to convince the legal system to not even think about going after him.

But trump never really thinks all of this through. The early reports are that the NYPD and FBI and other agencies are already planning for trump's rioters to show up. They've seen this movie. Unlike January 6th, trump and his handlers can't sabotage the security efforts, meaning the police and other law enforcement won't be undermanned and vulnerable to attacks.

Despite the conservative nature of a lot of police officers and federal agents - a number of them MAGA at heart - most of them will show up to do their jobs if ordered towards "keeping the peace" and preventing any violence from escalating.

And despite what trump believes about his followers - and yes, he has millions of Americans awaiting every command he issues - they're not going to show up in numbers this time to overwhelm anything. Don't forget even for his "big rally" to spark the January 6th riots, he only had roughly 2,000 people show up for him actually raid the Capitol. Hundreds of them have already been convicted or plead out, most of them in jail right now and unable to rally to trump's aid.

There may be 74 million Americans willing to vote for trump, but there's nowhere near that number willing to fight (or die) for trump and the racist sexist ideology he represents. A lot of trump supporters still have to think about their personal obligations - family, children, work, their own health, their own income - and can't show up as trump expects.

There may be violence in the streets of New York City this coming week, but it won't be all-out war. Most Americans are going to stay home and keep themselves as safe as possible. All we can hope for is that the bloodshed be kept at a minimum.

Gods help us, in a nation threatened by open-carry laws and easy access to assault rifles, minimum bloodshed is the best we can ever pray for... 

Escalation and Evasion

Over the weekend, the Republican War on Everybody escalated when a deranged man - prodded on by years of Far Right demagoguery - broke into the California home of U.S. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and physically attacked Nancy's husband. The details are not pretty. Quoting from Nicole Narea's reporting at Vox:

It’s now clear the speaker was the target of Friday’s attack. The assailant broke into the home looking for her, reportedly shouting, “Where is Nancy?” — echoing what insurrectionists called out when they breached the US Capitol on January 6, 2021 — and saying that he would wait “until Nancy got home” as he confronted Paul Pelosi. The speaker’s husband suffered a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hands that required surgery after the assailant bludgeoned him with a hammer. The attacker faces federal assault and attempted kidnapping charges.

It gets worse, because the bastards who pushed the violent rhetoric are now (of course) evading their accountability, blaming it all on the victim, blaming it on "urban crime," blaming it on everything but themselves:

Republicans have dismissed any connection between their rhetoric and the attack. Instead, they’ve blamed Democratic policies on crime and suggested that growing political violence may be the result of general anxiety around election legitimacy. Elon Musk, the billionaire Tesla CEO who was cheered by Republicans when he bought Twitter last week, has advanced a right-wing anti-LGBTQ conspiracy theory around the circumstances of the attack. Though he deleted his post, it remained on Twitter long enough to be amplified and repeated by many on the Right...

The conspiracy rumors hinged on the Far Right's homophobia, and was utterly unproven, and yet for days the Republican Party leadership and their Congressional candidates made jokes and insults at the Pelosi family's expense.

Never mind the reality of what investigators got out of the attacker's statements to the police. Via Julia Jacabo at ABC News:

The suspect accused of attacking Paul Pelosi told authorities he wanted to break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps to show members of Congress that there are "consequences to actions," according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court Monday.

The new revelation came Monday as the Department of Justice filed federal charges of assault and attempted kidnapping against the man suspected of attacking Paul Pelosi, the 82-year-old husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, last week...

(The accused David) DePape was charged with one count of assault of an immediate family member of a United States official with the intent to retaliate against the official on account of the performance of official duties, which carries a maximum sentence of 30 years in prison, according to a criminal complaint filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. He is also charged with one count of attempted kidnapping of a United States official on account of the performance of official duties, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison...

The attacker reportedly broke into the house - it remains a huge question why the Speaker's home didn't have tighter security - and confronted Paul Pelosi with the same threats and challenges that the Insurrection rioters on January 6th were chanting. DePape was caught with the same zip ties the rioters carried with them in case they caught themselves any congresscritters that day, and DePape had even bigger plans than just assaulting Speaker Pelosi (back to Jacabo's report):

DePape allegedly later told officers "that he was going to hold Nancy hostage and talk to her" and that he wanted to use the House speaker to lure another unnamed individual, the affidavit states.

The suspect also allegedly told investigators that he intended to break Nancy Pelosi's kneecaps if she didn't tell him the "truth" about "lies told by the Democratic Party" and said she would have to be wheeled into Congress, therefore showing other members of Congress that there are "consequences to actions," according to the criminal complaint...

DePape's agenda was to intimidate and injure a sitting Congressperson, especially the House Speaker who is technically the third-most powerful person in the federal government. He was motivated by the anger and ambitions that the Far Right have been openly screaming - to hunt liberals, to punish Democrats - for almost 20 years. And he hoped to target someone else higher on the GOP's Hit List than Pelosi herself.

This is where we are in the violent rhetoric constantly drummed and shouted through the televisions and video clips of the Far Right media. The George Tiller Effect in full display, where the demagogues on Fox Not-News push their Narrative of "Evil Democrats" that deserve punishment, and who then sit back and let their foot soldiers among their audiences do their dirty work for them.

And when presented with the evidence, those same demagogues laugh it off, claim "it wasn't us," and nowadays even joke about the damage done in their name.

Gods help us. This is a clear example of stochastic terrorism - the violence of extremism - and the Far Right fearmongers are going to keep escalating even as they evade accountability.

