First, many of these lawsuits (and I've read most in the comfort of retirement, free of the many obligations and duties of a daily newspaper opinion editor) simply don't offer specific evidence of fraud, probably because the attorneys know if they get caught lying to judges, the penalties can be severe and unforgiving. Only last week, in the 61st or 62nd or 63rd suit to be dismissed or pulled, this time for its "fundamental and obvious misreading of the Constitution," an outraged federal district judge openly contemplated pursuing disciplinary action against the attorney who filed it. The suit was so lacking in constitutional gravity that the attorney neglected to properly contact the intended targets (as required) or file the lawsuit in the correct court.
Second, those lawsuits that do offer specific allegations of election fraud don't withstand the scrutiny of the courts. Most of the evidence offers the consistency of a glistening soap bubble drifting lazily in mid-air. What’s more, a willfully ignorant segment of the public, in complete adoration of President Trump, simply can't imagine there are even more voters across America who feel very, very differently, that electoral intrigue and malfeasance must somehow be involved in his opponent’s victory. Surely all those packed, cheering rallies over the past five years are solid evidence of Trump’s hold over the hearts and minds of his countrymen.
Now a third reason arises justifying healthy skepticism about these allegations: the sloppily assembled PR campaigns mounted by desperate far-right cable TV commentators; crass, self-serving Republican lawmakers; and talk-radio rumormongers insisting that the pro-Trump combatants incited sufficiently to storm the U.S. Capitol by President Trump, Republican Congressman Mo Brooks, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton and others were actually ... yep, you guessed it: devious and deceitful antifa terrorists disguised as MAGA warriors! By dawn's early light over our nation's capital last Thursday, Congressman Brooks was among those of the alt-right stumbling over the wreckage to blame rampaging leftists, tweeting to his followers: "Evidence, much public, surfacing that many Capitol assaulters were fascist ANTIFAs, not Trump supporters. Again, time will reveal truth. Don’t rush to judgment. Don’t be fooled by #FakeNewsMedia whose political judgment drives their reporting."
Such claims compel questions. Given that the cheering demonstrators wearing red "Make America Great Again" gimme caps and waving blue Trump flags outside the White House earlier were responding to downright incendiary rhetoric from Brooks, Trump, tea party activist-turned-Trumpian warrior Amy Kremer, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani and others, and given that these demonstrators then marched the 1.2 miles up to the U.S. Capitol, and given that this movement of 250,000 (if you believe President Trump's famously exaggerated crowd estimates; 8,000 was the figure news media used) was presumably in plain sight the entire time, how did antifa so thoroughly infiltrate their ranks? Did some of the Trump forces maybe duck down some alley on Pennsylvania Avenue, leaving those sly, sneaky antifa warriors to scramble into formation and then storm the Capitol? Or were those antifa warriors actually in the crowd outside the White House at the very outset, decked in MAGA hats all along and ironically quick to seize on the belligerence and resolve being preached from the stage? If you’ve witnessed the rally near the White House and the insurrection at the Capitol, you know better.
