Witnessing free speech in judiciary January 6 real time hearing

Witnessing the free press action in real time: January 6, 2022 presented in a court room worthy thriller!

Watching democracy expressed in responsible First Amendment freedom!  Watch the YouTube video here. 

This opinion editorial was published in the Rutland Herald, in Vermont:

It was compelling even if the images — visual and spoken — were awful. (IMO- Moreover, the committee presentations have launched Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming) to the status of a political rock star!)

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/first-jan-6-hearing-draws-20-million-viewers-preliminary-nielsen-data-rcna33046

We saw the aftermath, the carnage. It was surreal that it had happened in the U.S. Capitol. It seemed crazy it happened in the United States at all.

January 6, was unique in modern US history. Five people died, Congress went into hiding, and the country briefly teetered on the edge of a coup d’etat.

We saw firsthand it had. The January 6, 2021 insurrection riot left more than 100 police officers injured, many beaten and bloodied, as the crowd of pro-Trump rioters, some armed with pipes, bats and bear spray, charged into the Capitol. At least nine people who were there died during and after the rioting, including a woman who was shot and killed by police.

As U.S. Capitol Police Officer Caroline Edwards testified Thursday night, “it was chaos.”

By Friday morning, all sides dug in like ticks.

You were either going to defend the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. Or you weren’t. Some Republicans insisted it was old news and that it was ridiculous to place any blame on former president Donald Trump.

But so far, the evidence would suggest that the assault was hardly spontaneous. It was not a farce, with broad implications. The Justice Department has arrested and charged more than 800 people for the violence that day, the biggest dragnet in its history.

“Democracy remains in danger,” said Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., chair of the panel. “The violence was no accident.”

In the weeks ahead, the panel is expected to detail Trump’s public campaign to “Stop the Steal” and the private pressure he put on the Justice Department to reverse his election loss — despite dozens of failed court cases attesting there was no fraud on a scale that could have tipped the results in his favor.

Trump defended Jan. 6 Capitol rioters chanting ‘hang Mike Pence

The panel faced obstacles from its start. Republicans blocked the formation of an independent body that could have investigated the Jan. 6 assault the way the 9/11 Commission probed the 2001 terror attack.

The hearings might not change many right wing Americans’ views of the Capitol attack, but the panel’s investigation is intended to stand as its public record. Ahead of this fall’s midterm elections, and with Trump considering another White House run, the committee’s final report aims to account for the most violent attack on the Capitol since 1814, and to ensure such an attack never happens again.

Thursday night was likely the panel’s “greatest hits.” (It was also widely watched!)

WASHINGTON — About 20 million people in the United States tuned in to the first hearing on the House's investigation into the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol Thursday night, according to preliminary data released by Nielsen on Friday.

Nielsen noted that while coverage varied, there were 12 networks that carried the hearing live between 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. ET.

But, it is also about what will happen next. Americans must be concerned and forewarned about the uptick in violence nationwide, including the ramped up harassment of marginalized minority groups and attacks on members of the media.

And those willing to harass, threaten and intimidate are unjustly feeling emboldened, like they have good reasons and excuses for acting inappropriately. And they are using social media as both organizer and megaphone.

Much akin to what led to the insurrection on Jan. 6.

In recent weeks, since several mass shootings in the United States, the chatter has elevated to the point of becoming shrill.

According to a report by the Associated Press released Friday morning, White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo.

“Their snarky memes and trendy videos are riling up thousands of followers on divisive issues, like abortion, guns, immigration and LGBTQ rights. The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the U.S. in the coming months,” the AP article notes.

These types of threats and racist ideology have become so commonplace on social media that it’s nearly impossible for law enforcement to separate internet ramblings from dangerous, potentially violent people, Michael German, who infiltrated white supremacy groups as an FBI agent, told the Senate Judiciary Committee this week. The problem is: So many false alarms drown out threats, he testified.

We are seeing more references to hate-filled ideologies. Authorities are learning about more coded messaging urging on violence and fear. They are seeing recruitment efforts. (A closer look reveals hundreds of posts steeped in sexist, anti-semitic, racist and homophobic content, the AP notes.)

As a nation, we are seeing compelling evidence — visual and spoken — that are leading to carnage and intimidation.

The concern is that Jan. 6 may have signaled a new normal. That truly does put democracy in danger.

