Soldiers of Misfortune

 

     (By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

Let's speculate for a minute if they'd, God forbid, succeeded. If the Proud Boys had become what Trump only wished they'd be- His new Praetorian Guard sweeping him back into power. Let's further speculate on the unthinkable- Thanks to the Proud Boys, no longer standing back and standing by, and the Oath Keepers and their stack formation behind their chubby, eye-patched leader, Stewart Rhodes, we'd be in the third year of an illegitimate dictatorship.

     Enrique Tarrio would be singing a different tune. There wouldn't be any contrition or a pathetic attempt at it. Because he'd be the captain of Trump's Praetorian Guard instead of sitting in a jail cell along with three of his cohorts. He's just a common criminal who'd been used then tossed aside when Trump realized his Plan B, the hard coup that had resulted in the deaths of nine people, over half of them police officers, had failed after 45 minutes. Trump never pardoned him or even mentioned his name.

     Instead, the only tune he'll be singing is if Trump commissions the J6 Choir to sing "Folsom Prison Blues" for his next rally. So now he's whining that Trump put him in the Capitol and made an innocent victim out of him and his buddies.

     OK, reality check- Trump certainly did stir up needless trouble and sicced a mob of crazed lunatics on the vastly outnumbered Metro and Capitol Police Departments. To use Alexander Hamilton's prescient phrase, Trump “r(o)de the storm and direct(ed) the whirlwind". He told the 74,000,000 idiots who'd voted for him that their votes were stolen and all it took was about 1000 of them to nearly bring the federal government to a screeching halt, nearly resulting in the death of Mike Pence.

     But everyone who stormed the Capitol building that day was a grown adult that was responsible for their own actions. Trump didn't plan their little insurrection field trips- They did that on their own. They took time from work, planned the routes for their road trip, saw to accommodations and even, in the case of Rhodes and his Oath Keepers, set up ammo and weapons dumps in Virginia area motels.

     Trump didn't do that. They did.

    Yet, time and again, just about the closest we get to any kind of remorse or contrition is when defendants whine that Trump put them in the House or Senate chamber, made them vandalize offices, literally shit in the hallways and steal and destroy government property. Again, if the insurrection was successful or if Trump at least preemptively pardoned them, they wouldn't be so butt-hurt.

      Grow up.

No, Tucker, That's Exactly How White Men Fight

 

In what's by now the most infamous text message ever sent, Tucker Carlson wrote, 

“A couple of weeks ago, I was watching video of people fighting on the street in Washington.”

“A group of Trump guys surrounded an Antifa kid and started pounding the living shit out of him. It was three against one, at least. Jumping a guy like that is dishonorable obviously. It’s not how white men fight."

“Yet suddenly I found myself rooting for the mob against the man, hoping they’d hit him harder, kill him. I really wanted them to hurt the kid. I could taste it."

    There's so much loathsome, right wing despicability in those three brief paragraphs that it's difficult to know what to focus on or even where to begin. Let's start with Tucker automatically assuming the victim was "an Antifa kid". Let's give the kid the benefit of the doubt and assume he wasn't doing anything that justified him being brutally assaulted.

    Tucker automatically assumed that the white thugs were perfectly justified in beating up this kid using superior numbers and, of course, without any context whatsoever, the "Antifa kid" had it coming to him because, well, Antifa, a movement that doesn't even exist organizationally, even though it should, given the rise of right wing violence in the Age of Trump.

     Running on his ample gut instincts, Carlson assumed the kid was a radical left winger and therefore should've been beaten to death. He wanted him killed so much he "could taste it". But then, in an almost admirable attempt at introspection, Carlson then says, "It's not how white men fight." As if, given a level playing field, white men will always prevail in a street brawl because, well, they're the master race.

    Still, even while gazing at his belly button, Carlson still assumed that he was superior for his murderous bleacher bum ideations because then he concluded with, "If I don’t care about those things, if I reduce people to their politics, how am I better than he is?” Despite the fact that the victim of this unspecified attack wasn't looking for trouble that would justify him getting killed.

    But we saw countless swarming mob techniques on January 6. Officer Michael Fanone was surrounded by people who wanted to literally kill him just for doing his job defending the Capitol and would have if he hadn't yelled out that he had daughters. We saw hundreds of homegrown right wing terrorists bunched up at the West Terrace and other places and pushing back, attacking and injuring a small phalanx of officers.

     These were the same tactics used by the Brownshirts, at least up until 1934 when Hitler had them liquidated. This is part and parcel to right wing thought- Swarming with superiority in numbers because they dread a one on one fight with those who'd forcefully disagree with them. 

    Since this is the usual end result of one on one engagement between right wingers and virtually anyone else.

    Because intolerance breeds intolerance and dissent breeds fear in the right wing mind, which led James Fields to kill Heather Heyer and seriously injure others, and level the playing field, so to speak, when he saw the Charlottesville hate rally was being protested.
     No, Tucker, this is precisely how white men, especially, right wingers, fight.