Come at them with unconditional love, as hard as that is

Kerry Eleveld of Daily Kos reported that Speaker Nancy Pelosi wrote a letter to her colleagues calling for the formation of a commission to investigate what happened during the attack on the Capitol. This will require legislation in the same way the 9/11 Commission was formed. There is a danger the outcome won’t be holding people responsible, but only recommending how to make the Capitol building more defensible. One thing the GOP wants investigated is how Pelosi hobbled the National Guard response. Laura Clawson of Kos reported the GOP is on board … sorta.

Lawmakers from both parties have called for a 9/11-type investigatory panel, but some of the Republicans are likely to either push for tight limits on what can be investigated or entirely back off those calls as impeachment—and the need to distract from it by acting very serious about some form of response to the attack—recedes into the past.

Translation: The GOP is making sure they’re a part of the commission so that they can control that it doesn’t investigate too much, as in the GOP. Clawson lists a few things that need to be investigated: Why were the Capitol Police unprepared? Why was the National Guard deployment delayed? Things to watch for: What investigative questions are off limits? What witnesses should not be called? Hunter of Kos reviewed a lot of things that show the GOP has fully embraced fascism. Along the way he discussed that if the GOP had convicted the nasty guy …

The message would have been clear: Violence as political tool is disqualifying. Forever. Not violence as political tool is unfortunate. Not violence as political tool is unseemly, but due to various technicalities and the current schedule cannot be responded to. Violence as political tool is an unforgivable act, whether such support is tacit or explicit, whether it was planned or it was spontaneous, and we will all stand united to declare that no matter what your political ambitions may be you are not allowed to do that.

Nick Anderson of Kos has a cartoon of GOP legislators on January 6th and today. Kalle Nemvalts tweeted:

When nearly half the jury is afraid of the mob, or actually members of the mob, you don’t expect a conviction of the mob boss.

Ben Franklin tweeted:

When the major ringleaders of an attack on the capitol like Ali Alexander, Alex Jones, Baked Alaska, N*ck Fuentes, etc are not even bothered by the FBI in the wake of an event that left several people dead I am left to conclude they are being protected by the FBI. … So either these guys are under the protection of the security apparatus, or the entire January 6th attack was being conducted by FBI informants, and these two things are more or less the same. Which means the security apparatus used them to attack the elected part of govt. The security apparatus left the doors wide open for a mob to attack on January 6th and almost kill members of congress, just like they let trump into power despite his ties to organized crime, foreign powers, and Epstein. The security apparatus is attacking democracy. The events of the last five years have largely been an exercise of all the governments and non governmental institutions which we were told to trust working together to allow an authoritarian movement to consolidate power all while keeping the truth from the public by distraction.

Sydette, who uses the handle Black Amazon, tweeted:

If you want to know what publishing/media is like … People are circulating my articles to find (white) writers LIKE me or get current “hot” writers to write like me But not talking to me.

I shoveled four inches of snow from my driveway today. Along with the three inches from last week the snow berm between my driveway and the neighbor’s is getting tall. The snow I got last night was the same storm that hit Texas – I followed its progress north on the weather map. I have family in Texas, so I’m concerned. I haven’t heard from them, perhaps because their power is out. Leah McElrath is in Houston and her power has been off for about 24 hours now. Here’s her description from this morning. Mark Sumner of Kos, who used to work in the energy industry (coal), explained why the Texas power grid collapsed. It was built around maximizing profit (never a good sign) and couldn’t handle the combination of cold and increased demands. In addition, the Texas grid is mostly isolated from the national grid so it isn’t easy for them to accept power from outside power companies. This one has been sitting in my browser tabs for a month. I spent all my blogging time writing about the impeachment trial and didn’t get to it. Audie Cornish of NPR talked with Dannagal Young, professor of communications at the University of Delaware, about how to mend family relationships after one member has been sucked into the QAnon conspiracy. People who are not sucked in try to lead their parent, child, or sibling away from the nonsense, try to say that Joe Biden really did win the presidency and did so fairly. That rarely goes well. Young said:

Because these belief systems are not about the information within them, but about the identity and the emotions that are appealed to through them, the only thing that can actually combat them effectively are loving, trusting, emotional connections.

To get back to reality they need help in the same manner as someone recovering from addiction or from a cult.

Do not mock. Do not use snark. All of the, you know, Twitter posts where people make fun of the crazy QAnon supporters, all that does is further reinforce their sense that they are disrespected and maligned. No. 2 - using scientific evidence, argumentation, etc., that comes through the very institutions that they have been told not to trust, that is going to backfire because now they think that you are the dupe because you trust these institutions, etc. … Come at them with unconditional love, as hard as that is, reminding them of the preexisting bonds that you have. If it's a brother or sister, how about talking about old stories and just texting them and saying, oh, my gosh, I remembered that fishing trip that we had back when we were 5 and you fell in the lake, right? Because now you're asking them to tap into an identity that they haven't tapped into in a while, and that is their identity as a brother or a sister. … My sense is that if your goal is to bring them back in and to reconnect that accountability is something that should be put aside for a while until much later.

Accountability for family members is later. Accountability for those who perpetrated these conspiracies for political gain is now. Laurie Voss tweeted:

It's Presidents Day in the US and once upon a time I read a biography of every single US president so I may as well make use of that useless knowledge. Here is a thread of the wildest tweet-sized fact I know about each president:

That is indeed followed by a thread where all the presidents get a tweet of their own. Read the post-scripts for corrections. Every so often I look over the Twitter feeds of Amazing Maps (no updates since June) and Terrible Maps, which I haven’t looked at in a couple years. So a couple tweets from Terrible Maps: The earth, if we put New Zealand in the middle. A map showing the 23 states with a total of 40 million people who get 46 senators and the 40 million people in California who get two senators. The caption is “Maybe a bunch of white slave owners from the 1700s did not come up with the best government ever.” There are a lot of comments saying this is the worst terrible map.