Or that our democracy would be exposed to not only the whims of a dictator wannabe in the Oval office, but he and his cronies would buddy up to other autocrats and demagogues — can you spell P.U.T.I.N ?
“5” Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “These conditions, for better or worse, do not define you. In a moment of detachment, you will notice your circumstances differently. They’ll feel somehow smaller.” Sagittarius
Hi and welcome to Thursday’s 21st Episode in Season 4 of “Our Disruptively Resilient Year” on this 7th day of April in the spring of 2022.
“The Tau of Steves: What You Don’t Know Could Fill a Book”
We concluded the three-year examination of how bits of wisdom changed — during the “normal” pre-pandemic year compared to the pandemic year, and more recently to the paradoxically normal year.
Season Four continues now within domestic and global chaos.
Previously in Season Four, The Disruptively Resilient Year
S4 E20 — Resiliently Living Through Domestic and Global Chaos; S4 E19 — The Reason Character and Honesty Don’t Count Anymore; S4 E18 — Hopelessly Naive or Too Numb to Know Any Better?
Related from Season Three, the Paradoxically Normal Year
S3 E21 — Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and My Curiosity Whisperer Walking a Yip-Yippy Dog; S3 E20 —Celebrate the Anniversary of When Things Seemed So Normal; S3 E19 — Thought Flickers, Cosmic Swirling and Exacted Costs; S3 E18 — My Teacher is Sending You to Detention!
Related from Season Two, the Pandemic Year
S2 E21 — Cycles of History Rhyming with Endlessly Disruptive Rhythms?; S2 E20 — Panic, Fertilizer and Least Expected Meaningful Moments; S2 E19 — What’s Percolating in Our Collective Unconscious?; S2 E18 — What is the Truth and How Can You Tell?
Related from Season One, the Normal Year
S1 E21 — Day 21 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E20 — Day 20 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E19 — Day 19 of My 1-Year Experiment; S1 E18 — Day 18 of My 1-Year Experiment;
Context
The incredible shrinking principled conservative base. How did it happen?
“Political critics now say,” according to Jamie Raskin, “that the Democratic Party, whatever its faults, is the party of democracy and that the Republican Party is the party of Trump, authoritarianism, corruption, and insurrection.”
Most politicians thought Trump was just:
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- playacting,
- blocking out negative information,
- giving everything a positive spin
- raising money on paranoia and
- playing the polarizing carnival barker
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But, then there’s his egging on violence from
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- The Proud Boys,
- the Three Percenters,
- the Oath Keepers,
- the Aryan Nations,
- QAnon followers,
- Christian White Nationalists and
- Militia forces
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Referring to the insurrection on January 6th when Confederate flag wavers broke in, Raskin said the United States had not seen and assault on the Capitol like that since the War of 1812.
But, because Trump displayed his four years of continuous norm destruction and daily shredding of the Constitution out in the open for all to see, it shouldn’t surprise us that he conspired to stay in office.
Or that our democracy would be exposed to not only the whims of a dictator wannabe in the Oval office, but he and his cronies would buddy up to other autocrats and demagogues — can you spell P.U.T.I.N ?
A threat to constitution exposed to violent authoritarianism and fascism.
Bob Woodward and Robert Costa reported in their book “Peril,” that Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Milley, thought that, ”Trump’s manifest behavioral instability and desperateness … “ could represent a very real threat to the nation and a possibility of an impetuous and undeclared war in his final days.
Milley took action with a call to “his Chinese counterpart to assure him that the U.S. had no plans to attack China.”
He made it clear that, “Any authorization for a nuclear launch would have to flow through him.”
Raskin says he and the House Manages “had the chance to convict and repudiate Donald Trump for his high crimes against constitutional democracy and then to disqualify him from ever holding office in the United States again.”
During the trial, we had been focused on just one man and one crime, but America needs to understand the whole architecture of the January 6 attack:
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- Who organized it and paid for
- Who coordinated the inside political strategy with the violent elements running amok outside,
- What we need to do to stop the next assault, or at least prepare ourselves for it.
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It would effectively have purged Trumpism from the American body politic. This we failed to do.
Woodward and Costa disclose that Milley believed January 6 was a planned, coordinated, synchronized attack on the very heart of American democracy, designed to overthrow the government to prevent the constitutional certification of a legitimate election won by Joe Biden.
Trump might still be looking for what Milley called a “Reichstag moment.” In 1933, Adolf Hitler had cemented absolute power for himself and the Nazi Party amid street terror and the burning of the Reichstag parliamentary building.