Representative Liz Cheney is a credible patriot and gives convincing January 6th insurrection evidence

Congresswoman Liz Cheney takes on Trump, and her own Republican party.  Echo report published in The New York Times, written by Catie Edmondson and Jonathan Martin with Zach Montague.

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, had just matter-of-factly rattled off a string of damning revelations illustrating how former (#TFG) President Trump had stoked the mob who attacked the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, when she paused to address the members of her own party who she said were “defending the indefensible.”

“There will come a day when President Trump is gone,” Ms. Cheney said. “But your dishonor will remain.”

Her rebuke, part of the searing opening remarks she delivered at the first prime-time hearing to lay out the Jan. 6 committee’s findings, marked the culmination of a remarkable arc for Ms. Cheney, the daughter of a prominent conservative family, from one of the most powerful leaders in her party to one of its most vocal critics, and a reviled foe of its de facto leader.

She has been unrepentant in continuing to blame #TFG Trump for stoking the attack, and her Republican colleagues for following his lead by spreading the lie of a stolen presidential election. 

In fact, that stance has left her marginalized by her party, with her colleagues ousting her from her leadership position and seeking to purge her from the House by boosting a MAGA-styled primary challenger to her at home in Wyoming.

‘He deserves it’: Donald Trump accused of supporting Jan 6 rioters who wanted to hang Vice President Mike Pence.

Now, from her perch as the vice chairwoman of the committee investigating the attack, Ms. Cheney is leading the charge to hold Mr. Trump to account for his efforts to overturn the election.

On Thursday night, Ms. Cheney illustrated in remarks studded with new details how, “over multiple months, Donald Trump oversaw and coordinated a sophisticated seven-part plan to overturn the presidential election and prevent the transfer of presidential power.”

Unfurling new testimony, she illustrated how Mr. Trump had persisted in pushing the fiction of a stolen election even as his top officials told him his claims of election fraud were false. And she emphasized how Mr. Trump had responded blithely when told that the rioters storming the Capitol threatened his vice president, chanting, “Hang Mike Pence.”

“The president responded with this sentiment: ‘Maybe our supporters have the right idea.’ Mike Pence ‘deserves it,’” Ms. Cheney said, quoting from testimony collected by committee investigators.

They were striking words coming from Ms. Cheney, who had been one of the most powerful Republicans in the House when she was ejected from her leadership post last year for bluntly and repeatedly condemning Mr. Trump’s false election claims and blaming him for the riot.

But Ms. Cheney did not back down, and in taking a leadership role on the Jan. 6 panel, she has elevated herself as perhaps the foremost critic of Mr. Trump in today’s Republican Party. She has said she views the assignment as the most important of her political career, and she often uses language borrowed from the criminal code — delivered in a characteristically blunt tone — to make clear that she believes the former president faces criminal exposure.

“Those who invaded our Capitol and battled law enforcement for hours were motivated by what President Trump had told them: that the election was stolen, and that he was the rightful president,” Ms. Cheney said. “President Trump summoned the mob, assembled the mob and lit the flame of this attack.”

Behind the scenes, Ms. Cheney is known to be one of the more engaged and aggressive questioners on the panel. Video shared during the hearing on Thursday showed Ms. Cheney personally pressing Jared Kushner, the former president’s son-in-law and adviser, about whether Mr. Trump’s lawyer threatened to resign over his false election claims. And it was she who pressed to assemble a bipartisan team of former intelligence analysts and law enforcement specialists on the committee’s staff.

Before the hearing, Ms. Cheney spent much of the day polishing her opening remarks, tapping away on her laptop in her suite in the Cannon House Office Building, a floor above the sprawling, chandelier-topped hearing room where she was to speak before a nationally televised audience. 

Who built this gallows?  Right Wing crazies must have had a design, and plan to construct this gallows and noose on January 6th.  This display was not a spontaneous exhibit!

Ms. Cheney wrote her own speech, aides said, in consultation with a small inner circle of advisers in her office and lawyers on the panel.

Her husband, Philip Perry, and one of her five children attended the evening hearing, but former Vice President Dick Cheney and his wife, Lynne, remained in their suburban Virginia home. Ms. Cheney, however, speaks to her father every day, on the phone or in person, and discussed her remarks with him in the hours before Thursday’s hearing.

Ms. Cheney is one of just two Republicans to serve on the committee, alongside Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, who has also openly condemned Mr. Trump. Both were selected by Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of California, after Republicans boycotted the committee in protest of her decision to bar two of their members from serving on it.

