Stop focusing on incompetent despots and go after the people funding them

Catching up on news... From a post from last Sunday Hunter of Daily Kos reported thousands of supporters of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro attacked the national buildings that house the Congress, Supreme Court, and Presidential Palace. Since it was a Sunday the Congress and Court were not there. Current president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was elsewhere in the country. Bolsonaro is in Florida. Rioters broke in and vandalized and extensively damaged the buildings. Police on the grounds were ineffective. The scene was very similar to the attack on the American Capitol done two years and two days earlier. The reason was similar too – claims without evidence of voter fraud, that Bolsonaro was the true winner of their recent election. Lula was quick to condemn the attack. On Monday Hunter reported that Brazil was quick to restore order. If I remember right, the military herded the rioters onto buses and sent them to detention. Hunter wrote:

The parallels to the Jan. 6 coup are uncanny, but both have followed a standard fascist pattern of promoting disinformation to delegitimize democracy, using those hoaxes as supposed evidence that an authoritarian overthrow of that democracy is "necessary" in order to return the country to (far-right) greatness.

Hunter also reported that American conservatives have been boosting Bolsonaro’s claims in the same way they’ve been boosting claims of Putin and Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban. Dr. William Horne tweeted:

So in the last three years, we've seen (by my count) FOUR rightwing coups planned & executed at least partly from FLORIDA: the 1/6 Insurrection, the "Operation Gideon" attempt against Venezuela's Maduro, the assassination of Haiti's President Moïse, & the Bolsonaro coup today. I do think there's a case to be made that Florida has become a fascist mecca, not just in U.S. politics, but in exporting fascist ideas, resources, & tactics worldwide.

Horne then wrote the US has been sponsoring far right invasions & coups for roughly 200 years. These actions promoted slavery and colonialism, especially in South and Central America. Mary Louise Kelly of NPR spoke to reporters Sergio Olmos and Shannon Bond. They talked about American and transnational aspects of the Brazilian attack. On the American side Steve Bannon lent his support and called the attackers “Freedom fighters.” Across the world there are many far right movements with the common goal of undermining democracy. As in the US attack, the one in Brazil appears to have been planned openly on social media, including invitations urging people to come join the violence. In a Gaslit Nation bonus episode (available to donors) Sarah Kendzior and Andrea Chalupa discussed the link between Bannon and Bolsonaro. I listened to this yesterday at a time I couldn’t take notes, so I don’t remember much other than it is worth your 37 minutes. Kendzior tweeted some aspects of her regular Gaslit Nation episode (available for free) that also discussed the Brazil attack. Some of what she tweeted and some of that quoting the episode:

Three recent approaches to a coup plot: 1) Germany -- stop the coup before it starts 2) Brazil -- round up insurrectionists after they attack 3) US -- Seat the seditionists in Congress, pass the buck on investigation, and allow the head insurrectionist to run for president again The refusal of the Biden admin to hold 1/6 organizers like Steve Bannon accountable has enabled fascism and seditionist violence worldwide. Brazil should be furious with the US's lax treatment of Bannon and of the coup-plotting global mafia based in Florida. "If I were a Brazilian citizen, I would be absolutely furious at the US right now, just as we in the US are furious when other countries -- Russia, Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc -- interfere with our politics and elections or lend monetary and tactical support to violent groups."

Jared Yates Sexton tweeted, speaking of Bannon and many others.

If you want to stop insurrections, if you actually want to save liberal democracy, you have to stop focusing on incompetent despots like Trump and Bolsonaro and go after the people funding them, who pay for the campaigns, who work behind the scenes radicalizing populations. It’s a complete indictment of our system that the January 6 Committee, led by Liz Cheney, told us it was all because of Donald Trump and did almost nothing to illuminate the Right Wing benefactors and groups that orchestrated the whole thing and continue to attack democracy. These ongoing attacks - January 6, the Trucker Convoy, Brazil’s insurrection, etc - are part of a larger, wide scale, and relentless attack on liberal democracy. This is, and always has been, bigger than Trump or Bolsonaro. And until we realize that, it’ll only get worse.

