"It’s like you get the most confident, strong personality people, a lot of them being women, and it’s like you’re layering all of them on top of each other and it becomes everyone trying to talk over each other."

"So it’s a lot of really enthusiastic yelling.... It was nice to have so many different, really strong opinions. We always joke that whenever we bring our friends over for the first time they’re going to get grilled. Like, if you don’t have your 10-year plan, like, fully ready and outlined in a spreadsheet for them, you’re not going to survive that meal." 

Said Ella Emhoff, quoted in "What’s It Like to Have Kamala Harris As ‘Momala’? We Asked Her Stepkids/A Zoom interview with Ella and Cole Emhoff" (NYT). 

I was interested in the question — asked by the NYT interviewer — "Your dad has never not worked, right? What do you think that’s going to be like for him?" 

The reader is forced to infer that Emhoff is quitting his work. There's no link or statement to that effect, and I didn't know it. He's only 56. He's been a lawyer. I see at his Wikipedia page that he took a leave of absence from his law firm when Harris was running for VP, and he permanently resigned when she became VP. So what will this be like for him? I'd say, he's old enough to retire, and not retiring would probably cause more trouble than any good his working could have done, even assuming that his legal work was for the good.

Here's his daughter's answer:

I hope he takes up, like, another hobby. I hope he starts knitting, like I do. I think it’ll be a good time for him to slow down and just, I don’t know, like appreciate life. And tap into a lot of the things that he couldn’t do because he was working so much or had these, like, time constraints. I hope that it opens up some of those creative outlets, but that’s obviously just me, the creative child.

Let him play the supportive role with grace and dignity, like the female first and second spouses have done. He's inventing the masculine version of a traditional role. I've seen some people say that the arrival of a man into this role ought to be an occasion for getting rid of it altogether — as if the role itself is sexist, and putting a man in it reveals that it was never a good at all. But I'd say that line of reasoning is sexist. 

BUT: Just clicking on footnotes at Emhoff's Wikipedia page, I see "Kamala Harris’s Husband Named to Faculty at Georgetown Law":  

Emhoff will be a Distinguished Visitor from Practice focusing on media and entertainment law, which he practiced for nearly three decades as a partner at DLA Piper. He will also serve as a distinguished fellow of the school’s Institute for Technology Law and Policy.

Dad needs a hobby. Ha ha. Being a law professor is a hobby. Or such a nothing pastime that you need to load in something like knitting to keep from being at loose ends. 

That NYT question — "Your dad has never not worked, right? What do you think that’s going to be like for him?" — contains the inference that to be a law professor is not to work!

"Mr. Biden’s team has developed a raft of decrees that he can issue on his own authority after the inauguration on Wednesday..."

"... to begin reversing some of President Trump’s most hotly disputed policies. Advisers hope the flurry of action, without waiting for Congress, will establish a sense of momentum for the new president even as the Senate puts his predecessor on trial. On his first day in office alone, Mr. Biden intends a flurry of executive orders that will be partly substantive and partly symbolic. They include rescinding the travel ban on several predominantly Muslim countries, rejoining the Paris climate change accord, extending pandemic-related limits on evictions and student loan payments, issuing a mask mandate for federal property and interstate travel and ordering agencies to figure out how to reunite children separated from families after crossing the border, according to a memo circulated on Saturday by Ron Klain, his incoming White House chief of staff, and obtained by The New York Times. The blueprint of executive action comes after Mr. Biden announced that he will push Congress to pass a $1.9 trillion package of economic stimulus and pandemic relief, signaling a willingness to be aggressive on policy issues and confronting Republicans from the start to take their lead from him. He also plans to send sweeping immigration legislation on his first day in office providing a pathway to citizenship for 11 million people in the country illegally."

The NYT reports.

Aggressive and confrontational... that's the tone they want to set. 

I say "they" because it's "Mr. Biden's team" putting these things together. What part of this is the actual man, Joe Biden, choosing and acting? 

Here's a sentence that's about Biden personally: 

After a lifetime in Washington, the restless, gabby man of consuming ambition who always had something to say and something to prove seems to have given way to a more self-assured 78-year-old who finally achieved his life’s dream.

A man got what he wanted. He was "restless" when he didn't have it yet, and now that he's achieved his dream — getting the position — he's "self-assured." The struggle is over, I guess, and he can relax.

“He is much calmer,” said Representative James E. Clyburn, Democrat of South Carolina and a close ally. “The anxiety of running and the pressure of a campaign, all that’s behind him now. Even after the campaign was over, the election was over, all the foolishness coming from the Trump camp, you don’t know how all this stuff is going to play out. You may know how it’s going to end, but you’re anxious about how it plays out. So all that’s behind him now.”

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk 'til dawn.

"Adnan Oktar... a Muslim televangelist and cult leader... proselytised about religion while scantily clad women bopped robotically beside him."

"He and his followers had connections and influence stretching across the world.... The core female members were called 'kittens' and the men 'lions,' and many were recruited from powerful and wealthy families. The local tabloids loved it: an Islamic 'sex cult' run by Istanbul’s Hugh Hefner with a few Quranic verses thrown in. But, after a trial that has gripped Turkey, Oktar’s organisation... been shown to have committed serious crimes and destroyed the lives of many members. In an 480-page indictment prosecutors laid out charges including sexual abuse, fraud and organised crime that reached deep into Turkey’s elite.... Their message of religious understanding and liberal values resonated with [one woman who escaped the group after 10 years]. In it she found another option to the secularism common in her social class. Soon, the group edged out her old friends and her family. 'They were like best friends around me,' she said. 'I mean, they were taking a lot of care of me. They make you feel like you’re indebted to them, so you want to do something in return. Slowly your reality starts getting distorted. Very slowly, not fast. It’s not like "OK, you joined us, now you can’t go out any more."'"

From "Turkish sex cult saga ends in a 1,000-year jail sentence/A televangelist faces death behind bars while the ‘kittens’ he dominated are struggling to resume normal life" (London Times).

"The Cornish hotel flying a flag for QAnon’s cult delusion/Conspiracy theories spawned in America are taking hold in unexpected corners of British society."

 Reports the London Times.

The Camelot Castle Hotel in Tintagel, Cornwall, may be themed on Arthurian legends but the flag flown over its tower last year stood for a more modern myth.... Guests at the hotel, which displays a Q flag, said that the owner left conspiracy theory material in their bedrooms.... 

Since Mr Mappin, heir to the Mappin and Webb jewellery business, which holds a Royal Warrant, hoisted a Q flag above the battlements of Camelot Castle Hotel last January he has hosted a regular video broadcast called Camelot TV. 

In a coded message on Wednesday to his 20,000 subscribers, he likened QAnon to an oak tree. “If the roots are strong, all will be well in the spring . . . 2021 is all about the rebirth of our civilisation,” he said. 

Oh, come on. That's got to be an intentional reference to "Being There":

President "Bobby": Mr. Gardner, do you agree with Ben, or do you think that we can stimulate growth through temporary incentives? 

Chance: As long as the roots are not severed, all is well. And all will be well in the garden. 

President "Bobby": In the garden. 

Chance: Yes. In the garden, growth has it seasons. First comes spring and summer, but then we have fall and winter. And then we get spring and summer again. 

President "Bobby": Spring and summer. 

Chance: Yes. 

President "Bobby": Then fall and winter. 

Chance: Yes. 

Benjamin Rand: I think what our insightful young friend is saying is that we welcome the inevitable seasons of nature, but we're upset by the seasons of our economy. 

Chance: Yes! There will be growth in the spring! 

Benjamin Rand: Hmm! 

Chance: Hmm! 

President "Bobby": Hm. Well, Mr. Gardner, I must admit that is one of the most refreshing and optimistic statements I've heard in a very, very long time. … I admire your good, solid sense. That's precisely what we lack on Capitol Hill.

It seems like the "coded message" is we're having a laugh. 

But how do I know what's going on over there in Cornwall? From the Times article:

Mr Mappin, 55, a Scientologist and soft porn actor, is a supporter of Mr Trump, whom he met in 2017 after awarding him an “Honorary Camelot Castle Knighthood”.... Mr Mappin said that he knew nothing about the material in guests’ bedrooms. “We raised a flag above Camelot Castle on New Year’s Day of 2020 to highlight emerging freedom-related phenomena that we predicted would become part of the narrative,” he said.... 

Hmm! 

"Justice Sotomayor opens her dissent in U.S. v. Dustin Higgs by saying the names of every person executed by the federal government over the past year."

