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Regarding Babbit, I can’t help but think of the scene from The Godfather, Part II:

“I saw an interesting thing happen today. A rebel was being arrested by the military police,” he tells his fellow gangsters. And rather than being taken alive, he exploded a grenade he had hidden in his jacket,” he continues.

“He killed himself and he took a captain of the command with him.”

The mobsters mutter that the rebels are lunatics.

“Maybe so,” says Corleone. “But it occurred to me: The soldiers are paid to fight. The rebels aren’t.”

“What does that tell you?”

“They could win,” Corleone says.

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If anyone would like to read a parallel--but still different--take on yesterday's events:

https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2021/Pres/Maps/Jan07.html#item-1

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I discussed on Twitter whether I should change the focus of my Substack fiction blog to cover yesterday's events. I decided not to stray from fiction. You handled it flawlessly.

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Violence was a totally predictable outcome for how this would end for the supporters of a malignant narcissist and sociopath. It's likely to continue. There was no excuse for the Capitol Police to be unprepared (I'm guessing more than a small handful supported the insurrection).

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President Trump has been diagnosed by multiple mental health professionals, albeit from a distance, with narcissistic personality disorder. Now, just because a person has a mental health disorder does not mean they cannot be a functioning member of society, though it’s certainly not desirable in a president. Despite this condition, his presidential policies have largely followed the Republican playbook and might not have been that different had another Republican been elected to office.

Then came the November elections, and the notion that he lost was incompatible with his narcissistic personality disorder. So his subconscious had to come up with a way to reconcile that disparity, and what he came up with was that the election was fraudulent and rigged, despite no evidence to support that idea. In other words, he is suffering from a delusion.

All his subsequent actions, most notably those of yesterday, were reactions to that delusion. (If you were president, and you were sure in your mind the nation was threatened, democracy had been compromised, and an election rigged, would you have fought back?) This delusion has resulted in a greatly diminished ability to be functional member of society, much less president. He should therefore be removed from office under the 25th Amendment. And his cabinet is actually discussing that, apparently.

It’s not that he’s evil, or at least, no more evil than the typical conservative Republican. It’s just that he’s suffering from mental illness. His co-conspirators in Congress have no such excuse for their behavior however.

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There won't be any consequences for yesterday's events. None. The Seditious 13 will probably come out of this better off than before - tons of donations, more supporters, etc. I don't anticipate any expulsions, impeachments, disbarments, or discipline of any kind. I'm willing to bet there were a lot more people watching at home and enjoying the hell out of what they were seeing than we'd think, people we'd classify as "normal" and not QAnon supporters. Everything sucks. I hope my extreme cynicism wears off as I finish drinking my first Cup of Coffee (TM) here.

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I really wish Democrats would grow a spine. When the republicans hatched their plan, democrats should have immediately said, "you know, that sounds like a great idea...50 states, 2 hours each plus voting time, that's at least a good 15 hours, we got 2 weeks until inauguration, let's do this republican colleagues...let's discuss the status of the vote in every single state to be sure we are comfortable with our election results" and made it clear that if any objection to the legal vote was forthcoming for pointless grandstanding, then they were all going to be there for days. If you will waste my time, then I will waste yours, make a point about how empty and pathetic your grandstanding is, and take away your recognition from this by having everyone do it."

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Great recap Craig, even if I expected you to (appropriately) come out much harsher. I guess seditious acts speak for themselves?

As significant as yesterday was in our nation’s history, I think today is even more important. What is our government’s response? Does it come out with a strong message that this is not acceptable, going after those responsible (both within and outside the government)? Or does it all get brushed aside with nobody being held accountable, giving a signal that it’s ok to do things like this setting up an even worse insurrection in the near future?

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+1 to On the Beach as an inner-circle all time great album and Revolution Blues as one of the highlights. (Like Tonight's the Night too, but it's more outer-circle great for me.) Did you listen to Homegrown when it was unearthed last year? Curious to hear how it rates for you.