It won't be just the congresscritters next time. The goddamn wingnuts of the Fox-watching Proud Boys/Oath Keepers brigades are going to target ordinary Americans on a bigger scale than before, all because they were told to. And all because they can.

Setting It Off as trump's Followers Cross One More Line (w/ Update)

Update 8/16: Many thanks again to Tengrain for including this article in Crooks & Liars' Mike's Blog Round-Up! Please take some time to review the other stuff that's got me ranting all week long...

Just noting for the record, I feel sympathy for the poor guy who has to manage the Wikipedia page on donald trump's ongoing civil matters. It is interesting to note the web encyclopedia made all the criminal investigations into separate pages, but still at any moment the way things are going there's bound to be two to three new civil court filings by now.

Speaking of, if you're looking for the stuff on "trump espionage" it's actually under "FBI Search of Mar-A-Lago," have fun.

In the meanwhile, this weekend post-warranted search has seen a bit of uneasy response from the Far Right regarding donald trump's pending troubles involving the theft of Presidential Records (18 USC 2071), destruction / obstruction of records involving federal investigations (18 USC 1519), and possible espionage (18 USC 793).

In that acts of violence took place, committed by likely MAGA true believers triggered by the news that their Lord and Savior donald trump is facing serious legal trouble he can't lie his way out of.

On Thursday, a gunman attacked the FBI field office in Cincinnati with both a nail gun and an AR-15 rifle, then fled the scene and chased into another county before one last shootout killed him. More details from Elisha Fieldstadt, Ken Dilanian, Tim Stelloh and Ryan J. Reilly at NBC News:

Officers fatally shot the suspect (Walter Shiffer) after failing to negotiate with him, an Ohio State Highway Patrol spokesman, Lt. Nathan Dennis, told reporters.

The man raised a gun and officers opened fire, Dennis said.

It wasn't clear whether he fired, Dennis said, nor was it clear who fired the fatal shot. The man was pronounced dead at the scene, which Dennis described as a rural area off Interstate 71.

No officers were injured, and a motive is still under investigation, Dennis said.

The two officials said Shiffer appeared to have posted in recent days about his desire to kill FBI agents after former President Donald Trump's Mar-a-Lago residence was searched...

Shiffer was seen at the Capitol on Jan. 6, although it's unclear whether he breached the building, said three people aiding law enforcement who saw him in photos. Shiffer frequently posted about going to the Capitol on social media.

In the days after the FBI searched Mar-a-Lago, Trump's compound in Palm Beach, Florida, he appeared to post multiple times on Trump's social media platform, Truth Social.

In one comment, he appeared to call on people to prepare for "combat." In another, his apparent account said users should kill FBI agents "on sight..."

Brian Murphy, a former official at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI who’s now an executive at the open source intelligence firm Logically, said Wednesday that his company has observed a big rise in threats against FBI personnel and facilities on social media platforms since the FBI searched Trump's home...

And there's the doxxing attempts by media agitators especially Breitbart's media outlet - which received an unredacted copy of the search warrant from trump's people that included the names of the FBI agents overseeing the search - and a former aide to trump Garrett Ziegler who named those agents and issued threats bad enough that trump's own version of Twitter (Truth Social) had to delete his posts (via Alia Shoaib at Business Insider):

"This is one of the two feds who signed the 'Receipt for Property' form, which detailed—at a very high level—the fishing expedition that the FBI performed at Mar-a-Lago," Ziegler wrote on both Truth Social and Telegram, per the outlet.

Along with the message, Ziegler shared the FBI agents' date of birth, work emails, and supposed links to family members' social media accounts, according to the outlet...

As anyone who pays attention to domestic terrorism activity, what Ziegler did crosses into the threshold of stochastic terrorism. Ziegler claims he's providing "transparency" about "illegal FBI actions" but why the hell drag those agents' families into this mess?

(Saturday night, there was a suicidal car driver who slammed into a Capitol building barricade and shot himself as his car burst into flames. Until the police can find out if the guy had a motive, this is as much as should be said about it)

Not to mention the armed people protesting outside of an Arizona FBI field office on Saturday.

Also: Kind of need to mention the reports of how "The Dark Web" of Far Right secret Internet servers are on fire with talk of civil war.

In short: Yeah, the pro-trump violence is ticking upward.

I almost saw this coming, barely a month ago. I wrote back then the reality we're in the early stages of a second civil war. I knew it was going to be something involving trump getting held to account for any number of his misdeeds surrounding the 2020 elections, the January 6th insurrection, or maybe even one of the big civil lawsuits like the one in New York (where trump had to testify in person and ended up pleading the Fifth Amendment over 440 times). Here's what I wrote:

You can feel it: We are one final step from the "Cannons Firing on Fort Sumter" point of no return. The battle lines are drawn over the January 6th Insurrection and the recent extremist Supreme Court rulings. All it's going to take is one more nudge from the goddamn wingnuts and we will be quoting Fred Thompson's "We will be lucky to live through it" line until the shooting stops, and either the United States remains intact but with the conservatives shattered for 100 years or with the nation broken under an authoritarian bootheel...

I'd bet good money - okay, 50 bucks, I'm a librarian I'm not rich - it's going to involve donald trump freaking out in some way, and most likely over criminal charges that would interfere with his plans to retake the White House in 2024. Thing is, there's a number of separate criminal charges he's still facing...

In that article, I gambled on the likely trigger being the Georgia grand jury investigation into trump's attempt to bully the state's Secretary of State - who oversaw the election results - into throwing the votes out for Biden and giving trump (falsely) the state's Electoral votes.