Justice Sotomayor opens her dissent in U.S. v. Dustin Higgs by saying the names of every person executed by the federal government over the past year. pic.twitter.com/KLHcRTWMIZ

— Sister Helen Prejean (@helenprejean) January 16, 2021

Sister Helen Prejean continues her summary, here, at Twitter, but here's the full text of the dissent, issued yesterday. Excerpt: 

Throughout this expedited spree of executions, this Court has consistently rejected inmates’ credible claims for relief. The Court has even intervened to lift stays of execution that lower courts put in place, thereby ensuring those prisoners’ challenges would never receive a meaningful airing. The Court made these weighty decisions in response to emergency applications, with little opportunity for proper briefing and consideration, often in just a few short days or even hours. Very few of these decisions offered any public explanation for their rationale. 

This is not justice. After waiting almost two decades to resume federal executions, the Government should have proceeded with some measure of restraint to ensure it did so lawfully. When it did not, this Court should have. It has not.

"A Capitol Police lieutenant was suspended for wearing a MAGA cap during the Jan. 6 riots but told his colleagues he did it to get fellow officers out of harm's way."

"If you took the fact out that he is the president of the United States and look at the conduct of the call, it tracks the communication you might see in any drug case or organized crime case. It’s full of threatening undertone and strong-arm tactics."

Said Michael J. Moore, the former United States attorney for the Middle District of Georgia, quoted in "Atlanta Prosecutor Appears to Move Closer to Trump Inquiry/The Fulton County district attorney is weighing an inquiry into possible election interference and is said to be considering hiring an outside counsel" (NYT).

"Senate Democrats could vote to abolish the legislative filibuster, and then pass Biden’s plan on a party-line basis."

"But West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has vowed to keep the filibuster in place. In effect, this means that all regular legislation will need 60 votes to clear the Senate. The only exception to this rule are bills passed through the budget-reconciliation process, which enables legislation pertaining to the federal budget to pass the upper chamber with a simple majority.... [I]t’s hard to see how Biden could really believe there are 10 GOP votes for a $15 minimum wage, or $350 billion in fiscal aid to states, or, frankly, most of the items in his proposal. It’s possible then that this gesture toward bipartisanship is intended to fail: Perhaps, the idea is to make the GOP an offer it can’t accept — but which the voting public overwhelmingly supports — and then say, 'Well, we tried for unity but those Republicans wouldn’t even support the $15 minimum wage that red state voters are clamoring for, so we’re just going to roll everything into one giant, partisan reconciliation bill.' Alternatively Biden may simply be making an opening offer full of provisions he’s ready to concede for the sake of a bipartisan compromise. Regardless, the proposal strikes a weird balance between maximalism and pragmatism.... Hopefully, Biden & Co. know what they’re doing." 

From "The Good, the Bad, and the Odd in Biden’s Stimulus Plan" by Eric Levitz (NY Magazine).

A fantastic example of the problem of humor that some people are going to take for truth.

Honestly no. (I laughed too...but people are already using it to bash CNN. This “some people know it’s a joke but lots of other people don’t” kind of fakery has consequences. OK carry on.) https://t.co/m9o1HcIeaq pic.twitter.com/uhk5uhHpi0

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) January 16, 2021

"As mayor, I will regularly get around the city by subway, bus, or bike, because that’s the way most New Yorkers get around..."

"... and that’s how I’ve been getting around for 25 years. I will build bus rapid transit networks like the 14th street busway in every borough. I will have a fully electric bus system by 2030. [inaudible 00:10:59] electric buses. New York can move our people around in a way that’s sustainable for our neighborhoods and our planet. Building this forward-thinking transit network will require municipal control of the city’s subways and buses. As mayor, I will fight to get control of our subways and buses so we can control our own destiny." 

Said Andrew Yang, announcing his candidacy for mayor of New York City.

What vision! The transportation solution for New York City is buses. Lots of buses. They'll be electric, so that's supposed to be good for the environment, but the method of getting around is the same old method. The bus! I've lived in NYC — 1973 to 1984 and 2007 to 2008 — and the last form of transportation I'd use is the bus. Maybe 3 or 4 times in the early 70s, and never again. 

The problems were not anything that would be helped by running the bus on a battery instead of gas. It was that buses were penned in by street traffic, so the wait could be terribly long and you'd know that once you get on, the ride would be slow. There you are, standing at street level, wondering why you didn't just keep walking and whether you'd be where you were going by now if you had.

A dreary sunrise...

... but it's a café nonetheless.

"There was an eerie sense of inexorability, the throngs of Trump supporters advancing up the long lawn as if pulled by a current."

"Everyone seemed to understand what was about to happen. The past nine weeks had been steadily building toward this moment. On November 7th, mere hours after Biden’s win was projected, I attended a protest at the Pennsylvania state capitol, in Harrisburg. Hundreds of Trump supporters, including heavily armed militia members, vowed to revolt. When I asked a man with an assault rifle—a 'combat-skills instructor' for a militia called the Pennsylvania Three Percent—how likely he considered the prospect of civil conflict, he told me, 'It’s coming.' Since then, Trump and his allies had done everything they could to spread and intensify this bitter aggrievement. On December 5th, Trump acknowledged, 'I’ve probably worked harder in the last three weeks than I ever have in my life.'... Militant pro-Trump outfits like the Proud Boys—a national organization dedicated to 'reinstating a spirit of Western chauvinism' in America—had been openly gearing up for major violence. In early January, on Parler, an unfiltered social-media site favored by conservatives, Joe Biggs, a top Proud Boys leader, had written, 'Every law makers who breaks their own stupid Fucking laws should be dragged out of office and hung.' On the Mall, a makeshift wooden gallows, with stairs and a rope, had been constructed near a statue of Ulysses S. Grant.... I followed a group that broke off to advance on five policemen guarding a side corridor. 'Stand down,' a man in a maga hat commanded. 'You’re outnumbered. There’s a fucking million of us out there, and we are listening to Trump—your boss.' 'We can take you out,' a man beside him warned." 

From "Among the Insurrectionists/The Capitol was breached by Trump supporters who had been declaring, at rally after rally, that they would go to violent lengths to keep the President in power. A chronicle of an attack foretold" by Luke Mogelson (The New Yorker).

"Federal prosecutors offered an ominous new assessment of last week’s siege... saying in a court filing that rioters intended 'to capture and assassinate elected officials.'..."

"The detention memo, written by Justice Department lawyers in Arizona, goes into greater detail about the FBI’s investigation into [Jacob] Chansley, revealing that he left a note for Pence warning that 'it’s only a matter of time, justice is coming.' 'Strong evidence, including Chansley’s own words and actions at the Capitol, supports that the intent of the Capitol rioters was to capture and assassinate elected officials in the United States government,' prosecutors wrote.... 'When questioned as to the meaning of that statement, Chansley went on a lengthy diatribe describing current and past United States political leaders as infiltrators, specifically naming Vice President Mike Pence, former President Barack Obama, former Senator Hillary Clinton and U.S. President-elect Joe Biden as infiltrators involved in various types of wrongdoing,' prosecutors wrote. 'Although he stated his note was not a threat, the Government strongly disagrees.' The prosecutors’ assessment comes as prosecutors and federal agents have begun bringing more serious charges tied to violence at the Capitol.... In Chansley’s case, prosecutors said the charges 'involve active participation in an insurrection attempting to violently overthrow the United States government,' and warned that 'the insurrection is still in progress' as law enforcement prepares for more demonstrations in Washington and state capitals...."

From "'Strong evidence' suggests Capitol rioters intended to ‘capture and assassinate’ officials, US prosecutors say" (Fox News). Chansley is the rioter who's getting extra attention because he costumed himself in a fur hat and horns. He also, as the detention memo says, "has spoken openly about his belief that he is an alien, a higher being, and he is here on Earth to ascend to another reality."

"In his illuminating book 'The Ministry of Truth' a biography of '1984' and its influence, Dorian Lynskey makes a persuasive case that..."

"... the novel is structured in a way that heightens its ambiguity. Yes, the brute force of totalitarianism is an inextricable theme, but the novel’s narration — with its texts within texts — also enacts its own phantasmagoria, a world where both everything is true and nothing is true. Lynskey credits Orwell with anticipating what Hannah Arendt would describe in 'The Origins of Totalitarianism,' published a year after Orwell died: 'The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.'"

From "How ‘Orwellian’ Became an All-Purpose Insult" by Jennifer Szalai (NYT). 

