Unpacking this last week… and it seems like months.
Seditious white supremacist fascists attacked our capitol building, I was trying to work while it was all happening… needless to say, I couldn’t get much done.
I am incredibly sad, angry, worried, frightened… and plenty of other emotions all in an incomprehensible knot. Sort of like riding a rollercoaster that never stops to let you off.
Two things really stood out for me…
- I heard a TV commentator say they were shocked but not surprised… and that crystallized the moment really well for me. Any reasonably aware & well-informed person, at even a low level for the last 5+ years, understood this moment has been fomented by this occupant of the white house and his minions.
- On Twitter, I saw a post about Trump and his flying monkeys being unable to give the left a short time to celebrate after the wins for (now) Senators-Elect Warnock & Ossoff in Georgia. It was an awesome night and I stayed up late eating Cheetos while the votes were tallied, but the next morning, Trump and his evil minions attempted their coup… more distraction by his orangeness.
The firehose of stress and distraction just never stops with him… because it has to always be **about him**
I am hoping that we have turned a corner with his social media access winking out like a world war 2 blackout, but I fear what is coming may be even worse.
The cancer that is Trump should have been removed long ago, as scholars of authoritarianism & psychiatry have made abundantly clear, repeatedly. People such as Andrea Chalupa, Sarah Kendzior, Timothy Snyder, Naomi Klein, Bandy Lee, Mary Trump, Jared Yates Sexton, Beau of the Fifth Column, and so many others; the have tried to tell us for almost more years than we can count. However, they were treated as doom-sayers or crazy… and then people just kind of got used to Trump and his antics, even though they were continually getting worse. Now they are called Cassandras… the mythological seer that nobody would believe… it brings to mind a favorite ABBA song… Cassandra
Down in the street they're all singing and shouting
Staying alive though the city is dead
Hiding their shame behind hollow laughter
While you are crying alone on your bed
Pity Cassandra that no one believed you
But then again you were lost from the start
Now we must suffer and sell our secrets
Bargain, playing smart, aching in our hearts
It seems so appropriate, especially the part about “hiding their shame behind hollow laughter” as we watch the rats leaving the sinking ship at this late date… and the cabinet refusing to invoke the 25th amendment. It’s easier to leave than to have courage.
And what of the insurrectionists? Well they are fracturing… some of them are trying to say “sorry” like little kids who know they are in trouble, but who really have no idea what they broke or why it’s important. There are those who are turning on their dear leader after his hostage-kinda’-sorta-maybe concession video.
Overall, they are rebels without a clue or conscious. They are angry and that anger has been used by their dear leader to commit terrorism… it’s classic stochastic terrorism, he managed to maintain a level of plausible deniability, until right before the invasion of the capitol.
I feel a small measure of sympathy for these people because they have been duped to be flying monkeys for the moneyed elites. Their vulnerability caused largely by our shredded social safety net that has left them to fend for themselves and understandably angry. The American dream was promised and taken away, instead they were told to blame their problems on people of color, women, immigrants, anybody else “below them”. My own kids, aged 29 & 25 embody this disillusionment. I find myself relatively lucky, being born early in the post-baby boom generation, of whom some did well and some not so much.
Despite my sympathy, I do not condone their actions in any way. But this was clearly both a backlash against the elites, and a demonstration of deep-rooted white supremacy and the inevitable result of unfettered capitalism. People are angry and done, and the elites are trying to keep the rabble divided and punching each other, rather than up, where the power really is.
The attack on the capitol was planned and the goal was more than just vandalism, considering they had firearms, plastic handcuffs, and erected gallows complete with a noose. Trump told them he wasn’t happy with Mike Pence… and they entered the capitol calling for Pence’s head.