I honestly didn't even think about the simmering situation surrounding trump's failure to turn over Presidential Records until this February as the possible trigger. To be fair, the Justice Department had kept a tight lid on their investigations into - even in June when they pursued the remaining boxes of classified materials trump STILL hadn't turned over - the possibility trump violated the Presidential Records Act.

Who knew - other than the DOJ - that the case would also involve even more serious allegations of espionage?

As it stands, among all the other possible criminal matters trump is facing - in Georgia, in Arizona and Wisconsin involving "fake electors", with the January 6th investigations into various legal violations the House Committee has already uncovered - this one right here revolving around trump's illicit hoarding of national security/classified documents could well be the first big criminal charge trump will face between now and the end of the year.

And as I noted in my previous article, the minute trump gets charged with actual criminal felonies, his followers will erupt in violent madness. As Zach Beauchamp notes at Vox:

What we are seeing is shocking, but it’s part of an established pattern. Trump engages in some kind of egregious misbehavior, prompting official scrutiny and condemnation of his actions. He treats these actions as unjustified persecution, proof that the “deep state” is out to get him, a claim that the Republican Party and conservative press dutifully echo. His most radical supporters become even more radical, even contemplating violence.

None of these investigations is a witch hunt. In each case, there are serious reasons to believe that the president violated the law. If prosecutors chose not to even investigate Trump, that itself would be politically motivated — a tacit admission that if a political figure is popular enough, he is above the law.

But the result of prosecutors doing their job is predictable: Trump reacts by casting it as proof that he is under attack by nefarious forces...

The litany of grievances, the sense that Trump has been forever persecuted by the government, the unfounded implication that the FBI was “planting information” at his house — all of it screams victimization, that Trump is the target of a vast and shadowy conspiracy pulling the FBI’s strings.

The fact that a Truth Social user had just been radicalized by such talk — posting violent threats on the site before attempting an armed breach of an FBI building — isn’t deterring Trump at all. He is, as the political scientist Julia Azari puts it, a nationalist who has no concept of a nation; a narcissist who abuses the language of patriotism without any commitment to the underlying idea that he has some responsibility to preserve order and cohesion in the polity. In fact, he does the opposite — sowing division and stoking violent distrust if it helps him.

Perhaps Trump’s talk wouldn’t be so dangerous if the rest of the GOP would work to tamp it down. Yet it’s become excruciatingly clear in the wake of his emergence as the GOP’s standard-bearer that Republicans are not taking Trump’s transgressions and troubles as opportunities to dump him, but rather to dig in, right by his side, in similarly radical terms...

The Far Right cannot cut themselves off from trump because trump has given the Far Right everything they've ever wanted and still left them angry and violent for more.

If there's any good news, it's that the rabid trumpian fanbase won't attack the rest of America in large numbers. For all the millions of "true Americans" they think have their back, most Americans - even among the 74 million who voted for trump in 2020 - will not rise to violence when the call goes out. The simple fact is that a lot of them - even the ones yelling and screaming the most - have obligations in the real world that would not allow them to go off and live out the militant cosplay some of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers revel in. Most people are not that violent.

The bad news, obviously, is that in this day it doesn't take a lot of people to commit enough violence to cause grief. Even one gun nut with an AR-15 and MAGA outrage can ruin a small town's entire day.

Like it or not, we're facing dark days ahead. If the Justice Department pursues criminal charges on trump, it will escalate the current civil strife we're in to the next level of open warfare. If Justice is not pursued, all it will do is encourage trump to keep violating more laws, safe with the knowledge his mob rule overrides the rule of law.

Best to hold trump accountable. Let justice be done though the heavens fall. Best to face facts: trump is proving himself a clear and present danger to the safety of the United States itself, and the sooner he faces jail for his crimes the better it will be... in spite of the violence his followers will unleash on the rest of us.

Just be ready for when the day comes, America.

April 4: Martin Luther King Spoke About Violence

What Reverend King said about violence holds true on this anniversary of the evening that violence claimed his life:

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate...Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that...

The violence of war we see every day will not end until the haters are gone.

The violence of mass shootings we endure every day will not end until the haters are gone.

We all have to make that moral choice to stand up and fight, not for the sake of hate but for the sake of those we can love.

Update: Christ. I looked back at my other memorial blog articles for MLK and I keep quoting this same paragraph. I gotta get fresh material next time...

Just Another Rambling Florida Man, Full of Violence and Full Of Bull

Welp. Florida Man got a reputation for stupidity and violence to uphold.

From Marc Caputo at Politico, a Republican primary candidate for the Tampa Bay area congressional district (13th) - being vacated by Charlie Crist as he plans another run for Governor in 2022 - threatened another Republican primary opponent with a Russian-Ukrainian hit squad. Yes, he went there:

During a 30-minute call with a conservative activist that was recorded before he became a candidate, William Braddock repeatedly warned the activist to not support GOP candidate Anna Paulina Luna in the Republican primary for a Tampa Bay-area congressional seat because he had access to assassins. The seat is being vacated by Rep. Charlie Crist (D-Fla.), who is running for governor.

“I really don't want to have to end anybody's life for the good of the people of the United States of America,” Braddock said at one point in the conversation last week, according to the recording exclusively obtained by POLITICO. “That will break my heart. But if it needs to be done, it needs to be done. Luna is a f---ing speed bump in the road. She's a dead squirrel you run over every day when you leave the neighborhood...”

