The Insurrectionist

[Since I originally posted this, I have learned that "insurrection" has a narrow legal definition, as does "sedition" and "seditious conspiracy". None of the invaders of the Capitol on January 6 were charged with insurrection, but many were charged and convicted of seditious conspiracy, hence "insurrectionist" is inaccurate and "seditious conspirator" is the more accurate label]

Do I think Donald Trump, aka "Losin' Don", will ever see one day in prison, or even be subject to significant civil penalties? [updated May 28, 2023 to note that he was recently held liable for defamation and order to pay $5,000,000]

No. 

Do I think he should because he's guilty as Hell?

Yes, I do. 

One of Trump's impeachments was over his incitement of the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2020. His supporters point to one line in his speech in Washington, D.C. on that day: "I know that everyone here will soon be marching over to the Capitol Building to peacefully and patriotically make your voices heard". There are other references to peacefully protesting and being the party of law and order. But does that exonerate him from any blame? 

Throughout his speech on January 6, 2020 Trump rehashed his lies that the election was stolen and that day's Congressional certification of the electoral votes was the last chance to make things right. He had supporters in Congress who would vote against accepting the electoral votes of states that had went to Joe Biden in close contests. He was pressuring Vice President Pence to refuse to accept the results. And now, on the last supposedly legal opportunity to overturn the election results he faced a crowd of thousands of true believers. The core of those who really believed the lies that their cult leader was feeding them and were prepared to act on his words. 

Trump was skilled at not leaving a paper trail, ensuring plausible deniability at every turn. He was the master of "Will no one rid me of this troublesome priest?" utterances, enabling him to claim that he didn't actually issue the orders to do what his subordinates clearly understood to be orders. His defense that he didn't incite that attack on the Capitol is apparently that he didn't say the words "Now go and attack the Capitol". 

The context of incitement in this case can't even be narrowed down to what he said or didn't say on January 6. For months he had been ranting that the election had been stolen from him. His core of supporters, especially those present that day, were people who had no problem with violence. His 'wink and a nod' support of extremist groups (to the Proud Boys "Stand back and stand by") certainly communicated that he was perfectly fine with protests that got more physical than waving Trump flags and wearing red hats. He encouraged rough and even violent treatment of protesters at his rallies. After months of convincing his followers that it was the patriotic thing to do to overturn an election he encouraged them to march to the Capitol...which was not open to the public that day to make their voices heard. What did he think would happen? Maybe he didn't realize how far it would go, but it took him over three hours to call on his cult to stop their attack and go home. And even then he expressed sympathy for them and what they were doing. If he truly intended for their voices to be heard, "peacefully and patriotically", why did he allow the rampage to continue as long as he did? Trump claims that it wasn't his intention to encourage his followers to break into the Capitol, but his followers seem to think it was. He knew what affect his words would have.

Speaker McCarthy released all the security to video that day, not to the media at large, not to the Congressional Committee (that he disbanded) to investigate the events of that day, not to the Georgia prosecutor looking into Trump's culpability, but to Trump sycophants Tucker Carlson, who released portions of the footage where the seditionists weren't attacking the police, breaking windows, scaling walls or stealing items from Congressional offices. As if we hadn't already seen the videos of the violence and destruction or the calls to "hang Mike Pence" or "get Pelosi". 

He's guilty. Go get him Jack.

The Latest Election

It ain't over yet, but here's how it looks:

• Most election deniers were not elected, a notable exception was Ron DeSantis, Florida governor; Kari Lake in Arizona may still squeak by

• In all likelihood when the dust settles Republicans will have the majority in the House of Representatives

• In the Senate, Alaska, Nevada & Arizona are too close to call, but the two top vote getters in the ranked choice election are Republicans

• Nevada is tilting toward the Republican; Arizona to Senator Mark Kelly

• This leaves 49 Democrats and 50 Republicans with a runoff election in Georgia between Senator Warnock and a violent, lying, brain-damaged Hershel Walker - I predict Warnock wins in December

What does all this mean? Probably nothing legislatively for the next two years (unless the trends reverse themselves in the remaining races and the Democrats retain control of the House). There's a good chance that if they are the majority the Republicans will entertain themselves by opening investigations in Hunter Biden and anything else that their paranoid little minds dream up. Even if they gain the majority in the Senate, the Democrats still have the filibuster and Biden still has the veto, so a MAGA/right-wing agenda  isn't going to happen. (If McConnell were to eliminate the filibuster, it's unlikely that he would do it with a Democrat in the White House, since Biden could veto anything they come up with and there won't be enough to override). The biggest issue if the Republicans take over the Senate, even by 51-49, is that they can prevent President Biden from appointing any more federal judges. 

