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      in US Politics

      American carnage: how Trump's mob ran riot in the Capitol

      by

      A rioter leaned back in the chair of the speaker of the House Representatives and brought a brown boot down on the papers left strewn on her desk.
      Elsewhere in the Capitol building, a lectern bearing the gold seal of Congress was ripped away and framed documents were torn from the walls, as Trump banners and Confederate flags were paraded through abandoned hallways.
      It was Wednesday afternoon, 6 January, when Donald Trump’s four-year assault on US democracy reached its inescapable destination, an orgy of violence aimed at the heart of the republic.
      Staffers in some offices barricaded their doors and hid under their desks like one of the active shooter lockdowns the country’s schoolchildren practised when they still went to school. “Where the fuck are the Capitol police?” a staffer texted to a journalist friend. The police were overwhelmed, and the massed ranks of national guard and federal agents who had crushed peaceful Black Lives Matter protests in the summer were nowhere to be seen until evening fell.

      In the corridors outside, Trumpist rioters were able to roam freely, as they looked for members of Congress they saw as enemies. They found their way into the Senate chamber where minutes earlier the election results were being certified. A rioter stepped on to the dais and, according to a reporter on the scene, yelled: “Trump won that election.”
      Police fired teargas as the rioters pushed inside the gleaming white edifice of the Capitol. One woman was shot by the US Capitol police and later died of her injuries, according to the Washington police. Three others died in “medical emergencies” throughout the day, authorities said. . Rioters attacked TV crews outside the building. Several police officers were also injured. Authorities found pipe bombs outside the offices of the Democratic National Committee and the Republican National Committee, as well as a cooler with a long gun and molotov cocktail on the Capitol grounds.

      When the defeated president was first sworn into office almost four years ago, he raised the spectre of “American carnage”. He portrayed it as something that had gone before, but it very soon became clear it was what was still to come.
      As Trump has made clear for months, he has been prepared to wreak carnage on the political system that elevated him to the most powerful office, if it ever threatened to spit him out.
      The party who enabled his rise and then grew terrified of him has been left broken, so divided that the Republicans lost both Senate seats in the southern bastion of Georgia, results confirmed on Wednesday.

      At the moment the Trumpist mob stormed the Capitol, the Republicans had split into duelling factions. A dozen senators and over a hundred representatives were prepared to follow him across the Rubicon and vote against certifying the confirmed results of November’s presidential election.
      The vice-president, Mike Pence, the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell and most Republican senators wanted to jump off the Trump train before it reached its last stop, and tried to put an end to the president’s fevered delusion that the presidency would be handed back to him after electoral defeat.
      It was the declaration from Pence – who had hitherto been assiduously loyal to the leader – that he would follow the constitution and read out the election result, rather than try to change it, that apparently triggered Trump’s wrath, and set in motion the events that led to the storming of the Capitol.
      As senators were being hustled to safety, a leading member of the latter faction, former presidential candidate Mitt Romney, is reported to have told a leader of the loyalists, Ted Cruz, “This is what you’ve gotten” – a clumsy, desperate epitaph for the party the Republicans thought they were.
      The orange genie, who had been out of the bottle for four years granting the Republicans’ every wish, was not going back in without tearing down the palace walls, turning the party’s own supporters against it.
      Less than an hour before the Capitol was breached, Trump had told his supporters: “We want to be so respectful of everybody – bad people. And we are going to have to fight much harder.”
      He told them to march from the White House along the National Mall to the Capitol to “save our democracy”. He even said he would go with them, but it was just another promise he had no intention of keeping, taking his motorcade instead the hundred yards back to the White House.
      Go to the Congress “peacefully and patriotically” he told them, but a matter of minutes later, the barricades outside the Capitol were down and the mob was charging. They had been told, again and again, their nation was at stake, child-trafficking Chinese-run socialists were taking over, and they had to fight harder.
      Those Republicans who failed to overturn the election were “weak” and “pathetic”, allowing Democrats to destroy the country. Trump singled out his formerly loyal deputy. “Mike Pence is going to have to come through for us, and if he doesn’t, that will be a sad day for our country,” Trump yelled from a stage that had been set up a block from the White House, for a crowd that had gathered on the grassy Ellipse below the national monument.
      As the president was speaking, Pence had, however, jumped ship. For the first time, with two weeks of the presidency to run, he did the opposite of what he was being told by his boss.
      Hours after his supporters had stormed the Capitol, Trump released a video telling them: “Go home, we love you, you’re very special.” But he also used the video to repeat his baseless claims about the “fraudulent” vote which he lost.

