Our democracy is in peril. A significant number of GOP senators oppose any accountability for a president who invited violent terrorists to attack the U.S. Capitol, vandalize it, and threaten the lives of Vice President Pence, Speaker Pelosi and other members of Congress.
Two members of the House of Representatives belong to QAnon, the group that believes Trump was battling a Satanic ring of pedophiles.
One of the QAnon members, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, posted or liked tweets that called for the assasination of leading members of Congress.
Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene repeatedly indicated support for executing prominent Democratic politicians in 2018 and 2019 before being elected to Congress, a CNN KFile review of hundreds of posts and comments from Greene’s Facebook page shows.
Mass insanity or just a handful of unhinged zealots?
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Is it any wonder that members of “The Squad” are fearful about their lives–from other members of Congress? The video of Greene on Jan 6 in the room in Congress as she snickered as her “colleague” (in quotes because many of the members in Congress would not consider her to be one) who was distributing masks. I’ve asked before, “What will our Reichstag moment be?” With people like Greene, I’ll paraphrase that and ask, “What will our Preston Brooks moment be?”
Brooks took exception to Sumner’s insulting his family as I recall. He was an apparently violent man on a violent society. He nearly killed Sumner, and many in the south thought him justified. Like us today, they were operating on a different plane of reality.
I think we have already had our moment. We will see many senators rise to defend trump, whose inciting was at least complicit in the DC debacle. Many of the senators who defend trump will be doing so to save their political skin. Others will be like Brooks, operating on principles far from truth but widely accepted.
The Brooks incident showed that the country was already at war, and it is difficult to avoid saying that the American civil war started with the Bleeding Kansas affair. But no one at the time really envisioned a war except Sumner, who referred to war at the first of the speech.
We might stand on the precipice ourselves. Unanimous condemnation of trump would go a long way toward quelling the rising violent right wing radicals. Don’t hold your breath.
“…far from truth but widely accepted.”
Succinctly profound!
I don’t get it. Isn’t it illegal to threaten someone’s life? To conspire with others to take someone’s life? Setting aside the question of why this person hasn’t been expelled from Congress, why isn’t she in jail?
Flerp! Help me out here.
“Flerp! Help me out here.”
Me, too.
I think it would come down to whether it’s a “real threat,” i.e. intended to be a threat. Reposting someone else’s language makes it murkier. I would say it’s enough to charge, but sounds like a long shot. But then again I’m not a criminal lawyer.
I hate all tweets and Twitter in general, so I’ll never have to worry about being arrested for liking tweets.
This was a consistent pattern of behavior. I have never liked a comment that called for killing someone. I have never discussed with anyone, on social media, how this might be accomplished. There’s nothing surprising about that, for it’s truly bizarre, troubling, and I would think, illegal behavior. Something I’m missing here?
I agree!
QAnon: A moronic ring of Tediphiles* battling a Satanic ring of pedophiles.
Tediphile: a follower of Ted Cruz
Or maybe it’s spelled Tedophile
I’ll have to check my dicktionary.
“QAnon: A moronic ring of Tediphiles* battling an imaginary Satanic ring of pedophiles.”
There, fixed it for you.
When it comes to moronic Tediphiles, the imaginary distinction is redumbdant.
This is what the right does when they can no longer win enough elections to hold onto power.
The Spanish Civil War is an instructive example, but it has happened throughout Latin America too (with our government backing the right-wing forces).
The Spanish Civil War is an instructive metaphor (Bob will correct me if I’m wrong in this choice of word)! Hugh Thomas’s history points out in excruciating detail the extreme cruelty and savageness with which former neighbors and friends treated each other. He noted that the sadistic ruthlessness of the perpetrators–in this case it was, to some extent, both sides, perhaps 65-35 in “favor” of the right–was much worse than in wars in which the two side had no previous connection with their opponents. And in some ways the war is still being fought. See Catalonian and Basque separatist movements for proof.
Apparently Franco’s thugs kidnapped babies during the fifties so they could be raised by pro-Franco people. That Spain evolved from this into modern Spain is breathtaking.
“Apparently Franco’s thugs kidnapped babies during the fifties so they could be raised by pro-Franco people”
The same happened in Argentina a couple of decades later.
Spent some futile time this morning searching for Thomas’s descriptions of the brutality that former neighbors committed against each other in the Spanish Civil War, but found some gems that prove history is an endless cycle:
“The worthy died, the unworthy lived.”
“Not for the first time, victory went to those who could think of war as hunting by other means.”
For Franco, “language was used to disguise, rather than to convey, thought.”
“…Franco himself [believed] that there were no political aims so important that victory might be jeopardized in obtaining them. But it was Franco who turned this desperation, those fears, and this cynicism into engines of war.”
I’m no longer in the classroom but if I were, I’d be teaching two films about the Franco era. Many times, people need distance from their own reality to register the situation in which they themselves live.
