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Monday, January 11, 2021

 We cannot be inured to the historic nature of what happened last week.

Sometimes, living through history, we fail to understand what's happening around us.

Here's what happened: For the first time in the history of the United States armed insurrectionists overtook the Capitol, trashed it, vandalized it and sought out elected officials for potential assassination. Some of them smeared their own feces on walls for God's sake.

Ask yourselves: What will the history books say about this time?

Sadly, I'm reminded of what my beer-drinking buddy Dennis said Sunday. Dennis, a man who works with his hands but who can quote Tennyson and a self-described "terse and taciturn" man, leaned into me and said, "We've taken a turn for the worse as a country and I don't think we can recover."

I had to agree.

I know exactly how millions of people have come to believe absolute lies and how at least thousands of them can use those lies to justify insurrection -- and even the death of five people.

Now there are plans for more violence as a new president is inaugurated.

We've been through a civil war and many more wars, massive economic upheavals, social chaos, Constitutional crises and this is all coming down to 70 million people who have been taken by a serial grifter. In the game of the con man, there's the grifter who has created the con and there's the mark. Usually the grifter has associates. The the commonality is the mark (the victim) never has a clue he's the mark.

Back to my initial point: the Capitol has never been violated by its own citizens until last week.

It's not heroic. It's not patriotic. It's not American.

It is, however, historic in it's gross stupidity, immorality and utter lack of anything decent.

The arguments for false equivalency about Black Lives Matter and Antifa are such utter bullshit. Come to me with that argument when those groups trash the Capitol, the sacred place of our democracy.

I cry for my country almost every day now.

I truly wish peace unto all of you my brothers and sisters.

4 comments:

  1. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  2. Ask me in 2120 if anyone is still angry over the 2020 election. Speaking of time travel, would that we could send 74,000,000 people back to the day in school when they taught critical judgement.

    Perfect political storm led to Trump's election. Hurricane of ignorance led to Trump getting more votes the second time around.

    Our hope lies in the fact that America is not getting whiter and less educated. The opposite is true, in fact. Long before 2120, these "people" will be voted out of office. I have faith in the institutions.

    Peace to you, Rich.

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  3. Rich, Please comment on your opinion of Glenn Greewald's analysis of the situation we face today from the Tech world. I consider Greenwald one of the best, and few, good journalists today. Your opinion as an editor. Link to Glenn's piece below:
    https://greenwald.substack.com/p/how-silicon-valley-in-a-show-of-monopolistic?token=eyJ1c2VyX2lkIjo5ODA0MjUyLCJwb3N0X2lkIjozMTI4NTY5NywiXyI6IlptcjlSIiwiaWF0IjoxNjEwNDcwODYwLCJleHAiOjE2MTA0NzQ0NjAsImlzcyI6InB1Yi0xMjg2NjIiLCJzdWIiOiJwb3N0LXJlYWN0aW9uIn0.CUlWDEYn_iHlKm8xMSyMvgl0okhA481d5rsd9ZhZssk&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email&utm_content=share

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  4. My parents carried me out of Latvia just ahead of the Red Army in 1944. In the 70 years I have lived in this country I have never felt as pessimistic as I do now. Our institutions have held so far, but I wonder what will happen when the next demagogue is smarter and less lazy and distracted. Public comments I have read indicate a tremendous failure of civic education. I wish Biden luck, but he is going to have a Sisyphean task.

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