And Sleepy Joe Will Get The Credit: US Politics January 2021

I don't think an elected official's life is worth more than mine or yours, and find that opinion abhorrent.

where is my secret service detail than?

NEW details in SELF PARDON story: Trump appeared to aides to enjoy watching t.v. scenes of Capitol siege. WH top lawyer warned him he could face legal exposure for the riot given he had urged his supporters to march to the Capitol and “fight.” w/@maggieNYT https://t.co/ebeJrQEAER

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) January 7, 2021

if i were trump id be thinking abt negotiating a resignation for pardon deal but that might be too much for his pride

I do not have the emotional capacity or the mental reserves to spend any time thinking about the death of Ashli Babbitt

― Totino's Fortnite Training Room (DJP), Thursday, January 7, 2021 2:33 PM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

oh believe me my first and strongest reaction was disgust that more of that crowd hadn't suffered similarly

Babbitt was ex-military and was awarded the Iraq Campaign Medal. Surprise, surprise.

there is a pretty strict standard for incitement that I doubt trump’s behavior, reprehensible as it was, meets

Yeah I mean, telling them to march to the Capitol and fight is something we all say.

NEW details on my LATEST VISIT to the BATHROOM

I don't think an elected official's life is worth more than mine or yours, and find that opinion abhorrent.

― Pere Legume (the table is the table), Thursday, January 7, 2021 2:35 PM (four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well yeah but the contradiction is that the location of legitimate power and its legal continuity (if you think such a thing exists) resides in the physical persons elected to have it!

the people storming the doors knew this, that was the whole point. they were trying to physically prevent the certification of electoral votes

there is still a weird inescapable whiff of royalism in the practice of "representation" i guess

there is a pretty strict standard for incitement that I doubt trump’s behavior, reprehensible as it was, meets

― k3vin k., Thursday, January 7, 2021 3:40 PM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

there are any number of things they could go after him for

i'm not good at doing kremlinology on the murdoch orgs but lookee here

Capitol rioters could face up to 10 years in prison under Trump monument executive order https://t.co/8z5GVePnbS

— Fox News (@FoxNews) January 7, 2021

Well, elected officials are getting the vaccine before you or I, so there's that.

Whatever you do today, please don't share the video below of the Trump crime family and his Chief of Staff gleefully partying from their secure bunker while the rioters they unleashed attack the symbol of our democracy. That would not be nice. pic.twitter.com/1seQSqzE89

— Ted (@trom771) January 7, 2021

That’s Guilfoyle giving us a little shimmy right? She strikes me as someone dumb enough to have no idea what’s going on more than a foot away from her, just vibing on the tunes.

let's not forget the other side of this fucking mess

Far-right streamer 'Baked Alaska' stormed Capitol while COVID-19 positive https://t.co/zeNPZAyecq pic.twitter.com/yE8UHLGaGw

— New York Post (@nypost) January 7, 2021

Been years since I saw that name. Didn’t he try to pretend he left the alt-right at some point?

i'm trying to remember if it was the same guy but did he sing the "we love our cops" song

YES
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NxOltvOfLIM

xps I'm covid-positive and I briefly had a fantasy in my mind that I'd zip down to DC yesterday and infect the proud boys, but other considerations aside, it was also obvious that they would take care of that themselves.

am i missing something with that video people keep posting? its them backstage during the morning rally, not during the riot?

yeah people are not looking at what's on the tv screen very closely

i made the same error before mrs jon not jon pointed it out to me

I think the Don Jr video is them waiting to get rally going... not even sure if Don Jr. or Eric have appeared on stage yet. I don't think it's them partying while the Capitol was being sacked.

It’s quite annoying because it’s very obvious even on a phone screen

I'm offended by the v poor dancing to Laura Branigan

well yeah but the contradiction is that the location of legitimate power and its legal continuity (if you think such a thing exists) resides in the physical persons elected to have it!

No matter what bromides or propaganda get pushed, democracy has never existed, and "legitimate power" in the US exists only insofar as a majority of people believe the lie that such power is age-old and God-given rather than constructed by some white dudes who owned slaves several centuries ago.

any video of don jr. i can't see what's in the background because i'm too distracted by his extremely weird teeth and mouth

the laura branigan use angered me bc i am on a big laura branigan kick lately

I'm offended by the v poor dancing to Laura Branigan

― Looking for Cape Penis house (Neanderthal)

"Self-Control" clearly should've been the anthem.

sic transit Gloria

any video of don jr. i can't see what's in the background because i'm too distracted by his extremely weird teeth and mouth

― superdeep borehole (harbl),

Coke sands down the gumline.