Yet everyday people I know are already rationalizing (with the aid of talk radio, Fox News and GOP hangers-on such as Sarah "Trump Lite" Palin) that the rioters who stormed the Capitol were antifa, not patriotic, law-and-order-loving Trump supporters. But as with allegations of voter fraud, evidence of dastardly antifa simply isn't there. The bare-chested, spear-carrying dude famously wearing horns on his head while leading others onward with rousing cries of “Hold the line, patriots!” and at one point standing at the desk from which Vice President Mike Pence fled? Jacob Anthony Chansley, AKA Jake Angeli, 32, a self-described "QAnon shaman" familiar throughout the Southwest for his support of President Trump and wild QAnon conspiracy theories. In a Jan. 8 "statement of fact" included among indictment papers, a Capitol Hill policeman adds this: "In addition, Chansley called in to the Washington Field Office of the FBI to voluntarily speak with law enforcement. Your affiant and an FBI agent spoke on the phone with Chansley who confirmed that he was the male in the face paint and headdress in the Vice President's chair in the Senate. Chansley stated that he came as part of a group effort with other 'patriots' from Arizona at the request of the president that all 'patriots' come to D.C. on January 6, 2021." A few days later the QAnon shaman was charged with violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds. And the guy who famously made himself at home in House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's office, putting his feet up on a desk and claiming, as a taxpayer, it was his desk anyway? Richard "Bigo" Barnett, 60, a right-wing braggart well-known to law enforcement and news media. His social media site stamps this Arkansan as a hardcore supporter of white nationalism and Trump. Among charges filed against him is that he unlawfully entered a restricted area with a lethal weapon — in this case, a stun gun. In an interview with news media at a Bentonville, Arkansas, "Stop the Steal" rally in November, he makes clear he believes Trump’s claims of voter fraud and that such things as mail-in-ballot misdeeds cost the president the 2020 election. Antifa? Really?
The list goes on and on. “The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the U.S. Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, members of the military and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals,” the Associated Press reported Tuesday. “Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.” (The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people by then either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless amid the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee, often with the help of real American patriots.) What’s more, by late last week, counterterrorism experts who monitor anti-government skullduggery on social media say some of the insurrectionists laying siege to the Capitol a week ago are now furious that credit for their conquest is being hijacked and credited to antifa forces by right-wing media whose steady nourishment of such groups has presumably backfired on sponsors. More evidence? Well, consider the dead, including 55-year-old Alabama resident Kevin Greeson who, "in the midst of the excitement" (to quote his family), suffered a heart attack. On Parler, the social-media echo chamber where conspiracy nuts and white supremacists percolate, Greeson praised Proud Boys and attacked President-elect Joe Biden. In November, he sounded the alarm: "All males over the age of 18 join a group... be ready to defend our country!! Spend your money on guns and ammo... it's time to stop this shit!!!!!" Antifa? Really? (In the irony of ironies, Greeson's wife has dismissed the viral social-media claim that her husband died by accidentally tasing himself.)
Consider California swimming pool service owner Ashli Babbitt, 35, the debt-ridden Air Force veteran killed by Capitol Police while trying to crawl through the broken glass of a barricaded door and refusing to heed police commands to stop. On Facebook she vented over gun laws and immigrants and followed the tweets of retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn, who has encouraged President Trump to declare martial law and oversee military-run elections to replace those held by state governments. On the eve of the siege, Babbitt tweeted: "Nothing will stop us. They can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light!" She served several deployments in her military tenure, reportedly including Iraq. She concluded her active duty as a security guard at Dyess Air Force Base in my old hometown of Abilene, Texas. By the time she got herself shot by police trying to take over the Capitol, she clearly had forgotten or dismissed the oath she took to the Constitution. Antifa? Really? Already anti-government forces have turned her into a martyr.
More? For weeks right-wing, anti-government websites touted "Operation Occupy the Capitol: Taking Back Our Country from the Corrupt Politicians," encouraging those of similar mindset to "go to Washington Jan. 6 and help storm the Capital." Antifa? Really? One website user declared: "We will storm the government buildings, kill cops, kill security guards, kill federal employees and agents and demand a recount.” Even now these groups online promise more insurgency and more chaos not only in Washington, D.C., but at state capitols in the days leading up to Inauguration Day. They warn against removal of Trump via the 25th Amendment. Meanwhile, some Texas Republicans such as indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton – who did his duty to help turn fired-up protesters into dutiful insurgents in Washington – now insist the insurrectionists are (to quote Paxton) “not Trump supporters, they have been confirmed to be Antifa" – an allegation the FBI has repeatedly stamped as absolutely false. Texas Republicans who knew better but elected Paxton twice to be our state's top law enforcement officer must sleep well at night knowing he's on the job.
