Background of the Capitol HIll insurrection

This article is particularly good at laying out the violent rhetoric and actions that preceded the insurrection and set the tone for it. This includes invasions of statehouses in Michigan, Oregon, and Kentucky. Also the incident when Trump supporters boxed in a Biden campaign bus in Texas. 

There was some disarray in the Capitol police in the run-up. They didn't stay informed on the trends and missed the signs to be better prepared. Timeline and issues. Did some members of Congress help rioters in the run-up? 

Groups were saying that they'd storm the Capitol (a particularly good article, also here). Alt-right groups are taking advantage of the opportunity to radicalize Trump supporters. The groups are in the military and law enforcement, and disinformation is rife. The scope of planning within the groups and between the groups isn't clear yet. The Proud Boys appear to have spearheaded some actions (excellent video), but the Oathkeepers and 3-percenters are well-represented too. More will be emerging as investigations continue. Here's NYT covering Proud Boys' chat prior to the riot. 

Also, what roles did Roger Stone and Alex Jones play? Here's Roger Stone raising money in the run-up. Here's an article by Rod Dreher on the religious groups prior to Jan. 6.

It was perhaps sheer luck that more people weren't killed. Most of the rioters were pro-police and not in favor of injuring police just to get to the members of Congress. The more radical groups perhaps didn't see enough support for more violent action and therefore didn't go that route. 

Tucker Carlson says it was just good Americans yearning to be heard by a callous, uncaring, overbearing government. Wow, talk about propaganda. 

A huge article about the work done by non-partisan groups to prevent a huge mess in the election and the aftermath. Election systems were strengthened, sometimes with donated money. Business groups didn't want chaos, but they saw it coming if they did nothing. 

A transcript of the speech given by Trump on Jan. 6. Search for 'fight' and search for 'peace' to get a sense of how much peaceful protest wasn't emphasized. 

Two articles about the belated response of the military to requests for help. Shorter, possibly clearer. Longer with a detailed timeline. There appeared to be almost an hour delay in getting the OK from top military to send in national guard units. The guards weren't able to go directly to help--they had to stop at armories to get the proper gear first. But at least they had partially mustered, or it would have taken even longer. 

Image: brandeis.edu

And more aftermath. 

A Republican Congressman (and Nazi youth look-alike) Madison Cawthorn has a moment of regret, but did it last? Minority leader McCarthy says that everyone bears responsibility. That's a convenient smearing/spreading of the blame. A pundit trying to minimize the importance of the riot. Mostly, things weren't that bad and democracy wasn't overturned, so it's not that bad. 

A watchdog of Parler found a 'patriot' calling for much more violence next time. Lets hunt these cowards down like the Traitors that each of them are, he writes. 

In Michigan, the head of the state senate goes along with the line from the true believers, and then apologizes, somewhat. This is such a standard  problem of standard cowardice. 

In Pennsylvania, there's a civil war between Trump supporters and those who support Toomey and a level of independence. We'll see in 2022 who is nominated to the open Senate seat and who wins. 

The Capitol Hill police force deals with group (and individual) PTSD. 

The nutty pillow guy is making 'documentaries' about the election theft. Here is a review: Absolute  Proof is as bad as you'd expect. 

Facebook has its own 'supreme court' and they were called on to rule and/or advise on the permanent suspension of Trump's account. Here's the pithy version of what they decided, including the phrase 'replete with falsehoods' about Trump's statement. Here is a more detailed version. 

'Daddy told us to come to DC.'

Trump supporters aren't that different from the Proud Boys or other right-wing fight groups. 

The saga of Ashli Babbitt, the woman who was shot while crossing a barricade in the Capitol.  

More about OathKeepers, Three Percenters,  and other militias. 

Trump tried to get the DOJ to overturn the election.

The New York Times made a somewhat short video (40 minutes) about the Jan. 6 riot, using pieced-together video of the events. 

