I had to wait three days to even *start* writing this.
I am that angry.
I am a white woman of a certain age, so I have tons of privilege. I could dress and speak the parts, and blend right into at least two levels of the mob that just literally *shat* in the halls of Congress.
I was reared around those people, in both the blue-collar & ultra wealthy factions. Folks I dearly love bought into that fragile white cult mentality. People I work with might have been at that insurrection.
And if I learn that they did, I’m turning their asses in to the FBI. So should you. https://tips.fbi.gov/
They got played, first by Trump and the Republican Dominionists desperate to keep political power. Second by the foreign state actors who blatantly used the mob as cover.
Make no mistake: the foreign agents were there for information theft. The mob was there for hostages and lynching. They brought police-grade zipties, ropes, guns, napalm cocktails, and pipe bombs.
They carried a Confederate flag into Congress.
I am paranoid, untrusting, skeptical, and moderately well-read enough to have *fucking seen this coming for thirty-five years*.
I knew this was what the Moral Majority would ultimately morph into, and I stayed in the Republican Party to try steering from within. They lost me around 2005, when I became an Independent voter.
I had hoped I wouldn’t see the conservative coup in real life.
I hold responsible not only the entire Trump klan, but the politicians, media outlets, and businesses that enabled it.
Guess what else I see coming? It’s not over. This insurrection is trying to come back as a full fledged coup, not only in DC but all around the states.
Over a century-and-a-half ago we allowed the dregs and bedraggled remnants of the Confederacy to retain their liberty and pride. At the expense of newly-freed black people, and other marginalized groups. How much of an American Renaissance did we lose, by not keeping the promise of universal equality and freedom, in favor of white religious stagnation and status quo?
Because the anti-intellectual, isolationist white fragility in this nation ended up teaching the goddamn Nazis how to do genocide. It poisoned our Greatest Generation, who survived the 1930s Depression and WWII, and permanently warped many of their Boomer children. Those are teaching hate to their kids and grandkids.
They will not and probably cannot play well with others. They fantasize about theocracy and ethnostates that only function for whites. They make deals with the most loathsome of dictators in other countries.
They blithely think that because they’ve got away with it this far, they’ll keep on getting away with it.
The best outcome involves legal, financial, and cultural penalties. The worst…is what they’re ginning up for everyone else.
Extinction.
We don’t want that for anyone.
What can we do? Keep our wits. Vote. Use our voices. Do not forget, forgive, or ‘move on’: that is gaslighting meant to take the sting out of punishment for these seditionist terrorists.
And remember: we already know what to do with Nazis.