That phrase has been running through my mind for days now. Weeks. Perhaps for five years.
And Hitler loved his Dog…...
As the excuses for the attempted overthrow of the duly elected United States government by self described “patriots” wearing shirts saying that Hitler’s six million dead was not enough have been coming in, and calls for “unity” rise from the lips of Trump’s enablers, that phrase is on constant repeat.
Like so many of us, I have been devouring information for days, including this on the ground report about the people attending Trump’s “protest” on Wednesday, January 6th.
My wife and I attended the “Stop the Steal” Trump Insurrection on Wednesday (as observers, NOT participants) and there are FIVE big take-aways from what we witnessed and heard outside the Capitol that I'd like to share. (We took all the pictures below). 1/221) This insurrection wasn’t just redneck white supremacists and QAnon kooks. The people participating in, espousing, or cheering the violence cut across the different factions of the Republican Party and those factions were working in unison. 2/22Preppy looking "country club Republicans," well-dressed social conservatives, and white Evangelicals in Jesus caps were standing shoulder to shoulder with QAnon cultists, Second Amendment cosplay commandos, and doughy, hardcore white nationalists. 3/22We eavesdropped on conversations for hours and no one expressed the slightest concern about the large number of white supremacists and para-military spewing violent rhetoric. Even the man in the “Camp Auschwitz” sweatshirt wasn’t beyond the pale. They were all “patriots." 4/22 (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1348365375449268226)…….
…3) The Trump rioters only supported law enforcement as long as they believed law enforcement was supporting them. Rioters, many carrying Thin Blue Line flags, seemed convinced that the Capitol Police would turn against the government and join them. 13/22Numerous rioters shouted at the police, saying some version of “we had your back, now you need to have ours.” All of the Capitol officers we saw—Black, white, Latino, male, female—seemed alarmed by what was happening and continued to try to do their job faithfully. 14/22And the crowd reviled them for it. They booed the police and FBI swat team, calling them traitors and murderers. A man on the back Capitol steps ripped up a Thin Blue Line flag, the torn stripes fluttering down over a crowd briefly chanting “fuck the police.” 15/22 (Source: https://threader.app/thread/1348365375449268226)….
Some of them ended up killing Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick.
U.S. Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, 42, died Thursday from injuries he suffered during the pro-Trump riot that breached the Capitol. He had served overseas in the New Jersey Air National Guard in support of the war in Afghanistan, eventually attaining a lifelong goal of becoming a police officer.
We’ve all seen the photos and videos of what happened when terrorists breached the Capitol building.
We’ve heard them chanting “Hang Pence! Hang Pence! and “Where is Nancy?” as they hunted for them both.
We know that but for the heroic actions of Capitol Police Officer Eugene Goodman, the attack would have become a mass casualty event.
...At that moment, one floor below, rioters had crashed through windows and climbed into the Capitol and clashed with police, including a lone Black Capitol police officer who tried to prevent them from ascending toward the Senate chamber.
A video captured by Igor Bobic, a congressional reporter for HuffPost on the scene, shows the officer trying to hold back a few dozen rioters who push him back and up the steps leading almost directly to the chamber.
For almost a minute, the officer held them back — at the exact moment that, inside the Senate, police were frantically racing around the chamber trying to lock down more than a dozen doors leading to the chamber floor and the galleries above…….
The desire for blood shed was rampant. These so called “patriots” wanted to do harm. Planned on doing harm, complete with pipe bombs, gallows, and guns.
And even given all that, even given all photographic and video evidence, voices still rise up — making excuses, demanding we forgive and forget.
Surely good white folks, folks who own businesses, who even have private planes and dress “respectably,” could not be part of this.
Surely they were just exercising their constitutional rights, were misled, brain washed, or troubled individuals struggling with personal problems and mental health issues.
And Hitler loved his dog.
First of all, a second grader could go on line and fact check Trump’s hateful traitorous lies in two minutes — if they chose to.
Secondly — “Brain washed?” Really? How about the tens of millions who heard the same Trumpian speeches and were not “brainwashed? We all either have free agency to choose or we do not. They chose to believe what confirmed their already held beliefs.
Thirdly — “Troubled?” “Struggling with personal problems and mental health issues?” Who isn’t at this point? Millions are struggling. Millions deal with depression, anxiety, and PTSD, among other mental health issues. They didn’t all show up to over throw our government. This all too often seen excuse insults those with mental health issues while excusing racist sexist traitorous people.
And Hitler loved his dog.
There is no justice without equal justice. Domestic terrorists who killed a Capitol Policeman while trying to overthrow our government must be held accountable. So must those who aided and abetted the attack on our country. And that is what scares them half to death. It's not that they're "patriots" or brave or strong. It's that they're white folks who have never been held accountable. It’s that they are racist, sexist, abusers and do not want to stop.