There's still a lot that's undecided, so pay attention!

 

Our Allegedly Nonpartisan Legislature

Nebraska has what's called a unicameral legislature. That means there is only one house of the legislature, as opposed to a bicameral, or two-house legislature like every other state.  You also hear the word "nonpartisan" thrown around a lot. In this context, nonpartisan means that in elections to the legislature (or simply "the unicameral") party affiliation does not appear on the ballot, nor are there formal party caucuses. But don't let that fool you, Nebraska's government is as partisan as any other state's. 

Once upon a time, party politics in Nebraska wasn't as...well...partisan as it is now. The difference in the unicameral was more about urban versus rural than it was about Republicans versus Democrats. There was a time when both Senators were Democrats and the governor was Republican. Of course our Republicans weren't the fire-breathing radicals that you get now, and Democrats were pretty conservative. They were more concerned about property tax relief, aid to public schools, tax rates and the many mundane things that governments used to be concerned about. Little by little though, Nebraska politics became more aligned with the trends being set by the national parties - demonizing their opponents and holding on to power.

I'm not going to suggest that Ricketts started it, but he certainly brought things to a head. Shortly after he was elected he loudly chastised Republican members of the unicameral for not supporting a bill that was important to him. He then, utilizing the deep pockets provided by his family's ownership of TAmeritrade, he financed primary challenges against the Republicans that he deemed not partisan enough. 

These days, though, Nebraska politics is a reflection of national partisan divides. Two years ago, Governor Ricketts, clearly sniffing the possibility of a Senate run, started mouthing MAGA talking points. He'd always been a conservative politician, but his utterances became more and more Trump-like, even though he opposed Trump's preference for governor, knowing that the MAGA base among at least the Republicans primary electorate would reward him for his remaking himself in the Trump image. Ricketts' chosen successor, Jim Pillen, pandered even more to the right-wing voters, posing in campaign ads with a rifle. Even more overtly, one of his goals was "more red sweaters", his way of saying that he wanted a filibuster-proof Republican majority in the unicameral. The results aren't all in, but it's likely that Republicans will get that thirty-third vote that would prevent Democrats from blocking nakedly partisan laws, such as a total abortion ban. 

We're still waiting for the results of a few elections that will affect national politics, such as which party controls the Senate, but here in Nebraska, we've set the clock back...quite a bit more than an hour. 

Tilting at Imaginary Windmills

Once upon a time the two largest political parties disagreed and argued about actual issues. You could disagree with what either their positions were, but you could be sure that they were talking about things that were real. Economic issues, foreign policy, infrastructure, taxes - maybe they weren't sincere, or were in the pocket of big donors, but they fought about things that existed!

One of the things that don't exist that Republicans have made an issue of is Critical Race Theory. Critical Race Theory exists, but it is a legal hypothesis that is based on the premise that racism in the United States is less caused by individual acts of bigotry and more on structural and systemic considerations. This is taught in law school, not your local community college, not any high school, and certainly not elementary schools, despite what "parents rights" advocates and the right-wing politicians would have you believe. Despite its absence from any school curriculum that any child or any adult who is a non-lawyer is likely to encounter, Critical Race Theory has become one of the non-issues with which today's Republicans get their supporters excited about. School Board meetings are disrupted by angry parents and governors, who have no input whatsoever in what gets taught in school, campaign on it. 

In addition to the fact that Critical Race Theory isn't being taught in schools, what people think Critical Race Theory is, is inaccurate, a fantasy put forth by Republicans looking for a wedge issue. Fantasy Critical Race Theory includes the idea that all White people are racists, that they are born racists, that Black people should hate White people, that all White people are oppressors, that all Black people are helplessly oppressed, that today's White people are responsible for the past - it goes on and on. Republican led state legislatures and local school boards are banning the teaching of Critical Race Theory in public schools. One might wonder, since it's not actually being taught in public schools, and it's funhouse mirror version certainly isn't, why banning something that's already not there would be a problem. I'm glad you asked.