At nearly every turn since the riot, Mr. Trump and House G.O.P. leaders have sought to drive Ms. Cheney out of the party, including by backing her Trump-endorsed primary challenger, Harriet Hageman. There are few Republicans the former president is more determined to beat than the Wyoming’s at-large House member, and polling shows that Ms. Cheney faces an uphill battle to keep her seat in a ruby-red state that still favors the former president. (Maine Writer: But, Wyoming's population is 581,348, so she has the potential of winning her seat in a write in campaign.  A Republican primary election in Wyoming probably sees a small number of voters showing up and the right wingers are likely a big chunk of them, but not all of them.)

“Nancy Pelosi loves her hand-picked minion,” Ms. Hageman wrote on Twitter, sharing a news article about Ms. Cheney’s work on the committee. “Wyoming? Not so much.” (Maine Writer: Ms. Hageman cannot challenge Representative Cheney directly so she uses a surrogate fake enemy.)

The congresswoman finds herself in political jeopardy because, unlike some Republicans who have found themselves in Mr. Trump’s cross hairs, she has neither sought to repair her relationship with him nor ignored his criticism.

In seemingly embracing political martyrdom, Ms. Cheney had invited speculation that she might not seek re-election — up until the moment last month when she filed to do just that, shortly before the deadline.

Her broadsides against Mr. Trump have fueled speculation that, win or lose this summer in Wyoming, she will mount a long-shot campaign against the former president, should he seek to reclaim the presidency.

In a video she posted as she filed for re-election last month, Ms. Cheney used the sort of lofty language to which she has often turned since breaking with her party last year, invoking her state’s distinctive sense of western honor — and perhaps previewing what she may offer voters in 2024.

“In Wyoming, we know what it means to ride for the brand,” Ms. Cheney said. “We live in the greatest nation God has ever created, and our brand is the United States Constitution.”

Ms. Cheney has made little secret of the fact that she considers her work on the Jan. 6 panel — and the political price she has paid for it — historic.

“As you’re listening to some of my colleagues and others who think that the way to respond to this investigation is with politics and partisanship — those people are not acting in a way that is healthy for the country,” she said in an interview with The Dispatch this week. “And if we really want to understand why Jan. 6 is a line that can never be crossed again, then we really do have to put the politics and the partisanship aside and say what happened.”

On Thursday, she was accompanied throughout the day by one of Mr. Cheney’s old friends, David Hume Kennerly. He is the famed photographer who forged a relationship with the future vice president when both served in President Gerald R. Ford’s White House, Mr. Cheney as chief of staff and Mr. Kennerly as official photographer.

Mr. Kennerly, who remains close with the family, has shown up, camera in hand, on other momentous days for Ms. Cheney, including last year when she was ousted from her leadership post by her Republican colleagues.

Zach Montague contributed reporting.

Sedition is a Federal crime includes murder- January 6

Echo opinion letter published in Tuscon.com, in Arizona:

https://tucson.com/opinion/letters/letter-january-6-2021-capitol-attack/article_57365944-8274-11eb-b476-a34b1558fa67.html

All those (seditionists!) who breached and entered the U.S. Capitol Building, and murdered, rioted, damaged and looted in January should be charged with the same Federal crimes including murder.

The Second Amendment does not mention taking arms to a rally and then breaking into the U.S. Capitol Building where Congress was in session. There was no threat to the security of the free state until the rioters brought the threat into the building.

Sedition is a Federal crime!

It was also horrific that the Capitol police were injured and did not have the back-up they needed to deal with the rioters. The last terrible part was some members of Congress did not accept the will of the people who voted in the election. Some members used this venue inappropriately to voice their so-called concerns about election security and fraud in states other than their own. 

This was neither the time nor the place for these (outrageous!) concerns.

Charles J. Reiser, Saddle Brooke Ranch
Oracle, Arizona

P.S. Watch Michael Fanone give his personal testimony to the U.S. Congress on this attached video.

How did the evil January 6th rioters plan? More chronology is revealed.

Echo opinion: What were the Capitol rioters thinking?
By Byron York published in the Texas Lubbock Avalanche-Journal newspaper. 

