More on Lying and Insurrection and Racism
As more facts emerge, VP Mike Pence came perilously close to being beaten and killed by the Trump-fueled mob that took over the Capitol. https://news.yahoo.com/where-pence-pro-trump-mob-120503920.html Representatives Biggs, Gosar and Brooks appear to have coordinated with some of the riot planners in trying to overthrow the election. https://www.businessinsider.com/stop-the-steal-organizer-gop-members-helped-him-plan-rally-2021-1 Several of the extremist groups planned in advance the Capitol takeover and violence towards Pence, Pelosi and others in Congress. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jemimamcevoy/2021/01/12/report-fbi-office-warned-of-war-at-us-capitol-despite-claim-attack-was-unknown/?sh=43401ea7290d The Capitol Police got an intelligence report on this three days in advance, and the FBI got a separate report to the same effect a day in advance. https://www.rawstory.com/warned-insurrection/ Some members of law enforcement, the armed forces and firefighters participated in the Capitol takeover, and some in the Capitol police may have shown the rioters where to find member’s offices. https://www.mercurynews.com/2021/01/15/capitol-rioters-included-highly-trained-ex-military-and-cops/ and https://www.kmbc.com/article/2-capitol-police-officers-suspended-at-least-10-more-under-investigation-for-alleged-roles-in-riot/35183403 The President sat on the sidelines while it happened and took no action to send in law enforcement reinforcements; he was instead working the phones with Senator Tuberville and others to get Senate votes to overthrow Biden’s election. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-mob-failure/2021/01/11/36a46e2e-542e-11eb-a817-e5e7f8a406d6_story.html Federal law enforcement officials ignored the warnings of the potential for violence and a Capitol takeover, and many reacted very slowly to the Capitol takeover. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/10/us/politics/capitol-siege-security.html Two thirds of the House GOP members and a handful of Senators voted to support the President’s efforts to overthrow the vote of the American people electing Biden as our next President even after the Capitol takeover. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/07/us/politics/republicans-against-certification.html
Now is the opportunity for the GOP to cleanse themselves from the lying stench of Trump. As Senator Romney said just tell them the truth, Biden won and Trump lost. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2021/1/6/22218093/romney-refutes-trump-election-lies We all know that Trump is an inveterate and irredeemable liar, but that does not mean that the GOP leaders, conservative media and GOP voters have to believe, repeat, spread and follow his lies; that does not mean they have to collaborate in his efforts to steal the election. Yet many did so. Certainly all the GOP leaders and conservative media hosts knew to a certainty that the President was telling a big lie in claiming the election was stolen, yet they persisted in spreading his lies to his and their followers. Social media proved to be an excellent avenue to spread misinformation and disinformation, and also to allow the Capitol plotters to plan their insurrection. Evangelical pulpit preachers echoed and reinforced these lies.
How do we emerge from this? It is not just going away when Joe Biden becomes President. Trump has already been impeached; he needs to be quickly convicted in the Senate and barred from ever serving in the government again. The criminal investigators need to identify, round up and try the bad actors for the crimes they committed in the Capitol takeover. Senators like Hawley and Cruz need to be censured by their colleagues, same with Representatives like Brooks, Gosar and Biggs.
Congress needs to agree on the next stimulus package. We must quickly get help to people so they can be vaccinated, return to schools and jobs and have enough money for food, rent and other daily essentials.
The Internet giants need to continue to deny Trump the megaphone he needs and craves to incite further violence. He has free speech rights to be sure, but we don’t have to build him a stereo system and amplifier and offer him a bullhorn to broadcast his efforts to further divide our nation.
He should be ignored and shunned by the media once he leaves office. Corporate America is already moving to deny corporate contributions for Trump and his enablers in Congress who sought to overthrow Biden’s election.
We need a bi-partisan commission, maybe a truth and reconciliation commission, to identify the weak-spots in our democratic institutions that led to the widespread, hypnotic acceptance of Trump’s lies and the rise of domestic white terrorists and their organizations and to recommend the corrective actions so urgently required. I think we will have to tackle racism, rebuild our frayed social safety net, federally guarantee voting rights for all citizens, enact direct election of Presidents and set 18 year term limits for Supreme Court justices.
The “big lie” is not Trump’s invention; George Bush lied us into waging war in Iraq. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon lied us into and ever deeper into the Vietnam War. And our forebears told us unspeakable lies about African-Americans and Native Americans, which have deeply infected and taken root in our nation’s soul. These lies linger with us in the form of distrust of government and political leaders and people with different shades of skin color. Trump’s lies added the nation’s news media to the public’s list of least popular, most distrusted sources of information.
But what were the soil conditions into which Trump’s lies found such fertile ground to grow and prosper? Some is found in the decay of American manufacturing dominance and the evolution towards a knowledge economy that favors the college educated and hurts the economic conditions of the high school educated. Some is found in the extraordinary increases in economic inequality and the failures to equitably share the benefits of the nation’s economic growth. Some is found in economic and wage stagnation for particular regions of the country, such that the big cities and coasts enjoyed unusual prosperity while small town and rural America did not. And some is found in the persistence of racism and the denial of economic opportunity to too many throughout the nation. Some is found in the echoes of the murders and assassinations of Martin Luther King, John and Robert Kennedy, and the loss of their inspirational leadership during a key period in our nation’s history. Some is found in the Covid pandemic and political leaders and government’s abject failures to rise to the level of crisis response required.
These are not problems that Joe Biden and Kamala Harris alone can solve for us. These will require each of us to pitch in at the family, community, local, state and national levels. We have a new President, let’s help him and our nation heal and succeed in this tumultuous time.
Lucien Wulsin
1/15/21