One is* Butterfly* (La lengua de las mariposas in Spanish), which is a gentle film which chronicles a young child first experiences outside his home as the Spanish Civil War begins. https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0188030/
The second is Pan’s Labyrinth, in which a child’s fantasy world collides with the real one after the Civil War, as Franco’s army seeks to eliminate its opposition.
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0457430/
Adult guidance is recommended for both.
Might I also recommend The Good Fight, which is about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade and narrated by Studs Terkel. Used to use it in my government class. I think it’s available on Prime. Will look for both the films you recommend.
When I was in Salamanca (the Oxford of Spain) years ago, where the national archives of the civil war are stored, I met a gentleman who told me the story about a professor who was arrested in the middle of a lecture. When he was release and allowed to teach again, he began is his first lecture with something to the effect of, “As I was saying…”
Susan and GregB Another film about the Nazi era is: “The White Rose” which was a group of students and a teacher who formed resistance to it. CBK
I saw “The White Rose” and loved it. Sophie and her brother and their few friends were heroes. How courageous they were!
Diane Yes, I used “The White Rose” in my ethics classes for years . . . always profoundly influential for getting in touch with a person’s existential genuineness. (I thought it was better not to tell the ending here.) CBK
Is this film: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Weiße_Rose_(film)? If yes, I agree. The scenes of how buying certain things caused suspicion are quite accurate. Showed this as extra credit for my classes. I’d also recommend Sophie Scholl–The Final Days, but have a box of tissues and a teddy bear or security blanket handy. The only other two films I’ve ever seen that are as intense are the Danish/German Land of Mine and the Russian The Ascent. They leave you emotionally spent for days. Also, the Russian film I Am a Teacher, which is on Prime, might interest many here.
During Franco’s life, political prisoners were used as slave laborers in The Valley of the Fallen to build the masoleum which was to be Franco’s final resting place. His body was interred with great pomp and his followers made continual pilgrimages to pay homage to their leader. In 2019, 44 years after his death, leaders of the Socialist party kept a campaign promise and exhumed the body, which was relocated to a municipal graveyard outside Madrid.
(Also buried there is Rafael Leonidas Trujillo, the brutal dictator of the Dominican Republic for 30 years. Trujillo greatly admired Franco and his entire political philosophy was based on the notion of “Hispanidad”, a reverence for the colonial racial roots of the DR, and a disgust for African and indigenous influences in its population.)
Spain’s experience is instructive and more of us ought to look at these precedents as guides to what can happen when a charismatic autocrat gains power.
Can it be that I’ve been brainwashed and everything I’ve experienced, read, learned, and seen with my own eyes has been one big lie?
https://crooksandliars.com/2021/01/qanon-merges-white-extremist-sovereign
I’m dumbfounded at the apathy in our country. Malcolm Nance predicted all of this in his last two books. We are easily defeating ourselves without the need for Russia to have nuclear weapons. Putin has been funding these right wing fringe groups throughout Europe. Think Marie LePen. The USA is last one on the list but we’ve been falling faster than they could have dreamed. Putin is behind the social media trolls from Twitter to YouTube to Tiktok
to Parler to Telegram. He’s a specialist in human behavior. The Russians study us starting in grade school. We are willing to share everything with them and trust them far too much.
The autocrats are fomenting the chaos from Holland to the UK to the USA to Hong Kong.
They want democracies to fall because we’re slow and steady. We root out evil people.
We need to root out the evil people one our midst NOW.
WE NEED TO PUBLICLY SHAME THESE TRAITORS. SHAME THEM EVERY SINGLE DAY AND LET THEM KNOW THAT THEY’RE NOT WELCOME HERE ANYMORE.
My family did not fight in every single war from the 1600s thru the CIVIL WAR to WW2 to allow this horse shit continue. My grandfather, my mother, my father, my brother and sister are all rolling in their graves that this is what we’ve become. FIGHT BACK! FIGHT BACK! THIS IS NOT A JOKE. A full blown insurgency is building underground. We must root them out. Shed light on it and hold the media accountable. There’s only ONE right side!
So, Donald Trump had the mobster’s habit of tearing up paperwork after he didn’t read it or if he didn’t like it–paperwork that would ordinarily, under actual presidents, go into the National Archives. The Presidential Records Act of 1978 made all such papers into public documents, legally owned by the people, but in keeping with his flouting of every other law and norm, Trump simply ignored this, as he ignored the provision of the law that required presidents to maintain and turn over records of meetings with foreign heads of state (Trump’s infamous meetings with his handler, Putin, for example).
So, what will go into a Trump Presidential Library, if one ever gets built? Perhaps his tweets, but if so, these should be renamed Twits in his honor.