The top-rated comment over there is: "To accuse the opposition of being Orwellian while actually being Orwellian has become the stock and trade of the right. How Orwellian." 

Does it make sense to refer to a "biography" of a book? Well, first, it's in the book's subtitle, "The Ministry of Truth: The Biography of George Orwell's 1984." Second, "bio" means life, so we can understand the extended use of the term: It means that the book has a life. Third, I suspect the usage is explained in the book, and it's my blogging practice to buy the book in Kindle form so I can do a search when I have a question of this magnitude. 

But, wait. I'm reading the OED definition of "biography": "A written account of the life of an individual, esp. a historical or public figure; (also) a brief profile of a person's life or work. Later more generally: a themed narrative history of a specific subject in any of various written, recorded, or visual media." An example of that more general use is the 1999 book title: " H2O: a biography of water." And there's an 1848 book title: "The plant; a biography." 

So I don't have to buy the book, but I will. Such is my dedication to this blog. Here's the closest thing to an explanation for the use of the concept "biography" to refer to a book about a book:

There have been several biographies of George Orwell and some academic studies of his book’s intellectual context but never an attempt to merge the two streams into one narrative, while also exploring the book’s afterlife. I am interested in Orwell’s life primarily as a means to illuminate the experiences and ideas that nourished this very personal nightmare in which everything he prized was systematically destroyed: honesty, decency, fairness, memory, history, clarity, privacy, common sense, sanity, England, and love....

"Adolfo 'Shabba-Doo' Quiñones, who grew up dancing in a bleak public housing project in Chicago and went on to become a pioneer of street dance in the 1980s..."

"... and one of its first celebrities after appearing in the hit movie 'Breakin’,' died on Dec. 29 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 65.... He shimmied in the video for Chaka Khan’s 'I Feel for You,' and he was the choreographer and lead dancer of Madonna’s 'Who’s That Girl?' world tour in 1987. He also choreographed (and appeared in) the video for Lionel Richie’s 'All Night Long' and advised Michael Jackson on the video for 'Bad.' Us Weekly called him the 'Bob Fosse of the Streets.' 'Shabba-Doo was an absolute Los Angeles dance legend,' the rapper Ice-T... 'We throw that word around. But not anybody can say they invented an entire dance style.' Even before 'Breakin’,' Mr. Quiñones had made a mark on the dance world in the 1970s. He danced as a teenager on 'Soul Train' with an influential ensemble called the Lockers. That group... became known for its development of the 'locking' technique, typified by rhythmic, freezing dance movements...."

The NYT reports.

"Oh, hello, nice to see you, have a seat — let’s stress-eat some chips together. Let’s turn ourselves, briefly..."

"... into dusty-fingered junk-food receptacles. This will force us to stop looking, for a few minutes, at the bramble of tabs we’ve had open on our internet browsers for all these awful months: the articles we’ve been too frazzled to read about the TV shows we’ve been meaning to watch.... For nearly a year now, many of us have been locked in a controlled environment, a closed lab of selfhood: the Quarantine Institute of Applied Subjectivity. Our homes have become biodomes designed to study the fragile ecosystems of Us. All our neuroses and addictions and habits are under the microscope. Willpower, productivity, resilience, despair. We have turned into scientists of ourselves. And so I watch myself eating chips.... The chips come like ocean waves, like human breaths, serial but unique, each part of a huge eternal rhythm but also its own precious discovery.... I believe we have reached the point, in fact, where it would be shameful to leave only what’s left.... If we stop, it will end, but if we keep going, it might last forever...."

From "Letter of Recommendation/I Recommend Eating Chips" by Sam Anderson (NYT).

In the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

"'There is no grievance that is a fit object of redress by mob law.' Those words are as true today as when Abraham Lincoln spoke them."

"As I said last summer when mob violence gripped our streets, so I say again about the mob violence at our nation’s Capitol last week: those persons responsible should be held accountable in the courts to the full extent of the law. The House has passed an article of impeachment against the president, but the Senate under its rules and precedents cannot start and conclude a fair trial before the president leaves office next week. Under these circumstances, the Senate lacks constitutional authority to conduct impeachment proceedings against a former president."

Tom Cotton says, in a statement (which I'm quoting in full).

"The Founders designed the impeachment process as a way to remove officeholders from public office—not an inquest against private citizens. The Constitution presupposes an office from which an impeached officeholder can be removed. Fidelity to the Constitution must always remain the lodestar for our nation. Last week, I opposed the effort to reject certified electoral votes for the same reason—fidelity to the Constitution—I now oppose impeachment proceedings against a former president. Congress and the executive branch should concentrate entirely for the next week on conducting a safe and orderly transfer of power. After January 20, Congress should get on with the people’s business: improving our vaccination efforts, getting kids back to school, and getting workers back on the job."

Click on my "Tom Cotton" tag. Tom Cotton is getting a lot of things right. 

Remember the poll I had on November 23? "Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now: Trump/Tom Cotton." I said, "My poll, my options — do your own poll if you don't like the constraints." Tom Cotton looked like the most apt alternative to me at the time. And you Trump voters who answered the poll — or whoever answered the poll — chose Cotton over Trump, 55% to 45%. Let me see how that choice is holding up:

Trump voters only please: If you had to pick the 2024 GOP nominee right now:

Trump

Tom Cotton

 

pollcode.com free polls

Biden shows no leadership... I mean... Biden tries to stay above the fray.

The NYT headline is "As Trump is impeached for a second time, Biden tries to stay above the fray."

... President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. has maintained a studied cool, staying largely removed from the proceedings... Mr. Biden’s focus on the governing challenge ahead... it also underscores the contrast between his cautious, centrist approach to politics and the anger of many Democratic officials and voters over Mr. Trump’s assaults on democratic norms.

Actually, this little article is rather critical of Biden, even with that coolness spin. He's "removed," "above the fray," but is that good? Some people would like him to express hotness — anger and leftism — not this "cautious, centrist approach."

I like cool, calm centrism. My problem with Biden is that he's not imposing his restraint on his party, just standing back and standing by* as his party goes on a wild pursuit of something other than "the governing challenge ahead."

I have to give this post my "Democratic Party in Trumpland" tag. That tag should be relegated to the dustbin of the blog's archive. But the Party loves the stomping ground of Trumpland. They don't want to leave. They don't care about the dawning of Bidentime. 

______________________ 

 * Reference: 

 

Is the impeachment funny?

Karl Marx wrote that history repeats itself, "the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce." 

Is the second impeachment funny? 

My son John has a Facebook post reacting to the impeachment with jokes:

The most impeached president in American history! I wonder if Trump is tired of all this winning… 

Half of all impeachments of an American president have been of Trump!... 

We’re going to have impeachment, like you wouldn’t believe. A lot of people are saying he’s the best president ever at getting impeached. No one had ever heard of impeachment before Trump.

I said, "Is it funny?" 

John said, "Is it funny to turn the tables on the pompously powerful?" and I — copying the humor of "No one had ever heard of impeachment before Trump"* — said, "There are very pompously powerful people on both sides."** 

I don't want to be part of the that's-not-funny crowd, but I do wonder if those who are wielding the power — using the mechanism of government — are themselves clowning. I heard some of yesterday's speechifying, and I detected a lack of sobriety. There's a lot of political theater, and I'm wondering if this show is a farce.

Trump is almost out the door. He's being kicked as he leaves. And there's the prospect of conducting the impeachment trial after he's out of office.*** Farce?

____________________________ 

*   Last June, Trump asserted that "nobody had ever heard of" Juneteenth before he made it "very famous."

** Reacting to the violent protests in Charlottesville in April 2017, Trump said there were "very fine people, on both sides."

***  Makes me think of this.

"Some say the riots were caused by Antifa. There was absolutely no evidence of that. And conservatives should be the first to say so...."

"The President bears responsibility for Wednesday’s attack on Congress by mob rioters. He should have immediately denounced the mob when he saw what was unfolding. These facts require immediate action by President Trump, accept his share of responsibility, quell the brewing unrest and ensure President elect Biden is able to successfully begin his term. The President’s immediate action also deserves congressional action, which is why I think a fact finding commission and a censure resolution would be prudent."

Said House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, speaking on the House floor in yesterday's debate on the impeachment.

