You are living in the political version of a slasher movie

I read through the transcript of another Gaslit Nation episode. This podcast is created by Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa. This episode is titled Where is Christopher Wray? and was posted February 17th. Kendzior began by reviewing some of the good and bad in the impeachment trial. On the good side the prosecutors did prove the nasty guy incited the violent insurrection. On the bad side, they did not call witnesses and did not explain how the inner circle served as a bridge between the nasty guy and the various groups who were the major force behind the attack. Kendzior listed that inner circle. Roger Stone coined “Stop the Steal” back in 2016. That’s when the Big Lie began and has been a guiding principle ever since. Michael Flynn was the QAnon hype man. Steve Bannon, in his podcast, hyped and guided the attack and instructed the attackers. That should have been played in the Senate chamber. Lin Wood, the nasty guy lawyer, recruited and instructed insurrectionists. Why are they not being investigated now? Yeah, they’ve been pardoned, but we still need to know what went on. They and Rudy Giuliani have been pushing the Big Lie for a long time. Rep. Bennie Thompson filed a suit against the nasty guy, Giuliani, and the lead insurrectionists of conspiring to incite violence and violating the 1871 Ku Klux Klan Act. Chalupa said a lot of people should bring lawsuits against the Trump Crime Family, such as a class action suit for inflicting mass trauma. Why has Sen. Lindsay Graham become a loyal lapdog? Back in 2016, when Graham was critical of the nasty guy, he gave out Graham’s phone number at a rally in a speech filled with hate. We should praise Republicans for doing the right thing, so Chalupa read Lisa Murkowski’s statement on why she voted to convict. It was thorough in its reasonings. Kendzior said such statements should not be so rare. “Clearly, running around threatening to assassinate people is not something that should ever be accepted in our Capitol.” Georgia, recently voting blue but still with the GOP in major offices, is investigating the call from Graham to the Georgia Sec. of State trying to get him to find extra votes. Georgia seems more willing to investigate the nasty guy than Congress is. Kendzior said:

… Georgia is also corrupt. Georgia is corrupt in a different way. Georgia is corrupt in a neo-confederate way and within that is a certain kind of pride. They don't appreciate being treated as pawns of the Trump machine, a machine that will take away their vote, a machine that will threaten them if they don't instantly obey. So, I think that is something to watch.

The talk turned to the power outages in Texas, which also affected Kendzior’s sister. Chalupa said:

John Tedesco, an investigative reporter for The Houston Chronicle, tweeted out a story: "The ERCOT grid has collapsed in exactly the same manner as the old Soviet Union. It limped along on underinvestment and neglect until it finally broke under predictable circumstances. That's how the state's power grid failed millions of Texans." Annise Parker, the former Houston mayor, shared that story with her own addition writing, "25 years of total Republican control of the state of Texas." That's what it got voters, a Soviet Union like failure at a time when they need basic services the most. You might be wondering, why would voters go against their own interests election cycle after election cycle? Because the power of losing your inhibitions is extremely strong and intoxicating. … With all the cost associated with that being shouldered by the poor and the shrinking middle class and vote against a reduction in basic services—like maintaining roads and a power grid—because they want to be able to live free of accountability. They don't want to have to do all of that heavy work of being empathetic towards the needs of a changing society. They don't want to have to be "politically correct" towards women wanting equal rights and an equal representation in the world, towards people of color, towards transgender people. They want to be able to have the freedom of essentially being bigoted and openly racist and having this "freedom." When they talk about freedom on the Republican side, what they really mean is freedom from accountability, freedom from empathy, freedom having to deal with sharing this world with anybody else. That's why you always have these Republicans come into power with some belligerent foreign policy, which is a reflection of their belligerent domestic policy. This is what Republicans get us—a Soviet failed state in the making.

Kendzior added:

This whole thing where they pretend to not believe in climate change and not believe in science, what they want, as Andrea just said, they don't want to be accountable to that. They don't want to make actual policy decisions about that. They don't want to do things for the benefit of ordinary people and not for the benefit of fossil fuel companies or large corporations that make up their donor base. And then, of course, on top of that, you have just plain old sadism, as demonstrated with Trump, who was very content to let a pandemic ravage this country.