They are making plans for further attacks.
And yet the demands for “unity,” for not holding anyone accountable, continue to rise from GOP enablers in the Senate and House.
And Hitler loved his Dog.
These are not good people. They’re not “struggling” with financial hardships or mental health issues. They’re white racists who believe they are the only ones with any rights, including the right to power. They are domestic terrorists.
There are no excuses to be made for what happened on January 6th or the actions of so many that made it possible. If you stand with Nazis, if you support those who do, you’re a Nazi.
Henry Farrell, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Agora Institute Professor of International Affairs at SAIS, 2019 winner of the Friedrich Schiedel Prize for Politics and Technology, and Editor in Chief of the Monkey Cage blog at the Washington Post, explains why accountability is crucial to the survival of our democracy —
1. Short thread - on the various claims we're seeing from Republican politicians over the last few days that the Democratic push for accountability is "divisive." Damn right it's divisive - that is what it has to be.
2. It is intended to enforce a clear division between those who accept and are committed to democracy and those who are willing to turn to violence when the vote doesn't turn out the way that they want it to.
3. One of the basic implications of Adam Przeworski's theoretic work is that democracy is made out of mutually reinforcing expectations, and those expectations are fragile. If some actors think they would be better off defecting from the democratic bargain, they will.
4. In other words: democracy and armed factionalism are far closer than we think, or we would like them to be. This means that it is incredibly important to police the boundaries between them. Allowing some to turn to violence can lead to expectation collapse and cascading ruin.
5. When we allow the divisions to become blurred, that means that we are running the perpetual risk of things getting fucked up. If a major faction turns to violence, and no-one responds, things can get really fucked up really, really fast…….
And now we get to what is painful for so many of us. Even now, after everything that has happened, far too many have friends and family who support Trump. Far too many of us have heard the same excuses being made for them by people we care for.
It has been excruciating listening to those excuses, knowing that people we love were making excuses for those who support a man who puts everything we love — our families, our children, and country in harm’s way.
We have either walked away or hung in there.
Sometimes both. We don’t give up easily on those we love.
We understood their fears and grief. Their pain. Their fear of being alone.
We get it. We carry our own losses and grief.
But they have never been an excuse.
And Hitler loved his Dog……
It’s not ok that they make excuses for those who put my ICU RN son’s life at risk, all my children and grandboys at risk.
It’s not ok that they make excuses for those who put my Black, Jewish, and LGBTQ friends at risk.
It’s not ok that that they made excuses for those who enable further attacks on voting rights.
It’s not ok that they made excuses for those who enable the growing body count in this country.
It’s not ok that they ask me to be ok with those who put my life at risk.
It’s not ok that we are now living in fear for our soon to be duly elected President Biden and Vice President Harris.
It’s not ok that the country we fought for is now in danger.
We have been asked to accept being betrayed, our caring used against us. That caring doesn’t stop. But putting up with being betrayed does.
Hitler loved his Dog…..
And yet —
Taking into account all of the victims of persecution, the Nazis systematically murdered an estimated six million Jews and an additional 11 million people during the war. Donald Niewyk suggests that the broadest definition, including Soviet civilian deaths, would produce a death toll of 17 million.
The Confederate Flags being waved on January 6th, the gallows waiting for hostages to be taken, are American as apple pie and
lynchings.
Our choices define who we are.
There are no excuses left.
Choose
Our lives and country depend upon it.
Capitol siege was planned online. Trump supporters now planning the next one.
…...Twitter cited dangerous talk and online planning in banning Trump’s account
Concerns about more violent incidents appear to be well-founded. Calls for widespread protests on the days leading up to the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden have been rampant online for weeks. These demonstrations are scheduled to culminate with what organizers have dubbed a “Million Militia March” on Jan. 20 as Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala D. Harris are to be sworn in on the same Capitol grounds that rioters overran on Wednesday.
“We all knew that tens of thousands of extremists would converge on D.C. Wednesday, so there’s no excuse for the resourcing failure,” said Brian Harrell, a former Trump administration Department of Homeland Security assistant secretary for infrastructure protection, who is now chief security officer for Avangrid, an energy company. “Law enforcement was ill-prepared for an event the entire country knew was coming, and one that [the president] has been signaling for weeks. ... It’s shocking.”
The renewed calls to action in recent days have bristled with violent talk and vows to bring guns to Washington in defiance of the city’s strict weapons laws. A new analysis of such posts by Alethea Group, an organization combating disinformation that draws its name from the Greek word for “truth,” found abundant evidence of threatening plans on a range of platforms large and small…..
Chose