Other Republicans sounding election fraud alarm such as Sen. Ted Cruz and those in Central Texas are now distancing themselves from Trump and the mob, even as some voice doubts about whether the president actually incited violence. Just more locker room talk? Gauge for yourself Trump’s belligerence before dispatching riled-up demonstrators up Pennsylvania Avenue, and after weeks and weeks of outraged rhetoric and tweets similarly claiming a stolen election: "We fight, we fight like hell, and if you don't fight, you're not going to have a country anymore." (Trump also told supporters on Jan. 6 that he would walk up Pennsylvania Avenue with them, then vanished without explanation from the field of combat.) Consider Republican Congressman Mo Brooks' words at this pre-riot rally: "Today is the day American patriots start taking down names and kicking ass!" Or 25-year-old Republican Congressman Madison Cawthorn: "Wow, this crowd has some fight in it!" Or Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani, hailed "America's mayor" after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, last Wednesday at this very same White House rally calling for "trial by combat" in disputing election results despite the opinions of scores of judges and justices in weeks past and individual state recounts of the votes: "This was the worst election in American history. This election was stolen in seven states. They picked states where they had crooked Democratic cities, where they could push everybody around, and it has to be vindicated to save our republic. This is bigger than Donald Trump, it's bigger than you and me. It's about these monuments and what they stand for. This has been a year in which they have invaded our freedom of speech, our freedom of religion, our freedom to move, our freedom to live. I'll be darned if they're going to take away our free and fair vote, and we're going to fight to the very end to make sure that doesn't happen."
Given that some of us now retired from the journalism profession have seen younger colleagues repeatedly deemed "the enemy of the people" by President Trump and his supporters the past several years, given that we saw the mob last week carry signs such as "The media is the virus" and scrawl on Capitol walls "Murder the Media," given that some journalists were threatened and assaulted last week, our thoughts are surely relevant at this juncture. Shortly after the mob overran the Capitol, a longtime friend who worked at major newspapers fact-checking news stories and making sure headlines were accurate decided she'd had enough of “friends” spreading alarm over partisan-manufactured crises and crazed conspiracy theories issuing like wisps of smoke from shadowy social-media echo chambers: "Right-wingers: You are no longer my friend if you share from Parler, QAnon or their ilk." Another cherished friend and former newspaper colleague of mine, a military veteran who served honorably overseas in hostile settings in both hemispheres and whose newspaper writings never betrayed his personal politics, offered this frank response:
"I am thankful that you obviously understand the seriousness of this threat. I confess I did not until recently. I thought it was too weird to believe many people actually would do something as drastic as attack the Capitol and have plans which very well may have included capturing and executing 'enemies' of this insane president. Read this morning’s Washington Post story of Ms. Babbitt, the protester who was shot and killed. They have learned her background, her radicalization and belief in QAnon’s conspiracy theory of Democrats’ pedophile ring and the like. She is quoted (I think it was tweeting) as she neared the Capitol that she was now part of a crowd of several million (crazy exaggeration of crowd size) marching on the building to fulfill what the QAnon folks call 'the storm' — a deadly comeuppance on the Dems. Oh my gosh! My eyes were opened. This is REAL. I don’t think it just goes away. These folks are waging a real war in their own minds. They are driven. They feel justified. You may already know all this. I feel stupid, with all my military background and experience. I did NOT believe they were dedicated to — let’s be honest — killing their enemies. They believe WE are the enemy. I think their attack on the Capitol is far from the end of it."