      As night fell over the capital he tweeted: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love & in peace. Remember this day forever!”
      The seeds of violence were disguised inside the husk of the old order. Wednesday itself had appeared to begin like any other American political carnival, with bright flags, exuberant costumes and vendors selling T-shirts and hotdogs. It was only with a closer look, that something far more dystopian was at hand, with a seething potential for violence.
      “Fuck Your Feelings, Trump 2020,” was the message on the fastest-selling T-shirt. Some of the flags declared: “Fuck Biden”. The crowd that sprawled across the Ellipse was a mix of families and the elderly, men and women, young and old. Only about one in 10 was wearing camouflage gear, though that was more than the percentage wearing masks.
      A young couple, Kasey and Mike, were sitting under one of the ornamental cherry trees near the monument, having traveled down from Rhode Island. They spoke with the dreamy smiles of two people in love, sharing a moment in history, but their message was one of looming conflict.
      “People here are mad. They’ve watched so many people destroy our country like that. I don’t think they’re just gonna sit back any more,” Kasey said.
      “I think Trump’s only option he really has left is to call military action into it because he has the right to do that.”
      As Trump finished his speech, the crowd dispersed, thousands streaming along the mall to the Capitol. On a side street some distance from the crowd, a small group of young bearded men in military fatigues and hats lounged patiently, in readiness for what they knew would come later, when the sun set.
      It was unknowable, as the glass was being swept up in the Capitol and the police began to eject the jubilant rioters, whether they were the embodiment of a last spasm of a spent force, or the true face of America’s future.
      • This article was amended on 7 January 2021 to remove an inaccurate term to describe the rioters. More

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      in US Politics

      US Capitol's last breach was more than 200 years ago

      by

      The US Capitol has been the scene of bombings, a presidential assassination attempt and countless demonstrations in its more than 200-year-old history.
      For the first time on Wednesday, it was the site of an armed insurrection incited by the sitting president.
      The building is relatively accessible to the public. It houses the country’s two legislative bodies, the House of Representatives and the Senate, but anyone can enter after a security screening in the visitor center.
      Congressional offices are frequented by protesters and sit-ins. With a little bit of planning, people can interrupt a hearing, though they are often quickly ushered out by Capitol police.
      These peaceful scenes are a stark contrast to what happened on Wednesday, when a mob of Donald Trump’s supporters stormed past barricades and clashed with police to enter legislative chambers and congressional offices. A woman was reportedly shot and killed, people working inside were evacuated in gas masks, and rioters clambered up the buildings walls inside and out.
      Not since 1814 has the building been breached.
      Then, it was by British troops who set fire to the building during a broader attack on Washington in the war of 1812. City residents were aware that the British were approaching and most fled before troops torched the city’s federal buildings and a few warships.
      The Capitol was under construction at the time, and while a considerable portion was destroyed, it had been built with many fireproof materials that allowed for the preservation of the exterior and many interior rooms, according to the Architect of the Capitol. Still, the fire was persistent enough to burn documents, melt glass lights and destroy statues.
      In the 200 years since, other violent attacks and bombings have occurred on the US Capitol grounds.
      At a funeral in January 1835, an unemployed painter, Richard Lawerence, attempted to shoot president Andrew Jackson, but the bullet failed to discharge.
      During the first world war, a professor named Eric Muenter planted a bomb in the Senate reception room, which went off near midnight and resulted in no injuries. He had killed his wife years before the bombing and was later arrested for trying to kill the banker JP Morgan.
      In 1954, four armed Puerto Rican separatists entered the House floor and shot indiscriminately at House representatives, wounding five.
      In March 1971, the far-left Weather Underground bombed the Capitol in protest of military action in Laos, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars of damage, but resulting in no deaths.
      In November 1983, a bomb was planted in protest of US military efforts in Grenada and Lebanon. It also went off without causing injuries or deaths. More