The state intervenes... too much

The Alfie Evans scandal didn't get a lot of news site attention from the MSM, but it did in the conservative media. A bit of background if you don't know the story (which means that you follow the MSM and thus miss some news stories):

Alfie was born in Britain about 23 months ago. About 6 months after his birth, his health was declining and he was found to have some unknown wasting disease that was shrinking his brain. He's been on life-support since December 2016. The doctors decided treatment was futile, and removed life support. A hospital in Italy offered to take him, which the parents wanted, but this was blocked by the British courts, who also posted guards to prevent his parents from removing him from the hospital. He died at the hospital on 4/28/18 approximately 5 days after being removed from a ventilator.

Superficial review and reaction

Initially I viewed this case of one of people blindly holding on to hope, screaming for everything possible to be done, and ignoring the evidence that it was hopeless. I think most of the news stories played out this way, along with most of the comments. So my initial reaction was to back up the scientific findings and stress the reality of the situation. Alfie was not going to recover. He was not conscious at all, and would never become conscious. He had no prospect in life except being connected to life support and having seizures as they gave him therapy in trying to keep him alive. That was the hard truth that so many people seemed unable to accept.

I agreed that hospital was right to declare treatment futile. I disagreed with the British court preventing the parents from taking Alfie to Italy. There seemed (to me) little chance of significant harm to Alfie. But the judge was overly concerned that he'd die in transit, and that seemed appalling to the judge. I disagree, but at least I understood the rationale, and I didn't think the judge was a monster. Many others did.

The public outrage at the hospital and the British courts was huge, which I didn't understand. Now I do.

When should courts overrule parents?

If you look at the story through the lens of what was good for Alfie and what was medically possible, the parents seem out of touch, and the hospital and courts seem sane, realistic, and reasonably kind.

However, if you look at the story through the eyes of Alfie's parents, it appears very different. They want to do whatever they can for their son. The hospital says they can't do anymore. The parents are distraught, seek other opinions, but are legally and physically blocked from taking their son to another location for treatment.

This is the outrage. They love their son, want to care for him, have never been abusive to him, but their rights as parents were shut down in favor of the court's opinion. I felt this was wrong, but at first I didn't feel the outrage of it.

The mistake of the court was to take away the rights of the parents to decide the child's treatment. Almost all parents will consider carefully, help, nurture, notice how the child responds, comfort, and minimize suffering. Most parents can do this better than a judge can because they are intimately connected to the child.

Not all parents are like this, however. Some are abusive or negligent. For those parents, it makes sense for the courts to intervene. However, Alfie's parents were neither abusive nor negligent. They cared more than anyone else. But at the end, these parents, who dearly loved him, were barred by police from caring for their son in the way they desperately hoped to.

That was the wrong. Not against Alfie, but against his parents. And it was a fairly grievous wrong, to take the decision away from them in such desperate circumstances.

Media focus

Media tended to focus on how it wasn't certain what caused Alfie's decline, and how his last hope relied on getting care elsewhere. Some attacked the British National Health Service (NHS) for its policy to withdraw life support. Some didn't attack the NHS, but faulted the courts for siding with the NHS against the parents and the child's 'last hope.' It became a cause within Britain, but perhaps even more among American conservatives. Their spin, motivated by animus against socialized medicine such as the NHS, regularly contained lies and didn't accurately report the reality of Alfie's condition. The media regularly used words like 'murder' and conservative commenters copied that. Very few gave consideration to the personal, ethical, moral, and financial issues in giving life support for extended periods.

The American Conservative is typically a more thoughtful source of the conservative perspective. But even here, Dreher puts his thumb on the scale. When the NHS wants to end artificial life support, it's described as "forcibly euthanizing the disabled." But should his parents make the decision, it's letting "Alfie die a natural death." Interesting difference in wording considering the actions are the same.

The American Spectator is probably more typical in its invective. The doctors are incompetent and the state is tyrannical. This isn't measured analysis, it's war against tyranny. It's no wonder so many echo these arguments when they're not presented with any counterarguments. Just one side of the story. If you're not practiced in questioning, it's not going to happen.

Luckily, the comments section for the Dreher argument had other thoughtful alternatives. Another columnist for the American Conservative focused more on the parents, and was also fair to the doctors. In the comments section for the American Spectator, anyone dissenting was blasted. Well, that's just another week in the culture war. I wonder what this week will bring?