January 6th white domestic terrorism - QAnon and Oath Keepers: 

It's one of the most basic questions of the U.S. Capitol riot investigation: What was the rioters' plan? What did they think was going to happen when they stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6th, as Congress certified the results of the 2020 election Electoral and College votes?  (President Joe Biden = 302/ former guy = 232)

For the rioters, who are alleged to have committed serious criminal acts, more information is coming out in court papers filed in the Justice Department cases against them. And now, specifically, there is a new indictment against nine people who are said to be members or associates of the Oath Keepers militia.

It's a revealing document. The Oath Keepers are visible in many photos from the riot. They were dressed in military-style outfits and pushed their way up the Capitol steps in what is called a "stack" formation. (They were not the ones who initially broke into the building.)

The indictment shows what they were saying to each other on social media in the days and weeks before the riot. Read together, their social media posts suggest people living in a kind of fantasy world in which they could take the Capitol -- while carefully obeying Washington D.C.'s strict gun control laws and carrying no firearms -- and change the course of U.S. history, and then head home.

The social media posts suggest that some of the Oath Keepers thought Trump was specifically calling on them to storm the Capitol. For example, on Dec. 19, 2020, when Trump tweeted, "Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 election. Big protest in D.C. on January 6. Be there, will be wild!" it appears they took that as Trump telling them specifically to make it "wild" through paramilitary action.

"He wants us to make it WILD that's what he's saying," defendant Kelly Meggs wrote on Facebook on Dec. 22, 2020. "He called us all to the Capitol and wants us tomakeitwild!!!!" (All the quotations from the Oath Keepers' social media posts include their original punctuation, capitalization and spelling.)

The Oath Keepers discussed among themselves whether they should bring guns to the event. On Dec. 25, Meggs wrote on Facebook: "We are all staying in DC near the Capitol we are at the Hilton garden inn but I think it's full. Dc is no guns. So mace and gas masks, some batons. If you have armor that's good."

A few days later, on Dec. 31, Meggs wrote: "You guys gonna carry? Ok, we aren't either, we have a heavy QRF 10 min out though." By QRF, Meggs apparently meant a "quick reaction force" that would be stationed nearby and be ready to support the Oath Keepers whenever needed.

On Jan. 3, defendant Jessica Watkins wrote to another defendant, Bennie Parker: "We are not bringing firearms. QRF will be our law enforcement members of Oathkeepers." Parker responded: "Good to know." So the Oath Keepers would take the Capitol basically unarmed. Indeed, the indictment states that on Jan. 6, the group "prepared themselves for battle before heading to the Capitol by equipping themselves with communication devices and donning reinforced vests, helmets and goggles."

It does not allege that they took weapons to the Capitol, and certainly not guns. The Oath Keepers' idea, apparently, was that if there was trouble, they would be backed up by the quick reaction force. But it is unclear what that force would be. In the government's memo seeking to jail Watkins, prosecutors wrote that on Dec. 30, Watkins messaged Thomas Caldwell, another defendant, about the plan.

Caldwell mentioned "a quick reaction force bringing the tools if something goes to hell. That way the boys don't have to try to schlep weps on the bus." In another exchange, Watkins said that, "If it gets bad, they QRF to us with weapons for us." If there was no problem, "we can have mace, tasers, or night sticks. QRF staged, armed, with our weapons outside the city."

But who was going to be in the force? There was vague talk of buses full of Oath Keepers arriving outside Washington to back up the small group at the Capitol. But nothing was specific. At one point, Caldwell mentioned a person, not charged and referred to as "Person Three" in the indictment, who was trying to book a room at the Comfort Inn in Ballston, Virginia, right across the Potomac from the District of Columbia.

Caldwell wrote that Person Three chose the hotel, with its easy access to town, "because he feels 1) he's too broken down to be on the ground all day and 2) he is committed to being the quick reaction force and bringing the tools if something goes to hell."

That was the QRF (Quick Reaction Force)? A guy who wasn't up to spending all day in Washington, so he was going to hang around the Comfort Inn in Ballston unless he was needed to overthrow the U.S. government? Taken together, the court papers portray the Oath Keepers as a ragtag group living in a delusional world, planning a delusional operation to bring about some sort of delusional outcome.

They imagined themselves saving the country with their reinforced vests, helmets and goggles. It would be the understatement of the year to say that they had not thought things through. Still, their cases are critical to understanding the U.S. Capitol riot. Was Trump responsible for their actions? Did he incite them? Or did they hear something other than what he actually said?

