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The Putsch and the Putz: More Observations on the January Coup

I write this on January 10, 2021. Or, rather, I’m compiling it. Some of the pieces here are new, some I posted to social media over the last few days.


What follows, then, is something of a mess, and I’m sorry about that. But then…the real world is a bit of a mess at the moment.


So maybe my mess, and the bigger, world mess, will mesh…




What happened on Jan 6, 2021




It is increasingly clear that this was, in fact, much more than just a demonstration that got out of hand. Rather, it was an organized coup attempt, constructed by Trump and his enablers. What seems to have saved us was that Trump and his people were as incompetent at power politics as they’ve been at everything else.


Safety through ineptitude. There is something terrifying in that thought.



*


Another way of putting it…which, alas, I’ll never be able to use in spoken conversation.


This last week?


It was the tale of the Putsch and the Putz.


*


I see that Donald Trump is refusing to attend Biden’s inauguration. Which makes me say, “Dude, why did you think anyone wanted you there in the first place?”


*


So Trump finally entered history, as the first and (we hope) the only president to be impeached twice.


The terrifying thing? He might not be entirely displeased. After all, to go down in history as a Bond villain is preferable to being forgotten.


Or, to put it another way, to the malignant narcissist, better to be Blofeld than to be decent but obscure…


Even if it means detonating the self-destruct device…and taking all of SPECTRE Island, not to mention yourself, to the grave.



*




I honestly hope (and secretly suspect) that once Trump is out of office, he will have considerably less appeal for even the most deplorable of Deplorables. His whole schtick was of himself as a winner, and a strong man. If he is demonstrably a loser, and perhaps a weakling, well, what then?


For instance, I noticed that pro-Trumpsters called for a rally at Twitter HQ in San Francisco to protest their Leader’s expulsion from social media.


All of one person showed up. (1)


Maybe, then, that is a sign of things to come. Maybe, the whole of the Trump movement will end that way, when it is all over, and historians look back, they’ll see…


Something silly, something ridiculous, and, in the end…


Something rather pathetic.



*


Something grotesque. The Trumpists who occupied the Capitol didn’t just smash things. The Orlando Sentinel is reporting that they also smeared feces around the building. (2)


Yes, they literally sh1t on the floor of the place and tracked it about.


Just in case you had any doubts about the nature of their “revolution.”


*


I see that Nancy Pelosi has spoken to General Mark Milley, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff and thus de facto head of the military, about keeping the nuclear codes away from Trump during his last few days in office. (3)


Honestly, I’m not sure that’s legal. Trump is, after all, the Commander-in-Chief.


Still…


It would sure make me feel a lot more comfortable.


Sort of like not handing machine guns to rabid anthropoids.



*


Like you, I suspect, I’ve been looking at the pictures of the men and women who broke into the Capitol. What I find astonishing is just what clowns they seem to have been. Not all of them, of course. Some were genuinely deadly, and they were all a threat to the life and well being of the American people and our freedom.


Yet, what is amazing is how dim many of them seem to have been. They did almost nothing to disguise their identities. They selected remarkably conspicuous clothing for their adventure — I mean who wears a horned helmet to a coup?


And most of all, they seem to have been utterly amazed when, after it was all over, they weren’t greeted as heroes. Think of the woman weeping in the airport when she discovered she was now on a no-fly list.


In other words, they seem to have been…well…damn dumb.


Which, I think, says much about how Trump got into power in the first place, and why he remained there for four agonizing years.


And it says, too, that while there are many answers to our national problems…chief among them may be education…


That is, teaching civics, and reason, and critical thinking…


To those for whom appearing in public in cow horns does not seem ridiculous.


*


Until next time…


Onward and upward


~mjt



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