The real truth is the Flying Monkeys are tools of the establishment elite, lied to in order to focus them like a loaded weapon at the final confirmation of the 2020 electoral college vote of Joe Biden’s win, with a focus on Mike Pence, who was resolute that his constitutional role was as a presider, not a decider. The fingers of the corporate America are deep in this insurrection. Donors to the Rule of Law Defense Fund (RDLF: https://documented.net/2021/01/republican-attorneys-general-dark-money-group-organized-protest-preceding-capitol-mob-attack/) include the Koch Industries, Comcast, Walmart, Home Depot, Amazon, TikTok, 1-800 Contacts, Chevron, The National Rifle Association, Monsanto, Facebook, Fox Corporation, Uber, Coca Cola, Exxon, and Google. The RLDF is associated with the Republican Governor’s Association was among many right-wing organizations listed as participating in the so-called “March to Save America” and sent out details about the “protest” via robocall. Various well-known and wealthy conservatives funded buses to the March, including Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas…. And interestingly, her Facebook page disappeared after her support for the rally-turned-attack was revealed. (https://lawandcrime.com/high-profile/ginni-thomas-facebook-page-disappears-after-media-reports-on-her-support-for-pro-trump-rally-that-turned-into-attack-on-u-s-capitol/)
There is also evidence that the attack was planned, the full extent of which has yet to be seen. Alex Jones of InfoWars infamy paid a half million dollars for the DC “rally” and was told by the White House 3 days prior that they wanted him to lead the march to the capitol. Trump’s last minute DOD acting appointments slow walked requests for aid, the Governor of Maryland was not allowed to send his National Guard, because Trump refused to allow it for 90 minutes. Per news reports, it took a backdoor deal between the Secretary of the Army, Mike Pence, Governor Hogan, and Rep. Steny Hoyer to get the National Guard headed to DC. Trump also shuttered the DHS office that analyzed threats within our borders. And in addition, some capitol police apparently let the mob waltz right on into the Capitol, one being quoted as saying that they just needed to let them “do their thing.” But anyone being honest about this will emphasize that if the protesters had been black or brown, they would have been shot, beaten, and arrested en masse.
But this is where I turn the corner to really call out the elites and how they really feel about us rabble… I wrote the next section about 2 weeks ago and it ties directly into the coup attempt.
The American oligarchs have squeezed the “rabble” to a point at which the pitchforks are coming out, but so far they have been able to redirect their flying monkeys with a smokescreen of lies and conspiracy theories. The question is how long it will be until the pitchforks and torches are turned on those in power. Per things I have seen on Twitter, it looks like some of the Flying Monkeys are starting to realize that they have been used.
“People are the shit our money grows in”… a saying of Ukrainian oligarchs…. And American ones too, if you think about it.
We are the shit their money grows in.
Why are we the shit their money grows in? And why do we let this happen?
Why aren’t we marching?
Why aren’t we striking?
Why are so many of us voting against our own best interests?
Why are so many of us believing the lies and the propaganda?
Fear… they have us living in fear…
Fear that someone else will take what few scraps we have cobbled together into the best living we could
Fear that we will lose our jobs if we strike
Fear of… well… everything.
The powers that be leverage our fear against us.
They use it to soften us up and make us more compliant… for the next thing they want to take from us.
Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine…
We have been conditioned to give a little more, of our freedom, our security, our privacy after each successive shock or propaganda barrage… some by design, some by happenstance:
9/11
2008-2009 economic crash
COVID, both the pandemic and the economic fall out
Black Lives Matter
Defund the Police
The Trump Administration has been a constant firehose in the face of propaganda and distraction, keeping us bewildered, demoralized, and overwhelmed. Each stage softening us up for the next body blow… leading us to increased compliance and decreased outrage.
When everything is outrageous, you can’t focus, so to survive… you choose fight, flight, or freeze.
I know that I want to fight, but end up doing a lot more flight or freezing… mainly because I have to go on.
I hide in my crafts and listen to music or podcasts and feel the futility of it all. I have to support my family, but I honestly wish that I could just lay down to sleep and never wake back up. But I’m not the kind to act on that… but it’s an honest feeling.
