Thank you, boosters, 1/6

This evening after dinner, I caught Tom picking roasted potatoes off the sheet pan with his fingers and shoving them in his mouth. Long story short, yesterday’s post did not describe rare occurrences.

But, you knew that! You’ve experienced it, and I can’t thank you enough for filling my inbox today with such delightful notes of laughter and total understanding. They were the best sorts of hugs and friendship.

I also want to thank scientists, science, Dr. Fauci, Pfizer, quick decisions by the FDA and CDC this week, the Biden admin for urging quick delivery, and the Silver Spring Civic Center for the glorious fact that both J and O received their boosters today. We were in and out in 20 minutes, start to finish (including the wait), and both boys feel totally fine. Hallelujah!

I will add that while in the waiting room, both Beavis and Butthead alerted me to the fact that max capacity is 69. For the love of god, y’all.

Your notes and these shots were such bright spots in an otherwise pretty heavy day. ONE year since that horrible, violent insurrection. I remember it all so clearly. We’d woken up so happy that morning, after Ossoff and Warnock won in Georgia. And mere hours later, Agent Orange called his minions and gave them their marching orders. As the day played out, I became increasingly speechless and horrified. I don’t know that I’ve ever felt like I did on that day. Watching fellow citizens do what they did.

The violence. The entitled-yet-ignorant rage. The flags and the Big Lie and thousands of little lies and the military-grade cosplay.
The screaming and destruction and feces and Confederate paraphernalia.
The gallows and the broken windows and members of Congress pulling gas masks from under their seats and their staffs turning anything into barricades.
The guns and grenades and fire extinguishers and flag poles.
The flash bangs and the havoc. The joy they were all taking in all of it. The utter insanity of being not 10 miles from all of this and yet a world away.

I have family on both sides, mine and Tom’s, who remain trumpers. To this day. Today. Who still believe in the Big Lie and pretend not to know how to pronounce Kamala’s name and who will not, under any circumstance, listen to, much less ingest, anything that does not slip neatly into the glove of trumpism they’ve fashioned and sewn to their own beings. They have and will lose family and friends over their house of cards. They do NOT care what the truth is.

And that right there is the essential kernel of why I feel truly hopeless about the survival of American democracy. I have no idea how to un-brainwash so many Americans who continue to joyfully follow a greedy, stingy, grab-em-by-the-pussy imbecile who does not care for them.

One year later and no organizers, higher-ups, instigators, law-enforcement enablers have met consequence. Yes, yes, many participants in the insurrection are in jail and such, but they are the tail of the snake, a replaceable element that serves the writhing, causal, intentional, toxic head. Am I glad they’re crying in prison? Absolutely. Rot there forever you machismo toy soldiers who peaked in high school.

But what is essential for America’s survival is real accountability and real punishment. The 1/6 Select Committee is working hard, and I am thankful. I hope Merrick Garland and DOJ are doing something, anything. Hard to tell, even after that “speech” yesterday.

Hope. A desire for something certain to happen. The human spirit is remarkable and resilient, but so many are so tired and beaten down after the past 5 years and the pandemic and so little accountability and that 99% of one whole ass American political party continues to peddle the Big Lie and that people to whom I’m related do, too.

It’s a lot, y’all.

This article is worth a read!

If you missed VP Harris’ and POTUS’ speeches today, go find and listen to them. Righteous anger is healing.

If you’d like to read the verbatim responses to 1/6 by many a Congressional Republican last January, this thread is a hell of a damning compilation.

sad but true

If you need inspiration or a lift, go listen to anything Jamie Raskin has said in the past year. He is an incredible human and a remarkable, rare politician. I am beyond blessed to be one of his constituents. He has stood up for America and our democracy with all his heart every damn day, even in the aftermath of losing his son at the end of 2020. He is the epitome of a public servant, and we should all be grateful for him. His new book is out today, by the way. Unthinkable. Read it.

Image by Leah Millis, a senior photog with Reuters.

Boy howdy, shit went down: domestic terrorists, and a Blue Georgia

Alrighty, y’all. very tired and upset and stressed on January 5, I melted down to you and felt so much better. As my friend Liz says, “writing is catharsis.” I do appreciate all who checked in on me. I love you! And then Wednesday came, lawd a mercy. I’m still wiping my brow.

I stayed up so late watching the Georgia returns before waking a few hours later and:

seeing confirmation that Reverend Warnock had ousted Barbie Loeffler;
starting to make enthusiastic calls to Georgia canvassers volunteering to cure ballots;
starting to feel real hope about Ossoff beating the jackass who pretended he couldn’t pronounce Kamala;
watching with disgust as Josh Hawley and Ted Cruz sought to decertify Arizona’s votes;
seeing some news about a mob;
opening Twitter to find that insane domestic terrorists, aka MAGAs, were five miles from my house storming the Capitol with pitchforks, guns, flags, IEDs, war paint, and other paraphernalia of war;
becoming riveted to every news source and their video feeds;

Wait, hold up. WHAT? Yes. It was like watching a psychotic game of Olympic-level ping pong. And it was still just 1pm.

As you all know, trump’s people took his directive and planned an insurrection. They flew and drove here from all over the country. Hotels rented them rooms. It seems that some Capitol Police even opened perimeter gates* and actual Capitol building doors* for them, inviting them in to desecrate one of the symbols of America they -the police and the mob- purport to love. Footage shows rioters breaking windows and doors, sitting in Congressional chambers and office chairs, stealing podiums and who knows what else, all while screaming “This is OUR house!” I don’t know about y’all, but that is just not how I treat my home.