Alfie on a ventilator, with his dad

Image: dailyrecord.co.uk

The phenomenon of Trump support

Some seem to support Trump because he perfectly encapsulates their anger. They're angry at immigrants, at Muslims, at leaders who are 'losers,' at Obamacare, at Obama, at George Bush, etc. These supporters love it when Trump insults others. Maybe they are rage addicts, and he's their daily dose.

Then were are others who feel Trump is on their side, at least somewhat, and won't sell them out as so many other politicians have--making promises and not delivering for them and their class. I don't know why they think Trump will be different except that he's already rich, and therefore won't sell them out to become richer. He says he won't do that, but what makes it more believable from him than from countless others?

I don't totally understand the attraction Trump has for the second group, though I grasp it a bit. There is certainly reason to doubt that the GOP will follow through on their promises, especially promises to make the economy better for the little guy. The GOP has provided much more constituent service to business owners who want to keep wages and benefits low. They've done it by opposing more regulation, mandatory health insurance, and by not working toward enforcement of immigration law. The GOP helps businesses on labor issues (with de facto support of immigrant labor) by reneging on implicit promises to and screwing over the little guy wage earner. And the GOP has chosen the business guy again and again.

So I get Trump's popularity. I'm not sure what Trump means for the future of the Republican party. It's not surprising if the GOP business elite is finally losing control. They've let blowhard talk radio jocks be the spokesmen and missionaries, and maybe they're finally going to pay the price for that.

Or possibly they'll just pay a short-term price until things go back to normal:

...it would be better to effectively rent the party to Mr. Trump for four months this fall, through the general election, than risk turning it over to Mr. Cruz for at least four years, as either the president or the next-in-line leader for the 2020 nomination.

What an excellent insight, though it may not be true. Maybe that's a third way Trump is attractive. In a no-win situation, he'll do less harm than the other potential nominees. He'll let those in the mines blow off some steam, and then will fade away as quickly as Mondale did.

Perhaps there's even another way he is attractive, captured by this quote: "I can’t stand Trump, but I love what he’s doing." And what is he doing that is exciting or admirable? Maybe it's calling out all the political hypocrites (except himself, of course). There are lots to be called out, and it's good that someone is doing it. However, that attraction isn't going to last because the seams in his own ideas will begin to fray with all his vigorous denunciations of all the rest of those hypocrites. How will it happen and how soon? Damned if I know. But it'll be exciting to watch.

Image: dailymail.co.uk

Extras. Great reads about Trump: Is Trump disproving the theory that the party decides? If so, how and why is it happening? (From Nate Silver.) The GOP has no intelligence on Trump because they are completely cut off from his supporters. That's a risky position to be in. A sampling of readers of Dreher, many of who are religious, and why even they like the philandering, foul-mouthed gambling czar.

Surviving the same-sex marriage decision

As I wrote often, Rod Dreher, a religious/cultural blogger, regularly moaned about the growing support for same-sex marriage. His complaints reached a pinnacle (or maybe more than one) as he tried to find the culprit for the fall of marriage from a holy sacrament (joining man, woman, and God) to a piece of toilet paper freely available to perverts.

How badly has Dreher freaked out now that the US will have legal same-sex marriage all over the country?

He's not doing too badly. He's on a trip to Italy right now, enjoying the food, history, and street festivals, or preferable all three at the same time. He's got the right idea. Before the total downfall of Western civilization, I'd like to spend more time in Italy too.

Image: theamericanconservative.com

It's rather sentimental of me to wonder whether this opponent has survived the ruling. Not that I really worried that anyone was going to kill himself over this ruling. Nearly everyone saw it coming. Justice Kennedy, the usual swing vote on the Supreme Court, had voted to declare some of DOMA unconstitutional two years ago, so it wouldn't take clairvoyance to foresee this ruling.

So almost all saw this coming. Almost all let the LGBTQ and allies celebrate their victory unmolested. There were rainbow sprinkles all over Facebook, and, with triumphalism, rainbow lighting on the White House. Not exactly tactful or magnanimous.