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      in Elections

      America shaken as violent pro-Trump mob storms Capitol building

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      [embedded content]
      America was shaken on Wednesday as a mob of Donald Trump supporters staged an insurrection at the US Capitol building in Washington, storming the debating chambers and fighting police in clashes that left one person dead.
      The siege was among the worst security breaches in American history and came after Trump had earlier urged a crowd of protesters to march on the Capitol and undo his November election defeat.
      The violence halted the tallying of electoral college votes to affirm Joe Biden’s victory. Mike Pence, the vice-president, and members of Congress were evacuated to undisclosed locations for their own safety.
      Local police said one person had been shot inside the Capitol building. Later, Dustin Sternbeck, a spokesman for the DC police, told the Washington Post that the woman had died. More

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      in US Politics

      Call it what it was: a coup attempt | Rebecca Solnit

      by

      On Wednesday, a coup attempt was led by the president of the United States. A rightwing mob attempted the coup in the form of a violent riot that stormed the Capitol building. They disrupted the proceedings that would have completed the recognition of the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. Those proceedings had been disrupted earlier by elected officials bringing forth bad-faith claims that the election was not legitimate and should instead produce a continuation of Trump’s presidency. This too was a coup attempt, an attempt to violate the constitution and override the will of the voters in this election. Inside and outside were two faces of the same thing, and both were fomented by the leaders of the Republican party and by the US president. The mob outside would not exist without the politicians inside. Those insiders will make noises of horror and repudiation, but they own this.Had Mitch McConnell and other Republican leaders recognized the legitimate winner of the election in early November, had there been no challenge to a legitimate election from inside the government, there would have been no mob. Having failed to suppress enough votes to guarantee a Republican presidential victory, the Republican party and the Trump administration decided to try to suppress them retroactively. Trump invited the mob and whipped it up for months and set it off today, as surely as if he’d lit a bomb’s fuse.I call it a coup attempt because, though I assume it will not prevent the Biden presidency, it certainly intended to, and is part of a campaign to delegitimize and thereby weaken the incoming administration. It was a long time coming, building up for years with white rage, especially white male rage fueled by everyone from Trump himself to the National Rifle Association, Fox News and the various rightwing pundits, the Republican party, the various faces of white supremacy, and the far-right groups such as the Proud Boys. It is a rage against the fact that other people might be equal under the law, that women and people of color might also govern as power begins to be distributed more equally, the same rage that attempted to delegitimize a black president with birtherism and obstruction. It is a rage against equality.Democracy is a set of agreements to make decisions together and respect the outcome whether you like them or not. The kind of violence we saw on Capitol Hill is authoritarian, a way to try to force other people to submit to the will of the perpetrators. This violence comes from the white men who were long the only people with power in this country imagining themselves as marginalized and oppressed outsiders because others might also have power and a voice. We saw these kind of men last summer, when they invaded the Michigan capital while carrying semiautomatic rifles and saw them again when a handful of them were arrested for a plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. We saw them in racist shootings from the Texas border to a Pennsylvania synagogue.This coup attempt was built by the more and more uninhibited ideology of violence we have seen again and again, in the mass shootings that became a norm in 21st-century America, the fetishization of guns and gun rights that made the killing machines and the death they inflict far more common, so that death by gun recently overtook death by car as a leading American way to die.As I write, I hear a Republican leader on TV say “Remember we are the party of law and order,” and, of course, the riot going on in the Capitol is technically lawless, but “law and order” as a rightwing slogan means that they are the law and they impose their version of order. Authoritarianism is always an ideology of inequality: I make the rules, you follow them, I change them at will and punish those who don’t obey, or, if I feel like it, those who do because I can. Frank Wilhoit once said: “Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition … There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.” They are demonstrating that nothing binds them and that they expect to have whatever they want. Entitlement is too demure a word for this.Authoritarianism is always an ideology of inequality: I make the rules, you follow them, I punish those who don’t obeyWhat is at stake in America today is the outcome of an election. But it’s also the rule of law and the rights of voters. And in the end it’s also about the authority of facts and evidence and history and science, that no one has the right to override those things for personal gain. Trump’s position all along has been that he in particular has that right. Today it came to a head and became a crisis as a mob sabotaged a constitutionally mandated procedure for the peaceful transition of power. This was always going to happen because Trump’s power was always going to be finite in reach and duration under the law, and because he wants that power to be infinite, he was always at war with the law, and he always had a volunteer army willing to help him take it. Today they acted like an army, a hostile occupying force in the nation’s capital. This is what he wanted and this is what he orchestrated and this is what we got.Trump was the most prolific public liar America has ever seen, and his lies were an essential part of his authoritarianism, a refusal to be bound by facts, even the facts of what he said or did the day before. He demanded a parallel narrative in which he won the election and laid the groundwork long before to claim, if he lost, that it was illegitimate, as he did in 2016. In a recorded video on Wednesday, Trump said to the crowd “We love you” as he told them to go home but also reasserted that the election was stolen, which is why they’re there in the first place. Ivanka Trump apparently deleted a tweet in which she called them “American patriots”.The Trumps and their loyalists in office will disavow the worst of what happened and pretend to be surprised by it and continue feeding it. Conversation about what’s been happening over the past several months has often bought into the false binary that either we have a successful coup, in which they steal the election, or we have a failed coup, but there is something insidious in-between: the delegitimization of the democratic process and the incoming administration. In this in-between state, Trump supporters continue to regard their leader and themselves as above the law and entitled to enforce it however they see fit, on the basis of whatever facts they most enjoy having. They are building a separate reality and appear to wish for a shadow government to beleaguer and undermine the legitimate one. Today, we’ve seen it in action. More