Republican politicians, along with confused and angry parents, have interpreted virtually anything in school history curricula that addresses racism, including slavery, Jim Crow, lynchings or segregation, as being Critical Race Theory. Some have even gone further, pointing to any mention of contributions by Black Americans, including celebrating Black History Month, as Critical Race Theory. The imaginary windmill that the Republicans are tilting at is a twisted, exaggerated, and false definition of a scholarly discipline. The real discipline isn't even in school curricula, but the do-your research crowd has been convinced that it is, that the false definition is the true one, and have lumped basic United States history that used to be noncontroversial in with their invented definition, causing a spike in the sale of pitchforks, scythes and torches among the angry villagers.  

This isn't the only make-believe issue that Republicans are running on. The lie of the stolen election and equating the acknowledgment that gay and transgender people exists with pedophilia are two other big ones. Causes you to wonder how they plan to govern when most of what they think needs to be addressed can only be found in their imaginations. 

Safe & Secure Elections

Is there such a thing as election or voter fraud? ("Voter fraud" indicates actions by individuals, usually isolated; "election fraud" is organized actions by political parties, lobbying groups or other entities to change the or illegally influence election results) Of course there is. We see a handful of cases every year. From someone who manages to vote twice, to a a deceased voter's mail-in ballot be filled out by a family member, to organized schemes that have popped up in a few constituencies. But is election or voter fraud widespread? Is it common? There is no evidence to suggest that it is, so where does the Republican idea that our elections not only are subject to fraud, but are so overrun with it that the results cannot be trusted, and are rigged in favor of Democrats? The answer is pretty easy to identify. 

Donald Trump.

Until 2016 candidates for public office operated under the assumption that votes would be counted accurately. That there were checks in place to identify any irregularities. That close elections would receive extra scrutiny, including recounts. 

This is not to say that politicians did whatever they (legally) could to make their own election and reelection more likely. Gerrymandering, unreasonable barriers to registration, and the like have a long history - but virtually every candidate for public office accepted the results and graciously (usually) conceded defeat when the numbers told them that's what happened. 

In the months before the 2016 presidential election candidate Donald Trump began to suggest that the only way that he could lose was if the election was "rigged" against him. He suggested that the primaries where he lost were rigged. Journalists, picking up on this started asking him if he would accept the results of an election in which he lost. He never said "no", but his answers, like "we'll see", and "if I win" indicated that he wouldn't accept the results of an election if he wasn't the winner. Since he did win, the point was moot. 

Or was it.

His opponent, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, received close to three million more votes than he did. In our Electoral College system of electing a president, that's an irrelevant number. It really only matters in that it's an indication of popular support, but for the purposes of deciding who sits in the Oval Office it's meaningless. But it wasn't meaningless to President Donald Trump. He started tweeting (his preferred form of communication) that in addition to winning a majority of Electoral College votes, he actually won the popular vote...if you didn't count millions of votes by illegal immigrants. He also began referring to his victory as a landslide, even though his Electoral vote margin of victory was fairly average. 

Unable to believe that he hadn't convinced a majority of Americans to vote for him he established the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (aka "The Election Fraud Commission) headed by Vice President Mike Pence, with Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach as vice-chair and the driving force behind the commission. The commission was disbanded in January 2018 without finding any evidence of voter or election fraud. 

Fast forward to the 2020 presidential election. Who knows whether Trump believed that it possible that he would lose. He has a massive ego, but also has a history of massaging the facts in his favor. He made his first public remarks suggesting that election results were untrustworthy in April 2020. But as early as Summer 2019 he certainly was aware that former Vice-President Joe Biden would be the likely Democratic nominee and was taking steps to undermine Biden's chances. July 2019 was when Trump encouraged Ukrainian President Zelensky to open an investigation in the Biden and his son which resulted in his first impeachment. Trump disparaged Biden as "Sleepy Joe" and downplayed Biden's chances of defeating him, treating his candidacy as a joke. 

