Still too many Trump apologists
Listen around town and you’ll hear the apologists wanting to characterize the D.C. insurrectionists as a bunch of yee-haw hillbillies, play-acting at revolution while vigorously expressing their economic anxiety.
“Who could have seen this coming?”
In the aftermath of the rioting at our nation’s Capitol that question is being asked on the airwaves, in the press, at backyard gatherings and in polite and impolite conversations in person and online. We watch the images of the plague rats from around the country converge on Washington to take their orders from the Dear Leader and try to overthrow the government because they are too stupid to recognize the lies they are fed, and we still ask the question, who could have seen this coming.
How about, “people who had their eyes open.” Because seeing this coming didn’t require an advanced degree in seven dimensional physics, all it took was an ability to pay attention to what was already happening. That the MAGA-hatted, alt-Reich had gone mainstream in a Republican party so beholden to evangelicals and white supremacists, and so enslaved to tax cuts and deregulations for the rich, that they were never going to stand up for America.
Republicans have made excuses for Trump ever since he came down the escalator. Now those Republicans who stood by while the country was violated want to point fingers at anyone but themselves, as Americans have to live with the violation for the rest of their lives.
Who could have seen this coming? You have to be completely delusional to have not recognized the danger when the president, along with his bootlicking senators and congressmen, peddled lie after deranged lie and then demanded the mob do something about it. As if four years of hatefueled violence wasn’t reason enough to recognize that something like the Capitol riots were inevitable, just consider some of actions taken by the Trumpenvolk after the election when Trump, McConnell, Giuliani, Cruz and the rest turned their anti-American rhetoric up to 11.
For seemingly no reason other than spastic muscle-memory, two weeks after the election one of the Trump caravans with hundreds of likely armed dead-enders descended on Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York, and tried to storm her house chanting the usual “Lock her up,” until local police beat them back onto the street.
Want more foreshadowing? Armed goons surrounded the home of the Michigan secretary of state screaming that she’s a murderer because she called for an audit of the state’s vote count. Before that, some of these terrorists were arrested for plotting to kidnap the governor of Michigan.
The wife of the Georgia secretary of state was receiving death threat because her husband was doing his job, and a mayor in Kansas had to resign after receiving her own death threats because the deplorables hate masks.
From Washington D.C. to Olympia, Washington, violence broke out almost immediately after the election, with Trump and his goon squad whipping the mob into a violent alternate facts frenzy, which clearly is not over. Who could have seen this coming? Who couldn’t?
Listen around town and you’ll hear the apologists wanting to characterize the D.C. insurrectionists as a bunch of yee-haw hillbillies, play-acting at revolution while vigorously expressing their economic anxiety. They try to describe them as disorganized, incoherent and ultimately pointless, but they are organized, advertising and out for blood. Listen closer, and you’ll also hear that Greenwich was well represented at this Fascist Coachella, something that should shame local Republican leadership.
It doesn’t though, and the statements put out by Greenwich Republican Town Committee chairman Dan Quigley and First Selectman Fred Camillo were feckless attempts at bothsiderism misdirection that were each as pointless and phony as the traditional “thoughts and prayers” platitudes we get after school shootings.
Still, Republicans both national and Greenwich want “unity” in the wake of their treason. Sure, but unity has to start with publicly accepting that the election was fair and undisputed. That the president and certain senators, congressmen, attorneys general and others should be held accountable for their sedition. That the rioters, if found guilty in court, should be on a permanent blacklist/national registry branding them forever as traitors. When we see that coming, then we can discuss unity.