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      in World Politics

      US Media Still Has Russia on Its Mind

      by

      In December, a breaking story about massive hacking of US computer networks dominated The New York Times columns for weeks. With the new year, The Times is still nourishing its alarmed indignation at the evil force behind the event. In an article this week, David E. Sanger, Nicole Perlroth and Julian E. Barnes describe the event as “a hacking, now believed to have affected upward of 250 federal agencies and businesses … aimed not at the election system but at the rest of the United States government and many large American corporations.”

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      In an opinion piece from December, Thomas P. Bossert, former homeland security adviser to President Donald Trump, described the event as an attack on “the networks of the federal government and much of corporate America” which were “compromised by a foreign nation.” Consistently with The New York Times editorial policy in place for the past four years, he went further than the non-committal reference to “a foreign nation” and designated a particular nation as the culprit: Russia.

      Bossert explained not only why he could jump to this conclusion, but also why it was so fearful: “Domestic and geopolitical tensions could escalate quite easily if they use their access for malign influence and misinformation — both hallmarks of Russian behavior.”

      Today’s Daily Devil’s Dictionary definition:

      Hallmark:

      A term designating a superficial feature of a hostile act that, thanks to some vague similarity with incidents from the past, can be cited as conclusive proof of culpability, which proves especially useful when no tangible evidence exists to blame the party one prefers to blame.

      Contextual Note

      Consumers of mainstream media should by now understand that when they encounter the word “hallmark,” it expresses a supposition of guilt when the journalist has no real evidence to back it up. For example, a December 2016 piece in The New York Times stated that “In post-Soviet Russia, the same cynical mendacity has become the Putin government’s hallmark.” In August 2019, another article claimed that “Several American officials who follow Russia closely say the hacking bears the hallmark of an operation by Russia’s military intelligence service.”

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      Sometimes, the term “earmarks” is used to express the same idea. In October, the story of Hunter Biden’s compromising emails broke, to the delight of Donald Trump’s campaign.The media supporting Joe Biden responded with the assessment of the intelligence community: “More than 50 former senior intelligence officials have signed on to a letter outlining their belief that the recent disclosure of emails allegedly belonging to Joe Biden’s son ‘has all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.’” No one denied the reality of the emails, but accusing the Russians made the story sound fake.

      To establish a “truth” worthy of the media, the US intelligence community systematically looks for hallmarks or earmarks. Because the assessment comes from intelligence, the media present it as fact. On January 2, David Sanger claimed that the culprit of the massive hack was “almost certainly a Russian intelligence agency, according to federal and private experts.” On January 5, Sanger and Barnes offered this update: “American intelligence agencies formally named Russia as the ‘likely’ source of the broad hacking.” Their use of “almost certainly” and “likely” tells us that nothing is certain about that claim. It does, however, tell us what the intelligence community wants Times readers to believe.