A Trump gift shop with Trump-branded plastic straws for swallowing by marine animals? A mini-mall with Trump merch–pens and MAGA hats and Trump steaks and Trump wine and boat-parade flags? Mushroom hats? The 10,000-year supply of hydroxychloroquine bought by Trump’s administration? Don and Eric’s collections of the cut-off tails of endangered African wildlife? Invitations to an important election security briefing at Four Seasons Total Landscaping? Trump’s draft over to trade California for Greenland? The collected cheeseburger wrappers of Donald Trump? Paintings on velvet of Fred Trump and Roy Cohn ascending into heaven? High-flush toilets? Love notes to Kim and Vlad?
cx: draft offer
I wonder if he realized that every piece of paper he tore up was generated on a computer, so it would be a bit tougher to destroy.
LOL, prof!
Don’t forget to include in Trump’s Gift Shop, Adderral and the imported extra strength Sudafed, both products preferred for that constant tweaking while Tweeting effect. He averaged one tweet every 10-15 minutes while in office.
There was a fairly famous photo of Trump in the Oval Office in which a drawer had been left open, exposing, inside, a bunch of boxes of these Mama’s Little Helpers.
“I could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and I wouldn’t lose voters,”
Trump will get off on a technicality:
He’s no longer a sitting president…therefore he can’t be impeached.
Even though he’s indirectly responsible for murder and an attempted coup against the government that he represented…he’s going to walk.
“You ain’t got nuttin’ on me coppah…I’m clean! See…?”
Besides worrying about fallout from their constituents, I’m sure there are more than a handful of his enablers in Congress who are worried about their own legal status. They’ll be more than happy to see the problem just “go away”.
Truly frightening. Political figures such as Green were duly elected by a majority. They represent a significant number of American citizens.
Presidents always walk, no matter what they do.
And most of them are later “forgiven” by the very people who criticized them while they were in office.
It’s an American tradition. Sedition, Sedition…Sedition! (Hat tip to Randy Rainbeau)
Rainbeau! Love it!
She’s on the House Republican education panel:
https://www.edweek.org/policy-politics/republican-who-backed-comments-denying-school-shootings-to-join-house-education-panel/2021/01
She’s looking forward to “expanding school choice”.
Before or after she murders her political rivals is unclear.
This will intensify after the next round of redistricting. Republicans will be in charge of drawing many, many districts and they’ll draw them in a way that will encourage another lurch further Right.
They’ll be a lot more of her by 2024. I don’t see any end to it. If anything, it gets worse.
Here’s Majorie Taylor Greene stalking David Hogg on a street in the nation;s capital. She accuses him of being funded by George Soros. She’s deeply frightening.
https://twitter.com/fred_guttenberg/status/1354420542678441986?s=20
Wow, thanks for posting this video of the Q-Anon nut bag. Greene is even more vile, despicable and loathsome than I thought. And I already had her pegged as far right wing fascist filth. Why would David Hogg give any time to an obvious lunatic, bravo to Hogg for ignoring her. Hogg has more class in his little finger than she has in her whole carcass.
Wow, indeed. This is an elected member of Congress! Tells you a lot about her constituents.
She brags about having a concealed carry permit and then wonders why she can’t get an appointment to talk to members of Congress.
Undoubtedly a logic major in college.
The other QAnon member from Colorado insists that she must be allowed to carry her Glock everywhere, including the House floor. I urge Nancy Pelosi, AOC, and other members of the Squad to wear bullet proof vests.
I think they may already be taking extraordinary means to protect themselves. My two daughters are Ocasio-Cortez’ peers and her safety was much on my mind during the insurrection. She is instantly recognizable and the misogyny that is fused with White supremacy makes her extremely vulnerable. Certainly, any woman of color – VP Harris, Maxine Waters, Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, Barbara Lee or my representative Ayanna Pressely (who has said the panic buttons were ripped out of her office before the invasion) was in danger. It doesn’t take much imagination to decipher how those zipties might have been used.
“…(who has said the panic buttons were ripped out of her office before the invasion)…”
That is scary. Obviously the attack on the Capitol was carefully planned.
!!!!
A freaking crazy woman
If I were a casting agent, I would offer Marjorie Taylor Green the following roles: Lizzie Borden; lady checking out at the grocery store who keeps going back to get more stuff; Ilsa, She-Wolf of the SS; mother with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy; Caroline Bryant (woman who made a false accusation against Emmett Till, leading to his appalling murder by her husband and his redneck pals); Agrippina the Younger; herself in a biographical film about her; Leni Riefenstahl; generic child-abusing mom; Queen “Bloody” Mary of England, and Elizabeth Bathory.
I agree with all but Agrippina. At least she inspired one of the great operas! 😎
Fair enough Greg–I do love me some Handel, so I must agree. On the other hand, Agrippina was the mother of the Donald Trump of the ancient world, Nero.
Now you’ve got me thinking Peter Ustinov in one of my all-time favorite roles. Stop that!
YUP. She is quite at home in this crowd.
Next up? Trump is probably setting up a new government in Florida. CBK
Does that mean Florida will secede?
We can always hope.
Why you should join me (and The Idiot) in Flor-uh-duh: https://bobshepherdonline.wordpress.com/2019/05/05/why-you-should-move-to-florida/
Mass insanity.