My own perspective is different. I retired from the profession only two months ago and have been regularly exposed to wide-ranging varieties of the Trumpian mindset in the mostly rural Central Texas stretches between the Austin metropolitan area and the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex. Some Trump supporters I know (and even like personally) are supportive of him because of his strides in boosting our economic fortunes through deregulation, tax-cutting and tariffs; whenever I have mentioned, say, his constitutional transgressions or his costing American lives by bungling the White House response to the pandemic yet raging, they have cast their eyes downward and acknowledged his slips of tongue and temperament, then snapped: "But look at what he's done for the stock market!" Others, however, are thoroughly radicalized and at this very moment confident and upbeat that orders for implementation of martial law have been issued and that Trump will remain in power, elections and constitutional frameworks notwithstanding. As a retired sportscaster and friend of mine from years ago noted on his Facebook page this week: "Looks like it's all about to go down very soon. Have cash, food and a full tank of gas for about 10 days. MAGA people who are in the know, know. This will be a happy and unbelievable historic day." A local nurse thoroughly enraptured by the president's commanding charisma posted this past weekend what she and others claim is a social media message direct from the president: "I have invoked the Insurrection Act of 1807 to address the treasonous rebellion conducted by Democrats and Republicans, CCP agents, the FBI, DOJ, CIA and others to undermine, corrode and dismantle the United States of America and its Constitution. These entities pose a direct threat to national security. I will remain president indefinitely until all domestic enemies are arrested." The vehemence of some local Trump disciples, the rage targeting me as a domestic enemy in recent years, has been so hostile and unbalanced that my wife the past two years feared I would be shot dead in the manner of famed Waco newspaperman William Cowper Brann in 1898. To his credit, Brann took his attacker with him.
And so, sure, a Trump-roused mob of terrorists and insurrectionists and thugs storming the U.S. Capitol surprised me last week but the tragic spectacle didn't shock me. As an opinion editor and a columnist at the Trib the past dozen years (and before that the paper's city editor and assistant managing editor), I've followed local conspiracy theorists and white supremacists and out-and-out anarchists. I've heard and read (through letters submitted to the opinion page and wildly ricocheting phone conversations) loony anti-government and “Deep State” rants. I've witnessed the over-the-top vilification of Democrats as morally corrupt, anti-American socialists and commies and heathen and devil worshipers and traitors in formerly respectable Republican circles and festering tea party ranks since at least 2009 when an African-American and a moderate Democrat was sworn in as our president. I had a front-row seat witnessing the beginning of the tea party movement amid its stated but hollow claims of nonpartisanship and dedication to addressing taxes and national debt. I watched as it mutated, within weeks, into an intensely partisan, never-compromise, alternate-reality cultural and political sphere brimming with hostility, racism and showy obstruction, ripe for reality-TV star Donald Trump's enduring 2011 claim that Barack Obama was foreign-born and thus illegitimate as president of the United States. (And, yes, the local tea party tried several times to get me fired, once appealing directly to the head of the newspaper chain.) Prominent tea party activist Amy Kremer pretty much verified at last week's pre-riot "Save America" rally what I suspected and feared and chronicled in 2009 and beyond: "You know, there's so much at stake today. We have been in the streets the past two months. There's a movement that has been born. I come from the tea party movement, and I'm asked all the time: What happened to the tea party? Well, we're still here. We just grew and morphed into something bigger and better, the MAGA movement. And I am convinced were it not for the tea party movement, we would not have had Donald J. Trump today. He has fought for us and he unlike any other president in our lifetime has put America first." (After violence erupted Kremer predictably scrambled to blame the Capitol Hill invasion on ol’ standby antifa, though this recourse of sham patriots is fast revealing the flat-out delusional and deceitful in GOP ranks, given the somber acknowledgement before U.S. House members by no less than House Republican Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy during today’s impeachment debate: “Some say the riots were caused by antifa. There is absolutely no evidence of that, and conservatives should be the first to say so.")