      It didn’t take long for the Boston Herald to notice that the “classic earmarks” in the Hunter Biden story cited above turned out to have been totally imaginary. In the same document, the officials paradoxically admitted that “we do not have evidence of Russian involvement — just that our experience makes us deeply suspicious that the Russian government played a significant role in this case.” The Herald comments: “That also should have tipped reporters off to the fact that the letter was rank speculation masquerading as informed analysis, but true to form, they happily ran with it instead.”

      In a post-truth world, the media runs happily with anything it believes will excite its audience. Spinning accusations against Russia serves not only the media, but also the objectives of the political class. With no clear evidence about who the perpetrator may be, Julian E. Barnes, writing for The New York Times on December 18, reported on the reaction from politicians: “The recent hack on numerous federal agencies by Russia’s elite spy service demonstrated the need for new defenses, key lawmakers said.” Is it a coincidence that the scandal broke at the very moment Congress was preparing to vote on the Defense Authorization Act, with its bloated $740-billion price tag?  

      Democratic Senator Mark Warner was delighted to echo the media’s accusations on December 20. “All indications point to Russia.” By “indications” he obviously meant hallmarks. Warner added that Russia “came away with a big, big haul.” But even today nobody knows what the hackers were seeking or what they may have purloined. No one has signaled any form of damage. The hackers may, after all, just have been gathering information, which is what every nation routinely does.

      AP offered the most honest take, avoiding a direct accusation of Russia: “U.S. government statements so far have not mentioned Russia. Asked about Russian involvement in a radio interview Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo acknowledged that Russia consistently tries to penetrate American servers, but quickly pivoted to threats from China and North Korea.” Russia spies. What else is new?

      Historical Note

      Could all this simply be a case of the good, old, tried-and-true strategy of fear that emerged during the Cold War and has been renewed regularly by Western governments ever since? Filmmaker Adam Curtis documented this historical pattern in his compelling three-part survey, “The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear.” In Curtis’ words, politicians “turned to fear not because of a real enemy outside, but because they feel their own sense of legitimacy and authority dwindling.”

      Nearly a month after the initial report, can we say there is a real enemy? On December 17,The Times expressed its “concerns that hackers could ultimately use their access to shutter American systems, corrupt or destroy data, or take command of computer systems that run industrial processes. So far, though, there has been no evidence of that happening.” With all the talk about Russia but only hallmarks for evidence, nothing tells us that the hacking may not have come from another credible source, like Israel for example or, more credibly, from the NSA, which has always denied domestic spying. It was NSA Director James Clapper’s denial, under sworn testimony during a Senate hearing, that incited Edward Snowden to release his trove of confidential data proving the contrary.

      Embed from Getty Images

      Since the Cold War, Americans expect Russia to be dreaming of harming the US. Any clever operator should know that accusing Russia of what the US itself may be doing — in this case, spying on its own corporations to better control the economy — makes a lot of sense. People immediately find the accusation against Russia credible. They won’t even think about suspecting their own intelligence services. But there is no evidence to support the idea that US intelligence did it … other than hallmarks.

      And many such hallmarks exist. The anthrax attacks that followed 9/11 permitted the George W. Bush administration to blame them on Iraq. Saddam Hussein was known to have experimented with anthrax, initially provided by the US during Saddam’s war with Iran. Everyone could see at the time that Bush was looking for an excuse to attack Iraq, which he only managed to do in March 2003 after a massive campaign of creative disinformation.

      The anthrax plot failed because the strain of anthrax used had its own “hallmarks.” It was produced only in the US and specifically at a defense laboratory at Fort Detrick. The authorities took years to find a patsy to accuse in a “lone wolf” scenario. The FBI’s psychological campaign eventually drove the presumed culprit to commit suicide, obscuring any investigation into possible complicity from the team at the White House, who had the most to gain from the operation.

      On the day the story of the massive hack broke on December 12, the author of spy novels, David Cornwell, aka John le Carré, died. It’s unfortunate, because Le Carré might have been the most qualified person to tease out the play of interests and intrigues that lies behind this spying hack of the century.

