I find championing Mike Pence a hard thing. Since he accepted the role of Trump's Vice President, I thought him a political whore. Now he is the man who kept his oath to uphold the Constitution.
- ‘System nearly failed’: US democracy was left hanging by the thread of Pence’s defiance
- Pence prevented a fall into chaos, and 3 other takeaways from Jan. 6 hearing
Having failed to keep my own vows, I cannot do anything but admire Mike Pence.
Not that I will vote for Pence. I do not feel any shock in this headline: Pence the ‘hero’ who foiled Trump’s plot – could it lead to a 2024 run?.
But how long before we have another attempt at making this country a banana republic:
In political science, the term banana republic describes a politically unstable country with an economy dependent upon the exportation of a limited-resource product, such as bananas or minerals. In 1904, the American author O. Henry coined the term to describe Honduras and neighbouring countries under economic exploitation by U.S. corporations, such as the United Fruit Company (now Chiquita Brands International).[1] Typically, a banana republic has a society of extremely stratified social classes, usually a large impoverished working class and a ruling class plutocracy, composed of the business, political, and military elites of that society.[2] The ruling class controls the primary sector of the economy by way of the exploitation of labor;[3] thus, the term banana republic is a pejorative descriptor for a servile oligarchy that abets and supports, for kickbacks, the exploitation of large-scale plantation agriculture, especially banana cultivation.[3]
Why did the masses who followed Trump's words to attack the Capitol do this? Did they not have a civics class? Have they not read the Constitution?
Jan. 6 Committee Lays Out Election Theft Scheme That Nearly Got Mike Pence Killed:
Donald Trump’s last-gasp scheme to overturn democracy and remain in power put his own vice president’s life in grave peril, as Trump’s social media attack on Mike Pence further enflamed the mob that had already breached the U.S. Capitol, the House Jan. 6 committee detailed in a hearing Thursday that included the revelation that the pro-Trump Proud Boys group was prepared to murder Pence on that day.
Do they see some benefit to living in a banana republic? The videos show working stiffs. The kind of people a banana republic uses for fertilizer.
Yes, a majority backs the committee, want to keep America great. FACT SHEET: People Are Closely Watching The January 6th Committee Hearings, Support the Investigation and Want the Perpetrators Held Accountable:
...Polling shows that the vast majority of Americans support the investigation, and want to hold the politicians who planned and supported the attack accountable for their actions. There is more than enough evidence that MAGA Republicans, alongside Trump himself, planned, promoted, and paid for a criminal conspiracy to overturn an election they lost.
This may not matter. What we face is a cadre of rich, spoiled white men behaving with the self-righteousness of toddlers demanding total control of their toys.
Meet the New Leninists, Same as the Old Leninists?
Kevin Williamson’s latest, “The March of the New American Leninists,” is bracing and eloquent....
Kevin writes that many of the chief culprits of our political discontent are Leninists — that is, ideological or political descendants of the Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin — whether consciously (as in the case of Steve Bannon) or not. Regardless, their aims are, in his view, functionally revolutionary....
***
If we are to take seriously the Leninist framework, then we should remember that Lenin himself found “the masses” (a condescending term) a frustratingly stubborn lot. In “What Is To Be Done?,” his famous revolutionary tract, Lenin identified this fact as an obstacle to his aims.
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...So much of the “revolutionary” messaging we hear nowadays, in other words, is an elite phenomenon being wielded for elite advantage. In that, I suppose, it truly does have something in common with its predecessor after all.
These Trumpers want no regulation on their power. They want power the way a toddler does - to get what they want regardless of the effects on others. We have smaller citizens thinking liberty is license - so long as the freedom pertains to themselves. Gun owners brook no restriction as the mayhem kills more than Islamic terrorist. Republican legislatures restrict the pursuit of happiness by trans people. The equal right of women to bodily integrity fall by the wayside. Freedom of speech belongs only to those in power. Power belongs not to the people but to the few. Holding the powerful few to the control of the laws, of the will of the majority, to being responsible citizens becomes a witch hunt.
What made America great was its character - the effort to rise up to the creed of our Declaration of Independence, the recognition of our flaws while trying to do justice to those injured by our errors.
The Trumpists, Donald J. Trump himself, want an America as small as their imagination, as small as their courage, as small as their souls. They endanger this "nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal" as it has never been endangered by replacing a "government of the people, by the people, for the people" with a government of their own will.
Would Trump or his followers say anything like this?
Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this Congress and this administration, will be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We -- even we here -- hold the power, and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free -- honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just -- a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless.
It is good Mike Pence stood up for the Constitution. That is not enough. The people need to stand up for their government.
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