There were several differences in the 2020 voting environment from 2016. The Covid-19 pandemic caused many states to modify their rules, making mail-in voting, early voting, and the availability of drop boxes much more prevalent. Trump began his assault on election integrity by questioning the security of mail-in ballots. It's true that in some states this was a new thing, but other states had been using voting by mail for years without any problems, and some states' elections were entirely conducted by mail. Mail voting existed when the Election Fraud Commission was doing its investigations, yet they found no systemic problems with the practice. 

Throughout 2020 Trump continued to attack the reliability of voting systems, accelerating his rhetoric once Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee. Think about that for a minute or two - months before a single vote was cast he was asserting, without a shred of evidence, that due to these ephemeral irregularities, the election would be rigged against him...if he lost. In fact he insisted that the only way that he could lose was if the election was rigged and rife with fraud. He and many of his supporters imagined that voting by mail and the use of drop boxes was by its very nature not secure so therefore there will be fraud. Not a shred of evidence was presented; possibly because the election hadn't happened yet, but they couldn't point to any evidence that it was happening in states that were already using these voting methods either. But Trump's most ardent supporters had already been primed, as cultists often are, to believe anything that Trump told them. Based on the doubts sown by Trump, Trump voters now had their own doubts, which they echoed back to Trump and his allied political leaders, which Trump in turn pointed to as evidence that "many people had questions". Who knows what would have taken place if he had squeaked by and won again in 2020 - which very easily could have happened with a few thousand votes in some key states going the other way. Ironically Biden's Electoral College victory was exactly the same as Trump's 2016 margin. 

We all know what happened next. Trump not only refused to concede, he announced, before all the votes were counted in states with close elections, that he had won. Eventually he would start calling his "win" a landslide. Biden received around 7 million more votes than Trump. Recounts, audits, investigations, lawsuits, all turned up no fraud and no results were changed. But the damage was done. Millions of people believe that the election was stolen from Trump. Some of them went to Washington while the electoral vote certification was underway and invaded the Capitol. A majority of Republicans voted to not certify electoral votes in states where Trump narrowly lost. 

This was new. There have been disputed elections in the past. Recounts have taken place. in the 2000 election the Supreme Court got involved. But in all cases the loser eventually conceded defeat and moved on. Trump not only refused to admit defeat, but has ramped up his claims of chicanery by the Democrats, still insisting that he won...by "a lot". He has inspired hundreds of Republican candidates to run explicitly as election deniers. Candidates, who in positions like Secretary of State, have the power to influence how an election is conducted, and who indicate that a Republican victory is the only valid victory to be contemplated.

There's still no evidence. There never has been evidence. In over 60 court filings no evidence was ever presented. Affidavits without exception speculated on how fraud might have taken place, without uncovering any actual fraud, or pointed to "suspicious" activity that turned out to be perfectly normal procedure. Statistical "anomalies" were only anomalous if you didn't understand statistics. 

The idea of a rigged election came from the paranoid mind of Donald Trump and was passed on to his cult who accepted it without evidence. Scarily, the current crop of MAGA Republicans make the thought of a rigged election a real possibility.

Fortunately, in the election that took place earlier this month election deniers were elected, but fortunately the worst of them, the ones in positions to actually skew election results were not elected. In fact the trend seemed to be that traditional Republicans did better than Trumpy Republicans overall. The danger isn't past, but maybe it's delayed a little. 

Church-State-Bigotry Overlap

Christians have been arguing about what constitutes a "true" Christian, battling about esoteric theological points virtually since day one. Even when "the Church" was ostensibly united - before the East-West Schism, before the rise of Islam cut off many Christians from regular communication with their coreligionists, before the Protestant Reformation and the various Great Awakenings, there have been arguments about just about every aspect of Christianity, with the winners - those who held the power - writing the rules and casting out those who disagreed as heretics. I'm sure some of the arguments were good faith attempts to make sense of the jumble of mutual exclusivity that is The Bible, but often theological arguments were just a way to sanctify purely political disagreements.  Over the centuries The Bible was used to justify pogroms against Jews, colonialism and slavery. 

Wow, it's almost as if there's a Bible verse to justify just about any kind of horrible behavior.