Trump got his message out on Twitter.

pic.twitter.com/FIJbvCYGJ6

— The White House (@WhiteHouse) January 13, 2021

Transcript here. Excerpts: 

I want to be very clear, I unequivocally condemn the violence that we saw last week. Violence and vandalism have absolutely no place in our country and no place in our movement. Making America Great Again has always been about defending the rule of law, supporting the men and women of law enforcement and upholding our nation’s most sacred traditions and values. Mob violence goes against everything I believe in and everything our movement stands for. No true supporter of mine could ever endorse political violence.... Whether you are on the right or on the left, a Democrat or a Republican, there is never a justification for violence, no excuses, no exceptions. America is a nation of laws....

Now I am asking everyone who has ever believed in our agenda to be thinking of ways to ease tensions, calm tempers, and help to promote peace in our country. There has been reporting that additional demonstrations are being planned in the coming days, both here in Washington and across the country. I have been briefed by the US Secret Service on the potential threats. Every American deserves to have their voice heard in a respectful and peaceful way. That is your First Amendment Right. But I cannot emphasize that there must be no violence, no law breaking and no vandalism of any kind. Everyone must follow our laws and obey the instructions of law enforcement.... 

What is needed now is for us to listen to one another, not to silence one another....

"The ability of companies such as Facebook, Twitter and Google to control what people see online is so potent, it is the subject of antitrust hearings...."

"But the decision by Amazon to push Parler off its dominant cloud-computing service illustrates just how powerful its content-moderation capabilities are as well.... [T]he companies that provide the technical infrastructure that powers websites and services where people express opinions have vast power as well, though they rarely use it. They include little-known companies that register website domains for customers; so-called content delivery networks, which can boost the speed at which webpages load; and Internet service providers, which connect homes and businesses to the Web.... [Amazon's] Amazon Web Services is the dominant provider of cloud infrastructure services, which let customers rent data storage and processing capabilities over the Web instead of running their own data centers.... [AWS's] Trust & Safety team, which has fewer than 100 workers, acts only on complaints received. In its reply to Parler’s suit, Amazon said it received reports in mid-November that the social network was 'hosting content threatening violence.'... It accused Amazon of conspiring with Twitter to take the smaller competitor offline just as it was significantly gaining users in the wake of Twitter permanently banning Trump.... 'Without AWS, Parler is finished as it has no way to get online.'" 

WaPo reports.

Here's the top-rated comment at WaPo: "If you support a baker choosing to not selling a wedding cake to a same-sex couple, then it follows you must support a company choosing not to do business with a customer that behaves in a manner contrary to the company's known parameters. As the same-sex couple was told, go find someone else to bake your cake. Parler should do the same. If they can't, perhaps it's the 'cake' they are trying to bake."

IN THE COMMENTS: MayBee takes on the cake analogy:

Parler was already on AWS. 

So the baker (aside from scale, monopoly considerations, and anti trust issues) situation would have to be more like: 

The gay couple hired the baker, paid the baker, and then on the day of the wedding the baker refused to deliver the cake. The baker, however, delivered a lot of cakes to your ex-boyfriends wedding on the same day. And then the baker announced you were dangerous.

"QAnon reshaped Trump’s party and radicalized believers. The Capitol siege may just be the start."

WaPo headline. 

Subhed: "The online conspiracy theory, which depicts Trump as a messianic warrior battling ‘deep state’ Satanists, has helped fuel a real-world militant extremism that could haunt the Biden era."

Oddly, that makes QAnon sound like the leader of the movement — QAnon, not Trump. But the impeachers portray Trump as leading an insurrection. Is Trump the evil mastermind, or more of a dupe, standing in the middle of things, thinking he's a fine leader and surprised by the violent turn taken by his adulators?

From the long article:

The baseless conspiracy theory, which imagines Trump in a battle with a cabal of deep-state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex, helped drive the [January 6th] events and facilitate organized attacks.... QAnon devotees joined with extremist group members and white supremacists at the Capitol assault after finding one another on Internet sanctuaries: the conservative forums of TheDonald.win and Parler; the anonymous extremist channels of 8kun and Telegram; and the social media giants of Facebook and Twitter, which have scrambled in recent months to prevent devotees from organizing on their sites.

That has QAnon devotees as one of many sets of people who joined together. I can't tell what the proportions were or even when these sets merged into a single action. I'll read on.

QAnon didn’t fully account for the rampage, and the theory’s namesake — a top-secret government messenger of pro-Trump prophecies — has largely vanished, posting nothing in the past 35 days and only five times since Trump’s election loss....

So, there's no person called QAnon who's leading or purporting to lead any of the recent actions. We're just calling some leaderless group "QAnon devotees." Please note that I am merely interpreting sentences I'm reading in WaPo, not making any statements about anything I know or believe. 

On fringe right-wing platforms and encrypted messaging apps, believers are offering increasingly outlandish theories and sharing ideas for how they can further work to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 contest — with violence, if necessary. The fervent online organizing seen ahead of last week’s assault has begun building again....

This is a frustrating read. I am searching to understand the extent to which the January 6th event was planned, and now I see that they are doing it "again," but what are they doing again? What was the organizing? I see that it was "online" and "fervent," but I don't know what they did before they showed up in person and did what they did. And how do I even know that the fervent on-line people were the same set of people who showed up in person? 

[ADDED: The end of the article discusses some individuals who participated in the breach of the Capitol and who also followed QAnon theories.]

Frustratingly, this article purports to shed light on the workings of conspiracy thinking, but the article itself indulges in the mechanisms of conspiracy thinking!

Thousands more have flocked to QAnon-affiliated spaces on the private-messaging app Telegram. One 12,000-member channel was so overrun with new members that those behind the forum temporarily froze the chat feature....

Is 12,000 a big chat group? I'm willing to believe QAnon is a big and dangerous force, but this article isn't giving me enough facts. There are conspiracy theorists talking on line, and January 6th happened — connect it up!

In 2017, a writer on the anonymous message board 4chan, styling themselves as Q, wrote posts spinning a dark and cryptic fantasy — detailing how Trump was working tactically to dismantle the “deep state” cabal that controls much of the world. For years, QAnon spun a tale in the militant language of good against evil, promising that Trump, a soldier messiah, would strike down a global cabal of pedophile politicians and Satanist media elites in a day of reckoning called the “Storm.” 

The siege, for some believers, was seen as that online theory coming to life....

Some believers! And who are these people? As it reads, it seems that there was some vivid conspiracy theory on line, and whatever happened on January 6th happened, and some people who believed in the conspiracy theory also believed that what happened on January 6th had to do with the conspiracy theory. That's not connecting it up! That's saying that some conspiracy theory people fit new information into their conspiracy theory. Yeah, that's how conspiracy theory people think! 

Much of QAnon devotees’ energy has in recent months flooded to false allegations that Trump had been robbed of an election victory. The QAnon-boosting attorneys Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood led a failing pro-Trump attempt to overturn the election. The QAnon conversation online had pivoted from taking down a global cabal to targeting a more specific mission: “Stop the Steal.” So when Trump invited supporters to Washington for mass demonstrations on Jan. 6, the day Congress was set to certify Biden’s victory, researchers said pro-Trump agitators and QAnon believers saw it as a demand for action. “Be there,” Trump tweeted last month. “Will be wild!”

I await further investigation and hope they can be conducted with professionalism.  

Another bloggiversary: This blog is 17 years old, and the record of blogging every single day is still intact.

That's 6,210 days. There have been 61,712 posts — not counting this one. An average just under 10 posts a day. There were 3,644 posts last year — again, just under 10 posts a year. You can see the number per year and per week for the 17 years in the side bar. I don't count the posts each day — or any day — to see if I'm hitting 10. 

The number of posts per day isn't a goal. I just have my way of looking around, seeing what's bloggable to me, and hanging out with the blog, mostly in the morning, until it feels done. One day, the whole thing might feel done and I'll walk away. More likely, I will ramble along until — one way or the other — I am incapacitated.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night, but don't talk about the re-impeachment here. Go one post down for that. Keep Trump out of this one. This is a Trump-free safe space. Let's talk about safe spaces and other concepts that recently were big but have disappeared. A difficult topic, because who can remember what is forgotten. What's the most important thing you forgot recently? What's your favorite time of day? What songs can you think of that depict romantic love as a very casual, easy-going activity? Do those songs annoy you or were you hoping they'd influence potential partners not to be too demanding? 

Watch Trump get impeached — live.

"On the surface, it’s a little weird that digital culture in 2021 would become suddenly obsessed with 200-year-old folk songs about men on whaling boats."

