The scariest thing about the attack on the U.S. Capitol last week isn’t how easily a bunch of freaking yahoos with bandanas and Army boots broke into the most sacred building of our democracy and desecrated it.
Middle schoolers on the Close-Up field trip get more pat-downs and backpack searches than the bunch of misguided fools and criminals who sauntered into our seat of government and had their way with it Jan. 6.
No, the scariest thing is what could’ve happened and didn’t.
A startling video by veteran war journalist Luke Mogelson for The New Yorker and shown over and over again — on CNN, at least; we don’t know if Fox viewers saw it — shows a stream of angry screaming MAGAheads breaking a window and pushing police officers to get inside and upstairs, where they ransacked the drawers of elected senators and banged door to locked door looking for lawmakers like they were hunting Democrats.
“Where the fuck is Nancy,” one particular yahoo asks, referring to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Knock, knock,” says another in a menacing voice as they enter chambers that were apparently hastily evacuated.
“Where they fuck are they? Where are they,” another asks.
What were they going to do if they found anyone? What would this crazed, chanting mob have done if they had come across Nancy or Bernie or — can you imagine? — Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez?
Keep in mind that just outside, a lynching mob had fashioned a hanging noose on a wooden frame. Keep in mind that these “protesters” used language that threatened not only the lawmakers but everyone of us.
Even Republican Sen. Ted Cruz was not safe for a couple of seconds as the mentally-challenged neanderthals who started rifling through lawmakers’ desks first misinterpreted some Cruz document.
“He was going to sell us out all along,” one bearded white guy said. Nah, bruh, another bearded white guy said. He’s cool. See? He was objecting to the vote, not the objection.
Vice President Mike Pence was a possible target, too, as a “fucking traitor.”
The whole scenario, the chanting of treason by an out of control mob egged on by certain narcissistic leaders, reminded me too much of el paredon, or the wall where traitors to Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution were put before a firing squad.
That’s why it is especially shocking that the Cuban Republican delegation in Miami hasn’t come out swinging against this very painful and disgraceful act against the very core of our government — and freedom.
The scene also keeps making me go back to The Handmaid’s Tale storyline, which begins when the Capitol, the White House and the U.S. Supreme Court are blown up in a coup attempt by an extreme right in the wake of a mysterious virus. The attack only assured me that it could happen.
My own Trumpster parents were shocked and dismayed on Jan. 6 as they watched the events of the siege on the U.S. Capitol — and I have to stop for a second every time I say those words — unfold live on the TV set in their living room. This is too familiar, they thought.
So why haven’t our local Republican Congress members called it out. Congress members Mario Diaz-Balart, Maria Elvira Salazar and Carlos Gimenez each had an opportunity (read: an out) to take a stand for democracy that would stand out for sure. All of them blew it.
Read related: Blood on his hands, Carlos Gimenez ditches TV show post coup attempt
The worse is Gimenez, who once voted for Hillary — unless that was another political lie — and beat former Democrat Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell in November by selling himself as a moderate option to her “hyper partisanship,” as he called it.
Really.
Not only does Grimenez ignore the siege and vote to decertify votes and disenfranchise voters in Arizona and Pennsylvania, but he then goes on TV and tries to defend himself and talk about fake news like he hasn’t lived off it for most of his political life.
Gimenez sounded like an unhinged lunatic Sunday morning on WPLG Local 10’s This Week in South Florida, which is a staple for 305 political junkies, as he tried to defend himself from the hot seat treatment applied, finally, by Glenna Milberg and Michael Putney, who too often give Grimenez a pass.
Putney also sees the correlation between the attack on the U.S. Capitol and the Cuban revolution my parents and the congressman’s family fled.
“Given your personal history, how do you justify that,” Putney
“I can justify it very, very, very well,” Grimenez starts, already sounding like a child who doesn’t believe his own lies to get out of bad behavior. He said his vote to decertify millions of voters’ ballots in Arizona and Pennsylvania was to defend the constitution. But he sounds like he doesn’t even believe himself. Because when did he become an attorney?
Milberg actually read the law to him, which wasn’t what he said.
“What evidence did you see that 60-something court judges didn’t see,” she asked him.
He only stumbled and contradicted himself in response but he got angrier as the reporters got tougher and kept correcting him.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s online for all eternity.
Meanwhile, we have more armed forces in D.C. today than in Afghanistan, a preventative measure in case there is another coup attempt on our country on the day when there is supposed to be a peaceful transition of power. Local police — what’s left of them after at least 45 fly to D.C. to boost manpower there — have talked about “chatter” regarding more attacks and people have been arrested since Jan. 6 for planning an armed conflict.
And we have The New Yorker video yahoos promising to hunt down every last Democrat and take them to “the guillotine” and their delusional shaman delivering a note: “It’s only a matter of time. Justice is coming.”
Let’s hope that’s true and not a threat about Wednesday.
Capitol siege and Republican reaction is scary because of what could’ve been added by Ladra on
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