American er....Democracy

Democracy challenged, Capitol, January 6th 2021

Jon Ossoff

Martin Luther King Jr. and Raphael Warnock

I have long winced at hearing Americans claim to have the greatest democracy on earth; usually I have tolerantly, benignly, attributed this fondly to the usual American penchant for having to feel the best, the biggest, the greatest. But that fond tolerance bit the dust years ago; four to be precise. Since Trump appeared legitimately on the American political scene, I have grown more and more hostile to the very idea of American-ness, unable to believe that so many millions could vote for a person so manifestly unfit in every way, to be President. At each appalling act or pronouncement, I have felt angrier and angrier and more and more dislocated in every way, from anything American. And this is a country where I have family and very dear friends and where I have spent such happy times in the past. I could not have visited the U.S. had Trump clung to power. And, frankly, had the destructive power of Covid19 not intervened powerfully, almost certainly he would have been re-elected. Imagine the mayhem and carnage of that scenario. Painful to imagine based on the history of the last four years. Every single day, we all awoke to the latest crass tweet or series of tweets; to impulsive, implicitly nonsensical or explicitly malign announcements of proposed policy changes or intentions; another irrelevant or supremacist idea from the latest screwball who had sucked up to Trump; almost unhinged rants from various of the Trump tribe; assertions that black was white this week, and that apparently intended policies were suddenly being overturned in yet another upheaval which further turned friend against friend, and family member against others in the family. Small wonder that the New York Times had one front page headline: A nation united in its fatigue post Jan 20.

Former Lord of Misrule.

Stacey Abrams, organising
Supremo in Georgia.

Early on Jan 6^th the first of the day’s shocking events occurred; Raphael Warnock, the black senior pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta where Martin Luther King had reigned in earlier times, was elected to one of the two Senate seats for Georgia. Later that day, he was followed by Democrat Jon Ossoff winning the second Georgia seat. All this after Joe Biden had won the State in the Presidential election; all three by tiny majorities it is true but nonetheless, all in the heart of the former Confederacy. These victories were the results of both population change and especially, grass-roots organisation over the last decade, to register black voters and educate them into the importance of actually voting to get out the Democratic vote, principally the black vote so long suppressed under Republicans. But it presented a consistent picture for Georgian Republicans; however slim each majority, there is an emerging political and electoral reality here. Elections cannot be relied upon to produce the desired results in the face of demographic change and the increasing black franchise. Presumably this lent an extra charge to the force exhibited that same January 6 day at the Capitol. Force just might obstruct the future the crowd feared and put Trump back in the White House with his reliable far right nationalism, his racism, his fake news in which he so fervently believed and his naked white supremacism. But it wasn’t until January 6 that I finally realised that all the Trumpery nonsense really disguised Actual Insurrectional Intent. And that the Hollow Man actually believed in his fantasies.

Ted Cruz
Rioter, examining documents, said, 
"Ted Cruz would want us to do this."

The insurrection was planned for the day and the hour when the electoral college vote was in process, and Trump had helpfully, and knowingly, stirred up the anger and sense of betrayal of the 8.000 people in the crowd listening to him, and helpful crusaders like Giuliani and Don Junior, outside the White House, before sending them off to stop, violently, the authentication of the largely ceremonial vote accepting the Electoral College result. [147 Republicans voted against acceptance of that vote following a chiefly fault-free, fraud-free, frankly exemplary process] He will be impeached but there is doubt as to whether the Democrats will be able to persuade the necessary 17 Republicans to vote with them. So this is where my incredulity explodes. Openly, defiantly, these elected lawmakers will cast blatantly dishonest votes to stop the lawful

Josh Hawley

impeachment of a damaged, violent man responsible for the assault on Congress by thousands of insurrectionists, leaving him free if he so chooses, to stand for public office again and incite possibly millions. How IS it that law-makers feel free to do that and ordinary people, ordinary voters, don’t find this reprehensible? Presumably because they all like what he stands for and what he does. They too want the status quo ante bellum because white supremacy has been How Things Have Always Worked.

     So, how is it possible to describe the U.S.A. as a democracy?

Joe Biden
Cometh the hour, cometh the man.