Back to discussing the attack, Kendzior said:

Where's the FBI? This is something I've been wondering now for over a month. Why does it seem that the FBI is not investigating people like Flynn and Stone and Bannon and Lin Wood, even though they blatantly helped organize and participate in these attacks, putting their words and their endorsement in the public domain? Where is Christopher Wray? Why has he not held press conferences on the attacks? Why are we not getting regular updates from our government on an investigation of our own Capitol? If you were old enough for 9/11, you may remember not a day went by day for like a year where we didn't hear of some development in the investigation of the 9/11 attacks. It was just constant. Here, we actually had a breach of our Capitol, with five people dead and people threatening to assassinate our representatives, and they are quiet. If I were Biden, I would fire Wray, so I wonder, why is Biden keeping him on and what exactly is the FBI doing?

Kendzior discussed deep institutional rot at the FBI going back 30 years. It seems it continues with Wray. One way in which it continues is the high level leaders of the attack are not being held accountable. No one is talking about them in the same way no one is talking about Stone and Flynn. There is a crisis of normalization. If the FBI has been corrupted, somebody would have done something, right? If the nasty guy was really that dependent on dirty Russian money to get elected, somebody would have done something. Chalupa said:

That's what happens is failed coups come first and then they learn, and they spruce up their tactics and they wear down their opposition. And they steamroll over any accountability and they normalize those tactics. The next thing you know, they're in power. Once they're in power, they're extremely difficult to get out of power. You see examples of this everywhere. The decline of democracy is a worldwide problem.

Chalupa mentioned Myanmar, whose coup was successful. There is Bolsonaro in Brazil. She said:

Hate speech is not protected speech. Hate speech is a weapon in the playbook used by dictators, used by strong men like Bolsonaro, like Trump. Hate speech is an extremely reliable weapon.

Kendzior listed types of things that have been normalized: hate speech, the president being a Kremlin asset and being named in a federal probe, and mass death due to a pandemic. It should not need to be said: don’t normalize the coup. Normalizing a coup may happen because there is a lack of urgency and lack of action. That’s in contrast to the urgency expressed when progressives do something. But when Republicans act … Both women get into discussing the demise of the Lincoln Project. It made a big show of being conservatives producing TV commercials opposing the nasty guy. Kendzior and Chalupa warned against them, knowing who some of the players were. And they were right. The head was accused of soliciting underage boys. The income was much greater than the cost of airing the videos, meaning it went into member pockets, meaning it was a scam hiding behind fighting against the nasty guy. Democrats embraced them because it seemed Nancy Pelosi in the House and Chuck Schumer in the Senate were not in that fight. Chalupa talked about the need for Democrats to hold hearings to investigate the nasty guy and his inner circle. She said:

By not wheeling out all these whole colorful cast of characters and then bringing them out there, not necessarily forcing them to testify, but giving each of these guys their own investigation in Congress, you would turn C-SPAN into the new Fox News. People would be watching this and devouring this scandal. … In this reality TV climate, the best reality TV right now is to come after Trump and investigate him. People will eat that up. And the fact that Democrats are being timid and containing their power there is extremely infuriating. And the prospects for that for the upcoming election in 2022, it makes me worried. It makes me worry that they're missing such a major opportunity and Republicans are just going to clobber them into 2022, because the independent votes they need in these swing districts don't understand the urgency. Because if there was an urgency, surely somebody would be doing something about it, surely Christopher Wray would be testifying before Congress, surely all of these characters or adjacent characters to Bannon and Flynn and others would be forced to testify before Congress, surely they would be gripping testimony for the next two years. And instead, we're getting it swept under the rug. We're getting it rammed through. Nancy Pelosi wants to dust her hands of this, and we cannot emphasize to you how dangerous this is.

Chalupa then turned to Republicans.

They were humiliated in front of all the world when they lost the 2020 election. So you know they're going to come and prove something to us next time. Ivanka Trump has a chip on her shoulder now from the 2020 election. She is going to come and prove something to us next time, and they're not going to give up power so easily next time. I'm really fearful of the Democrats' response in giving them the opportunity to do that.

Kendzior added:

It takes a toll on your heart. What I want people to do—this is why we call the show Gaslit Nation—is don't doubt yourself here. Don't doubt your perception. Don't doubt your frustration. Don't doubt your fear of the situation. It is normal to feel afraid about what is happening right now. And when you see people blowing off a violent insurrectionist coup led by the president on the Capitol, it is a big deal that that happened. It's also a big deal that they're blowing it off. You should be outraged. You should never, never let it go. … You are living in the political version of a slasher movie. The villain is not actually defeated. He's out there lurking in the background. And just like in a slasher series, the sequels get worse and worse and worse each time until they are utterly unwatchable.