Olszewski denied editing or altering the recording. She said she made it because she was concerned about Braddock’s “unhinged” dislike of Luna that he had previously expressed. After she made the recording just after midnight last Wednesday, she promptly turned it over to St. Petersburg, Fla., police and gave a heads-up to her friend Luna, who filed a petition for an injunction against Braddock. Luna and Olszewski each received a temporary restraining order against him last week. Braddock filed to run Monday...

“...I have access to a hit squad, too, Ukrainians and Russians,” he said about three minutes into the call, adding “don't get caught out in public supporting Luna. … Luna’s gonna go down and I hope it's by herself...”

It's unclear exactly why Braddock has such dislike toward Luna. The two do not appear to have any previous connection to one another, and Braddock is a lower-tier candidate in an increasingly crowded race for Crist’s seat. Already, two state lawmakers and a former Obama administration official have entered the race, with others expected to jump in...

I have a pretty good idea why Braddock has that much dislike towards Luna. One, she's openly as wingnut a candidate you can find among Republican ranks, railing against Socialism and praising Sarah Palin. Braddock doesn't want the competition for the MAGA vote. Two, she's a woman, and the goddamn misogyny underlining male conservative ideology tends to trigger this kind of violent response.

But there's a lot more to unpack in all of this insanity.

Braddock is bragging that he's got the money and the connections to hire foreign hit squads. This isn't the kind of thing you post on your resume, nor something you bring up in a PowerPoint presentation to the local Rotary clubs. Either he's just announced he's that dangerous to others he views as rivals (in either politics or business) or he's lying and bragging about shit he can't back up, which still makes him dangerously insane.

And it's telling that when he brags about this, Braddock is calling on "Russian-Ukrainians" as a specific foreign ethnicity at his beck and call. This brings forward the ongoing scandalous behavior of Republicans and Far Right business figures constantly getting caught committing dirty work within the sphere of Putin's influence. He's not talking about ex-SEAL mercs, or sniper teams from a Central American nation that got U.S. backing during the 1980s. Braddock is going to the one overseas nationalist white-power country in Russia (with Ukrainian expatriates in the mix) that has gotten its hooks into every level of Republican leadership the last ten years.

To anybody who takes national security and political integrity seriously, this is a major ongoing scandal threatening the whole United States.

Braddock, one way or another, is exposing a lot of the problems consuming the Republican Party: Obsession with wingnut purity, the easy talk of violent actions towards rivals, the willingness to threaten and harm women, reckless bravado bordering on stupidity, and open association with a foreign power that is in opposition to the United States and our European allies on the global stage.

This may be yet another Florida Man moment, but it's not funny.

Gods help us. 

Quick Followup On 1/6: Accountability and Arrests

 It's getting up to two months now, and the criminal charges stemming from trump's 1/6 Insurrection are picking up momentum (via Dina Temple-Raston at NPR):

The Justice Department charged six more people Friday it says are members of a right-wing militia group that plotted in advance of Jan. 6 to attack the U.S. Capitol.

The indictment offers the most sweeping evidence so far that members of the far-right extremist group known as the Oath Keepers had spent months allegedly planning to prevent Congress from certifying President Joe Biden's victory in a bid to keep former President Donald Trump in power.

The federal charges say 52-year-old Kelly Meggs, the self-described leader of the Florida chapter of the Oath Keepers, and his wife Connie, joined four other alleged militia members to breach the Capitol...

Last month, the Justice Department charged three members of the Oath Keepers with conspiring to undermine President Biden's win. Officials said that Thomas Edward Caldwell, Jessica Marie Watkins, and Donovan Ray Crowl had allegedly set up training for urban warfare and riot control in preparation for the Jan. 6 siege shortly after then-President-elect Joe Biden's election victory and had allegedly briefly discussed bringing weapons into Washington, D.C., by boat...

It's not just the Oath Keepers facing criminal scrutiny for their sedition: trump's favorite crowd The Proud Boys are also facing serious jail time. So far, there's been about 250 or so arrested and charged with their involvement in the violent attempt to disrupt Congress' role in confirming Biden's electoral victory.

And yet, this isn't anywhere near the number of people who rioted that day. There are thousands more out there yet to answer for their actions that day, especially the ones involved in the possible murder of Capitol police officer Brian Sicknick. 

There's still a serious need by federal, state, and even DC investigators to pursue possible criminal charges against trump for his incitement to riot that day.

And all of this on top of the reality that a strong plurality - if not a majority - of Republicans still think violence rioting to promote trump's "stolen election" lies is the way to move forward against their fellow Americans. it doesn't help that these conspiracy-addled wingnuts have bought into ANOTHER scheme that somehow March 4th is the "Official" Inauguration and that every President since U.S. Grant was illegitimate, therefore trump can be sworn back in as the legitimate one next month (never mind that theory would negate trump's one-term administration in the first place). 

The madness won't end until the Republican Party and their Far Right nihilist fanbase go away. /headdesk

Blood Today in the U.S. Capitol

I dreaded this day, and trump finally pushed the viciousness of his mobs too far.

Here's NPR's banner tonight (via Alana Wise, Elena Moore, and Benjamin Swasey):

Pro-Trump Extremists Breach U.S. Capitol Amid His Baseless Election Claims

The U.S. Capitol was the scene of chaos on Wednesday, as supporters of President Trump responded to his call to head to the complex and then breached it, leading to unprecedented violence in the seat of America's federal government.

The insurrectionists interrupted proceedings in the House and Senate, as members of Congress were tallying President-elect Joe Biden's Electoral College victory. The counting of the votes is normally a relatively pro forma session.