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The most bothersome aspect of the response yesterday was the blatant racism. From the planning of "security" to the execution of it. Oh, they are just a bunch of white people, no need to protect anything. Dicks. The FBI has considered white supremacists to be the biggest domestic threat for decades and are always the source of the vast majority of terroristic actions and threats in the US. Nonetheless, when 30,000 white supremacists announce that they will show up to "protest" with all of the plans for violence easily known by any law enforcement task force that gave a crap and 5 minutes to find out....the response was...nothing.

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As for how it happened, it's covered in this Daily Beast article, but I have seen it elsewhere: The FBI and law enforcement apparatus have spent years brushing off far right violence because they are absolutely obsessed with "black identity extremists," which are basically what remains of the Black Panthers and weirdos like the Black Hebrew Israelites, and chasing the shadows of antifa. The fact that they haven't found antifa (in the sense of a large, organized leftist insurrectionist organization) just convinces them that antifa is really good at opsec.

I have friends in the local lefty organizations and it seems like every week a dude with close-cropped hair and cargo shorts (sometimes it's a woman, but it's usually a dude) shows up like "Okay fellow radical leftists, let's blow up city hall. I brought some blueprints I found...uh, on the internet. When exactly should we strike and who all is in?"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/capitol-police-were-poorly-prepared-for-riots-by-pro-trump-mob

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I want to feel something over the death of that woman yesterday, but I don’t. She declared war on my country. In that way she’s no different from the 19 9/11 hijackers.

That she was a veteran who was taken in by a series of lies complicates things. But she was an adult with full agency over her actions, and she chose to believe a series of plain and obvious lies because they confirmed her existing biases.

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Predictably, within hours of yesterday's events I was already seeing "where was the outrage when BLM was burning down cities over the summer!" and "it was actually Antifa infiltrators causing all the destruction and violence in the Capitol!". Including, as always, from some "Libertarians" (one of whom participated in those stupid Trump boat parades) I am acquainted with who are always the first to be outraged by stuff like BLM "riots" (they act like every city in America was entirely burned to the ground over the summer) but can only manage, at best, disingenuous whataboutism and BOTH SIDES! after events like yesterday.

I know there are real Libertarians who don't like the Trumpism stuff, but I always only seem to come across ones who like to pretend that they think both sides suck, yet have shown nothing to believe they are anything but Trump and GOP bootlickers.

Regarding Steve Cohen, the accusations against him are not surprising when you consider his brother, Michael, was willing to be Trump's right-hand goon for so many years. Steve got a lot of good press for putting food on the table for Michael's family while Michael was in jail by buying the Mets so he could offer them discounted tickets to Mets games, where in turn they could then eat free hot dogs and not starve to death. It was a noble act to find a way to feed his brother's hungry family while Michael served jail time and faced financial woes from his legal troubles. However, at the end of the day, it's not surprising that an accused sexist would share blood with Grabembythepussy's top goon.

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Man, I hope Biden's Presidency is boring as hell.

My Representative, Ilhan Omar, said last night she's drawing up articles of impeachment. Hope that goes somewhere.

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Impeach, convict, remove from office. Who cares how much time is left? Rep Ilhan Omar has introduced articles, I believe, or is about to. At this point you might find 16-17 GOP senators. There need to be other prosecutions too. I'll go so far as to say that people like Reps Brooks and Gosar should potentially face jail time for their actions, if not every single person who challenged the results yesterday.

It is sedition, it fits word for word with both the part of US code Craig cited and also 52 section 20511.

I never thought I'd see a day like this in my life. The shock is only comparable to 9/11/2001 for me. There MUST be consequences for the traitors who stormed the Capitol... and their enablers too!

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Jan 7, 2021Liked by Craig Calcaterra

Craig, thank you yet again for creating cup of coffee. Your writing on days like today help digest events.

I am still in shock over what happened yesterday, but I am unsurprised by the Republican responses I saw to the violence.

It was the typical "we don't know" bull shit. "We don't know who those people are, we don't know, it could be BLM, it could be the IRA, it could be you or me, we just don't know and that's what's so scary, we just don't know anything. We're all infantile morons who have no knowledge of the world around us. Who are these people in maga hats? Must be antifa."

This whole "we don't know anything" is simply feeding into their alternative reality in which facts are what they say, and lies are disagreements. We ain't don't know so how can you say anything against what you don't know?

It's garbage cyclical thinking and I am so damn tired of people lending it an ear.

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