      *[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on Fair Observer.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      in World Politics

      2020 Has Shown That We Are Not “Better Than This”

      by

      I hit 75 years old a little over two weeks ago. All in all, I have been lucky throughout my life to have found much to be thankful for as each birthday rolled around on the shortest day of the year. Early on, I couldn’t understand why my birthday was shorter than everyone else’s and was a little bitter about it until I figured out that it was a daylight issue and nothing more sinister than that.

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      While I also had some rough patches, I got through most of them because I had enough good fortune and the resources to help it along. But I have got to tell you that the year that has now drawn to a close has often seemed like a long winding dark tunnel that might never end. While I am sure that there are those not paying much attention, who aimlessly go through life caring only about their moment, I believe that even that comfort seemed hard to find.

      Assault on the Human Spirit

      It is not just the pandemic that has blighted the landscape for those paying attention. It was a year that assaulted the human spirit. I can imagine that Americans are not the only ones feeling this way, but we sure managed to eviscerate what could have been a national spiritual awakening in the face of adversity. Well over 350,000 Americans have paid with their lives for our national failure, with many more to come.

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      But one thing haunts me more than anything else. It is the reality that there are children in America and elsewhere who do not have enough food to sustain their health and allow them to dream and thrive. I always had enough food to eat when I was a child, sometimes way too much. My son always had enough food too, and he eats a lot. Yet somehow, I have always hoped that you didn’t have to suffer hunger to care a lot about those who are hungry. But here I am, amidst so many still with so much, angry as hell that there can be a projected 18 million children going hungry here and now in America.

      If you are not hungry and your children are not hungry, then you should have the energy to be angry with me about those who are hungry and angry enough to demand that your government do something about this and angry enough to pay more taxes so that it can. Food banks, food charities and individuals buying an extra bag of groceries for someone who is hungry are both part of the problem and part of the solution. But it can only be part of the solution if we do not allow ourselves to be pulled away by our charity from the image of a hungry child.

      So many have said so often (it was an Obama favorite) that “We are better than this.” I hope that we have proven to ourselves — and I know that we have proven to others — that we simply are not better than this. Americans are what they have proven to be. Hungry children in our midst are the easiest barometer of our collective immorality.

      There is much more going on, of course. The unmasked continue to roam our public spaces, food lines and queues for COVID-19 tests continue to grow, health care is being rationed even to those with supposed access to it, systemic racism has not taken a vacation, and our “democratic” institutions are crumbling while the repair crew may not be up to the rebuilding task. For others, there may be even more. This just passed year of assault on the human spirit is likely to continue well into the new year.

      End of This Tunnel

      I know about the vaccines — and we will get to that — and the tunnel that the vaccines are supposed to be the light at the end of. Before that, it is worth noting that the impending Biden presidency and some of his cabinet selections promise a return to some measure of competent governance and the ethics and empathy required to accomplish it. For sure, there will be time to debate specific policies and programs and to sound the alarm if the forgotten remain forgotten in a rush to return to “normal.”

      And we can hope that Joe Biden and his team see the clear need for public accountability for those in the Trump administration, foremost Donald Trump himself, whose corruption and mendacity poisoned our nation and paved the way for disease and death to overwhelm us. There can be no pardoning this if the nation is to move forward.

      Then, before celebrating the light, there will be the challenges posed by the vaccines. First, there will be the simple medical questions with complicated answers: Do the vaccines provide immunity and for how long? Do they prevent the transmission of disease to others? Are they safe? Next up will be the logistical challenges: How do you get enough vaccines from manufacture through delivery to inoculate 330 million people? Most importantly, assuming that the vaccines are effective and safe, and assuming that the logistical challenges are met, who will get which vaccine and when?

      The answers to the safety and efficacy questions likely will emerge in the coming months from scientists given a new lease on integrity by the Biden administration. Meeting the logistical challenges will have to await a national plan that overrides the already-emerging chaos of the present 50-state solution. But the most complex challenge and the one that America has failed time and again is the equity challenge — who will get which vaccine and when.