Matt Wueker tweeted a cartoon showing Uncle Sam getting his morning coffee while the TV and newspaper are full of the Brazil attack. He says, “I miss the old days when democracy was what we exported.” Leah McElrath tweeted some images of the attack and then excerpts of Lula’s response. She also wrote:

What we’re watching is the effort to destroy democracy on a global scale by making peaceful transitions of power a thing of the past. The combination of denial of election results followed by incitement to and orchestration of violence is becoming an iterative process.

Back to the US and the insurrectionists in Congress. Joan McCarter of Kos reported that as McCarthy was making deals with his far right members someone was writing those deals down. The rest of the House, certainly the rest of the Republican caucus, wants to know the details. McCarthy and others deny such an official document exists. But McCarter says, official or not, there is plenty of evidence it does exist. Laura Clawson of Kos reported House Republicans have their first bill – to repeal the budget increase for the IRS that was in the big Inflation Reduction Act. And – as expected – everything about it is based on a lie. McCarthy says it will repeal the funding of 87K agents. That’s a lie. They say it is fiscally responsible to not spend that $70B, but it would mean the treasury overall gets $114B less because the rich don’t pay taxes. They call it the Family and Small Business Taxpayer Protection Act by claiming those 87K agents would be coming after the middle class taxpayers, but the original IRS funding says the new agents won’t be going after families earning less than $400K a year. Not surprisingly Fox News and other conservative news outlets have been pushing these lies for months. McCarter reported that with that first bill the White House has issued its first veto threat (though the bill won’t get past the Senate). The WH says Biden won’t support a bill that encourages the rich to cheat on their taxes. This first action appears not to be an actual bill, but a vote on House “policy.” McCarter discussed some of the other early actions: They passed the rules package and that is described as guaranteeing more chaos and a government shutdown. One thing in the rules is that McCarthy’s hold on the Speaker job can be questioned at any moment. They authorized Judiciary Chair Jim Jordan to create a Joe McCarthy style witch hunt committee to go after perceived enemies (this doesn’t need Senate approval). They voted to defund the Office of Congressional Ethics, which is an independent organization (the House Ethics Committee is run by House members). The only reason to do away with an ethics office is because they want to be unethical. And somewhere is something about being kind to insurrectionists. McCarter reported that Majority Whip Steve Scalise has linked cutting Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare to negotiations over the debt ceiling – and lying about his justification. McCarter also included a photo of a screen at a Republican conference meeting that lists their budget goals. One of them admits that they won’t have next year’s budget ready by September 30 and will have to pass bills to continue this year’s budget. And they’re saying that 8½ months ahead. Nah, they’re not interested in actually governing. I can see, as I saw at the beginning of the nasty guy years, I won’t be able to keep up with every dastardly thing the House does. So I won’t try. I have a few more things to include in my next post, then I’ll try to stick to the important stuff. Bill in Portland, Maine, in a Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, dipped into his mailbag and created a letter:

Dear Americans Who Are Not Rich, Can't afford health care? Screw you. Want the food you eat to be safe? How quaint. Want Social Security to be preserved? You're an idiot. In foreclosure or student debt hell? La La La we can't hear you. Concerned about the environment? Crybaby. You want stronger unions? Good luck with that, commie. Unemployment benefits running out? Quit whining. Muslim? Latino? Gay? Un-American. Looking for fresh new ideas? Move to Scandinavia. Reproductive freedom? We own your private parts, little lady. Don’t want the government to default on its debts? Too bad. Want the rich to be taxed more? In a pig's eye. Wish we'd put America's interests above our own? Keep dreaming. Love and MAGA (and that little “OK” sign we make with our fingers), The New Republican House Majority P.S. Like cake? Eat all you want.