Sedition is a wildfire

Yesterday, the new House was seated. That apparently included the 126 (or however many had won reelection) GOP members who signed on to the seditious court case. There was an objection, though it wasn’t over the seditious members. Hunter of Daily Kos reported Chip Roy (R-Texas) objected to the GOP delegates from Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, the states that are at the center of the nasty guy’s attempt to stay president. Roy’s objection was these members promoted the nasty guy’s claims of “rigged” election while declaring their own wins in those same elections as just fine. Roy wrote in a statement:

After all, those representatives were elected through the very same systems—with the same ballot procedures, with the same signature validations, with the same broadly applied decisions of executive and judicial branch officials—as were the electors chosen for the President of the United States under the laws of those states.

By a 371-2 vote the House moved to swear in all duly elected members. Good for Roy for calling out the double standard. However, Hunter is not impressed. The GOP is now known for its fascism. And Roy hasn’t changed parties. Ian Reifowitz of Kos reviewed that the nasty guy’s call to the Georgia Sec. of State is indeed a crime. Then Reifowitz wrote:

Look, this isn’t complicated. When the leader of the Republican Party openly commits a crime in furtherance of overturning an election defeat—the very definition of an attempted coup d’etat—every member of that party must go on record. Do you support Donald Trump or do you support democracy in our country? One cannot do both.

Garry Kasparov tweeted:

A few notes about the GOP Congressmen supporting Trump's coup attempt. The damage doesn't end on Jan 20. Trump won't be president, but he and his supporters will play the victim role forever. This creation of a permanent anti-democracy wing of a major party is not sustainable. I don't know what Republicanism means now, but if it's attacking legitimate election results, it must be destroyed. … The ugly surprises aren't over yet. There are still 16 days left in Trump's term. He will use them all to cause trouble, to rally his supporters against the rule of law, and to weaken Biden's presidency.

Back to the seditious House member having been seated… Ben Franklin responded to a tweet demanding the nasty guy be charged:

Right but our system will not charge him. Our system will not charge congressmen who are advocating for political violence. I think we have to address the fact that our system is allowing these people to operate with impunity and stop expecting institutions to function right now. It is the height of insanity for people to expect the institutions that have protected and enabled trump for his entire life to spring to action now and stop him. The overall story of the last four years has been of institutional collapse in the face of a sustained assault.

In more tweets Franklin wrote:

Trump is being allowed to mount a full scale assault on democracy and everyone in a position of power is letting it happen. Start asking why.

And:

We need to start asking why Trump is allowed to operate with immunity and impunity. No FBI arrests. No CIA intervention. A weak and ineffectual opposition. Is our system truly functioning or is there just an effort to fool us into thinking we still have a functioning democracy?

And:

We were promised that the prize for winning the midterms against Trump would be real accountability. Subpoenas, public hearings, impeaching him for all his crimes. Did we get it? Why not?

And:

The short answer to why the authorities aren't stopping an increasingly violent sedition movement is that everyone in power is a criminal, a traitor, or a pedophile or being blackmailed, bribed or threatened by a criminal, traitor or pedophile. That's the 30 second version. This may sound extreme but having applied myself to try and figure out what’s going on for five years all evidence seems to fit under this statement.

And:

The ability of the "resistance" to twist itself into pretzels to paint the illegality and norm shredding actions of the GOP into some childish "gotchya" moment in which they automatically win has been the worst feature of this political crisis. GOP: We are going to destroy the constitution and illegally seize power Resistance: Aha! They broke the law! We win again!

This “gotchya” moment is someone declaring a bit of superiority over their opponent. It rarely delves into important issues. I’ve seen this a lot in people saying the “own the libs.” That also translates to saying something to supposedly show how superior one is to the target. I’m tired of a world where everyone is trying to claim superiority over others, whether it is in these little episodes of “owning” someone else or big episodes of attempting a coup, no matter the damage. More from Franklin:

There are still dopes making the argument that despite what has all the appearances of an actual attempt to seize power that this is all theatrics - which is what they said about trump rejecting the election results before it turned into a coup attempt. When does it “count?” To repeat myself, sedition is a wildfire not a controlled burn of norms and laws. The words that have been spoken already are going to result in a body count. When congressmen say “we need to use political violence,” someone is gonna hear that and use political violence. 100% Once political violence starts, it’s very very hard to stop it. It snowballs. Tit for tat. We’re on the edge of a precipice and there are people telling you that this is all just a meme and you don’t have to be worried. This is grossly wrong.