They sound like prehistoric oddities, which is part of the appeal. Simplistic in structure, they are deliberately repetitive and full of ideas and references that feel very, very far from life right now. Aside from the word Wellerman, they’re full of harpoons and pierheads and the specifics of butchering whales; the most recognizable lyrics are lines about 'rounding the Cape' and the love of bonny brown-haired lasses. Sea shanties are also resiliently uncool. They’re songs about whaling and strong winds, and they sound the way a bowl of New England clam chowder looks: imprecise, sort of lumpy, and, not to put too fine a point on it, very white.... One person is the song leader, setting the pace and singing the verses, but the engine of the song is in the repeating chorus that everyone sings together over and over again. They are unifying, survivalist songs, designed to transform a huge group of people into one collective body, all working together to keep the ship afloat. Right now, it’s not safe to gather in groups. Every news story is about division, deadlock, anger, and the massive gulf between the left and the right.... It’s hard to think of a more unexpectedly appropriate musical form for a bunch of people yearning for physical (and political and spiritual) connection."

From "Um, It Makes Total Sense We’re All Into Sea Shanties Now" (New York Magazine).

SeaShantyTok keeps getting better pic.twitter.com/yWLEHzlPlB

— Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021

In the interest of giving credit where it’s actually due, @NathanEvanss started off this Wellerman chain
and @jonnytmstewart added the gentle thiccness ✨ pic.twitter.com/R5Lazj8Q0F

— Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 8, 2021

A new challenger has arrived, and his name is Promise: https://t.co/pDi63kRU1W pic.twitter.com/P9I9dysUd4

— Peter Fries (@Peter_Fries) January 12, 2021

"Given the smaller number of seditious members in the Senate, McConnell’s task is far easier: Conduct a quick Senate trial; convict Trump and..."

"... ban him from future office; expel Cruz and Hawley; and then vote to censure others who tried to deny voters the president and vice president they chose. McConnell should do these things not because it is the only moral, decent course, but because he is smarter than McCarthy and knows that to do any less would starve his members of financial support and set them up for losses from pro-democracy primary challengers or Democrats. And we know one thing: McConnell is not dumb." 

From "Impeachment is just the start. Republicans must cast off the deadwood" by Jennifer Rubin (WaPo).

Don't misread "smarter than McCarthy." I myself did a double take. That's what I get for skipping right to the end of a column. In context, it's clear that Rubin is talking about House minority leader Kevin McCarthy. 

The headline is screwy. Deadwood?!

Anyway, what you see there shows the problem of starting something. If you do one thing, as soon as you do it, people will say, you haven't done enough. You've got to do one more thing and one more thing.

Me, I liked Mike Pence's letter rejecting the use of the 25th Amendment. He set the tone I like to hear. Maturity, moderation, future-looking optimism, order, working together.... I wish Joe Biden would say something like that. Where is he in all of this anyway?

Blue morning.

Look at the top 2 best-selling books at Amazon.

List here. Orwell's "Animal Farm" ranks high too — at #18. Isn't it amazing that "1984" seems so continually relevant? I clicked into my Kindle, and it was the book that was already open. I'd been doing a search on a word — "fight" — after it came up in the context of re-impeaching Trump:

I note that the Trump quote [the Democrats included in the Article of Impeachment] did not make my list "The 7 most violence-inciting statements in Donald Trump's speech to the crowd on January 6th"! I thought "fight like hell" sounded too much like ordinary politics to make the list. We fight for our rights, we fight in political campaigns, we fight in court. Are we going to outlaw the word "fight"?! We'll be descending into Newspeak.

But it was this more general concept about Newspeak that was important — from the essay on Newspeak in the back of the book: 

As we have already seen in the case of the word free [retained only in the sense of "This dog is free from lice"], words which had once borne a heretical meaning were sometimes retained for the sake of convenience, but only with the undesirable meanings purged out of them. Countless other words such as honor, justice, morality, internationalism, democracy, science, and religion had simply ceased to exist. A few blanket words covered them, and, in covering them, abolished them. All words grouping themselves round the concepts of liberty and equality, for instance, were contained in the single word crimethink, while all words grouping themselves round the concepts of objectivity and rationalism were contained in the single word oldthink. Greater precision would have been dangerous.... 

And look at what's #2 on Amazon's list, "Unmasked: Inside Antifa's Radical Plan to Destroy Democracy" by Andy Ngo.

"This was not a protest, this was a well-organized insurrection against our country that was organized by Donald Trump."

Said Representative Jim McGovern, Democrat of Massachusetts, Chair of the House Rules Committee, opening the debate this morning on the Article of Impeachment, quoted in "The House begins debating impeachment charge against Trump." (NYT). McGovern asserted that he looked into some people's eyes and "saw evil." I'm seeing the live vote embedded at the Times, and it is strictly along party lines...

... even though the text of the article says "Republicans were fracturing over the vote." And:

Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the Republican leader, has embraced the effort as a means to purge Mr. Trump from the party, according to people who have spoken to him, and at least five House Republicans planned to vote to impeach.

I'm interested in seeing how the proof will be accomplished. McGovern sets a high bar in calling it "well-organized" and an "insurrection against our country" and saying that this organizing was done by Trump. 

ADDED: I'm interested in this notion that you can look into eyes and see evil. I remember how ludicrous it seemed when George W. Bush said he looked into Putin's eyes and "got a sense of his soul" — and decided he was "straightforward and trustworthy." 

But here's an article from 2011 in Scientific American, "The Eyes Have It/Eye gaze is critically important to social primates such as humans. Maybe that is why illusions involving eyes are so compelling." That's about the relatively objective issue of misperceiving where eyes are looking. Harder to study whether there is evil in there! 

Do courts allow witnesses to testify about what they feel they saw in someone's eyes? I have not researched this question, but I believe it would not be acceptable to testify "I looked into his eyes and saw pure evil." 

Why I put AdSense ads back on the blog — self-defense.

Last October, after years of taking offense at Google for sending me email telling me I had offensive material on this blog, I discontinued my participation in Google Adsense. That is, I opted out of using advertising to monetize this blog. At the time, I wrote: 

I'm tired of checking to see what's supposedly a violation. I get so many of these and they're often posts that are nothing but a quote from a commentator in the NYT. But to see that the review didn't okay these pages... it's just mind-bending. I can't waste my energy dealing with this bullshit. In every case, I'm told that I've violated their policy with "Dangerous or derogatory content," which I find insulting. Here are recent posts that have been found in violation of that policy — even after review... 

Click through to see what I'd written, but suffice it to say that there was nothing that could possibly be considered "dangerous" or "derogatory." I said:

How did these articles get flagged? By robots or by opponents of this blog? What kind of review does Google have that would reinforce the idea that this is "Dangerous or derogatory content"?! Review by robots or by opponents of this blog? I can't imagine an unbiased human being finding all — or any — of these posts to have "Dangerous or derogatory content." It could be that I'm getting flagged for crap in the comments.... 

I'm not dealing with it any more. So enjoy ad-free Althouse.

Well, I am going to deal with it now and in the future.  I just turned AdSense ads back on. At least, Google was nice enough to offer me cake....

... yeah, Google, your AI did a nice job of knowing what I like. Cake. I like cake. But it's not yummy cake that has me coming back. And it's not the income from the ads. I realized I can use AdSense in self-defense. Google has the power to delete this blog. Whatever force caused those exasperating notifications is still out there, exerting pressure, whether I'm getting notifications or not.

As I noted in that October post, "It could be that I'm getting flagged for crap in the comments." In the comments there, Yancey Ward said: 

It isn't your content that is getting flagged, Ms. Althouse, it is what we commenters are saying - they are flagging the separate blog post which contains all of the comments at the end. You just have too many of us deplorables.

I'm pretty sure that's what happened, and I gave up ads because it seemed like too much work to go searching for what might be the problem in the comments. But the mechanism for reporting abuse to Google remains. This presents a risk to me, and I think the risk has increased in the past week. So I want those notifications. I'm worried not only that Google will overdo its censorship but also that haters of this blog — of the comments section of this blog — will come in here with pseudonyms and write violent threats and racist crap for the purpose of drawing censorship down upon me. 

There are various ways to deal with the problem of commenters who are here to hurt me, and some of them are too labor intensive. Some of them would diminish (or destroy) the flow of the comments. The comments at their best are phenomenal, and I'm very happy with the good commenters and have greatly appreciated their company these last 17 years. (Bloggiversary #17 is tomorrow.) But one thing I can do is to put the ads back up and then use the notifications to identify the comment threads that have something Google sees as a problem. Then it's a limited task to look for what needs to be deleted.