While watching a bunch of entitled, profane, mostly white "patriots" ransacking the U.S. Capitol last week, threatening everyone from House Speaker Pelosi to Vice President Pence (the latter judged insufficiently loyal to President Trump because of his unwillingness to violate the Constitution on his master’s electoral behalf); while watching a Confederate battle flag hauled into the Capitol; while watching one rioter wearing a sweatshirt that read: "Camp Auschwitz: Work Brings Freedom" (translated: "Arbeit macht frei," the slogan marking a Nazi concentration and extermination camp where more than a million "undesirables" died), I thought back on a McLennan County Republican Club luncheon program in downtown Waco several years ago. The program focused on how Muslim influences threatened to contaminate Western Civilization. Hosted by none other than Waco native Pete Sessions, now our congressman, it was so personally repugnant that, even though I was there strictly as a work-a-day journalist, I nonetheless later reached out to an acquaintance I happened to notice in the crowd as the very stunned guest of a party club member. I apologized and assured her that I was not a McLennan County Republican Club member. (She had formerly overseen a local nonprofit helping immigrant families, legal and otherwise, adapt to U.S. norms and laws, including bolstering their children’s education. Turns out the party club member who invited her apologized as well.) And while watching a rioter use a pole with a U.S. flag attached to pummel a fallen Capitol Police officer on the very steps of the Capitol last week as others with "Keep America Great" flags and "Stop the Steal" signs either joined in the attack or stood by and watched — all this madness unfolding amid crowd chants of “USA! USA!” — I couldn’t help thinking of Republican state Sen. Brian Birdwell. He’s our supposed “war hero” who narrowly survived the 9/11 terrorist attack on the Pentagon and the self-styled patriot representing Waco and the surrounding area who stood up in a local church on Oct. 25 and suggested those allied against President Trump in the 2020 election do not love their country. Indeed, the American carnage of Jan. 6, 2021, reminds one of just how far we as a people have fallen in recent years amidst toxic rhetoric, glaringly obvious deceit, undying hatred and patriotism prostituted for dubious subversive ends, all fueled for the financial and political gains of a selfish few. In a PBS News Hour poll conducted a day after the Capitol Hill violence, one in five Republicans surveyed either supported the invasion of the Capitol (18 percent) or voiced uncertainty as to whether they supported it or not (2 percent). To quote an Ambler, Pennsylvania, resident in a brief but insightful letter to the conservative Wall Street Journal Saturday: “A truly sad day for America: desecration of our Capitol that everyone on United Flight 93 died to save on 9/11.”
Peggy Noonan, long the measured, dignified but frank voice of the few rational Republicans remaining, signaled in her Wall Street Journal column last Saturday the way forward for those who haven’t deluded themselves about the mob that stormed the Capitol, threatened to hang the vice president, killed a police officer and sent duly elected lawmakers, their staffers and the vice president fleeing for their lives:
“Find them, drag them
out of their basements and bring them to justice. Use all resources, whatever
it takes, with focus and speed. We have pictures of them; they like to pose.
They larked about taking selfies and smiling unashamed smiles as one strolled
out with a House podium. They were so arrogant they were quoted by name in news
reports. It is our good luck they are idiots. Capitalize on that luck. Throw
the book at them. Make it a book of commentaries on the Constitution. Throw it
hard. They have shamed and embarrassed their country in the eyes of the world,
which is not only a painful fact but a dangerous one. The world, and the young
– all of us – need to see them pay the price.”
As for Republicans now scrambling to argue against their long complicity in the horrors and rhetoric and outrages leading us to this moment in history: How do they now propose we respond to Trump, those who joined him in firing up a mob and, finally, those who then acted on his anger and indignation and victimhood? I'm willing to consider punitive, effective alternatives to the 25th Amendment and impeachment and sedition charges, but Republicans thus far offer nothing, further cementing the reality of an intellectually bankrupt party without principles, without values, without scruples beyond those ensuring them power and privilege and perks. To borrow from Congressman Brooks' war cry sending an army of Trump loyalists to overrun and ransack what some of us regard as a cathedral of democracy: When are Republicans going to assume personal responsibility, look at their own rank and file, take down the names of the seditionists, anarchists, insurrectionists and demagogues so long among them and finally kick some ass?
Don't hold your breath waiting.
No comments:
Post a Comment