And… referencing that phone call where the nasty guy tried to get 11,000 more votes from Georgia:

What’s the most puzzling thing to me is that Trump could have gotten 11,000 more votes if he had provided the barest amount of relief during the pandemic and chose not to do so as if he wasn’t worried about winning the election at all.

I mentioned yesterday some people heard that phone call and declared the nasty guy delusional. Leah McElrath said he was actually quite lucid. Franklin explained a bit more:

People are happy to call Donald trump crazy or delusional because the alternative, that he’s a calculated career criminal trying to kill democracy because he thinks he can get away with, is too scary.

Franklin turns to what we might do:

I think people need to be prepared for the political crisis to physically come to their city, to think locally instead of nationally, and to act like there’s a bad hurricane on the way in terms of having useful stuff in supply. Not much more I can say besides that. There’s been an overall trend of increasing right wing mobilization over the last four years and it’s going to get worse in the event there’s a major incident on the 6th OR if they believe the election was stolen from them on the 6th. It will get worse and will be everywhere.

And:

If you want to take a stand against these guys I am confident you will have an opportunity to in your closest city in short order on home territory and when the odds are much more favorable. This isn’t over on January 6th. There are already MAGA rallies being planned for after the 6th in different cities and its paramount that those are opposed. That being said the people are going are very brave and my thoughts are with them even though I think they are strategically correct about the need to show up and tactically wrong about trying to do it on January 6th.

Emma Goldman added a bit more:

Do you have a plan when fascists, emboldened by Trump, start marching down the streets of your city? If you don't, start organizing now. Better to be prepared and it doesn't happen than not prepared and it does. Right now, events are pointing towards it happening.

Greg Dworkin, in his pundit roundup for Kos, included a couple good quotes. From Politico:

In short, there’s a growing rebellion inside the GOP conference instigated by President Donald Trump, who promises more GOP senators will join the effort and also called for mass protests in D.C. on Wednesday. (Yes, the Proud Boys and right-wing militias will be there, and, yes, there is cause for concern about the prospect of violence.) We can’t say this emphatically enough: This does not happen to Mitch McConnell. For four years, the Senate leader has managed to maintain order in his ranks as Trump unleashes daily mayhem on the GOP from the White House. That’s all gone to hell.

And a thread from Steve Schmid:

The 6th will commence a political civil war inside the GOP. The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940. The ‘22 GOP primary season will be a blood letting. The 6th will be a loyalty test. The purge will follow. … The poisonous fruit from four years of collaboration and complicity with Trumps insanity, illiberalism and incompetence are ready for harvest. It will kill the GOP because it’s Pro Democracy faction and Autocratic factions can no more exist together then could the Whig Party hold together the abolitionist with the Slave master.

Kerry Eleveld of Kos has another take on the divisions in the GOP:

When states across the nation finally certified their results rendering Trump the loser, McConnell figured he could just flip the switch, reluctantly embrace the results, and leave Trump in the rearview mirror. Not so fast. The monster McConnell nurtured over the last four years with the help of his fellow Republicans has turned on him. Despite his repeated pleas for Senate Republicans to leave Trump for dead when Congress certifies the election results in a joint session Wednesday, the lure of personal ambition proved too powerful for the greater good of the GOP caucus.

Eleveld then discussed the GOP senators in purple states up for election in 2022. They must bet early between moderate suburban voters or the MAGA crowd who may not show up when the nasty guy is no longer on the ballot, while trying to avoid a primary challenger on the right. Then:

If Senate Republicans had hung together and refused to challenge the election results during this week’s joint session, they all could have started to build a certain amount of insulation from Trumpian politics moving forward. But as it turns out, a craven party that eagerly betrayed the country to achieve its own political ends has only served to embolden its own cohort of craven politicians who are eagerly throwing their colleagues under the bus to serve their own political ends.