      Embed from Getty Images

      I have no hope at this moment, after so many failed moments in just the past year, that large swaths of Americans will wake up one morning and start thinking about something beyond themselves. It is most likely our individual selfishness that both propelled Donald Trump to the presidency and gave him a compelling voice that gave so many Americans the space to stand idly by and watch so much suffering of others in their midst. To the unmasked and their ilk, I say screw you. To those who have tried, I say keep trying and keep your distance from those who aren’t.

      Then, when the vaccines come, don’t stand idly by this time, as the selfish find a way to jump the line. To those who every day have provided essential services at great personal risk, you are going to have to fight for those vaccines in this America. If you don’t, your luck will run out and the unmasked will be laughing at you as they party on.

      I am not sure where America is in its dark tunnel nor even the full measure of that tunnel. I am sure that way too many Americans are unwilling to sacrifice much of anything for the well-being of others. There eventually will be a light at the end of this tunnel, but what of the next one?

      *[This article was cross-posted on the author’s blog, Hard Left Turn.]

      The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Fair Observer’s editorial policy. More

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      Who are the key players in the US presidential election certification?

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      Congress is set to certify the results of the 2020 presidential election on Wednesday, but the process is expected to be interrupted by unfounded objections by Republicans trying to curry favor with Donald Trump and the base of voters that support him.Other Republicans have said they will not join efforts to overturn the election result after dozens of state and federal lawsuits, state legislative hearings and elections challenges at the local level have failed to produce a shred of evidence to support Trump’s wild and false claims of voter fraud.From 1pm ET, Congress will begin certifying the presidential election result, state by state. But any state result is subject to objection by any member of Congress – and if both a senator and a member of the House of Representatives sign on to any one objection, the two chambers must retire for up to two hours to debate the objection.Here is a short list of the key players to watch:Senators Josh Hawley and Ted CruzHawley, from Missouri, and Cruz, from Texas, are leading a group of Republican senators who have said they will join objections to state results.Each politician hopes to be the Republican presidential nominee in 2024, and their willingness to sign on to Trump’s baseless campaign is recognized as being a sign of their political ambitions.Challenges in the House of Representatives to a state’s presidential election result are not uncommon. The House is four times as large as the Senate and, with every member coming up for election every two years, the chamber is subject to constant turnover and the attending ideological turbulence.But the Senate has mostly sat out from past wild assaults on the valid results of presidential elections. Until now.Senators Tom Cotton and Mike LeeThe softness of support among even very conservative-slash-ambitious senators for Trump’s attempt to overturn the election signals the basic weakness of the effort and the series of question marks that lay ahead for the Republican party.Cotton, a blistering conservative from Arkansas, is also expected to run for president in 2024, while Lee is a conservative ally of Trump and a close ally of Cruz. But each senator has announced that he will not support objections to the state electoral tallies. There’s no telling what voters in a presidential primary three years hence will remember of the current episode, but Cotton for one has declined to join the Trump dead-enders.Mitch McConnellThe Republican Senate majority leader asked his caucus not to join challenges to the election result, and he dispatched his top lieutenant on national TV to announce that any such challenge “would go down like a shot dog”.And yet, about a quarter of McConnell’s caucus and a majority of newly elected Republican senators has signed on to Trump’s mission, in direct defiance of the party leader.How will McConnell handle challenges that he does not support from his own party to election results? Some progressives have indulged fantasies of a catastrophic Republican rift playing out on cable TV.In reality, most of America will not be watching and whatever rifts open are most likely to feed an internal party struggle such as it may develop.Nancy PelosiThe Democrat House speaker will be in charge of responding to objections raised in her chamber to state election results. Widely praised for her expedient and effective handling of the 2019 impeachment inquiry, Pelosi is thought to be organizing a united Democratic front with room for Republican recruits. In any case the battle is playing out on her turf of parliamentary procedure and coalition-building expertise.The House RepublicansA number of House Republicans, led by some of the hottest firebrands on Capitol Hill such as Alabama’s Mo Brooks and Texas’ Louie Gohmert, have vowed to object to a number of state election results. Unlike their counterparts in the Senate, some of these House members would appear to be acting not out of a cynical political calculus but as true believers in the Trump cause. Many are return figures from the defense of Trump during his impeachment in the fall of 2019.Mike PenceAs vice-president, Pence is the ceremonial president of the Senate, meaning he will serve as presiding officer for the announcement of Joe Biden’s election victory.As vice president at the start of 2017, Biden filled a similar role for the announcement of Trump’s victory. But unlike Biden, Pence is serving under a president who wishes to overturn the election result, introducing complications for Pence, who would like to stay on Trump’s good side as another potential 2024 presidential candidate.Speculative scenarios for an act of indecision or contravention by Pence abound – and seem largely overblown. Senator Chuck Grassley had suggested that Pence might absent himself from the proceedings, but it appears Pence will preside. Most analysts expect him to certify the presidential election result in accordance with the minor and ceremonial capacity allotted to him by the constitution. More