I delete comments without prodding from Google when I see threats of violence. I delete comments with the "n-word." I probably have a standard that's close to what Google is identifying, so I'm going to accept the help from Google now. I can't read every comment on every post — there are close to 4 million comments on this blog — but I can comb through the comments sections on posts where I get a Google notification. Google is getting vigilant about material that I don't want either — and, of course, I don't want a festering problem that I cannot see and that is undermining the existence of this blog. 

And that's why there are ads on this blog.

At the Sunrise Café...

... you can talk all night.

And here's a picture of me on my 70th birthday, ice skating:

Photo by Meade.

And thanks to all who wished me a happy birthday.

"Trump’s Twitter feed... was a window into his deranged and disordered mind. The insults, grandiosity, lies, threats, bigotry and incitement..."

"He was a menace to the world, but he was a genius of the genre: nasty, irreverent, oddly addictive. It will be strange to revert to humdrum, cautious political platitudes after drinking the wine of uninhibited, free-association populism. Here are some recent tweets by President-Elect Joe Biden. 'In 10 days, we move forward and rebuild — together.' 'In 2020 we’re going to build a brighter future.' 'I’m filled with fresh hope about the possibilities of better days to come.'"

Writes Nicholas Goldberg (LA Times via Yahoo News).

Maybe people will drift away from social media. How did we get so caught up in it in the first place? Trump was part of a wave of excitement over Twitter, and with him banished — along with other vivid voices of the right — it might not have any energy at all. Why look? What's there? An old man babbles about his fresh hope of a brighter future?! If you don't have people to bounce off of, what will you tweet about? 

I remember when Twitter first got started. I already had a successful blog, but I thought this "microblogging" should work for me. But almost immediately, I saw how much it depended on going back and forth with other people who were right there next to you on the platform. I was used to sole possession of my blog's front page, and I could chose to interact with commenters on the comments page or link to other blogs, but I had a sense of this being my own place. I liked that. I'll embed a tweet here if I want to go after something I see over there. 

But I've watched Twitter develop. It's so full of journalists and politicos who snap back and forth, and Trump fit right in and amped everything up. It's so fast and vicious and crazy. Now, he's going to be extracted? Who will the lefties — the people who are left (in 2 senses) — engage with? Each other?

Do I hope the whole place falls flat? I hate the censorship. And if it falls flat as a consequence, that's poetic justice. 

Sunrise.

"President Trump on Tuesday showed no contrition or regret for instigating the mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened the lives of members of Congress..."

"... and his vice president, saying that his remarks to a rally beforehand were 'totally appropriate'” and that the effort by Congress to impeach and convict him was 'causing tremendous anger.' Answering questions from reporters... the president sidestepped questions about his culpability.... 'People thought what I said was totally appropriate,' Mr. Trump told reporters at Joint Base Andrews, en route to Alamo, Texas, where he was set to visit the border wall.... 'If you look at what other people have said, politicians at a high level about the riots during the summer, the horrible riots in Portland and Seattle and various other places, that was a real problem,' he said."

The NYT reports.

"Which comes closer to your point of view: democracy in the United States is alive and well or democracy in the United States is under threat?"

"Do you think that extremism is a big problem in the United States, or don't you think so?... Do you think that - the Republican members of Congress who tried to stop the formal certification of Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election were undermining democracy or protecting democracy?... Do you think that - the individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th were undermining democracy or protecting democracy?... Do you think that President Trump should resign as president, or don't you think so?... Do you think that President Trump is mentally stable, or not?... Do you consider what happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th a coup attempt, or not?... Do you want to see the individuals who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6th held accountable for their actions, or not?... Do you hold President Trump responsible for the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, or not?... Do you think that law enforcement officials did everything they could to prevent the initial storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, or don't you think so?..."

Lots of great question at this new Quinnipiac poll. Read the details.

"Pseudocoup. Can be pronounced like Sudoku if wordplay demands it."

"An attempt to overthrow the government that, due to both poor planning and execution, fails in an incredibly underwhelming fashion." 

Urban Dictionary. Entry dated January 9, 2021. Declared "Word of the Day" on January 13th.

"We began preparing for Inauguration Day last year."

Write Guy Rosen, VP Integrity, and Monika Bickert, VP Global Policy Management of Facebook, setting off my bullshit detector. Last year was 12 days ago. I'll keep going. I want to read the original document, not the NBC News summary — "Facebook bans all 'stop the steal' content" — that I can see is getting lots of links. 

I don't believe Facebook would ban everything with the 3-word phrase. That would include all sorts of people who are just talking about what is the biggest news story going. It must be that "stop the steal" is a search term, and there's some additional judgment going on. 

Back to Rosen and Bickert:

But our planning took on new urgency after last week’s violence in Washington, D.C., and we are treating the next two weeks as a major civic event. We’re taking additional steps and using the same teams and technologies we used during the general election to stop misinformation and content that could incite further violence during these next few weeks. 

We are now removing content containing the phrase “stop the steal” under our Coordinating Harm policy from Facebook and Instagram.

It doesn't say  "We are now removing all content...."

We removed the original Stop the Steal group in November and have continued to remove Pages, groups and events that violate any of our policies, including calls for violence.

So "stop the steal" is a search term, and it's being used to quickly get to things that might violate anti-violence policies. There's still analysis of whether those policies — which apply to everything on the site —  are violated.

We’ve been allowing robust conversations related to the election outcome and that will continue.

Okay. Robust. We can still have robust conversations. Facebook has "been allowing" them. We can be robust — but not violent — because Facebook has, thus far, allowed it. We have freedom at the sufferance of Facebook. 

But with continued attempts to organize events against the outcome of the US presidential election that can lead to violence, and use of the term by those involved in Wednesday’s violence in DC, we’re taking this additional step in the lead up to the inauguration....

As always, we will continue to remove content, disable accounts and work with law enforcement when there is a risk of physical harm or direct threats to public safety.... 

Facebook should take steps to keep people from using it to plan acts of violence, but it should not obstruct the planning of rallies and protests. What should it do when there's a category of rally that has had an element of violence? I think it should work at achieving viewpoint neutrality. But the Inauguration this year is a unique situation, and special focus is justified. 

After the inauguration, our label on posts that attempt to delegitimize the election results will reflect that Joe Biden is the sitting president.

Hey, remember "Not My President Day," February 20th, 2017? From the Wikipedia article on the topic:

"Not My Presidents Day"... was a series of rallies against the president of the United States, Donald Trump, held on Washington's Birthday... Protests were held in dozens of cities throughout the United States.... The marches were mostly coordinated through Facebook.... 

The downfall-of-Trump conspiracy theories will go on for 100 years. They will never end in my lifetime. I have accepted this reality.

Americans love our great conspiracy subjects. The JFK assassination.... Area 51... We were talking about that last night, and I happened to say, "Truthers. Remember Truthers. What were the Truthers?" 

I had to stop and think which conspiracy subject had the people called "Truthers." I remembered: 9/11.

Now, 2 hours before sunrise, I'm seeing the headline "Some members of Congress fear the Capitol mob attack was an inside job" (Axios). Oh no. It's like the 9/11 Truther theory: inside job!

It will never end. We're just getting started. 

Do I need to worry that this is the conspiracy theory that gets you ousted from social media? Is it a left-wing conspiracy theory or a right-wing conspiracy theory? If I say it looks like a left-wing conspiracy theory because it's Axios so I'm probably safe writing about this, am I wafting a right-wing conspiracy theory and therefore vulnerable?

First sentence of the Axios article: "An information gap following the Capitol assault has fueled fears among members of Congress that it was an inside job involving the Capitol Police." So, in the absence of evidence — an "information gap" — you can speculate about anything and feel afraid. Then the gap itself can be said to "fuel fears." 

There's only one member of Congress identified in the article, Tim Ryan, "a lone Democratic congressman from Ohio": 

The mass resignations by the Capitol Police chief and Senate and House sergeant-at-arms, coupled with few briefings by federal officials like the FBI, have left important questions unanswered and a lone Democratic congressman from Ohio trying to fill in the gaps. Rep. Tim Ryan, chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Capitol Police, has held three virtual briefings to update reporters. 

On Monday, he shared the shocking news that two Capitol Police officers had been suspended and 10–15 were under investigation for their behavior during the riot. "One was the selfie officer, and another was an officer who put a MAGA hat on and started directing people around,” Ryan said....