So I go forward trying to find what happiness I can. My grandkids make me smile. I like my work, I like to think I’m helping people. I love the feeling of wool slipping through my fingers as it spins onto the bobbin. I love seeing my hands create things out of 2 sticks and a string. I love filling out my bullet journal daily… little blurbs and vignettes of my life… I love creating my 2021 bullet journal.
I have a lot that makes me happy, really.
But that doesn’t mean I’m not afraid, overwhelmed, tired and just wanting to be done.
There is no light at the end of this tunnel, really.
So many more are going to die.
And none of it needed to be this way.
We are now losing more Americans to COVID daily than the country of Japan has lost in total.
And yet we shrug it off… because… why?
We are overwhelmed by the firehouse of death and destruction in addition to the firehose of lies and propaganda that has only intensified over the last 4 years.
Fight – Flight – Freeze
We also don’t want to believe this is America.
How can this be?
Our institutions have shown themselves much more fragile than we ever could have known, had this not happened.
Yet some things have gone right: the election, the courts, the Georgia run-offs…
But the more basic things upon which our country is built are now dangerously eroded… namely our belief in democracy itself… and make no mistake, the Republican party, by-and-large, has led the charge.
They want power… they offer easy solutions to allay the fears that they stoke… and they promise they are they answer…
“Just give us power and we will take care of you” they say… while shredding the social safety net and the social fabric of our country… and handing most of our tax dollars to the wealthy and large corporations.
Heaven forbid that the little guy ask for help, because all those social problems are too expensive… but if there is a bank that might fail, well we’d better give billions to help out.
But we remain the shit their money grows in.
They really don’t care if we live or die. We are useful until we can’t work anymore. When we cannot give our flesh, blood, sweat, and tears to increasing their bottom lines, may as well let us die of covid. We are cheaper when we are dead… and hey it creates great new growth potential in the mortuary industry. Ivanka can use those Chinese patents on caskets… ship ‘em right on over, Vanky! And Perdue & Loeffler can make a killing on those body bag companies they invested in.
To quote a Janis Ian song, “I went to see my brother on the 32nd floor in a building down on Wall St., you could hear the futures roar. He said here we make decisions and we trade commodities, if you tell me where there’s famine, I can make you guarantees. I said, “is this all there is, power to the strong? Something’s wrong. Something's wrong in heaven tonight, You can almost hear them cry. Angels to the left and the right saying, "What about the love?”
And water futures are now being traded, but there’s no climate change.
Per the Cree Indians, “When the last tree is cut down, the last fish eaten and the last stream poisoned, you will realize that you cannot eat money.”
But we continue on… fighting amongst ourselves, as they want us to… fleeing to safe havens either through drugs or pure escapism, as they want us to… or frozen in fear or inaction, as they want us to.
The propagandist’s firehose keeps us distracted from looking behind the curtain… because we are so fucking busy simply fighting for survival at multiple levels simultaneously.
This also keeps us divided and less likely to join together, because we are always punching down
I recall a skit by Michael Nesmith called “Neighborhood Nuclear Superiority”it, “I called NNS and they really helped by inflaming my natural paranoia and reinforcing my territorial imperative…”
We need to start coming together and sharing the truth and punching up or nothing will ever change.
We must refuse to be the shit their money grows in and stop punching down.
We also must bring all of those responsible for the attempted coup to justice, no matter how high or how low their station in life. If we don’t face our racism, our misogyny, our classism and our other societal ills, this will happen again.
We aren’t done yet. Let us pray we are midwives of a better world, not one that descends into madness and civil war, because as the Army Insurgency and Counter Insurgency manual says (via Beau of the Fifth Column), if a civil war does start, it’s a minimum 6-year commitment. And there won’t be Cheetos, Mountain Dew or Netflix in your civil war bunker.