Blacks elect two Deep South senators; lynch mobs descend on the Capitol

 

Democrats politely returned to their seats. Are we due for another round of loyal bipartisanship?

The most extraordinary scene in the extraordinary episode of January 7 occurred after the dust had settled and the solons had returned to the vandalized chambers to proceed with their deliberations.

 

The President had just rallied with a band of violent fanatics, some armed, to demand the overturning of the election he lost by 7 million votes. Mobs then broke into the seat of the country’s legislative branch and nearly succeeded in seizing the official records of the Electoral College vote. Members fled for safety.

 

One person soon lay dead of a gunshot wound. Three others died later in obscure circumstances. A uniformed officer also died of his injuries the next day (Blue Lives Matter!).

 

No Democrat, female, nonwhite, or insufficiently Trump-toadying Republican member hated by the invading mob was attacked physically or killed. They could have been. One camo-wearing invader was photographed carrying zip ties and other military gear.

 

The incidents were triggered by a bogus series of objections raised to the voting procedures that had no bearing on the wishes of the nation’s citizens but were instead attempts by the losers to find technical reasons to enable the minority to cling to power.

 

In a sane country run by sane individuals, this blatant attempt to cheat and interrupt the peaceful transfer of power would result in the utter repudiation of the perpetrators. They would slink away in disgrace and be compelled to apologize for their seditious plotting.

 

Instead, Democrats returned to their seats and quietly tolerated Lindsey Graham’s further perorations on the alleged instances of voting fraud—exactly the kind of lurid, evidence-free accusations that had stimulated the assault on the Capitol.

 

None of those legislators who had just escaped harm at the hands of the president’s shock troops dared to shout down the continuation of the white supremacist conspiracy. None angrily left the chamber and refused to be part of the ongoing spectacle of disloyalty to the core democratic principle of majority rule.

 

However, it does appear that Trump has finally, finally gone too far.

 

After four years of pious hand-wringing followed by votes authorizing all the key funding measures demanded by the allegedly dangerous Trump, Democrat lawmakers and their leaders are changing their tune—11 days before the end of Trump’s disastrous rule.

 

They were personally affected. They experienced danger to their own bodies and lives.

 

I guess that’s what it takes sometimes to rattle sense into people. As long as it’s happening to some other people in some other neighborhoods living some other lives, it remains a “concern.”

 

Someone else’s 13-year-old kid getting murdered by a trigger-happy cop? Tragic, tsk tsk.

 

Someone else’s family compound being drone-bombed into smithereens? We should try to avoid “collateral damage” in pursuit of our laudable war goals.

 

Someone else’s livelihood being threatened by capitalist dysfunction? Yes, but there is no money! We can’t be raising taxes on the middle class!

 

But when it touched the members of Congress themselves, all hell broke loose. Someone must pay.

 

Who knows how long this sudden rush of outrage will last. President Biden and his team are itching to take office and announce the End of the Bad Dream. “Looking to the future, not the past” was the slogan of the incoming administration until 48 hours ago.

 

I can imagine that many criminal defendants would love to employ that approach to their own circumstances: “Your Honor, I ask the court to Look to the Future, not the Past!”

 

It is a line tailor-made to cover up the convenient crimes that Biden will inherit and exploit. Democrats did not really oppose most of the Trump program, the proof being their control of one chamber of Congress with the power to halt it.

 

There is too much confluence of interests among the representatives of our ruling oligarchy to expect any sustained challenge to the outgoing Trump crime family. And I have serious doubts about any of the legal issues Trump faces prospering whether or not he tries to pardon himself as rumored.

 

That said, the breach of the top politicians’ assumed privilege as members of the elite has come as a shock to them. There may yet be consequences.