Revolution<\/b><\/p>\n
Means \u201cgoing in circles\u201d<\/b><\/p>\n
June 10th<\/sup>, 2022<\/i><\/p>\n Bryan Zepp Jamieson<\/i><\/p>\n When it comes to stuff like treason, sedition, resistance, whatever you want to call it, there is an old saying: \u201cIt is unwise to shoot at the King\u2014and miss.\u201d The logic is simple enough to follow: if you\u2019re going to overthrow the government, make damned sure you have a solid shot at pulling it off, because kings (and governments in general) tend to take a dim view of insurrectionists. A real dim view. A \u201chang, draw and quarter\u201d sort of dim view. There have been any number of revolutions in human history, and they rarely end well for the would-be revolutionaries. Even when they WIN it often goes poorly\u2014Mao, Hitler, Lenin and Pol Pot conducted vast, murderous purges of their own in the wake of seizing control of their respective countries. It seems that if you\u2019ve betrayed your country once, you are seen as a bit of a risk of being a repeat offender.<\/p>\n For all the romanticism and (sometimes) idealism, being a revolutionary is a shit way to make a living.<\/p>\n For these and other reasons (including the approbation of neighbors) most revolutionaries are fairly circumspect about being, well, revolutionaries. Not only do they have to deal with an unamused government, but social circumstances that foster rebellion usually foster deep schisms amongst the insurrectionists, with the result that your deadliest and most treacherous enemy might not be the palace guard, but the guy at the next table who is making IEDs for the Cause. There\u2019s also the fact that it\u2019s rare for more than a third of the general population to support revolution, and usually it\u2019s a far lower percentage than that. Most people have jobs, families, some stability, and don\u2019t want to trade it in for party proctors and kangaroo courts that need a steady stream of imagined enemies to paper over the failures of the new regime.<\/p>\n So it\u2019s kind of unusual for the terminally disaffected to run around yelling that they\u2019re out to overthrow the government and they\u2019ve got the flags and bibles and guns to do it with. T\u2019aint healthy to be sayin\u2019 that sort of shit.<\/p>\n Until 21st<\/sup> century America, that is. Between Faux News and Donald Trump, the country got a special kind of revolutionary, a short bus rider with a big mouth and a small brain. These guys tended to run around saying stuff like \u201coverthrow the government!\u201d and even more puzzling, the ones smart enough to keep their yaps shut suffered having such loud fools in their ranks.<\/p>\n I was puzzled when I heard over the past few days that the Department of Justice had filed indictments of seditious conspiracy against a dozen or so leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers. It wasn\u2019t because I thought these two groups were innocent of such activities: it\u2019s just that in the entire history of the country after Benedict Arnold, no government had made that sort of charge stick outside of war time. Proving intent is nearly impossible in most cases. So it\u2019s rare. It\u2019s very rare.<\/p>\n The first two hours of the January Sixth Select Committee hearings last night showed what an overwhelming case the government had against the leaders of those two groups. Not only did the committee have a plethora of emails and videos (!) and testimony showing clear and evident intent to assault Congress, but they showed that, contrary to the fiction that they were so worked up by Trump\u2019s speech that they just got overenthused, they didn\u2019t even hear the speech\u2014they had already started their march on Congress before Trump started whipping up the crowd. The weapons and militia gear and so on? Oh, just the sort of stuff tourists usually carry, right?<\/p>\n The attack on Congress was premeditated and carefully planned. Subsequent hearings ought to tell us who the insurrectionists liaised with in the Trump administration.<\/p>\n The DOJ is carrying out a deft divide-and-conquer approach to Trump\u2019s insurrection. Go after the brown shirt crowd first: that\u2019s where you\u2019ll find the biggest mouths and the smallest brains. The committee showed just how solid a case they have last night. They produced solid evidence that Trump knew his claims of an election steal were, in the words of Bill Barr, \u201cbullshit\u201d and dropped hints of similar proof of efforts to overthrow the election at the state level, and a bombshell leak that at least four Republican congressmen begged Trump for a pre-emptive pardon in order to avoid criminal culpability.<\/p>\n There\u2019s an old Flemish proverb: \u201cWe must hang together or we shall all hang separately.\u201d A similar quote is attributed to Benjamin Franklin, but Franklin, like most good political theorists, pinched most of his juicier quotes. The Mob has its code, and street gangs have \u201cSnitches get stitches.\u201d The committee, and the DOJ are kicking apart any possible unity amongst Trump\u2019s minions\u2014not just the SA thugs in the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, but the inept clowns that Trump brought in to run the government in his name.<\/p>\n Everyone will be watching the committee over the next two weeks, of course. If the next five broadcasts are as sensational as this first one, then this will be the biggest story of its type in American history.<\/p>\n What makes this different from Teapot Dome or the attempted Putsch against FDR or Watergate is that the leaders of this mob don\u2019t have enough brains to shut up and slink back into the shadows. Trump doesn\u2019t think his followers are fools; he knows they are fools. But the drawback is that they don\u2019t do subtle. So Trump has to tell them to keep taking bullets for the cause. Which exposes him, of course.<\/p>\n