But for two months, Trump has falsely and continuously claimed the election was stolen from him, and dozens of fellow Republicans had planned to object to slates of electors from various states they considered contested.

Lawmakers were debating an objection to Arizona's results — a state Trump lost narrowly — when the sessions were recessed as the U.S. Capitol Police attempted to put the complex on lockdown...

trump had sent out word to his devoted voter base, the ones with the rifles and MAGA hats and Confederate flags, to show up to protest a ceremonial performance that Congress has done for over 100-plus years. trump did this knowing many of his base are Far Right conspiracy wingnuts eager to roleplay as militias in their culture war against the rest of America.

It does not help that there's a number of video clips and pictures out there showing the Capitol Police - or some other law enforcement groups working the barricades to keep the building secure - actively opening up those barricades and gleefully joining in with the rioters/terrorists with goddamned selfies.

And because of trump, because of his riling up of his fan base, because of him knowingly telling his gun-wielding Proud Boys to "be ready" to rise up, because of the violence today, a woman is dead (via Rhea Mahbubani at Business Insider):

A woman was shot dead in the Capitol on Wednesday after violent and armed supporters of President Donald Trump stormed and occupied the building, law enforcement officials told NBC News and DC police told the Washington Post.

Lindsay Watts, a reporter with a Fox News affiliate in Washington, DC, first said on Twitter that she'd learned from a paramedic source that one person had been shot and resuscitation efforts were underway. CNN later reported that a woman had been shot in the chest and was in critical condition. PBS NewsHour confirmed this, adding that the person who was struck by a bullet was not a uniformed officer...

There is a family tonight missing a loved one. All because trump needed to have his goddamned temper tantrum to disrupt the Electoral count proceedings of both houses of Congress today. Back to Mahbubani:

Congress met on Wednesday to certify the Electoral College votes for President-elect Joe Biden. But the session was interrupted by the violence, and the House is now in recess with members of Congress, including Vice President Mike Pence, being led to safety.

Photos from around the nation's capital showed massive crowds of people milling around, some of whom were carrying American and Trump's "Make America Great Again" flags. Dozens of ambulances and law-enforcement vehicles were also spotted, as were nooses.

The melee inside the building, which was breached, evacuated, and rocked by flash bangs, involved an apparent armed standoff between police and rioters, both of whom were armed, as well as Trump supporters breaking into and leaving notes in lawmakers' offices. CNN also reported that a police officer had been injured in the scuffle...

trump got what he wanted. His gangs interrupted the count, delaying the result for another day, until trump can come up with another excuse to prevent the legal transition of office to President-Elect Biden.

In the meantime, a woman was shot dead in the violence and confusion today.

None of this had to happen. Those Far Right trump-worshiping bastards did not have to be so riled up to commit acts of sedition and insurrection today. The election would have been resolved months ago had trump done what every other electoral loser had done until now, concede and allow the smooth transition to let America remain at peace with itself and the world.

None of this had to happen to take away that woman's life like that.

Goddamn you, trump. Goddamn your narcissism, goddamn your cruelty, goddamn you.

You've earned your body count now, you Son Of A Bitch.

Now the Savage Days Are Here

Washington heads in the toilet bowl/
Don't see supremacist hate/
Right wing dicks in their boiler suits/
Picking out who to annihilate

Toxic jungle of Uzi trails/
Tribesmen just wouldn't live here/
Fascist flare is fashion cool/
Well, you're dead, you just ain't buried yet

Under the God
Under the God

As the walls came tumbling down/
So, the secrets that we shared
I believed you by the palace gates
Now the savage days are here

Under the God...
- "Under the God," David Bowie/Tin Machine

I would prefer my days of Epiphany to be focused on religious piety, blessings, and Greek food, but trump and his Proud Boys army is making that unlikely for tomorrow. They've already arrested the leader of the Proud Boys before the street protests in DC take place (via Elena Moore at NPR.org):

Enrique Tarrio, 36, was taken into police custody and charged with destruction of property, according to a statement from the Metropolitan Police Department.

The charge is related to his actions during last month's pro-Trump demonstration in D.C. that turned violent. Tarrio admitted to removing and burning a Black Lives Matter banner from a historically Black church, an action the Proud Boys are now being sued over.

According to the police statement, Tarrio is also being charged with possession of a high-capacity feeding device. Officers found two high-capacity firearm magazines with him when he was arrested.

The FBI says the Proud Boys have "ties to white nationalism," and the organization has previously been associated with acts of violence...

One thing to note is that Washington DC has very strict gun-carrying laws on the books, and there's every likelihood the Far Right wingnuts marching - in protest of the Certification count in Congress that would confirm Biden won the 2020 Presidential Election - on January 6 are going to be testing those laws early and often to where even the local cops are going to push back hard.

Meanwhile, city leaders are preparing for possible violence, especially as reports show members of the Proud Boys are planning to attend the march dressed incognito...

What the plan seems to be - and they're being so obvious about it - is to have enough of their own cosplay as "Antifa" (the catch-all Far Right insult of anti-fascists) and have those cosplayers instigate the violence, and then claim afterward that the Far Left are terrorists causing enough violence to justify trump declaring emergency martial law.

It'll sell well on NewsMax and even Fox Not-News (which has been trying, honestly enough, to walk away from trump's narcissism... and failing), but nobody else will be convinced. All it's going to do is get innocent people harmed, likely hurt some cops and other law enforcement types, and drive the wedge of madness deeper into the nation's existing schisms.