Image: forum.bandmix.com

Some GOP presidential candidates said stupid things, but that's an everyday occurrence. Let's see, Bobby Jindal called for the money-saving move of abolishing the Supreme Court. I wonder if he followed up with a paean to the Constitution. Based on headlines, Jindal won the 'GOP leader stupid contest' over the perennial winner Ted Cruz. Cruz was probably runner-up, though, with the suggestion that Supreme Court justices face elections every 8 years. This idea suffers from being too complex, especially compared to Jindal's simple and pure stupidity.

Culture warriors warn of several looming crises.

1. The polygamists are coming!
2. The pedophiles are coming!
3. It won't be safe to express anti-gay beliefs.
4. Churches will lose their tax-exempt status.
5. This is the final straw that ends marriage in the US.
6. This is the final straw that ends the American experiment in democracy.
7. Anyone who doesn't cheer on same-sex marriage will risk losing their job.

Except for the panicking dissenting justices, there aren't many who are still predicting the swift demise of the US, so the response is more moderate than expected. After all, not all these looming crises are completely ludicrous. No, pedophilia won't be legalized, but the concerns about the chilling of viewpoints are well founded. (More posts later on that.)

One fascinating thing I learned is how widespread the gay pride movement is. I looked for images of the rainbow flag, and found it in Venezuela, Brazil, Peru, Mexico, Turkey, Israel, Russia, Serbia, Taiwan, Cambodia, China, and a huge number of images for India. The movement for tolerance is a world-wide phenomenon, not just a parochial battle in the US culture war. I still haven't grasped how momentous this movement is.

Image: citizenside.com

Extra. Perhaps before he left for Italy (judging from the tone), Dreher wrote a hilarious post about the future. It includes: polygamy, gay gated communities, all marriages gone queer, and no religious institutions left standing. No irrationality there! Here is Chicken Little:

"I remember a time, practically the day before yesterday, when conservatives who warned that gay marriage would inevitably deconstruct marriage and family entirely were called paranoid bigots."

This prediction is based on one gay novelist's imagination of life in 2035. But that is enough to declare "gay marriage [will] inevitably deconstruct marriage and family entirely." Yeah, right.

The many enemies of Christianity

Somehow I managed to resist writing about how the death battle between same sex marriage and conservative Christians for twelve days, but that reprieve is over. I'm back to the topic again because of the hyperbole of Rod Dreher (the main conservative-religious writer whom I read).

Dreher has blamed the Reformation for this evil before. He's blamed the Founding Fathers and their political philosophy that guarantees the state wouldn't impose religion on the people. He's blamed Martin Luther. Now he's blaming nominalism, a philosophical theory that perfect, ideal things don't actually exist.

I think Dreher should just go all the way and proclaim that the problem is that too many people think, and their thoughts are too often sacrilegious because they end up questioning the dogmas of the church. Somehow, though, Dreher exempts himself. When he questions the church, as he did when he left Catholicism to become Eastern Orthodox, it wasn't a hateful, uppity, and sinful of him to do that.

However, when Martin Luther questioned the Catholic church, he unleashed an incredible amount of evil. All sorts of people started questioning church dogmas and finding alternative ideas. For example what is more likely to be correct: your priest or your conscience? Is the Church correct that the sun and planets revolve around the Earth? Somehow this questioning is the direct cause of Western civilization becoming decadent and materialistic, and forsaking the guiding principles of a religious life.

Does Dreher actually wish that he could shut down all of that thought, remove the free will of people, and force people to put unquestioning faith in whatever their church says? From what I've read, that is what Dreher would prefer, based on the number of column inches he's devoted to defending dogma ("what Christianity actually is") and decrying the wrongness of guys marrying guys.

Oh, the hubris of using your brain! (... if you might come to a different conclusion from that of the Church).

A moderate problem in Dreher's argument is that Jesus himself is an example of questioning orthodoxy. But Jesus is the Son of God, and inerrant, which no other human is. So it's not illogical if Jesus can question but the rest of us can't. An even bigger problem is that humans are questioning authorities all the time, especially when they aren't thrashed within an inch of their lives for doing so. Maybe European stock is somewhat worse in this behavior than others (how frequently did Indians question their caste system?), but it has been a persistent trait for as long as we have records.