It's one thing to point to individual officers who, surrounded by a mob, behaved in a manner that could be construed as friendly. But why wasn't there far better security overall? If you're going to hypothesize that the Capitol Police supported the mob, don't limit yourself to one hypothesis. Why did the mob get into the building in the first place? But don't be a Truther. Actually find out what is true.

But you can see how there's a left-wing hypothesis here and a right-wing hypothesis. I presume, under current conditions of censorship, that the left-wing hypothesis will get air. That fuel will catch fire. The right-wing hypothesis... well, where will it go? 

"I’m not the one storming the capital, I’m literally changing the world by putting my life and thoughts and love out there on the table 24 seven. Respect it."

Said Lana Del Rey, quoted in "Lana Del Rey Reveals, Immediately Defends New Album Chemtrails Over the Country Club Cover" (New York Magazine). I've seen controversial album covers before, and I really don't know what micro-infraction she thinks people are detecting...

... I'm just here to quote the comment, "For Christ’s sake folks (not just Lana)—it’s spelled 'Capitol'—I feel like no one knows this?"

Here's the title track, in case you might enjoy the music (and the visuals):

Here are the lyrics, in case you, like me, don't want to strain through the mumbling to get to the words but somehow still care what she might be saying. 

There's nothing wrong contemplating God/Under the chemtrails over the country club/We're in our jewels in the swimming pool/... It's beautiful, LSD, normality settles down over me/I'm not bored or unhappy, I'm still so strange and wild/... Washing my hair, doing the laundry/Late night TV, I want you on me.... 

"There came a moment, around the time I turned 70...."

 

"The situation this country is facing is anything but amusing"/"Oh, who cares? Honestly. One of the few joys of being as old as we both are is it is not our problem."

I just happened to reach Episode 5 of Season 3 of "The Crown" last night, the eve of my own 70th birthday. The episode title is "The Coup."

At the Monday Night Café...

... you can talk about whatever you like.

"Hours after it went offline on Monday, the social media start-up Parler filed a lawsuit in federal court accusing Amazon of violating antitrust law..."

"... and asking for a temporary restraining order to prevent the tech giant from blocking access to cloud computing services. Amazon told Parler over the weekend that it would shut off service because 'a steady increase in violent content' on the site showed that the company did not have a reliable process to prevent it from violating Amazon’s terms of service. Amazon said it would ensure Parler’s data was preserved so that it could migrate to a new hosting provider. Millions of people turned to Parler after Twitter and Facebook barred President Trump following the riot at the Capitol last week. Apple and Google both kicked Parler out of their app stores at the end of the week, though users who already had downloaded the app could still use it. But the app relied on Amazon’s cloud computing technology to work.... Parler did not provide direct evidence showing Amazon and Twitter coordinated the response. Instead, it pointed to a December news release announcing a multiyear strategic partnership between Amazon and Twitter, and it made references to Twitter’s own challenges policing its content."

The NYT reports.

Okay, Joe. Thanks. I will link back to this if it ever seems you might be stoking the flames of hate and chaos.

The work of the next four years must be the restoration of democracy and the recovery of respect for the rule of law, and the renewal of a politics that’s about solving problems — not stoking the flames of hate and chaos.

— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) January 11, 2021

"But 'dilettante' is one of those words which deter people from taking up new pursuits as adults."

"Many of us are wary of being dismissed as dabblers, people who have a little too much leisure, who are a little too cute and privileged in our pastimes.... We might remember... that the word 'dilettante' comes from the Italian for 'to delight.' In the eighteenth century, a group of aristocratic Englishmen popularized the term, founding the Society of the Dilettanti to undertake tours of the Continent, promote the art of knowledgeable conversation, collect art, and subsidize archeological expeditions. Frederick II of Prussia dissed the dilettanti as 'lovers of the arts and sciences' who 'understand them only superficially but who however are ranked in superior class to those who are totally ignorant.'... The term turned more pejorative in modern times, with the rise of professions and of licensed expertise. But if you think of dilettantism as an endorsement of learning for learning’s sake... [m]aybe it could be an antidote to the self-reported perfectionism that has grown steadily more prevalent.... '[I]ncreasingly, young people hold irrational ideals for themselves, ideals that manifest in unrealistic expectations for academic and professional achievement, how they should look, and what they should own'.... Fluid intelligence, which encompasses the capacity to suss out novel challenges and think on one’s feet, favors the young. But crystallized intelligence—the ability to draw on one’s accumulated store of knowledge, expertise, and Fingerspitzengefühl—is often enriched by advancing age."

From "Is It Really Too Late to Learn New Skills?/You missed your chance to be a prodigy, but there’s still growth left for grownups" by Margaret Talbot (The New Yorker).

When's the last time you learned a new skill? If you had to identify 5 new skills to learn — which is something some older person in that article did — what 5 would you give yourself? The guy referred to in the article took on chess, singing, surfing, drawing, and juggling. I wish I could think of just one thing — one or 2. You know, tomorrow is my birthday, and it's one of the Big 0 birthdays. I'd like to think about something to do about it. The skill, perhaps, of stopping time. Apparently it's fine not to be good at it at all — a pure dilettante. But you can only slow the perception of the passage of time, and the relevant skill is boring yourself. What an awful skill! 

"German Chancellor Angela Merkel considers it 'problematic' that Twitter would toss President Trump off its social media platform..."

"'This fundamental right can be intervened in, but according to the law and within the framework defined by legislators — not according to a decision by the management of social media platforms,' Merkel spokesman Steffen Seibert told reporters in Berlin. 'Seen from this angle, the chancellor considers it problematic that the accounts of the U.S. president have now been permanently blocked,' he added."

The NY Post reports.

Many American are quick to say that freedom of speech is only a right that can be asserted against government, so there's no right — or even an interest in freedom of speech — that can be asserted against a private company like Twitter. But the German Chancellor speaks of "fundamental rights."

"House Democrats on Monday introduced an article of impeachment against President Trump for inciting a mob that attacked the Capitol last week, vowing to press the charge..."

"... as Republicans blocked a separate move to formally call on Vice President Mike Pence to strip him of power under the 25th Amendment.... Democratic leaders were confident it would pass, and pressured Republican lawmakers to vote with them to beseech the vice president, who is said to be opposed to using the powers outlined in the Constitution, to do so. It was a remarkable threat. If Mr. Pence does not intervene 'within 24 hours' after passage and the president does not resign, House leaders said they would move as early as Wednesday to consider the impeachment resolution on the floor, just a week after the attack.... Last minute changes were made late Sunday to include a reference to the 14th Amendment, the post-Civil War era addition to the Constitution that prohibits anyone who 'engaged in insurrection or rebellion' against the United States from holding future office. Lawmakers also decided to cite specific language from Mr. Trump’s speech last Wednesday, inciting the crowd, quoting him saying: 'If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.'"

The NYT reports.

Here's the text of the article of impeachment.

I note that the Trump quote they included did not make my list "The 7 most violence-inciting statements in Donald Trump's speech to the crowd on January 6th"! I thought "fight like hell" sounded too much like ordinary politics to make the list. We fight for our rights, we fight in political campaigns, we fight in court. Are we going to outlaw the word "fight"?! We'll be descending into Newspeak.

The fork as a weapon.

In the previous post, discussing a WaPo article about various characters in the January 6th incident at the U.S. Capitol, we encountered a man named Pete Harding, who "said that the only weapon he carried was a dinner fork, which he put in his pocket." He said — humorously, I think — "Fortunately, I didn’t have to wield the kitchen fork menacingly."

So I want to look into the topic of the fork as a weapon. When I was a college student and went through a phase of thinking I might take a course in "creative" writing, I considered writing a story about a perfectly friendly dinner between 2 characters that somehow escalated into a murder scene, with the fork as the weapon. Why not the knife?! The knife isn't interesting. The fork would be interesting, no?

Interesting — but way too much work! Too much work to write the description. And, of course, too much work to commit murder with a fork. But it would be a gruesome scene. It's for someone else to scribble out details like that. Like Harding's fork, my fork story remained in my pocket, unbrandished. 

But is a fork a plausible weapon? There's something called a military fork:

But we're talking about the table utensil of our time. 

I see that using a fork to fight is common enough in popular culture to have a page to itself at TV Tropes: 

[I]f chaos breaks out at the dinner table, a diner may have to get creative with what they have on hand, turning their utensils into an Improvised Weapon. Normally played for laughs (especially if there's Sword Sparks), but if the chips are down, things can get pretty ugly: this can lead to sickeningly devastating effect in the hands of someone skilled/determined enough.... Subtrope of Improvised Weapon. Compare Frying Pan of Doom....

