“Protesters loyal to President Trump stormed the Capitol on Wednesday, halting Congress’s counting of the electoral votes to confirm President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s victory as the police evacuated lawmakers from the building.“
My guess at this moment is that Vice-President Mike Pence is not spouting his usual selective Christian demagoguery. The Capitol building of the United States of America – whence he has been precipitously spirited for his own protection – is under siege. I will however assist Mr. Pence in this trying moment by directing him to the apt percept, “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap“, Epistle to the Galatians, 6:7, King James Version of the Bible.
Earlier this morning I listened to the opening remarks on the Senate floor from Senator Ted Cruz. He and his upstart political contender Senator Josh Hawley have positioned themselves as President Trump’s Second-in-Command and Regimental Sergeant Major.
“The piece often missing in bright young things, however, is strategic patience. Hawley (at 41 the youngest U.S. senator) could have used some when he made the rash mistake of stepping forward to carry the Trump banner into the ceremonial tally of electoral college voteson Wednesday. It’s unclear whether he will pay a cost for the error, but he certainly has nothing to gain from it. And when you are part of a new generation of politicians all scrambling up the same pole, it is important to choose spotlight moments that offer some upside.“
The discharge by Trump and his partisan base of political insurrection – inveigled by weeks of incremental bombast from Trump and his minions – has paradoxically turned the barrel of the rifle upon the Republican party. The tepid remarks of Senator Mitch McConnell this morning on the Senate floor are too late to spare him and his deceitful and Janus-faced cohorts from the ruin they have enabled since the election of Trump in 2016.
I fully expect that Mr. Cruz will once again lapse into a self-improving but contradictory statement for his own preservation. But it too will be tarsome to an Olympic degree and it is inconceivable that electors of any stripe will hereafter have anything further to do with Cruz.
The greater discredit of today’s eruption is that Republicans as a whole have proven themselves intellectually incapable of having foreseen these events as the consequence of Trump’s indisputable mania and insanity from the outset in 2016. No doubt Republicans this evening gathered about the festive board will be muted and astonished by the way the insect has turned on its own.
Meanwhile the world is once again watching, once again clicking their back teeth, collectively sighing that the descent of the Roman Empire has begun. I hesitate to speculate what if anything the Russians and the Chinese are contemplating as a fruitful outcome.
And then there’s FOX NEWS which until today has devotedly fanned the fires of Trump’s perpetual absurdity adding to it the fuel that “The Best is Yet to Come!” They too have a lot about which to reckon when it comes to responsibility for what has transpired at the hands of their puppet. You can safely bet that they and the backroom Republicans will have nothing to do with the likes of these inexpressibly insolent Trumpers who for example uttered, “It (the Capitol) belongs to We the People“. Republicans having the real authority know too well that there is no tolerance for the invasion of property by the uninformed. The parasitic union of Trump and the Republican party is over – though not before either or both go down (or up) in flames.
This is not to say Trump’s putative “base” hasn’t substance; anything but. As a country lawyer I long ago learned that a post-graduate degree and a seat in the comfortable pew of the Anglican Church doesn’t ensure legitimacy. But I also learned that the one must lead by example. Sending the wrong signal to others is ultimately self-defeating. One mustn’t ask by what devices a hungry child can advance your own ambition when the child only wants to be fed. Apart from the incongruity of mixing need with use, it offends adult behaviour to do so.
The Bolshevik Revolution was by all accounts an untidy affair. And if you thought that could never happen in America…
“The October Revolution, also known as the Great October Socialist Revolution, as the official term in the Soviet Union, the Bolshevik Coup, the Bolshevik Revolution, the October Uprising, the October Coup or Red October, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolshevik Party of Vladimir Lenin that was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917–1923. It took place through an armed insurrection in Petrograd (now Saint Petersburg) on 25 October (Old Style, O.S.; 7 November, New Style or N.S.) 1917. It was the precipitating event of the Russian Civil War.
The next day a full scale uprising erupted, as a fleet of Bolshevik sailors entered the harbor and tens of thousands of soldiers rose up in support of the Bolsheviks. Bolshevik Red Guards forces under the Military-Revolutionary Committee began the occupation of government buildings on 25 October (O.S.; 7 November, N.S.), 1917. The following day, the Winter Palace (the seat of the Provisional government located in Petrograd, then capital of Russia) was captured.
As the Revolution was not universally recognized, the country descended into civil war, which would last until 1923 and lead to the creation of the Soviet Union in late 1922. The historiography of the event has varied. The victorious Soviet Union viewed it as a validation of their ideology, and the triumph of the worker over capitalism. It was made a national holiday, marking its importance in the country’s founding story. On the other hand, Western observers saw it as a totalitarian coup, which used the democratic Soviet councils only until they were no longer useful. The event inspired many cultural works, and marked the beginning of Marxism–Leninism as a global force.“