Day 23 – Time to Choose. How Will History Remember Them?

Thursday February 11, 2021

We are just over three weeks into the new administration and the numbers are coming down in the pandemic. There are new variants that I am learning were festering in people that had limited immune responses. The new variants had time to develop new ways to more tightly bind to humans and hence are more apt to infect. This is no time to drop our guard! When will this stop? When a majority of the population is vaccinated and the virus can not find new hosts to replicate and mutate as quickly as it has. The race is on! 

Yesterday I watched much of the impeachment trial. It was riveting. I understand that Fox News cut away. Not surprising. Also, Senator Hawley was showing his open distain for the proceedings by sitting in the gallery and purposely not paying attention, doing paperwork instead.

The impeachment managers laid out a thorough and compelling, no damning, case against Satan. They showed new video. They showed a map of the Capitol building and where the mob was and where our elected officials were. The mob came damn close to grabbing some of them. Like fifty paces close. There were also the audio calls by Capitol police begging, screaming, for help. None came.

So? How will these Senators be remembered? Are we going to see Profiles in Courage or Benedict Arnolds? Maybe, Joe McCarthy? None of these are really apt comparisons. Hitler is better, or Mussolini – that is for Donald. For the Senators, maybe the fascists of the 1930s who backed Franco? Who later lied about their role in helping that dictator to power. I don’t know it’s hard to say. The evidence and causality is overwhelming. It depends on which media channel you watch as to whether you are getting everything. If you can just watch the trial, there is no contest.

Last night, after the trail recessed. One of the commentators said they thought the forty four Republican senators who have been unmoved so far might go or not in an all-or-nothing fashion. What will break the dam is hard to say.  Certainly, not their oath of office or loyalty to the Constitution. 

At the close of the trial yesterday Mike Lee tried a distraction move. He claimed that some things attributed to him were not true and he wanted them stricken from the record. The parliamentarian told the chair that he, Lee, didn’t have the ability to do this from a procedural point of view. It was a distraction. Then Jamie Raskin said okay we withdraw that evidence. Done.

The mangers didn’t need whatever it was. Don’t you love the sanctimoniousness of Lee?

Later Rand Paul made a slimy veiled accusation against Eric Swalwell. You’ll be surprised to learn that this is a main piece of reporting being pushed by Fox News. What is this all about? Well eight or now nine years ago a young Chinese woman, very pretty, volunteered on several campaigns. Swalwell’s was one of them. There’s a picture of him with her. There are pictures of her with others too. The FBI became suspicious and began following her activities. They caught her having sex with two midwestern mayors.  Swalwell was told that the FBI suspected her of being a spy for China and his association with her was immediately cut off. That seems to be it. All of a sudden the young woman said she had to return to China and hasn’t been heard from since.

Apparently, he wants to go there. Let’s go there. Last week there was an article saying the Russians had been grooming Donald Trump for forty years. Ivanka got special treatment from the Chinese government for trademarks as soon as daddy was elected President and she and her husband made hundreds of millions of dollars from foreign sources. Jared had been linked to giving MBS the impression, rightly so, that if a hit squad took out Khashoggi the U.S. Government would do nothing. 

So we are left with the question of will seventeen Republican seniors join to impeach the former president and if not how will they be regarded by history?

Stay tuned.

Or as the black Capitol policeman said as he lay on the floor in the Rotunda after fighting the mob for five hours. He said he had been called the N-word seventeen times. He asked, “Is this America?”

Is it?