Were they like the unbalanced characters in history who have taken violent actions in the false belief that some charismatic figure, say a rock star or a religious leader, had ordered them to do it? There's still much more to learn about the riot.

Indeed, with the Capitol Police refusing to release even the most basic information about the event, it is difficult to understand much of what went on. But, the criminal cases are picking up steam, and through them, we can finally get a better idea of what happened.

(Byron York is chief political correspondent for The Washington Examiner.) 

Cherish Freedom- Arlington Cemetery is evidence of Americanism

An America to believe in:

An echo opinion published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette written by Rev. Randy Hyde

Witness Americanism!  

Arlington National Cemetery

On Jan. 20, 2021, as I watched the inauguration of Joseph R. Biden, the 46th president of the United States, I was reminded of something that occurred years ago.

"Here we stand," said the newly minted president, as he offered his acceptance speech, "across the Potomac from Arlington Cemetery where heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion rest in eternal peace ..." 

My mind floated back to years ago when I officiated at a burial at Arlington.

I was pastoring a church in Baltimore, Md., and one of our parishioners died just three days past her 39th birthday. Her grieving husband called to give me the sad news. I was soon to learn he was not just mourning his great loss, but was at a loss as to what to do next. In the course of our conversation, he told me he had no money with which to bury his wife. Could I help him in that regard?

I promised to see what I could do.

I had developed a friendship with a local funeral director, whom I had found to be a very caring and compassionate person. So I called, asking if there was anything that could be done. I pledged to do what I could through the good graces of our congregation. Was there any consideration he might give to this grieving family?

We worked on some details, bringing the cost down as much as possible, but he told me that he didn't think any of the local burial sites would be quite as understanding about such things.

And then he asked the pivotal question: "Is her husband by any chance a veteran?" "I don't know," I told him, "but I'll ask." I did, and he was. So my funeral director friend made some calls resulting in permission for her to be buried at Arlington.

That also meant that when the time came, the husband too would be buried with his wife.

Think about it, if you will. For the last 36-plus years, her body has been in repose alongside presidents and generals and all manner of dignitaries, along with the bodies of those who gave their lives in service to our country, those "heroes who gave the last full measure of devotion," as Mr. Biden reminded us.

Repeatedly since Jan. 6 when insurrectionists stormed the U.S. Capitol, we have heard it referred to as a violated sacred place. And while I certainly agree, and watched in horror with many of you, I view the ground across the Potomac- Arlington Cemetery, to be even more sacred.

And I see it as a powerful symbol of our nation.

We are white, Black, brown, and otherwise. We are Christian, Jew, Muslim, and otherwise. We are Democrat, Republican, Independent, and otherwise. We are straight, gay, and otherwise. As diverse as God has created us, we are (or at least can and should be) unified in one respect: We value and cherish the freedom our Constitution provides us, and we can believe in one another and our common values, even when we don't agree exactly on how to go about doing it.

I would ask that you let Arlington National Cemetery be a symbol just as real as the American flag or the Capitol or the Constitution. We are not all alike, but one day we will all reside in the same earth from which we have come.

People of faith believe there is more--much more--beyond this earthly existence. But in the meantime, it is our responsibility to make our earthly one as redemptive as possible. And that falls to each of us as we continue this journey together.

That is the America I believe in.

Randy H. Hyde, a retired minister and pastor, lives in Little Rock, AK.

Republicans are now the Grim Old Reaper party!

Echo opinion written by Paul Krugman published in Arkansasonline.com, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette: 

Obviously, the Republican party has lost its way. Republicans have fallen and they cannot get up. 

Now the Grim Old Reaper party have become #Trumpzis

Krugman- Here's what we know about American politics: The Republican Party is stuck, probably irreversibly, in a doom loop of bizarro. If the Trump-incited Capitol insurrection didn't snap the party back to sanity--and it didn't--nothing will.

What isn't clear yet is who will end up facing doom. Will it be the GOP as a significant political force? Or will it be America as we know it? We don't know the answer. It depends a lot on how successful Republicans will be in suppressing votes.

About the bizarro: Even I had some lingering hope that the Republican establishment might try to end Trumpism. But such hopes died this week.

On Tuesday Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, who has said that Donald Trump's role in fomenting the insurrection was impeachable, voted for a measure that would have declared a Trump trial unconstitutional because he's no longer in office. (Most constitutional scholars disagree.)