Nazis were willing to come out in the open.
Behaving like an autocrat Trump was systemically attacking the courts, the press, and Congress—a vintage move by an autocrat to dismantle institutions constricting his power.
“The neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and white supremacists emerging from dark rooms and remote fields and the anonymity of the web into the bright light of day.”
Evidence
Today’s Holiday Theme:
Emotions are information. There are no bad emotions, just inaccurate interpretations of them, unhelpful reactions to them or questionable reasons they are triggered in the first place. (Celebrate) our emotions as neutral tools with potential for constructive use.
“5” Steve Zahn, 51: “When you are fully engaged in what you’re doing, it’s like you are one with the sea of life. You move and the world naturally adjusts and reacts, making way for you.” Scorpio
OK, I like how this one started out in the sea. The second sentence is the one I hope for, but remains to seen, eh?
Random ones that make me want change my sign.
“5” Steve Aoki, 41; Steven Spielberg, 74: “These conditions, for better or worse, do not define you. In a moment of detachment, you will notice your circumstances differently. They’ll feel somehow smaller.” Sagittarius
Well if the better or worse conditions don’t define me, I still hoping for the last sentence. Or as Emma the Baroness recently said, and I’m paraphrasing, “I can’t wait for the day when I can get Trumps name out of my brain.”
“4” Steve Carell, 57; Steve Martin, 74; Steve Wozniak, 69: “If the reward rained down from the heavens, everyone would go outside with open hands. But the rewards come in increments and from the ground up. They belong to those who get their hands dirty.” Leo
Or in rain buckets and tubs. But aren’t these Holiday Taus supposed originate in the heavens? Haha. But I get your meaning, dirty hands keep us grounded.
“3” Steve Harvey, 62; Stephan Patis, 53; Stephen Hawking (1943 – 2018): “Those who aim to impress will do the opposite because working for approval is off-putting. The truly impressive don’t need the feedback. They are too busy doing what pleases, upholding a standard or living a principle.” Capricorn
Will somebody clip this one and send it to the twice impeached former president?
What’s Going On …
Literally Bottled and Set Adrift from KnowWhere Atoll
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- @KnowLabs suite of 36 digital magazines, according to my analytics, grew from 12458 this week to 12559 organically grown followers.
- Orange County Beach Towns 212 viewers stopped by the week before.
Foresight
Quality-of-Life
Long-Form
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- “Here, Right Matters: An American Story” by Alexander Vindman. “We’d long been confused by the president’s policy of accommodation and appeasement of Russia, the United States’ most pressing major adversary. Russia’s president Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine, seizing the Crimean Peninsula, attacking its industrial heartland, the Donbass, from the capital, Kyiv. By 2019, little had changed, Russian military and security forces and their proxy separatists continued to occupy the Donbass. The biggest change was to Ukraine’s importance as a bulwark against Russian aggression weeks earlier, the White House had abruptly put a hold on nearly four hundred million dollars.”
- David Enrich begins his book with a suicide in “Deutsche Bank Dark Towers: Deutsche Bank, Donald Trump, and an Epic Trail of Destruction” and then meticulously details the bank’s Russian money laundering operations. Deutsche’s Russian business surged after revenues had fallen 50% due to the 2008 financial crisis. Putin’s Russia, poured in to Deutsche from deals it did with VTB Bank, linked to the Kremlin’s intelligence apparatus. Deutsche positioned itself as a crucial cog in “The Laundromat” by doing what couldn’t be done — processing cross-border transactions for banks that were too small and didn’t have offices outside their home countries.
- “Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy” by Jamie Raskin recalls one tragedy no parent should endure — the suicide of his son — and then a second tragedy at almost the same time — the insurrection on January 6th 2021, that terrified he and his congressional peers who were tasked by the Constitution to routinely oversee the orderly transfer of power from one former president to the duly elected new President.
- “A Warning” by Anonymous (Miles Taylor) written prior to the January 6th Insurrection as an insider’s account documenting how frequently the former President’s behavior and rage without any “guard rails” showed just how far he would go to win the next election at any cost while spinning lies and misinformation on top of each other.
- “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa provides anecdotes, stories and inside reporting documenting the controversial last days of Donald Trump’s presidency, as well as the presidential transition and early presidency of Joe Biden.
Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons
Inspired by Holiday Mathis – Creators Syndicate
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