My Comment:
Below is Robin Alperstein's lengthy and excellent post about the all
inclusive actions of Trump's enablers assisting him in an
unconstitutional attempt to overturn a presidential election and
overthrow the US government to install Trump as permanent Marshall Law
president. It is a summary of the poisonous mendacity of those who
enable Trump as he attempts to overturn a resounding election placing
Joe Biden at the center of the winner's circle against the loser Trump.
These unconstitutional acts to subvert the election are a cancer on
democracy. They are utterly deplorable as is Trump himself with all his
delusions of power and his never ending monumental corruption of the
office of president! His presidency bends towards monumental injustice,
mendacity and treasonous subversion. History's note will define Trump
justly as that. January
20, 2021 cannot come fast enough for me.
By: Robin Alperstein
Michael
Flynn, newly pardoned for his lies to the FBI and anything and
everything connected to the Russia investigation (thus ensuring his role
in obstructing justice on behalf of Trump in connection with that
investigation can never be prosecuted), has decided to up the ante on
his demented jeremiads against Hillary and Obama from the 2016
presidential campaign and instead incite the violent overthrow of the
United States Constitution, by urging Trump to "declare martial law" (a
power he does not have) and hold a military-overseen "re-vote" (a power
it does not have; the states run elections per the Constitution), i.e., a
coup. He is joined in this sedition by Trump attorney Lin Wood.
The
danger here lies in the seditious and destabilizing public calls to
destroy our system of government. Uncowed by his prosecution and
emboldened by the DOJ's corruption under Barr and Trump's corrupt abuse
of the pardon power to reward Flynn for his loyalty and obstruction,
Flynn demonstrates yet again why he should never ever have been put in
place as National Security Advisor. He is an unhinged and corrupt
disgrace, a menace whose every public statement is testament to the
threat he poses to our national security and our struggling democracy.
If
anything, the ongoing, Republican-led assault on our Constitution and
the legitimacy of President-elect Biden, who won 51%-47%, demonstrates
that Biden cannot just ignore the depredations of the Trump
administration and the criminal actors who engaged in them.
They
will never sideline themselves; they never slink away in shame or even
ignominy -- instead, they become false heroes to the right and they
double-down on their own vileness, and those who watch learn from them
and plot their own next moves, while Trump supporters and their
channelers in the rightwing ecosphere whip each other into escalating
frenzies of rejection of democracy.
Whether
they are murderous racist teenagers who slaughter protestors in the
street or the attorney general who called on the U.S. military to
potentially do the same, whether they are slick and shameless public
liars like Kayleigh McEnaney or more demented and bumbling ones like
Rudy Giuliani, whether they are the architects of grotesque human rights
violations reminiscent of Nazi Germany like Stephen Miller or weasley
apparatchiks like Emily Murphy, whether they are corrupt, nepotistic
Hatch Act violators potentially trading, for personal gain, information
obtained through security clearances that should never have been
granted, like Jared Kushner, whether they are flagrant abusers of the
public coffers like Scott Pruitt (remember him), or whether they are
part of Trump's legal clownshow like the brazen disinformation-peddler
Jenna Ellis or leopard-print-wearing loony Sidney Powell, these
grotesque actors and the Republicans clamoring in the wings to support
them with their lies -- such as Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz,
Lindsey Graham, Mitch McConnell, Nikki Haley, and so many more, so very
many, carrying the torch of lies, obstruction, and attacks on our system
that will be its undoing -- THESE PEOPLE ARE NOT GOING TO STOP. They
will continue their normalization of lying attacks on Biden, their
attacks on Democratic voters, their assault on the Constitution and
democracy itself, unless they are prosecuted for their crimes under a
Biden administration and STOPPED.
Republicans
like Josh Hawley and Nikki Haley and Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio and their
ilk -- well-heeled and highly educated elites who like to pretend they
are god-fearing people, and who would never be so crass as Flynn in
their demand for the overthrow of the U.S. government -- prefer to
launder their assaults on our nation and the right to vote of people of
color in coded letters to their constituents and lock-step talking
points about letting "the process" play out or counting "legal votes" or
newfound dog whistles like "ballot harvesting." The Hawleys and Tom
Cottons and John Thunes and Mike Rounds of the world are quietly
building on the rightwing conspiracy-complex-arsenal to attack our new
president and vice president and wage war on the majority's right to
self-governance by promising supporters to "restore" the very election
integrity that they are still allowing their vile leader to undermine.
And
meanwhile, their peers are not even quiet about their support for
democratic overthrow -- sitting senators Perdue and Loeffler baselessly
attacked fellow Republican and Trump supporter, Georgia Secretary of
State Brad Raffensperger, for not illegally throwing the election to
them or to Trump. These are sitting senators publicly lambasting an
elected public official for refusing to fraudulently call a valid
election a fraud to sow doubt about it for them and for Trump. This is
both reprehensible and now fully normalized, both through the fact that
it has happened and that other Republicans have generally not condemned
them or Trump, and it's the playbook we are now going to see used by
practically every Republican who loses. Look at John James in Michigan,
who eventually conceded but spread a host of lies and false fraud
attacks for weeks before he did, echoing the destructive talking points
of Trump and others.
So
many "at long last, have you no sense of decency" moments have come and
gone without a shred of change from Trump or a single one of the
lickspittles or power-mad accomplices who have made him possible, that
it cannot be plausibly argued that there is any such decency among the
Republican leadership. We can find it, in tiny and far-flung examples,
among some lower-level state officials in MI, PA, GA, and AZ, or the odd
governor of a Democratic state. But that's it. And while that proved
to be enough this time around, Republican leaders have every incentive
to ensure that next time around, it is not. Their failure to stand up for Joe Biden isn't about Joe Biden -- it's about the Constitution and whether we have a democracy.
The Republican leadership has shown time and again that it is not
interested in either; instead, it is interested in the pretense of both
as a figleaf for its larger project of minority rule and the endless
transfer of wealth into the pockets of their donors.
P.S.
In the comments are links to Hawley's letter to a constituent, which
exemplifies the walk-the-line laundering of pernicious
democracy-subverting lies that are, along with corruption and racism,
Trumpism's, and thus the GOP's, lifeblood.
P.P.S.
Also in the comments, a Joe Welch-esque "it has to stop" 4 minute press
conference by the Georgia Deputy of Secretary of State, demanding that
Trump and other Republican leaders stop inciting violence. Really worth
watching. It also appears to have had a marginal impact, along with
Raffensberger’s presser yesterday (also in comments below): per the
Hill, the White House now at least purports to condemn threats of
violence against election workers. But of course this is too little,
too late, and totally perfunctory, like Trump's initial reaction to the
murder of Heather Hyer. The damage that Trump and other members of
his party have done remains, is ongoing, and is metastasizing across the
party before our eyes.
P.P.P.S
Flynn's sedition comes even as the news explodes of the DOJ's
bribery-pardon scheme investigation and as trial balloons about
preemptive pardons for the Trump spawn are floated. Note that the
Constitutionality/legitimacy of a preemptive pardon is not a given.
Forward this to anyone you choose.