The GOP's national leadership, after briefly flirting with sense, has surrendered to the fantasies of the fringe. Cowardice rules.

And the fringe is consolidating its hold at the state level. 

Incredibly, the Arizona state GOP party censured the Republican governor for the sin of belatedly trying to contain the coronavirus.

 The Texas GOP has adopted the slogan "We are the storm," which is associated with QAnon, although the party denies it intended any link. Oregon Republicans have endorsed the completely baseless claim, contradicted by the rioters themselves, that the attack on the U.S. Capitol was a left-wing false flag operation.

How did this happen to what was once the party of Dwight Eisenhower? Political scientists argue that traditional forces of moderation have been weakened by factors like the nationalization of politics and the rise of partisan media, notably Fox News.
This opens the door to a process of self-reinforcing extremism (something that I've seen happen in a minor fashion within some academic subfields). As hard-liners gain power within a group, they drive out moderates. 

What remains of the group is even more extreme, which drives out even more moderates, and so on. A party starts out complaining that taxes are too high; after a while it begins claiming that climate change is a giant hoax; it ends up believing that all Democrats are Satanist pedophiles.

This process of radicalization began long before Donald Trump; it goes back at least to Newt Gingrich's takeover of Congress in 1994. But Trump's reign of corruption and lies, followed by his refusal to concede and his attempt to overturn the election results, brought it to a head.

And the cowardice of the Republican establishment has sealed the deal. One of America's two major political parties has parted ways with facts, logic and democracy, and it's not coming back.
What happens next? You might think that a party that goes off the deep end morally and intellectually would also find itself going off the deep end politically. And that has in fact happened in some states. Those fantasist Oregon Republicans, who have been shut out of power since 2013, seem to be going the way of their counterparts in California, a once-mighty party reduced to impotence in the face of a Democratic super-majority.

But it's not at all clear that this will happen at a national level. True, as Republicans have become more extreme, they have lost broad support; the GOP has won the popular vote for president only once since 1988, and 2004 was an outlier influenced by the lingering rally-around-the-flag effects of 9/11.

Given the unrepresentative nature of our electoral system, however, Republicans can achieve power even while losing the popular vote. A majority of voters rejected Trump in 2016, but he became president anyway, and came fairly close to pulling it out in 2020 despite a deficit of 7 million votes. The Senate is evenly divided, even though Democratic members represent 41 million more people than Republicans.

And the Republican response to electoral defeat isn't to change policies to win over voters; it is to try to rig the next election. Georgia has long been known for systematic suppression of Black voters; it took a remarkable organizing effort by Democrats, led by Stacey Abrams, to overcome that suppression and win the state's electoral votes and Senate seats.

So the Republicans who control the state are doubling down on disenfranchisement, with proposed new voter ID requirements and other measures to limit voting.

The bottom line is that we don't know whether we've earned more than a temporary reprieve. A president who tried to retain power despite losing an election has been foiled. But a party that buys into bizarre conspiracy theories and denies the legitimacy of its opposition isn't getting saner, and still has a good chance of taking complete power in four years.
--–––––v–––––--
Paul Krugman, who won the 2008 Nobel Prize in economics, writes for the New York Times.

UGH! On Thursday Kevin McCarthy (i.e., the dummy Charlie McCarthy's evil twin!) the House minority leader--who still hasn't conceded that Joe Biden legitimately won the presidency, but did declare that Trump "bears responsibility" for the attack on Congress--visited Mar-a-Lago, presumably to make amends.

"You Are There" on January 6, 2021: If not an impeachable offense, then what is?

In the 1950s there was a popular series titled "You Are There"- This report by Jeffrey Goldberg published in The Atlantic is reminiscent of that theme.
 

Insurrection Day, 12:40 p.m.: A group of about 80 lumpen (IOW- screwed up cult!) Trumpists were gathered outside the Commerce Department, near the White House. 

They organized themselves in a large circle, and stared at a boombox rigged to a megaphone. Their leader and, for some, savior—a number of them would profess to me their belief that the 45th president is an agent of God and his son, Jesus Christ—was rehearsing his pitiful list of grievances, and also fomenting a rebellion against, among others, the klatch of treacherous Republicans who had aligned themselves with the Constitution and against him.

A year from now we’re gonna start working on Congress,” Trump said through the boombox. “We gotta' get rid of the weak congress people, the ones that aren’t any good, the Liz Cheneys of the world. We gotta get rid of them.”

