Jan 6 No Trump<\/b><\/p>\n
Bridging the year<\/b><\/p>\n
January 7th<\/sup> 2022<\/i><\/p>\n Bryan Zepp Jamieson<\/i><\/p>\n I feel a lot better this January 7th<\/sup> compared to the same date last year. Back then, I was wondering if the United States had any sort of future, or was destined to fall into neo-Nazi fascism headed by one of the most vicious and corrupt swine ever to hold public office.<\/p>\n We\u2019re a long way from out of the woods, of course, but at least it stopped snowing and the wolves seem to have buggered off. Yes, the Republican party is now a fully-formed death cult, and yes, Trump is still in the news a lot, but they aren\u2019t quite as scary as they were the day they tried to destroy America. And America seems to be gaining a bit of a lease on life, at least until the mid-terms.<\/p>\n Biden and the Democrats seem to be finally taking the gloves off. Biden gave a barn burner of a speech on the anniversary, pounding Trump into the ground without ever mentioning him by name. How effective was the speech? Well, two days later, and Trump is still yowling like a cat shitting a porcupine. Fox \u201cNews\u201d couldn\u2019t even bear to discuss the speech, instead trying to pretend the assault on the Capitol was no big deal really, BLM and Antifa were worse, and why hasn\u2019t Biden controlled inflation and COVID? The Lord Haw-Haws of that propaganda pit have their loyal viewers, of course, but it\u2019s eroding as Trump\u2019s Big Lie continues to shrink under the assault of facts and evidence.<\/p>\n Merrick Garland also gave a speech, detailing why the Justice Department investigations were flying under the radar, and reassuring people that the trials and convictions of the small fry at the riots was only the opening act. In the state of New York, at least two Trump whelps, Donny the Lesser and Ivanka the Skanka, have been subpoenaed, and there are reports that Melania the Melanoma has been selling off some of her wardrobe and other personal possessions to make ends meet.<\/p>\n Things aren\u2019t going well for Trump loyalists, either. The Brownshirts have lost a really big civil case in the wake of the Unite the Right rally and are being sued out of existence. Devin Nunes, Trump\u2019s biggest cow in Congress, suddenly quit in order to run Trump\u2019s social media empire. If you\u2019re asking, \u201cwhat social media empire?\u201d, my answer is \u201cexactly.\u201d The January 6th<\/sup> Commission has shown it isn\u2019t screwing around, and is handing out subpoenas left and right, including Bannon, Meadows, Alexander (\u201cVictory or Death!\u201d), Ali with subpoenas expected for various members of Congress who might have to be forced to testify under oath, such as Gym Jordan (OH! Jimmy!), Marjorie Taylor Greene (Ga.), Paul Gosar (Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (Colo.), Mo Brooks (Ala.), Madison Cawthorn (N.C.), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Louie Gohmert (Texas.). It occurs to me that just by tossing those eight out of the House and into prison would raise the average IQ of Congress by at least 10 points.<\/p>\n While Republicans are still working feverishly to try to turn the next American elections into a Soviet-style joke, they aren\u2019t making the headway they were hoping for. Cyber Ninjas, the redoubtable firm in charge of the of-course-it\u2019s-legitimate! Arizona recount, are facing $50,000 a day in fines for refusing to turn over records that are in the public domain regarding how the count was conducted. Given that the count not only confirmed the results, but actually gave Biden a couple of hundred votes he didn\u2019t have before, you have to wonder how much gaming and cheating went in to achieving a result that was only slightly unfavorable to their cause. And how much of that was flat-out illegal. None of the dozens of other state audits seem to have gained much traction. Even notoriously corrupt Wisconsin seems to have given up on party-run recounts as a bad idea. In the meantime, Republican efforts at gerrymandering seem to have stalled out. In places like Texas, it\u2019s because it was already so gerrymandered they could no longer maintain plausible deniability. And I suspect some Republicans, aware of the growing fragility of the Trump cult, are hedging their bets.<\/p>\n For all we hear about Trump \u201crunning out the clock\u201d in hopes Republicans can take the House and make the January 6th<\/sup> commission go away, other legal proceedings that the House cannot interfere with are continuing apace. Garland already made that clear in his speech, and there are a swirl of well-informed reports that the State of New York is going to be dropping the hammer on Trump in the immediate future. Tax fraud, tax evasion, corrupt business practices, it\u2019s a very long list. And remember, Trump\u2019s most efficient henchmen are gone; Former CFO Weisselberg is fighting to keep his own ass out of jail, and former torpedo Michael Cohen is an active enemy gleefully providing evidence (many, MANY skeletons in THAT closet!) against Trump. Trump, in Cohen\u2019s mind, tried to kill Cohen by sending him back to his cell in the height of the pandemic last year. He didn\u2019t appreciate that.<\/p>\n A lot has been made of the poll showing that only 21% of Republican voters think Biden won legitimately. Granted, there are a lot of brainwashed fools and just plain fools in the GOP, but I suspect a lot of them are joining that chorus not from any personal belief, but because they know the cost of disloyalty to the party. \u201cDon\u2019t ever be the first to stop applauding.\u201d The GOP have been a lot like Russia\u2019s Communist Party for many years, and should the party destroy democracy and become, like the USSR, a one-party state, there would be a dear price for showing disloyalty. Nobody doubts the viciousness and cruelty of the GOP, but if they can\u2019t seize power, support for them will erode like cotton candy under Niagara Falls. Conviction persists; fear cannot.<\/p>\n A lot of that will erode as the legal investigations dissect GOP efforts to stage a coup. Fox News might ignore the stories and whine about Hunter Biden, but the rest of America\u2019s media will not ignore it\u2014and even Fox will turn when they can no longer sustain their fear of Trump and start to fear the American people instead.<\/p>\n So on this anniversary, we\u2019ve gained a lot of ground in defeating Trump and his swinish followers. Much remains to be done, and of course, any number of things could go wrong. Remember, we are saddled with a major party that WANTS things to go wrong.<\/p>\n We\u2019re not home free, and won\u2019t be for some time to come. But we\u2019re at least moving in the right direction.<\/p>\n