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      Republicans face test of loyalty to Trump as Congress meets to certify election

      by

      After four years of defending and emboldening Donald Trump, Republicans in Congress on Wednesday will face their most consequential test of loyalty yet: to indulge the president’s brazen and meritless bid to overturn the results an election he lost, or to uphold the democratic process and certify Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.A handful of congressional Republicans are preparing to object to the certification of the electoral college results when Congress meets on Wednesday, turning what is traditionally a perfunctory affair into Trump’s last stand. Their coordinated rebellion, unprecedented in modern times, is all but destined to fail and Biden will be inaugurated on 20 January.In his increasingly desperate bid to cling to power, Trump, who has not conceded, has spent the last several weeks attempting to enlist allies and pressure public officials to overturn Biden’s 306-232 election win. His machinations escalated this weekend when he pressured the Georgia secretary of state, Republican Brad Raffensberger, to “find” enough votes to reverse Biden’s win in the state.As required by the constitution, the joint session of Congress will meet to count the electoral votes. The votes will be delivered to the chamber in mahogany boxes and read aloud in alphabetical order of the states, with Mike Pence over the meeting. At the conclusion of the count, it is the vice-president who finally, formally declares the winner.Around the Capitol, authorities are bracing for “stop the steal” protests they fear could turn violent. Trump, who has encouraged his followers to join the gathering even as coronavirus cases surge across the country, said he plans to attend, as do several of his allies and a number of far-right groups, including the Proud Boys.Trump has been pressuring Pence to simply reject the vote count. On Tuesday, Trump claimed that “the vice-president has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors”. This is false.A handful of Trump loyalists in the House have been planning this showdown for weeks. But in recent days the effort gained support from a quarter of Senate Republicans, first from Josh Hawley, an ambitious first-term Republican from Missouri. Days later, a coalition of Republican senators and senators-elect led by the Texas senator Ted Cruz announced their opposition to certifying Biden’s win unless Congress agrees to a 10-day audit of the election results, which is highly unlikely.On Monday, the Georgia senator Kelly Loeffler, vying to keep her seat, announced that she too would object. (David Perdue, the other Republican candidate in Georgia, supports the effort but will not vote because his term expired on Sunday.)In the House, where the effort is led by the Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, a top Trump ally, Republicans said the plan to voice objections to Biden’s wins in six swing states: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.To succeed, an objection must come from both a member of the House and the Senate. Hawley has said he planned to object to the results from Pennsylvania, while Cruz plans to object to the results in Arizona. Both are considered presidential contenders in 2024, seeking to ingratiate themselves with Trump’s fervent base.The Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, sought to avoid this internecine showdown, keenly aware of the political blowback members of his caucus will face – either for defying the president or attempting to subvert the will of millions of voters. Several Senate Republicans have condemned the effort – more than enough needed to ensure the campaign will fail. The Republican senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska has called it a “dangerous ploy”. And Senator Pat Toomey, a Republican from Pennsylvania, one of the states that is expected to draw an objection, denounced what he said was his colleagues “effort to disenfranchise millions of voters in my state and others”.All 50 states have certified the election results after a number of closely contested states conducted post-election audits and recounts to ensure their accuracy. Courts at every level, including the supreme court, have rejected dozens of lawsuits filed by Trump and his allies to challenge the results.None of the senators who plan to reject the results of the election have come forward with specific allegations of fraud. Instead they have pointed to public opinion polls that show, after weeks of the president and his allies insisting the election was stolen from him, their supporters believe the election was “rigged” as evidence that further investigation was needed. More