That sounds funny, but remember that an improvised weapon — a fire extinguisher — was [allegedly] used at the Capitol and it killed a police officer. 

If the "Capitol mob" was "a raging collection of grievances and disillusionment" as The Washington Post says...

... in its headline, here, then doesn't that mean it wasn't an "insurrection" or much of a plan at all, just a coming together of disparate elements? Let's look at the long article. I'm reading it for the first time and making excerpts and comments as I go. I'm doing this without an agenda, just wanting to figure out what the hell happened and what it means.

Those who made their way to the grounds of the U.S. Capitol on Wednesday hail from at least 36 states, along with the District of Columbia and Canada, according to a Washington Post list of over 100 people identified as being on the scene of the Capitol. Their professions touch nearly every facet of American society: lawyers, local lawmakers, real estate agents, law enforcement officers, military veterans, construction workers, hair stylists and nurses. Among the crowd were devout Christians who highlighted Bible verses, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory and members of documented hate groups, including white nationalist organizations and militant right-wing organizations, such as the Proud Boys. 

The list is just a limited cross section of the thousands of people who descended upon the area, yet some striking commonalities are hard to ignore. Almost all on the list whose race could be readily identified are White.

Not sure how that is done. But okay. The Washington Post seems to have compiled a list of 100 people — a hundred out of what? "thousands"? — and it's making assertions about these people, somehow "readily identifying" their race and capitalizing "White." How many of the 100 were in the category whose race was "readily identified"? 10? 80? I have no idea.

Most are men, yet about one in six were women...

2 grammar mistakes there. It needs to be "one in six was a woman" to get subject/verb agreement, and, for parallelism, it needs to be either "Most were men, yet about one in six was a women" or "Most are men, yet about one in six is a women." We can argue about whether past or present tense is worse (or an outright error). But enough tripping along the pleasant side road that is grammar. Back to the substance:

... also almost all White. Many left extensive social media documentation of their passions, ideologies and, in some cases, disillusionment and vendettas.

Great. This is what I've been waiting for. Reading the social media of the various participants in the breaching of the Capitol. 

Their paths to the nation’s capital were largely fueled by long-standing grievances and distrust, and yet planned in spontaneous and ad-hoc fashion.

Was there a plan?  If it was "spontaneous and ad-hoc" then maybe it was not a plan, just diverse individuals whose paths flowed together at that place and time?

Several reported pulling together their travel funds and schedules in just a handful of days. Some took a solitary journey, including flying from coast to coast alone, only to find a shared community upon their final destination in Washington. Others traveled in buses that departed Wednesday at dawn, filled to the brim with other Trump supporters....

Don't mix up the plan to go to a big rally and street protest with a plan to break into the Capitol (and don't mix up a plan to break into the Capitol with a plan to take Mike Pence or members of Congress hostage).

Several who traveled to Washington to support the “Stop the Steal” rally told The Post they were driven by two primary grievances: their opposition to the election results and the restrictions in place to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Lindsey Graham...

Interesting name. 

... a 39-year-old entrepreneur from Salem, Ore., said her eventual path to the Capitol began last spring, when the six small businesses she and her husband own, including tanning salons, a gym and hair salon, were suddenly shuttered because of coronavirus restrictions...  Graham said she was “peacefully protesting” with thousands of people. She said she did not enter the building and does not condone violence. “I’m glad I was there because I am one of the people that can vouch for the crowd,” she said. 

Like Graham, 47-year-old construction worker Pete Harding said he was drawn to the Capitol by his disdain for restrictions to stop the spread of the coronavirus. Until last year, the Upstate New York resident said he had largely confined his strong political opinions to the Internet, describing himself as just a “keyboard warrior.” That’s all changed now, in radical fashion. The first days of 2021 found him — by his own account — charging through the chemical irritants that Capitol Police meant to deter him from entering the U.S. Capitol, rambling through the building, and then attempting to set fire to journalists’ equipment outside.... 

“We know that if Biden-Harris was going to get into office, they’ve said they’re going to make the lockdowns mandatory and mask-wearing mandatory across the country,” he said....

This article is making the lockdown seem more central to the protest than the idea that Trump won the election. 

After listening to Trump’s speech and marching to the Capitol, he found that “our people,” as he described the mob, had already pushed police back up to the top of the Capitol steps.

So Harding doesn't seem to be part of any plan to breach the Capitol, just a person in a crowd who finds out that in some other part of that crowd, something violent is happening. This reminds me of Black Lives Matter events, where there were peaceful protesters in some places and violent people in other parts. Is the whole mass to be called a "mob," with everyone who went to the event held responsible for what everyone else does? The answer should be no.

He waded through the crowd to join them, and persisted up the stairs, though he says police repeatedly deployed irritants to try to deter the mob. Harding describes himself as a “peacekeeper” who charged up the Capitol stairs to protect both police officers and rioters. 

“I started to see everybody going up the stairs at that point, and I decided I needed to be up there. … I knew that things could escalate and I needed to be there to de-escalate things,” he said. “I was there to protect and keep the peace. That’s what I do every single place that I go.”

By his own account, Harding made an independent decision to enter after the breach was made, and he has the image of himself as a "peacemaker."  

Harding said that the only weapon he carried was a dinner fork, which he put in his pocket because he believed he might need it to confront “antifa” or “Muslim brotherhood” fighters. 

It stayed in his pocket. “Fortunately, I didn’t have to wield the kitchen fork menacingly,” he said.

I hear that statement as humorous, though you could do some damage with a fork. Harding also seems to have believed, as I think many do, that any violence was attributable to anti-Trump forces — “antifa” or “Muslim brotherhood."

Once he left the Capitol, he saw journalists with cameras protected by barricades. He says he walked over twice to taunt them, saying, “You’re responsible for this” and “There’s a woman shot — this is on your hands.”

Harding claims that only after he walked away did other Trump supporters harass the journalists to the point that they fled, leaving behind their equipment. He was delighted. “I was kind of happy about it, to be honest with you, not going to lie, because they deserve it. But that’s not a crime,” he said. 

He said he came back and piled up the abandoned equipment, then used a lighter to try to set it on fire though he believed most of it was metal and wouldn’t burn. 

“The visual and the imagery was for the media to see, that they have started our country on fire,” Harding said, “with their constant lies about covid and about Trump.” Harding maintains that he did nothing illegal Wednesday....

Clearly, some of what Harding did is illegal, but — by his own account, assuming he's correctly and fairly quoted — he seems like an independent actor, making his own decisions according to his idea of what is true and good, and not part of a group plan. Just to be clear: I completely oppose the intimidation of the reporters and the damaging of their property. 

Many attendees described a type of fervor they felt that drew them to the Capitol. For 48-year-old Leonard Guthrie Jr., it manifested in his faith in the Lord. The Cape May, N.J., resident hasn’t often been well enough to work since having two surgeries on his back. In the absence of employment, he has heavily leaned into his Christian beliefs and conservative political views. When he heard about the “Stop the Steal” rally, Guthrie thought he could combine his two passions. If he and other Christians had been able to pray outside while senators voted inside, he feels certain it would have changed their votes.... 

He said he broke through a police barrier to reach the U.S. Capitol steps and readily admits his transgressions, bluntly saying: “I broke the law.” Still, he feels aggrieved. “We’ve been silenced for so long,” he said. “For years, because I voted for Trump, I’m called a racist, a Nazi, a bigot and all that stuff, and it’s not right.”

Again, this sounds like an individual making his own decision in real time, not a participant in any plan to enter the Capitol. He wanted to pray outside, and it sounds as though he didn't go inside, but only to the steps, though he did break a barrier, and he's confessionally sorry. 

Others squarely cited their fealty to the president as the force that pulled them to the nation’s capital....

This is a screwy way to blame Trump. Trump is a man, not a force. If the "fealty to the president" is a "force" within people who love him, then "pull" is the wrong word. That wrongness is the tip that WaPo is straining to blame Trump. In any case, this is only saying people were drawn "to the nation's capital." That's only saying they chose to go to the city, not that they felt drawn to enter the Capitol building.

Now, I've read the whole thing. There's nothing here about a plan to break into the Capitol! That doesn't mean there weren't people with such a plan, and I can see why such people wouldn't want to talk to the Washington Post, but this article supports the idea that the crowd consisted of individuals who were acting independently.