What they're hoping to do is bully enough people in Congress - especially any wavering Republicans who haven't signed onto trump's suicide pact - into nullifying the 2020 election results: Specifically, getting VP Pence as the Senate President to toss out the certified Electoral Votes and declare trump the winner in spite of everything.

If we're lucky, the violence will be minimal to various acts of vandalism and car burnings. trump will try to bully Congress to his whims, but the procedural count - which is baked into the system and mostly for ceremony - will likely be as expected, a Biden victory.

But we can't rely on luck, not in a Darkest Timeline where trump can NEVER accept a loss and where he's pumped up his fanbase to "Stand By and Stand Up" at his call.

Everyone in DC that I know of, stay safe tomorrow.

To the rest of the nation, here's hoping sanity and legality prevail.

The Calmness After The Dread

(Update: Many thanks to Infidel753 for adding me to Crooks&Liars' Mike's Blog Roundup! I need to note Infidel does a weekly roundup every Sunday - included there as well this past weekend, thanks again - so it should behoove you to check that blog every Sunday morning! IO SATURNALIA!)

It's been a month since the Election Night, after all that build-up, all that anxiety, all the stress that the results would be chaotic as hell.

There was, let's admit it, an open dread that the response to whoever won - Biden or trump - would lead to violence in the streets: That protests by one side or the other would lead to riots, police beatdowns, or worse.

Stores in major cities boarded up windows. Social media prepped for long fiery nights.

And... so far, it's been insanely quiet. Oh, trump and his lawyers are still stirring up bullshit over ballot counts and certifications, we've got a number of wingnut demagogues - especially just-pardoned Mike Flynn, who is falling further into seditious behavior - calling for shutting down everything and stealing the win for trump. We've had the pro-trump rallies screaming for arrests and acts of force in places like Georgia where the Senate runoff campaigns retained national attention.

But the oversized fears of nationwide rioting and blood in the streets hasn't happened, and it's looking like it might not happen even when the Electoral College officially calls it for Biden on December 14. (Of course, Gods help me if I've jinxed us all on this...)

It's a bit puzzling that all this brouhaha turned into a meh-haha. Bonnie Kristian at The Week is equally vexxed:

We've weathered four weeks of uncalled races, recounts, lawsuits, and allegations with relative calm. There was some rioting in Portland, where a Molotov cocktail was thrown at police, but tumultuous protests have been a fixture there for half a year now. In Michigan, some chanting Republicans attempted to force their way into a vote counting center but were restrained by police. Demonstrators assembled in other cities, too, and certainly some scuffles broke out. Yet the "dozens" of arrests reported nationwide are hardly the envisioned catastrophe...

I decided to revisit the forecasts. One of the most notable came from the International Crisis Group, a think tank that seeks to prevent war by "sound[ing] the alarm to prevent deadly conflict." Usually this work concerns places that are, well, not here, but for the 2020 election, the group issued its first report about the United States. "The 2020 U.S. presidential election presents risks not seen in recent history," the report said. "It is conceivable that violence could erupt during voting or protracted ballot counts."

The Crisis Group identified 11 risk factors, which it condensed to four larger themes in the executive summary: "political polarization bound up with issues of race and identity; the rise of armed groups with political agendas; the higher-than-usual chances of a contested outcome; and most importantly President Donald Trump, whose toxic rhetoric and willingness to court conflict to advance his personal interests have no precedent in modern U.S. history."

The first of these four is impossible to dispute. We are increasingly polarized and that polarization does involve identity as well as related issues of misinformation, information segregation, epistemic crisis, and institutional distrust spelled out in the longer risk list. With the benefit of hindsight, we also know the outcome has indeed been contested and Trump has missed no opportunity to spread division and undermine public trust and goodwill. The president still has supporters — as many as half of Republicans, per a mid-November poll, the most recent I could find — who believe he "rightfully won" the election and is being defrauded...

And yet, for some reason, the possibility of violence has not turned - not yet, I must caveat - into reality. Kristian considers why:

...One is that some of the proposed conditions went unmet: Trump didn't win; there wasn't a wildcard event; and the election contestation — the real procedure of it, as opposed to vivid nonsense the president and his surrogates have spouted on television and Twitter — has been fairly mundane. We've seen nothing so exciting as Bush v. Gore in 2000. Biden won the closest state races by margins of tens of thousands, not a mere 537 votes.

A second reason, as I wrote before Election Day, is that most Americans (including most Republicans) were prepared to wait for results. Everyone knew this year would be weird. How could we not? Trump's claim that any delay was a sign of cheating and a Democratic attempt to "creat[e] havoc" never made sense, so when the expected delay arrived, nobody panicked.

Or, at least, they didn't panic in real life. Maybe they panicked online, and maybe that, as New York Times columnist Ross Douthat has theorized, served as a way to "playact extremism, ... to approach radical politics the way they approach a first-person shooter game — as a kind of sport, a kick to the body chemistry, that doesn't put anything in their relatively comfortable late-modern lives at risk."

That brings me to my third and most significant reason: Whether because we're getting our extremist impulses out online (or by donating to Trump's still-fundraising campaign) or because we're among the plurality of Americans who don't align with either partisan extreme, most of us are not actually interested in participating in civil strife...

For all the rhetoric, for all the chest-thumping, for all the loud screams by the extremists that "they" number in the millions... when it comes down it the extremists are an extreme minority of malcontents who overstate their numbers either out of arrogance, ignorance, or projection.

