You’re STILL talking about that?
As a violent mob pushed past barricades protecting the U.S. Capitol, then dragged, beat and bludgeoned police officers before roaming the halls with abandon on Jan. 6, former secretary of state Condoleezza Rice watched and wept. The emotions, she said, were similar to those she felt on Sept. 11, 2001.
“I thought: ‘I study countries that do this. I didn’t think it would happen in my own country,’ ” Rice, a Republican who teaches political science at Stanford University, said Wednesday on ABC’s “The View.”
In her own country and with the tacit consent of her own political party. It wasn’t a national insurrection, it was a specific, partisan, one-sided, right-wing insurrection. Most of the country is appalled and disgusted by it, and wants to prevent it from ever happening again. We’re funny that way.
The assault on democratic processes that day, as protesters sought to interrupt the certification of the presidential election, “was wrong,” Rice acknowledged — but she qualified that it’s time for lawmakers to “move on.”
It is? Why? Have they done enough to make sure it will never happen again? Have they done enough to ensure it won’t happen again in three years? No and no, so why is it time for them to move on? Why is it time for any of us to move on?
The former White House official’s comments were a response in agreement to remarks Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) gave on Tuesday. McConnell told reporters it was time for lawmakers “to be talking about the future and not the past,” referring to the discussion about false claims of election fraud pushed by Trump and his allies, which ultimately led supporters to storm the Capitol on Jan. 6. McConnell said the issue should no longer be of concern.
He’d be saying exactly the same thing if it were Democrats who had attempted to overthrow an election and seize power by slaughtering half the Congress, right?
Rice, who served as secretary of state in the George W. Bush administration from 2005 to 2009, said she agreed with McConnell. She added that it’s time for lawmakers to “move on in a lot of ways” and focus on issues affecting U.S. citizens.
Oooh, oooh, you know something that affects US citizens? A right-wing coup that installs a dictator and does away with all our rights, that’s what. Making Donald Trump that dictator, that’s what. Joining the glorious company of Putin and Bolsonaro and Lukashenko, that’s what.
“I’m one who believes that the American people are now concerned about what we call ‘kitchen table issues’ — the price of gasoline, inflation, what’s happening to kids in school,” Rice said.
Also the empty shelf space where Oreos should be, and that pothole on Reagan Boulevard, and the fact that it’s raining. Real problems that affect real people. An insurrection to install a deranged corrupt dictator is just egghead abstract pie in the sky stuff.
At least Bolsonaro was actually elected.
I wonder what moving on means for republicans? Oh, yes, preventing anything from happening unilt the next presidential election.
Yes we are still talking about it. For a variety of great reasons not the least of which is that it was just a dress rehearsal for what the GOP has in store for us unless they get hammered right now. If there are no consequences for these relentless attacks on democracy then we may as well pack it in. This isn’t about winning elections anymore. It’s about preserving the Union. Guys like Mitch may be operating on the delusion that they can control this angry mob and their spray-tanned demigod after they crush the libs, but history would suggest otherwise. Every time they wail the lies about a stolen election they are fomenting insurrection – committing sedition at least in spirit. The GOP bound themselves to the old white moral majority bullshit but the demographics of the nation have shifted. They won’t win another fair election – ever. So what’s their response? Cheat, lie, subvert, disenfranchise – not the most democratic tactics but hey, gotta stick to your playbook.
Trump unleashed the ignorant angry asshole lurking in a third of the US population. That is the biggest threat we face. That is what we should be focused on. Call me paranoid but I would argue that we are in an undeclared civil war and our side is losing.
END OF RANT
9/11–enter a 20-years’ war
1/6–yawn and “move on.”
So, NOT like 9/11, AT ALL.
1. Can you say “Benghazi”?
2. Protecting democracy IS about the future, you yo-ho.
Pliny, I only wish we could call you paranoid.
So instead we focus on passing the “Equality” Act and throwing a hissy fit when Sinema and Manchin decide how much welfare they think is too much, thus stalling everything in Congress. Instead of, you know, moving on and cockblocking Republican efforts to negate elections, something which is of dire importance.
— Monty Python and the Holy Grail
Ah yes, the old self-interested ‘let’s not dwell upon the past’ trope. Trouble with that is: the past is always with us, and will repeat as if by magic for us if we let it drop out of sight. It is all about something called historiography: the writing of history. We heed the myopic dickheads like Trump and McConnell at our peril.
By the way, all of those “kitchen table” issues she’s talking about? Those are exactly the sorts of policy issues that the Democratic Party keeps trying to address, only to be blocked by Mitch McConnell and the Republican majority in the Senate.
(Yes, I know that Republicans technically don’t have a majority in the Senate. But since Senators Manchin and Sinema have enabled, encouraged, and modeled their own behavior on Republican intransigence and corruption at every turn — and have refused to even consider trashing the current version of the not-even-remotely-in-the-Constitution-and-rather-directly-contrary-to-its-spirit filibuster rules which empowers Republican obstructionism — I question the relevance of that technicality.)
February 6th, 1934, the French far right staged a vast riot, aimed at invading the National Assembly and imposing their own government. They were stopped by the police and army, after being ‘tolerated’ almost to victory. There were 15 dead. The Daladier government fell when police and judges declined to pursue the guilty.
Sure, the Popular Front took power in ’36, but all the usual suspects who later formed Vichy, were already in place that night.
Look, it was 2000 years ago! Can we just move on and not worry about who killed Christ? For chrissake?
iknklast: Sorry, but who killed Christ is an important point, and still is. Jews or Romans? There are implications with each; apart from theological and evangelical problems. There has been a lot of money tied up in it, and still is. Think of the sales of indulgences, the Vatican Bank, Mafia connections, etc, etc.