A woman wearing a trump flag was shot and later died. A video she shared a few days before this treasonous insurrection shows that she was really deep down the right wing cult wormhole. I haven’t been able to watch it in full because it is so insane and vitriolic and sincerely terrifying. She is now being heralded as a martyr for far right groups. Ivanka called these people “American patriots,” while Cheeto Satan said, “you’re very special. We love you.”

Prior to the arrival of various national guards and DC police, Capitol Police (not under DC jurisdiction) didn’t seem to do too much about the rampant mob whose behavior resulted in:

the American flag being replaced by a Trump flag;
a giant cross being erected outside which was, purportedly, to be burned;
a noose erected on the Capitol’s west side (apparently, these seditious thugs wanted to lynch Pence);
the DC mayor frantically issuing a city-wide curfew;
MD Rep Steny Hoyer frantically calling MD Gov Hogan to ask he deploy the state’s police and National Guard (which we now know Hogan tried to do but was delayed for some time before being granted permission to send);
Pence being hurried away to safety;
Congress being hurried away to a different, crowded place of safety in which some REFUSED to wear masks;
among other hideous actions.

All of this was and is domestic terrorism. And yet, later, after a measly 52 arrests (and that was SO much later; for comparison, more than 14,000 were arrested during protests against George Floyd’s murder), we saw footage of some of the insurrectionists back at their hotels, drinking and “celebrating” in lobby bars, sans masks, natch, flags and such resting on their chairs. Not arrested. If they were black, they would have been hours dead. White supremacy, anyone?

We also found that WHILE they were being safely guarded from the thugs they incited and encouraged, Hawley and Cruz, yes those two, sent fundraising emails to their supporter lists. Can you even fathom the depths of soullessness and cravenness that would enable a person to behave in such a way? In any of these ways?

I should fess up here and say that in my rage, I responded to Ivanka’s claim that these criminals were “American patriots” by tweeting, “You did this, you hideous whore.” On the same day that Twitter finally suspended Cheeto Satan, they also suspended me for hateful speech. Bless their hearts. To be welcomed back into the grand Twitterverse, I had to delete my tweet and “browse only” for 12 hours. Should we call people names? No. But I do find it a bit hysterical that a fairly factual, subjective tweet -mine- was met with the same punishment as the multi-year destructive, full-of-lies-and-hate, “Obama is a Kenyan muslim,” “Lock her up,” “the election was rigged” feed of spray tan mc ketchup face. Now I’m back, and trump has just been permanently banned. I guess there’s some justice after all.

I maintain that Ivanka is complicit in all of this. Of course she is. The whole family is. Just watch this recording of them watching, from a safe space, as the insurrection commenced -AFTER Evil Yam and his degenerate son WELCOMED and spoke to the thug mob- and played out. Kimberly is dancing. Jr looks wrecked and crazed as ever. Ivanka’s hair is coiffed. It’s The Hunger Games, a la Trumpian America and with less intelligence. A hat tip to Laura Branigan whose agents subsequently stated, very publicly, that she neither gave permission for or condoned, the hooligan family’s use of her song, Gloria.

After a five-hour delay, the Capitol was declared safe and Congress resumed what has previously, always been a perfunctory, symbolic tradition: the certification of the winning presidential candidate. Hawley and Cruz continued their shenanigans, but just before 4a on Thursday, Biden was officially declared the winner of the 2020 election. NO SHIT.

During said largely symbolic tradition, trump continued saying inflammatory things, refusing to acknowledge he’d lost. Matt Gaetz had the gall to say the mob was antifa in disguise (nope) and, get this, was applauded by fellow House republicans. And, Ossoff was declared the official winner in his race against Perdue. I have a lot of family in Georgia, and though it pains me deeply, most of them are ardent trump lovers. In part because of that and in part because of Georgia’s history of grotesquely racist behavior, it is a special thrill that the state not only voted for Biden but also that it replaced two white assholes with a Black man and a Jew. Thank you, Stacey Abrams and Latosha Brown and all others who made this happen by enfranchising (FFS, finally) black Georgians.

This has been an enormously unsettling time. I beg everyone to stop saying, “this isn’t who we are.” It IS who we are, almost half of us, and we MUST do and be better. The only response to trump, hawley, cruz, and the domestic terrorists who attacked the Capitol, are planning to do so again, and who support such behavior is to squash them completely, a la Germany post-WWII. There must be full consequence for the traitors; we must not give one inch. Not one.

While it’s good that since Wednesday many more have been arrested and/or fired from their jobs, not least because the idiots didn’t cover their faces and so have been readily identifiable, many are still out there, at least 6 were elected legislators, and, per NPR and other sources, intelligence suggests that more attacks are being planned for near-future dates. If you are thinking of coming to DC for the inauguration, I beg you to cancel those plans. Stay home. If you live in DC, stay in your home. I am not an alarmist. I have a fairly high risk tolerance. But this is all not remotely a joke. They wanted to LYNCH Mike Pence. Mike Pence!! Plus, more than 4,000 Americans died from Covid yesterday alone, so please, wear a mask, stay at home, be safe.

To be continued…

*There is video footage of both of these things happening. Many people are saying this was intentional assistance, suggesting Cap Police support for and enabling of easy access/infiltration; others are saying the Cap Police were just wholly overwhelmed by the size and anger of the mob and so couldn’t hold them back. I find this almost 100% improbably. I’ve protested MANY times at the Capitol and have even been directly pushed back by its police and threatened with arrest. They do not fuck around and they don’t get intimidated. They arrested an enormous chunk of a group I protested with one day (the day my friend K and I participated in the Remove Trump movement in the Cannon building; wearing shirts, each with a letter on it.)