January 7

The Barbarians aren't at the gates; they are inside the castle.

I have been, as I am sure many others have been, glued to the accounts of the insurrection by the MAGA crowd incited by #45 himself. I have several thoughts on the situation.

1. I was shocked but not at all surprised. The A$$hole in the White House has been roiling the political environment since h"e came down his escalator to announce his candidacy and he has been inciting, advocating, almost demanding violence for just as long: telling supporters he would pay for their legal fees if they assaulted a person at a rally who didn't support him, telling law enforcement to not be "too gentle" with protesters, excusing violent Neo-Nazis as "very fine people."

2. Listening to the discussion of possible sanctions against #45 from impeachment (either new charges or revisiting the charges from last year) to an Article 25 action to remove him I think it doesn't go far enough. The Muller Report cited Justice Department policy which shields sitting presidents from indictment. That needs to be changed by Congressional action. There is no reason that policy should be in force. If some sources I read are correct that came into effect during the Nixon crisis because both the President and the Vice-President were under legal threat and the issue was one of continuity of government. Now we have a chain of succession that has more depth to it. At least four people on that chain were in the Capital during the assault. Indicting a sitting President for serious crime would not endanger the continuity of government.

3. Like a good many others I am amazed at the different handling of the insurrectionist mob yesterday and the demonstrations over racial justice during the summer. They only explanation I can think of is the the Capital Police saw white faces and couldn't see the threat. That is exactly the problem for police in various parts of the country: black face equals danger, white face equals a good people.

4. I have voted in almost every election for the last 50 years. I couldn't vote until I was 21. We later lowered that age to 18. The candidates and issues I voted for lost more often than they won but I never considered that the rejection of my perfectly reasonable candidate or issue was prima facie evidence of fraud, chicanery, or theft. But we now have a candidate and a sizable minority of voters who think just that. They have no hard evidence that there was no fraud and insist that we do the impossible and prove the absence of fraud. Logically one can't prove a negative. Worse they insist that the lack of evidence is actually proof that there really was fraud.

5. For the last 30 years I have been repeatedly amazed by the growing inability of different factions to accept the results of elections they lose. A democracy only works when each side agrees that they have to persuade voters to agree and when each side accepts loss when they lose. That isn't going to change once #45 is out of office and I expect the sides will harden and grow more bitter.

6. When the pundits kept saying that yesterday's assault on the Capital was unprecedented and the only parallel they could think of was the British sacking of DC in 1814. I thought of another incident in the 1950s. There are big differences: only four assailants instead of an army or a mob of 20-40K but fine members of the legislature were wounded (3 severely). Four Puerto Rican activists (for want of a better word) entered the Capital and the guards, after ascertaining that none had cameras, allowed them into the gallery. They didn't have cameras but they did have guns.

I have a lot of other thoughts but they need a bit of thinking. I simply don't know this country any more.