We have strong, albeit violated, norms against political violence in America, and there is little post-election rioting in our national history. Worries about civil war cycle with each election, but that's not the same as an appetite for street fighting, for making your hate tangible enough to shoot your neighbor for putting out the wrong yard sign. Even the alarming willingness to say violence may be "justified" to advance a political cause — which has risen in recent years, though much less than a Politico report initially suggested — is not the same as readiness to personally enact that violence.

Those "armed groups" who want to fight are a tiny minority of dunces. The rest of us may be very angry at each other, but we are mercifully not stupid enough to think violence will help...

This should not overlook the actual history we have with politically-motivated violence. We've had mad bombers and street shooters fighting over arguments - usually race-related - for decades. Redeemer governments of the late 19th Century - well into the 20th Century in some counties - made ready use of guns and rope to enforce their will. There's still a possibility that violence over who won the 2020 Presidential election - hint, Biden - can still erupt.

What's happening right now is that the fighting over this election is still relatively early, and it's focused mostly on courtroom battles where trump and his team of irrational lawyers keep losing their cases due to the simple fact they can't produce any actual evidence of voter fraud. There isn't necessarily any panic buttons getting pushed right now. Most of the trump supporters are still happily spinning conspiracy bullshit that once this all gets to the Supreme Court, trump's hand-picked Justices will SAVE 'MURIKKKA, nullify 80 million votes, and hand trump a gift-wrapped stolen election.

So what happens when all of trump's half-assed court appeals reach the Supreme Court... and a solid majority of Justices all say "This Court can only rule on the appropriate legality of the lower court rulings, and they were all relying on your evidence you never produced, there's nothing we can do, by the way where's the damned evidence?"

When we get to that moment, we may indeed see violence in the streets from the extremist trumpsters unable to cope with reality. But how bad could it get?

The scary news is that so far there's about 73 million Americans who voted trump. That's a lot of people to be worried about.

The good news is that - as Kristian pointed out - a vast majority of Republican voters are not extremists or violent towards their communities. I've noted before, most Republicans are hard-wired to vote Republican but are otherwise honest, decent people (who can't accept the fact their own party is led by crooked, vulgar people). If trump flashes out a Tweet for WAR to foment a coup takeover, many trump voters will shake their heads and mutter "okay, that's a little too far."

What we have to worry about are the trump extremists who have crossed that line of morality. The guy making pipe bombs in trump's name, for example, or the gunmen caught plotting to kidnap and kill governors.

We're not talking millions of Americans at this point: These numbers are mercifully few and far between - they have to bus in people from out of state to make their wingnut rallies number in the thousands, after all - but there's still enough of them to make the days between now and January nerve-wracking. All it will take is just one of them packing enough firepower to wipe out an entire city block to ruin everybody else's day.

Even with that dread, I am tired of talking like a Debbie Downer. There may be a nice little silver lining to celebrate in this: That in the end, a sizable number of Republicans - even ones who for godforsaken reasons VOTED FOR trump - are still able to respect the civil norms of a democratic-republic nation the same way a sizable number of Democrats do. 

Now if we can just get everyone to WEAR THE DAMN MASKS (and over the nose, everybody!) we can save our United States of America...

Cycle of Violence, Unending

Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars... - Reverend Martin Luther King Jr (1967).

What are we doing to ourselves?

This past week we had two questionable, honestly horrific situations where police used lethal force to kill two black men, Alton Sterling one day and then Philando Castile the next, in situations that begged the question - yet again - at what point should lethal force even be considered? In Castile's case, it was over a minor traffic stop - over a busted tail light? - that for a white guy - like myself - would have meant a warning from the cop and the chance to drive home and fix the tail light by tomorrow. But for a black guy like Castile it was a death sentence.

And then things got worse last night when - during a peaceful street protest in Dallas regarding Sterling and Castile's deaths - a gunman with an assault rifle took a sniper's position overlooking the protest and opened fire on the cops working the security detail. The shooter wounded twelve officers and civilians, killing five.

Every account about the protest up until then was that it was by the book, nobody causing problems, a genuinely peaceful protest that by all definitions our Constitution encourages. Word is, Dallas is one of those cities than has been effective in maintaining professional relations dealing with the public, had been avoiding the militarization of the police that took place in Ferguson and Cincinnati and a hundred other cities, that had been reducing the kind of bad confrontations that led to last night's protests in the first place. 

There is horrifying irony in this, that a place where policing was actually working right had to suffer the loss of four police officers and a transit officer to another angry guy with a gun. All because one angry Black - a military veteran of Afghanistan with no previous police record, and "upset about the recent police shootings" - decided to take his "revenge" on the cops who had nothing to do with those other deaths.

We're still not over what happened in Orlando last month, home to the worst one-shooter gun massacre in our nation's history. Given how bloody that history is, that fact ought to upset every single American. The fact of that shooting - like every other mass shooting our nation's seen - involved yet another angry guy with access to military-level assault rifles ought to stir up action to prevent such guys from easy access to weapons that can kill in a heartbeat with the pull of a trigger finger. And yet...

And yet we dare not talk about any attempt at sensible gun safety laws lest the NRA throw yet another hissy fit. I don't even know why they bother to throw one: they're too busy raking in the dough as more gun nuts race out to the armories to buy up more weapons and ammo out of fear that "Obama's gonna take our gunz."

/headdesk

We cannot gather in peace in public to protest or celebrate or dance or learn. We cannot assemble in our churches or our schools or our shopping malls without fear of the angry guy wielding the almighty gun. We cannot calm down our police forces, who fear every traffic stop and street protest for the likelihood of violent escalation, who overreact and kill those who didn't deserve to die.

