From The Left Hook with Wajahat Ali: Four Years Later, America Normalizes a Violent Insurrection
A violent insurrection is forgiven and forgotten by a corporate establishment that is willing to engage in historical amnesia to curry favor with Trump and his MAGA brownshirts.
By WAJAHAT ALI
Four years ago, a mob of violent insurrectionists in service to Donald Trump and the MAGA agenda stormed and invaded the U.S. Capitol in a failed attempt to overturn our free and fair election. If you’re a citizen of the United States of Amnesia, here’s a refresher.
These were criminal traitors inspired and incited by their traitorous criminal leader who to this day refuses to acknowledge the reality that he lost the 2020 election to President Joe Biden. Thanks to the advice of Dan Quayle and Judge Luttig, Vice President Pence found a moment of courage and remembered his fidelity to the Constitution instead of the criminal whims of an aspiring authoritarian. He went ahead and certified the election. Because of this act of defiance, Trump threw Pence to his insurrectionist cult and was perfectly fine with him being killed. Nancy Pelosi, another MAGA target, also survived the day. However, her husband, Paul Pelosi, was violently assaulted by a deranged right-wing conspiracy theorist in 2022. Thankfully, he survived.
Others weren’t so lucky.
On January 6th, police officers were injured - and a few later took their own lives. Buildings were vandalized, feces was smeared in the US Capitol, and a radicalized MAGA conspiracy theorist, Ashley Babbitt, was shot and killed as she attempted to climb through a broken window that led to the Speaker’s Lobby. Meanwhile, Republican officials who were complicit in Trump’s insurrection and anti-American agenda hid like cowards, protected by the Capitol Hill police they would later mock and ridicule, or they ran away like Senator Josh Hawley.
Fast forward for years, and America, a stubbornly self-destructive country, has decided to re-elect Donald Trump to the White House. The January 6th insurrectionists are set to receive pardons on Day 1 of Trump’s presidency. MAGA refers to them as patriots, heroes, and “hostages.” Supreme Court Justice Alito’s wife refuses to apologize for flying two flags associated with the insurrectionists. Thanks to 24-7 propaganda from right-wing media, a majority of Republican voters believe the lie that Trump won the 2020 election and it was stolen from him by “the deep state.” Meanwhile, they refer to one of the most shameful days in our history as a “day of love.” Due to the somnambulist Merrick Garland and the thoroughly corrupt Supreme Court packed with right-wing activists, Trump will face zero accountability for his role in orchestrating a failed insurrection. President Joe Biden however did drop a limp, milquetoast op-ed in The Washington Post, the same paper that refused to endorse Kamala Harris, about how democracy survived four years ago.
Did it? Biden himself warmly greeted Trump in the White House after the 2024 election and took pictures in front of a huge, warm fire.
Trump is going to ascend to the Oval Office this month and now he has the obedience of ass-kissing billionaires, corporate CEOs, and media hosts who will forfeit their dignity and our democracy for the sake of profits, access, and personal safety. Amazon announced it will release a Melania Trump documentary. Will it be a damning portrait of a woman who is utterly complicit in her husband’s agenda or a flattering hagiography? Let’s see.
Trump also has his army of radicalized, weaponized nuts willing to engage in acts of violence and terrorism against the rest of us who don’t bow down to the Orange menace. Just look at the words of Cybertruck suspect Matthew Livelsberger who urged militias to attack Democrats to get them out of the government and military.
All of this ugliness and chaos just because a plurality of the country could not stand to vote for a Black Indian American woman. Alas, this is America. Violent and self-destructive just like before, but at least now the masks are off and we no longer have to pretend. Today, I’m reminded of the words of Frederick Douglass who once wrote, “the limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.”
In this episode of Democracy-ish (we’re now twice a week, folks! Monday and Friday at 12 pm ET), Danielle and I refuse to accept or sugarcoat the sordid and shameful reality of the present moment as our establishment willingly bends the knee to a criminal insurrectionist. Instead, we urge both hope and daily acts of resistance following the example of cartoonist Ann Telnaes who quit after her cartoon mocking the broligarchy was censored by the Post.
Onward!
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