People are going to use their minds, and what they think may change as a consequence. God can't stop it, and neither can Dreher. If it is to be labeled a sin, that tells us that Dreher or the Church or God can't deal with a major aspect of human nature. It also raises the question of whether Dreher believes that people deserve freedom, or whether instead they need the cossetting of an authoritarian system to avoid this worst of sins--thinking the wrong thoughts.

Of course, what is most likely is that Christianity wasn't threatened by Martin Luther, the Reformation, liberty-based government, or a metaphysical theory I hadn't even heard of (and me a philosophy major!). Only Dreher's mistaken and narrow definition of Christianity is threatened and only in his mind.

Image: wikipedia.org

Extras. Well, the threat's not quite "only in his mind." Traditionalists in some professions have been sued or fined for not working on same-sex weddings. There are also allegations of jobs lost or discriminatory work environments made by traditionalists.

Religious observance and religious identification are also becoming less common. Is that due to people choosing for themselves too? Most likely.

Hegemonic sore losers

I think Christianity used to have quite a lock on most of the world, even if they didn't have a plurality of the population by religion. Christian countries were the most powerful. The white Europeans, their stock, and their religion seemed supreme.

But not so fast. There were a fair number of revolutions against this domination, even in the heart of Europe. The reformation was full of murder and mayhem in the name of one Christian sect or other. Anti-Christian feeling moved in a different direction in the 1700's through now, with political and moral philosophers building the foundations for public life that didn't depend on religion.

Religion as necessity?

Perhaps this was possible because religion isn't a necessity for quite a few people. They live largely without religion affecting them much. They manage to earn a living, raise families, get along with their neighbors, and defend their countries without religion playing a big role in any of these necessary parts of life.

So what happens when you realize you don't need religion to grow your crops or make a living? If you don't need it in raising your family? Or in teaching morality and how to live with others?

Well, religion may seem superfluous. But even more so, it may seem like a con game. If your religion requires you to follow strict food rules, strict rules on when you can work, strict taxes on pain of terrible punishment or exile, you might want to throw off that religion.

Rebelling against that old religion

Of course that is what most early Christians did. They jettisoned the accretion of rules that happened to Judaism, and the streamlined the religion quite a bit.

The same instinct is at work today. I look at traditional Judeo-Christian rules, and I see areas where the rules don't make sense. Is there a religious or moral reason that I have to wait until marriage (in my 20's or 30's) to have sex? Is there a religious or moral reason sexual relations between two men is wrong? And remind me what's wrong with occasional masturbation?

This isn't the only area where Christian teaching have been questioned. Christians haven't generally given away everything they owned, as Jesus told his followers to do. They started lending money with interest at some point. I can't think of a single person who has balked at buying a house because they had religious qualms about the mortgage interest.

To me, the sexual rules aren't sacrosanct, and modern life has eliminated some of the practical reasons for those rules. We can now easily have sex without the worry of unintended pregnancy. We know that masturbation doesn't cause blindness or schizophrenia. We know that same-sex attraction is usually a life-long preference, not a temporary surrender to temptation.

Can't let go

Somehow, letting go of these sexual rules has been very hard for some Christians, even the ones who have mortgages. I don't really know why, and I wish I could find out.

In particular, I'm thinking of Rod Dreher. He had an epiphany at some point and realized it was terrible to treat gays badly. However, this epiphany only included beating up gays, denouncing them, and throwing them out of jobs. His understanding didn't extend to realizing that they have the right to marry too. So Dreher, like many conservative or Orthodox Christians, has been very loud in protest against marriage equality.

Now Dreher doesn't understand how anyone can label him a bigot, or be angry with him. After all, he realized that Jesus commands him to have love in his heart, and he does. Isn't that enough? He's not against gays because he hates them, but because his religion commands him to see them as sinners.

Wake up, Rod. You're living in a world where the sexual condemnation you cling to has been largely discredited. You're likely to be dumped on your keister when you try to tell people that God has ordained these rules. That doesn't fly anymore with a large number of people. You can whine about the loss of 'truth' or 'morality,' but my suspicions is that you miss the power to make people follow these rules.