We shouldn't be surprised that in 2022 there are still people who are using The Bible to rationalize their repugnant actions and beliefs. A textbook example of the "No True Scotsman" fallacy, Christians who subscribe to the version of Jesus who loves everybody and is a kind of proto-socialist, call out the Christian Nationalists and homophobes as "not true Christians", while the latter could claim to have a longer pedigree than the former, going back at least 1500, if not 2000, years. They're just as "true" as the flower children, soup kitchen building, love thy neighbor Christians. 

Today, bigots and White Nationalists cloak their views in The Bible just like horrible people have always done. They can't construct any rational arguments to support their bigotry and hatred, so they justify it as divinely mandated. Their bigotry against gay, transgender and other groups, while ignorant at its core, has to have a cover. No one likes to see themselves as the villain of the story. Few people want to come right out and say that they want to restrict the rights of LBGTQ+ people simply because they hate them. They have to start with the assumption that the existence of LBGTQ+ people is inarguably wrong. I say start, but the stating point is actually the bigotry, they convince themselves that the bigotry isn't really bigotry, that it isn't their view, but God's, abdicating responsibility for their own hatred. In this twisted view, you don't need to accuse individuals of anything because the very fact of their being who their are is viewed as the offense. 

Once you have redefined a person's whole self as an aberration it's a short hop to defining anything connected with them as worthy of being legislated against. Simply acknowledging that a school child has gay parents becomes a crime, counseling or comforting a teenager who feels they were born as the wrong gender and may be contemplating suicide can get you fired or jailed. Drag Queens reading to kids is interpreted as "sexualizing children". The most innocent of actions becomes reframed in the most awful terms...if it's an LBGTQ+ person doing it. But talking to a 5 year-old boy about the little girl next store as his "girlfriend" or telling stories about the princess succeeding at life because she gets the prince isn't "grooming" at all. Right. 

Now we are seeing laws being written in jurisdictions across the country codifying this bigotry. Politicians revel in their hatred and subjugation of marginalized groups, decrying the homosexual or transgender "agenda" as if they were a domineering majority in power, rather than a small vulnerable minority. The way our political system works, this is effective. A Republican in many states only has to energize their Christian Nationalist-Bigot base to win a primary and victory over the Democrat is virtually assured due to the brainwashing that paints all Democrats as socialists who hate America. It's how in state after state the views of a minority become law.  

These people are not going away. 

The Golden Calf

If you've following my series So, You Want To Join a Cult on my "Aes Duir" blog, you know that I know what makes a cultist. You know that I opine that a cult doesn't necessarily have to involve a Kool-Aid drinking suicide pact, but can be banal, ordinary in its manifestations. There are different levels to cult behavior. There are those who will do anything, ever kill, for their leader or ideology, and there are also those, who while acting just like their neighbors, still harbor an absolute, fervent belief in the truth of what they have been taught. 

Trump supporters are in a cult.

Very seldom do I encounter a Trumpist in the flesh. I'm not a very socially extroverted person. I work from home and my social interactions center around live music performances. My Facebook bubble consists mostly of people with whom I have a significant overlap of beliefs and positions. Twitter is the social media locale where I see what the other side says and believes (or says that they believe!). Recently I have had conversations with two people who were pretty solidly on the MAGA side of the fence. The first, somewhat mildly, the other, full-bore all the way. Both of these people claimed, in preface to giving their political opinions, that they didn't know much about politics. 

The first person was what one might assume was a typical Fox "News" viewer, since almost all of her opinions seemed to be recitations of the official Fox News line. Conversations with this person revealed no knowledge whatsoever of national level policies of either Trump or the Democratic Party. Her opinion of Trump seemed to be based entirely on the myth that "they" never gave him a chance, that "everyone" was out to get him. Her opposition to mainstream Democratic politicians seemed to be based entirely on whether their manner of speaking annoyed her. She would bring up Fox News talking points like "Hunter Biden's laptop". Any attempt to engage her on a possible alternative to her mindset was met with the protest of "I don't know much about politics". 

The send person was also typical of what I would envision a Trump supporter to be, but in different ways. He was born in a small rural town, currently lived in a somewhat bigger, but by no means urban town, and worked a blue collar job. He seemed to be a decent enough, hard-working family man. He told me that he was apathetic about politics before Trump. He thought all politicians, law enforcement, the legal system - all of it, was corrupt and that voting didn't make a difference. He never voted until he voted for Trump in 2016. 