Which is where my favorite philosopher comes in again.

Mbembe:
"The term ‘movement’ necessarily implies the setting into motion of a drive, which, even if impure, is composed of a fundamental energy. This energy is enlisted, whether consciously or not, in the pursuit of a desire, which is ideally a master-desire (désir-maître). This master-desire – at once comprising a field of immanence and a force composed of multiplicities – is invariably directed towards one or several objects. ‘Negro’ (Nègre) and ‘Jew’ were once favoured names for such objects. Today, Negroes and Jews are known by other names: Islam, the Muslim, the Arab, the foreigner, the immigrant, the refugee, the intruder, to mention only a few.
Desire (master or otherwise) is also that movement through which the subject – enveloped on all sides by a specific phantasy (fantasme) (whether of omnipotence, ablation, destruction or persecution, it matters little) – seeks to turn back on itself in the hope of protecting itself from external danger, while other times it reaches outside of itself in order to face the windmills of the imagination that besiege it. Once uprooted from its structure, desire then sets out to capture the disturbing object. But since in reality this object has never existed – does not and will never exist – desire must continually invent it. An invented object, however, is still not a real object. It marks an empty yet bewitching space, a hallucinatory zone, at once enchanted and evil, an empty abode haunted by the object as if by a spell.

The desire for an enemy, the desire for apartheid, for separation and enclosure, the phantasy of extermination, today all haunt the space of this enchanted zone. In a number of cases, a wall is enough to express it. [5] There exist several kinds of wall, but they do not fulfil the same functions. [6] A separation wall is said to resolve a problem of excess numbers, a surplus of presence that some see as the primary reason for conditions of unbearable suffering. Restoring the experience of one’s existence, in this sense, requires a rupture with the existence of those whose absence (or complete disappearance) is barely experienced as a loss at all – or so one would like to believe. It also involves recognizing that between them and us there can be nothing that is shared in common. The anxiety of annihilation is thus at the heart of contemporary projects of separation."

Misread that as ‘coke sands down the guillotine’ and got my hopes up for a sec.

It's also obvious it's a fucking event tent and not a secure bunker

The right-wing yahoos have found their new disturbing object, and it's the supposed values they care so much about. The massive inversion of the violence and separation that the US has displaced onto the rest of the world is happening, and it's not going to be very cool. I'm fucking terrified.

i found this very demoralizing!

https://indica.medium.com/i-lived-through-a-coup-america-is-having-one-now-437934b1dac3

it made me think of this line from 2016

The nation may survive, but the wound to hope and order will never fully heal. Ask Argentinians or Chileans or Venezuelans or Russians or Italians—or Germans. The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile and their ability to resist a dictator that weak.

yes that 2016 line stuck w me

Shot/chaser. @washingtonpost sanitizing people intent on overthrowing the government. Vile. pic.twitter.com/v0aeGu9noP

— Emily C. Singer (@CahnEmily) January 7, 2021

reading that sri lanka article moved "get my youngest son a passport" up the old to-do list, let me tell you! :)

The national psyche never gets over learning that its institutions are that fragile

the national psyche apparently has a very short memory when it comes to US presidential elections

What the hell is going on with that man's Xmas column

The constant parading of our country's defense and security poised as so outmatched and advanced yet 9/11 & 1/6 have proven that all that military/defense/police/security spending is an illusory house of cards.

Trump did 9/11

lol simon h yes, but i do think people forget these things while also internalizing them.

they can claim to be shocked by events (and not necessarily be lying) but also learn the lessons for what works and what's rewarded and what has consequences and adjust their behavior and ambitions and hopes accordingly.

I saw him dancing on a rooftop

as scocca says, lindsay et al. aspiring to a peaceful transfer of power are a bit fuckin late. this is literally a violent transfer of power (at best!) https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/01/trump-coup-violence-capitol-national-guard.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/trump-self-pardon.html

Onion article ?

lol

At the end of the day, House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy voted to object to both AZ and PA's electors after acknowledging multiple times to me there was no doubt as to Biden's victory.

— Dave Wasserman (@Redistrict) January 7, 2021

Some security expert on the radio brought up a good point: this was both houses of Congress in session, with the #2 & #3 in the same room... why were there not already tactical SWAT dudes right there on duty to begin with? The seemed woefully unprepared... if this was a trained bunch of commandos instead of a bunch of drunk, diabetic rednecks, it could've been a bloodbath.

FP'd for classism