“Fuck Liz Cheney!” a man next to me yelled. He was bearded, and dressed in camouflage and Kevlar. His companion was dressed similarly, a valhalla: admit one patch sewn to his vest. Next to him was a woman wearing a full-body cat costume. “Fuck Liz Cheney!” she echoed. Catwoman, who would not tell me her name, carried a sign that read take off your mask smell the bullshit. Affixed to a corner of the sign was the letter Q.

“What’s your plan?” I asked her. People in the street, dozens at first, then hundreds, were moving past us, toward Pennsylvania Avenue, and then presumably on to the Capitol. “We’re going to stop the steal,” she answered. “If Pence isn’t going to stop it, we have to.” The treasonous behavior of Liz Cheney and many of her Republican colleagues was, to them, a fixed insurrectionary fact, but Pence was still in a plastic moment. Across the day, however, I could feel the Trump cult turning against him, as it turns against most everything.

I told the woman in the cat costume that I would walk with her group. “Only if you take off your mask,” she said. The media is the only real virus, she explained, knowing that I was a part of the media. I told her I would keep my mask on. Trumpists had asked me periodically to remove it. Some were polite about it, a few others not. It seemed to me that only 5 percent or so of the thousands of people gathered for the insurrection wore masks. 

At one point, when I was caught in the thickest part of the crowd, near the Ellipse, a man told me, “Your glasses are fogging up.”

“Yep, masks,” I said.

“You don’t have to wear it. It’s not a mandate.”

“No, I do.”

“Why?”

“There’s a pandemic.”

“Yeah, right.”

We will find out shortly if the January 6, 2021, insurrection was also a super-spreader event. What I do know, after spending hours sponging up Trumpist paranoia, conspiracism, and cultishness, is that this gathering was not merely an attempted coup, but also a mass-delusion event, not something that can be explained adequately through the prism of politics. Its chaos was rooted in psychological and theological phenomena, intensified by eschatological anxiety. One man I interviewed this morning, a resident of Texas who said his name was Don Johnson (I did not trust this to be his name), told me that the country was coming apart, and that this dissolution presaged the End Times. “It’s all in the Bible,” he said. “Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready.”

The conflation of Trump and Jesus was a common theme at the rally. “Give it up if you believe in Jesus!” a man yelled near me. People cheered. “Give it up if you believe in Donald Trump!” Louder cheers.

I would not compromise on the matter of my mask, but the woman in the cat costume and her friends allowed me to come along anyway. We turned from 14th Street into the sea of people moving down Pennsylvania Avenue. It did not strike me, even then, that this mob would actually storm the Capitol. I assumed, in a non-insurrectionary failure of imagination, that they would gather on the Capitol’s sloping lawn, sing Lee Greenwood anthems, and curse Mitt Romney. There were Proud Boys—or at least Proud Boy–adjacent boys—in this group; they would not speak to me but were also not overtly hostile. (I noticed on two occasions groups of Proud Boy–looking men smoking marijuana, which, all things being equal, was a good thing.)

“Where are you all from?” I asked the woman in the cat costume. “Ohio, Indiana, Virginia, Illinois, all kinds of states,” she said. “Are those guys Proud Boys?” I asked. “They’re American boys,” she answered. “Do you believe in the ideas of QAnon, that there’s a deep state that is a cult of pedophiles?” I asked. “Wouldn’t you like to know,” she said, attitudinally. My mask continued to bother her. “It’s very rude,” she said.

The streets became more crowded the closer we got to the Capitol. I lost track of my group. I tried to interview a bunch of other Trump supporters, mostly unsuccessfully. Earlier in the day, just west of the Washington Monument, a group of insurrectionists turned on another reporter—I was not able to figure out the identity of my masked compatriot—chanting the word guillotine (“Make guillotines great again” was one rally-poster theme).

The crowd continued to grow. It was then that I sensed the mob, goaded by its master, would not be pacified. “Stop the steal!” someone near me said to his companions.

Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) is sometimes called "The First American"

We were close to the Capitol. Large formations were approaching the building. It stood there gleaming, not yet defiled. (Maine Writer: IOW, the Capitol has been physically damaged but the democracy still stands!)  -  In fact, when 

Benjamin Franklin was 81 years old, he was approached by a group of citizens asking what sort of government the delegates at the Constitutional Convention had created. His answer was: "A republic, if you can keep it."