The onset of winter is here
All the complicated details of the attiring and the disattiring are completed!
A liquid moon moves gently among the long branches.
Thus having prepared their buds against a sure winter the wise trees stand sleeping in the cold.
— William Carlos Williams
Winter officially started Tuesday. Cold, sometimes dreary, dark, and full of danger. That also seems appropriate for Trumpublican politics. Much has come to light as to behavior of right-wing politicians and their followers, and the harm that can come from those actions.
The District of Columbia is suing far-right gangs for damages caused by their participation in the January 6th riots in the Capitol. D.C. Attorney General Karl Racine has evidence that they conspired to change the outcome of the 2020 election. The civil lawsuit indicts the gangs and thirty others affiliated with them. The suit charges, “Over the course of several weeks, the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, their leadership, and certain of their members and affiliates — motivated by a desire to overturn the legal results of the election and initiate a second term of Donald Trump’s presidency — worked together to plot, publicize, recruit for, and finance their planned attack. The result of that planning, the January 6th Attack on the Capitol, was not a protest or a rally. It was a coordinated act of domestic terrorism.”
The Congressional January 6th Select Committee has met with over 300 witnesses to determine who planned, funded, organized, and led the attempted coup d’état on that date. Phil Waldron, a retired U.S. Army colonel prepared and shared a Powerpoint presentation showing how to overthrow the 2020 Presidential election. He visited the White House on several occasions after the election, meeting with Mark Meadows, the Chief of Staff at the time, and several GOP members of Congress on and before January 5th.
Representative Adam Schiff (Democrat, 28th District of California) released a text from a member of Congress to Mark Meadows (White House chief of staff from 2020 to 2021) apologizing for not overturning the election on January 6: “We tried everything we could in our objection to the 6 states. I’m sorry nothing worked.” Schiff went on to say, “What did the president of the United States do, and what did he fail to do? Mr. Meadows doesn’t think he should have to answer those questions. He thinks the American people should be left in the dark.” The panel unanimously voted to hold Meadows in contempt of Congress after Meadows stopped cooperating with the committee and failed to show up for a scheduled deposition. “
Representative Liz Cheney (Republican from Wyoming) added other interesting material showing that some GOP supporters were worried the January 6th uprisings would hurt the party, “It’s really bad up here on the Hill.” Another said, “The president needs to stop this ASA.P” A third wrote: “Fix this now.”
Representative Cheney has exposed Republicans’ complicity in the Big Lie about voter fraud that fueled the January 6th riot.
Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican National Committee noted, “For her, this is about setting out in stark relief what the truth is, and in some way making the Republican Party confront that truth. ‘Here are the text messages, here are the phone logs, here are the conversations.’ That becomes a very difficult story line to refute.”
The 2022 and 2024 elections will determine whether small-d democracy continues to function in the United States. Voters must be shown the reasons for their importance. Twelve percent of Trumpublican constituencies say they might take up arms if the votes are close. Independents, Democrats, and former Republicans must take the threat seriously and vote to maintain our sovereignty.