Dreher writes about his own experience of disobedience and conformance, and how that helped in his life. That's fine, but others have vastly different experience, and they take the lessons they learned to heart also. Why Dreher thinks he can get on his high horse and lecture people based on personal luck (sexual continence worked for him AND it's biblical too!!) is beyond me. Yet he never hesitates to do that.

Short-lived amends 

He may have apologized for his formerly hateful ways and statements, but he falls back on the same behavior so readily. Here's an exchange:

Lee says:

The issue you lament came about as a reaction (and inevitably in some cases overreaction) to conservative Christians using their religion as license to dehumanize and mistreat others. If conservative Christians want to complain that they are now being mistreated, they must first own up to their own sin. Unfortunately, one does not need to look far to see self-proclaimed Christians still spouting hate today. Christiantity’s failure to own up to and deal with its own hate-mongers makes its claims of victimhood ring very hollow indeed.

[Rod's reply: It is useful to know that this is all about vengeance for folks like you. There is no amount of apology -- none -- that will satisfy you. It's important for Christians to know this, so we suffer no illusions that those who seek to destroy us personally and take our livelihoods can be appeased. You can't be. I do wish you would quit lying to yourselves about what you want, though, and why you want it. -- RD]

Compare that to this exchange at a religious conference:

Lyons apologized to Andrew on behalf of Christians for vicious treatment of homosexuals. “I know many people did what they thought was right in the name of Jesus,” Lyons said. “I ask for your forgiveness as well.”

“You have it,” said Andrew.

Apologies and pleas for forgiveness don't last long when it's someone else pointing out Dreher's errors. I guess Dreher only believes in making apologies as noblesse oblige, not as an equal. He's got a lot to learn about not being on top. I'll have to see if he changes his tune in a few years.

Image: wgs160.wordpress.com

Extras. Read the whole long post by Dreher. Notice how readily he circles the wagons to defend his tribe. How quickly he forgets the log in his eye.

The delicious irony of Christians in the closet

I absolutely hate when bloggers send volleys back and forth, but this one may be worth following, if only in hopes of seeing a few well-placed shots.

Rod Dreher is whining about how Christians can't say that they disagree with same-sex marriage out of fear of losing their jobs, or just being ostracized. Now, if a Christian worker were to say that he thinks homosexuals are disgusting and subhuman, that might deserve the reaction of dismissal, and certainly would deserve some measure of social exile. But Christians aren't saying anything as crude as that. Instead, they're trying to deny them the civil right of marriage.

There is an easy solution to this: stop denying civil rights to gays, and understand that includes all civil rights, including the right to marry. If you're going to parse which human rights a fellow human should have, you're not fully accepting the humanity of that person.

And don't act so surprised and offended that people are angry with you when you don't want them to have the full complement of civil rights. The message you send when you deny rights is: you aren't as human as me. Would you take away voting rights from gays? The right to own property? The right to shop in the markets? The right of burial? No, most Christians wouldn't take away these rights. So notice that the right to marriage is just as important, and don't stand in the way of it happening.

I've written before that I understand the deeply held religious beliefs, but religious people, like all people, must learn how to behave in a diverse society. That includes tempering your statements or paying the consequences. Rod Dreher knows that gay people were forced to hide their beliefs for a very long time:

"Christians and other traditionalists were wrong to have demonized gay people in the past, and forced them to live in the closet for fear of their careers."

Yes, and Christians are still wrong if they think they have to power or the right to choose which rights are granted to gays. The whole idea of rights "being granted" is wrong, as though gays were inferior, but their superiors deigned to pretend otherwise to a certain extent.

Rod Dreher again:

"Gay rights activists did a lot of good work to end this climate of fear, and to wake the rest of us up to the humanity of our gay brothers and sisters, and to increase tolerance for them."

Rod, finish waking up, and see that gays have the same right to marriage as you do, as Jews do, as Christians do, as Muslims do, as all people do. You don't have to support it, like it, celebrate it, but just get out of the way. And if you want to stand in the way of others' civil rights, stop whining that traffic is coming your way.

Image: memegenerator.net

Extra. Andrew Sullivan's reply. There are no doubt other posts as well, but I'm not going to chase them down.