What happened yesterday in Washington D.C. was both a travesty and a tragedy.

 

It never should have happened.

 

According to Business Insider… (click this link to learn more about viewers’ perspectives)

• A Gallup/Knight Foundation survey found that Americans think most of the news they consume is inaccurate and biased.
• Republicans said they thought only Fox News and The Wall Street Journal were unbiased, while Democrats felt that way about most mainstream outlets.
• Overall, survey respondents said PBS News and The Associated Press were the least biased outlets.
• (I would add to that Reuters and some other non-US news providers.) 

 

So, who’s to blame for yesterday’s insurrection on Capitol Hill?

 

Here’s a list…

 

Fox Noise, Breitbart, and OANN (the new kid on the block) are the best-known media culprits. These outlets spew mostly misinformation and disinformation from firehoses 24/7/365.

 

Sadly, among Republicans, Fox is the so-called news source they trust most to deliver “fair and balanced” news.

 

The first two have, over time, nurtured and turned many–if not most–of their viewers into blinders-on haters of anyone who disagrees with their venomous take on what THEIR America should be like: white, male, cisgender, misogynistic, anti-Semitic, privileged, and in control. That’s their entire list of must haves for their “nation under (white nationalist) God.”  Brown-skinned, Middle Eastern egalitarian Jesus would decidedly not be welcome here.

 

The citizens who watch the above without bothering to bring their brains and own lived experiences to the party. These myopic, painfully incurious, xenophobic folks have managed to tear their own households apart, and now far too many of them are equally willing to tear the nation apart, too, to make sure it remains “their way or no way.”  They don’t care if the American Experiment fails if they can’t ensure that their representatives will remain at the helm of it all. They are mostly white males who are scared spitless that a non-white, non-male majority will start treating them the way they’ve been treating everyone else since our nation’s inception.

 

The spineless GOP folks in Congress who have protected the President at every step from being prosecuted for his un-American activities and alliances. Despite being impeached, the GOP bulwark for Trump has given him the power and the incentive to do what he did yesterday: call on his deluded people to march on the Capitol and “Stop the Steal” that wasn’t: it was a referendum by the voters to send him packing.

 

Aided and abetted by Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader who, until yesterday, thought he was sitting in the catbird’s seat and could call the shots without risk or fear (for at least a few more more days until the new Congress is seated) suddenly faced the insurrectionist mob he had just disowned on the Senate floor by stating unequivocally that Congress should and would certify Biden’s legitimate win.

 

Perhaps watching his own life flash before his eyes as he and the other Senators were rushed out of the chamber and into hiding, he suddenly fully understood what Trump has unleashed and what they are capable of, and he likely soiled his underwear.

 

Donald John Trump. This man has never been an adult human being despite his years. He has always been a toddler, a case of arrested development. This is as plain as the nose on one’s face to anyone who has followed his downward spiraling career. He leaves a path of failure and destruction absolutely everywhere he goes and he always has. Everything he touches dies.

 

But no one has ever dared tell him the truth. Or if they have, they have never been able to destroy his delusion that he’s THE GREATEST MAN WHO EVER LIVED IN EVERY ROOM HE HAS EVER ENTERED OR EVER WILL ENTER.  In short, he’s a madman. He should have been stopped decades ago from destroying lives, careers and fortunes. And now he’s in control of a mob who believes every damn lie he utters.

 

They will die and kill for him. 

 

What we saw yesterday in the nation’s Capitol (and in a number of states with Democratic governors, including my state) is the ugly underbelly of this nation: a bunch of privileged white guys behaving like Donald Trump (if “Cadet Bone Spurs” had actual balls instead of  now-impotent social media accounts).

 

His brown shirts were willing to destroy what lays at the foundation of our democratic republic: the right of the people to choose its next leaders. He was calling it a stolen election before the first vote was cast. He was setting up the lie months in advance so his followers would swallow it whole and get it firmly stuck in their craw. 

 

They came for the blood of anyone on Capitol Hill who stood in their way.  They came to proclaim Trump their savior.

 

I hope the people on Capitol Hill will remember this wakeup call–the one that had them cowering in an undisclosed location for more than 10 hours–and start behaving like civilized human beings and compassionate survivors instead of the way they’ve been behaving.

 

Ted Cruz and his ilk are a lost cause. But many of the others who planned to raise objections to curry favor with Trump loyalists saw the light yesterday, and managed to live through (this time!) the reality of what an unruly mob can do to them in their hallowed halls when encouraged by a madman to do his bidding.  They’re peeling off, now  but it took an insurrection — an actual physical, existential threat to their own lives and livelihoods –to pry them loose from the notion that they should be kowtowing to and posturing for these lunatics.

 

I think the 25th Amendment should be used right now to remove Trump from office. 13 days is too long a time to have him in any position of power or influence. Twitter and the other social media folks who shut his accounts down did the right thing. Congress should act today to do the same.

 

He is a danger to this nation and to the world. He always has been and he always will be. He knows no other way to behave. He’s without a conscience and morals.

 

To him, if something doesn’t elevate and satisfy him, it’s bad.

 

And anything that makes him feel noteworthy and powerful is good. 

 

Who is still incapable of seeing the Real Donald Trump, after his comments extolling the patriotism of the insurrectionists who breached the Capitol  yesterday?

 

Certainly no one who has read this all the way through!