Somehow he thought that Trump would be different. 

It's completely understandable to have the position that politicians are corrupt, that the system itself is corrupt. I've known many people over the years who never voted for precisely that reason. It's not an unreasonable position to take. How often have we seen the rich and powerful get away with things that the rest of never could? How often have we seen back room deals take precedence over what is clearly the public interest? Fair enough. But why would any clear thinking person think that it was Donald Trump who would be the one to "drain the swamp" and eliminate the corruption within government? 

Trump was (and is) by any objective measure a con man. His business dealings were failure after failure, with unpaid contractors investors, defaults on loans and bankruptcies. But his skill (his only skill) as a conman and convincing liar enabled him to continue to arrange financing for more projects. He would always ensure that his own salary or consultant or management fee was paid, and make sure his own money wasn't at risk as business after business crashed and burned. Anyone who considered what actually took place during Trump's career, versus what he claimed had happened, quickly come to the conclusion that Trump was most certainly not the guy to clean up government corruption. But most people don't look at the details, they look at the big, brash personalities, they listen to the promises without considering the operational likelihood that they can be accomplished. Trump took advantage of this weakness in the average voter. He stood out from the pack of other Republican hopefuls - the other almost 20 fell into two main categories: Traditional candidates like Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Jeb Bush and John Kasich - senators or governors and a much smaller group that included non-politicians such as CEO Carly Fiorina and neurosurgeon Ben Carson. It was almost predetermined that Trump, in a category of his own, would surge to the front of the pack. He was saying what people wanted to hear, that no one else was saying.

[Trump's barely disguised racism and misogyny, including an admittance on tape of sexual assault, was part of what appealed to some. I didn't get any of that from the person that I talked to, for him, it was the "drain the swamp" aspect.]

One of the things you hear sometimes in religious contexts is "there's no zeal like the zeal of the newly converted". People like my second Trumper had just recently been converted to caring about politics and the catalyst was Donald Trump. And just like a new convert to any religion, these Trump supporters were fervent in the belief. And like any cultist, it didn't matter that the facts didn't line up with the rhetoric. Virtually none of what drew people to Trump was accomplished. The Wall wasn't built, and the only significant accomplishment was a tax cut that mostly benefitted corporations and the ultra-wealthy. (Conservative additions to the judiciary, which ended up with Roe vs. Wade being overturned, would likely have occurred under any Republican president). The "drain the swamp" aspect was a joke, with actions of questionable ethics taking place continually throughout his four years. The "swamp", if anything, got swampier, with Trump businesses even making money by charging the Secret Service for rooms to protect the president and his family and to accompany Trump sons on business trips around the world. (A full list of all the unethical actions is a topic for another day). Yet the faithful stayed loyal.

One of the things that keeps people in a cult, or in any harmful situation, is looking at the time spent as a sort of investment. If you get out, you have "wasted" all the time you spent inside. Related to this is the reluctance for most people to admit that something that they so fervently believed in was a fraud, so they stay on, convincing themselves that what was wrong was right and what was black was actually white. Trump's four years are full of examples of why he was incompetent, dishonest and corrupt. In addition to the tendency of people to want to ignore the inconvenient, Trump himself kept up a steady drumbeat, undermining confidence in everything, the media, Congress, the courts, everything but him. 

Trump steadily built up a cult of personality around himself. It didn't matter if he succeeded in any of his promises, it didn't matter when his words were exposed as lies, his people would stand by him. In the case of the second of my two Trumpists, he was already primed to believe that corruption was rampant, it was but a small step to imagine that corruption would be directed at his messiah, the one who said "I alone can fix it". To this man, it didn't matter that no evidence was ever produced in court of election fraud because the judges were corrupt. The FBI search of Mar-a-Lago? Corrupt FBI. Any negative story you read or hear? Corrupt media. 

With this kind of mindset, facts don't matter because they can be ignored or explained away. No other source of information is to be trusted, every other source of information is corrupt, all except one man. 

If that's not a cult, I don't know what a cult is (and I know what a cult is)