Meanwhile, we keep making this nation a safe place for angry guys to get guns, and to use those guns, even on the good guys like cops doing their jobs, to keep the cycle of anger and violence going.

...Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. - King

We are all part of that darkness, all because of a few who live for - who love - that hate.

Where are we going that we cannot see in this darkness?

Martin Luther King on the Weakness Of Violence

The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral, begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy. Instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate. In fact, violence merely increases hate. So it goes...

Returning hate for hate multiplies hate, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.
- Where Do We Go From Here? (1967)

Things To Note About Russia, Ukraine, and The World

With the ongoing crisis in eastern Europe between Russia and the Ukraine over Crimea (and Ukraine itself should Russia all-out invade), there are a few things you'll need to know. This Slate article does a nice job about covering the current events, but there's a few bits of background info you'd need to consider:

1) Russia has historically been heavily involved in Eastern European affairs for centuries.  They consider it "their" stomping grounds the way we Americans would consider, well, the Western hemisphere.  To an outsider, Russia reacting to the Ukrainian uprising this past month seems a bit like overkill: however, just consider how the U.S. reacts/reacted to Cuba just 90 miles off our shores over the last 150 years (trying to annex it, fighting Spain for its' "independence"... going apesh-t when Castro took over and joined the Soviets).  And the Ukraine is right on Russia's border.

The reason World War I escalated the way it did was because Russia inserted itself as a major player into the Eastern European Balkan nation-states like Serbia: when Austria-Hungary mobilized against Serbia in response to the Arch-Duke's assassination, Russia mobilized in response (which got Germany mobilizing against both Russia AND France, since France and Russia were allied via treaty already).  Just think of Russia still wanting to insert itself into Eastern European activities... whether those Eastern European states want Russia meddling or not.

2) What Putin is doing with sending troops into the Crimea may be an over-reaction because the Russians clearly didn't think their ally President Yanukovych would fall so quickly.  There's also the possibility Putin didn't figure on Europe or the United States over-reacting to his sending in the troops and getting his parliament to rubber-stamp the use of force against Ukraine.

A previous stir-up with a former Soviet state in 2008 - Georgia - ended up being lopsided in Russia's favor with few international repercussions.  But that was due more to Georgia's leadership being too aggressive towards Russia, hurting their stance with the U.S. and NATO nations.  Ukrainian protesters that overthrew Yanukovych may have been anti-Russian in their stance, but they were openly protesting in favor of joining the European Union.  That would make the EU nations - Germany, France and the UK in particular - more keen on providing political and economic support to Ukraine.

2a) Another reason for Putin's over-reaction: he's increasingly surrounded himself with yes-men and cronies (sounds familiar...) who only give him the news he wants to hear.  As such, he may have gotten separated from the real world and is operating on full Disconnect mode...

3) It's that pro-EU stance of the Ukrainians that's upsetting the Russian government.  Having a bordering nation go fully into the Western European sphere of influence would seem like a weakness to the Russians.  Again, see how Russia reacted to the start of WWI...

4) Crimea itself is relatively sparsely populated, but is mostly pro-Russian citizenry, which is why Russia moved so quickly and successfully in occupying it.  Save for the Tatar population, which is an Turkic-Arab minority that also happens to be very pro-Ukrainian and pro-Western.  What happens to them is a serious issue.

5) Crimea is key territory for Russia because of its' natural seaport geography in the Black Sea, a major aspect of Russian naval security.  There's a reason after the Soviet break-up that Ukraine and Russia made a series of treaties allowing the Russian navy access to Sevastopol: Russia needed that seaport, big time.

6) Western responses to Russia's takeover of Crimea has been limited.  Mostly diplomatic ties getting cut, a planned G8 meeting in Sochi in June now likely to get suspended, possibility of the other nation members kicking Russia out.  There's been a huge response already, however, to Russia's economy where their stock market's taken a huge hit, their currency's been devalued, and a lot of trade deals getting struck down.

6a) Which is why Putin may be talking tough, but it's increasingly unlikely Russia would fully invade Ukraine.  An actual invasion would be a huge blow to Russia's economy: they have few allies siding with them on this, and the nations that would line up on Ukraine's side are the major economic powers - the EU, Japan, the United States, even China - that could cripple Russia's finances and cause an internal economic depression that would anger up the Russian populace.

7) If Russia does invade, the Ukrainian forces may have fewer numbers than the Russian forces but will be better organized and fighting a defensive war, which favors them.  While NATO or the U.S. won't contribute ground troops or any overt support, they will back Ukraine as far as possible.  More than likely, Ukraine will find military support coming from Poland and other former Warsaw Pact nations not on good terms with Russia and terrified of a Putin-led government acting like a reborn Russian "empire".  It definitely won't be a swift curb-stomp fight like Russia had against Georgia.

8) Most likely scenario: Russia forces the annexation of the Crimea.  There'll be a fight - mostly political, possibly military - to force Russian concessions to Ukraine to make that annexation go over smoothly (especially something that would ensure the Tatars political and physical safety).  Russia may face some sanctions and their political leadership might find themselves persona non grata on the international scene for a few years, but it may stabilize matters over the long term.  That's only if they don't invade.

8a) If they do invade... it'll be like their 1979 invasion of Afghanistan (or the U.S. invasion of Iraq 2003) all over again: an occupying force in hostile territory while the rest of the world sits by in anger and open contempt.  With the added woes of a tanking economy as much-needed trade deals get wiped out.