Updates
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Originally published, January 22, 2021, 12:47 pm.
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January 22, 2021, 11:31 pm:
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Megan Stack has a somber account of the scene in Washington, D.C., outside Joe Biden’s inauguration, where right wing militia were expected and didn’t show.[1]
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January 23, 10:30 pm:
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Pennsylvania is dangerous. Don’t believe me? Check out what this Pennsylvania congressman tried to set up with Donald Trump and the Department of Justice.[2] I mean, seriously, if only it were true that Pennsylvania (Democratic) Governor Tom Wolf was a dictator;[3] we’d be safer.
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All I need to know here:
“[Chansley] regrets very, very much having not just been duped by the president, but by being in a position where he allowed that duping to put him in a position to make decisions he should not have made,” his legal representative said https://t.co/ZAzrg8CNCT
— The Daily Beast (@thedailybeast) January 23, 2021
Jacob Chansley is the “QAnon Shaman” who appeared in fur and horns at the U.S. Capitol coup.
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January 24, 1:52 pm:
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George Conway, III, lays out the case for prosecuting Donald Trump now that he’s out of office,[4] which I guess to many people will seem like a no-brainer.
If law is to apply, after all, it should apply to the rich and powerful as it does the poor. But I’ve previously remarked on the problem of presidential immunity,[5] and a larger picture notes that Conway is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, a project of a tendency of conservatism—neoconservatism—that has previously advocated the theory of the unitary executive,[6] the very and already extreme theory that Conway is really complaining about Trump taking to extreme.[7]
Zooming out still further, prosecuting Trump seems too superficial an answer to the problem of justice itself in which we have a distinctly harsher and more criminal system for the poor, especially of color, and a distinctly more lenient and civil one for the rich, especially whites,[8] no answer at all to the question of why Trump was elected in the first place[9] to obtain the immunity he has now lost,[10] nor to the roots of endemic and systemic injustice itself.[11] Yes, I think Trump should be prosecuted, but to do so still feels facile.
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January 25, 2021, 3:03 pm:
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There is a new blog post entitled, “The media and the Left.”
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Pittsburgh
In a previous post, I noted of Pittsburgh mayor Bill Peduto that “while I think Peduto means well, he is a jackass in the way that jackasses who have never faced existential crises in their lives is a jackass. A catalog of Peduto’s asinine tweets would be lengthy.”[12] To say I understated it would itself be an understatement of colossal magnitude:
It is difficult to imagine a more appalling demonstration of a fallacious appeal to the "middle of the road" than #Pittsburgh Mayor @BillPeduto's false equivalence between #BlackLivesMatter and #WhiteSupremacy. https://t.co/PrgTtVVNwF
Mayor Peduto, please stop equating Pittsburgh protesters with the "Radical Right"https://t.co/56mjc3YeTm
— lisa cunningham (@trashyleesuh) January 22, 2021
— David Benfell, Ph.D. (@n4rky) January 22, 2021
My fucking god.
I am calling for Peduto to resign. This is completely unacceptable and there isn’t even the beginning of an excuse for it.
Lisa Cunningham, “Mayor Peduto, please stop equating Pittsburgh protesters with the ‘Radical Right,’” Pittsburgh City Paper, January 21, 2021, https://www.pghcitypaper.com/pittsburgh/mayor-peduto-please-stop-equating-pittsburgh-protesters-with-the-radical-right/Content?oid=18780489
Tom Davidson, “Peduto challenger Ed Gainey: Fewer words, more action needed from next mayor of Pittsburgh,” Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, January 22, 2021, https://triblive.com/local/peduto-challenger-ed-gainey-fewer-words-more-action-needed-from-next-mayor-of-pittsburgh/
Donald Trump
Megan K. Stack, “The Week the Trump Supporters Disappeared,” New Yorker, January 22, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-week-the-trump-supporters-disappeared
Katie Benner and Catie Edmondson, “Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General,” New York Times, January 23, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/politics/scott-perry-trump-justice-department-election.html
- [1]Megan K. Stack, “The Week the Trump Supporters Disappeared,” New Yorker, January 22, 2021, https://www.newyorker.com/news/the-political-scene/the-week-the-trump-supporters-disappeared↩
- [2]Katie Benner and Catie Edmondson, “Pennsylvania Lawmaker Played Key Role in Trump’s Plot to Oust Acting Attorney General,” New York Times, January 23, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/23/us/politics/scott-perry-trump-justice-department-election.html↩
- [3]John L. Micek, “W. Pa. Rep. Metcalfe files impeachment articles to ‘remove dictator Wolf’ over pandemic response,” Pennsylvania Capital-Star, June 16, 2020, https://www.penncapital-star.com/blog/w-pa-rep-metcalfe-files-impeachment-articles-to-remove-dictator-wolf-over-pandemic-response/↩
- [4]George T. Conway, III, “Donald Trump’s new reality,” Washington Post, January 22, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/22/trump-charges-george-conway/↩
- [5]David Benfell, “The problem of presidential immunity,” Hot Housebroken, November 1, 2020, https://disunitedstates.org/2020/11/01/the-problem-of-presidential-immunity/↩
- [6]Jonathan Stevenson, “Trump’s Lingering Menace,” New York Review of Books, January 9, 2021, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2021/01/09/trumps-lingering-menace/↩
- [7]George T. Conway, III, “Donald Trump’s new reality,” Washington Post, January 22, 2021, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/01/22/trump-charges-george-conway/↩
- [8]Jeffrey Reiman, The Rich Get Richer and the Poor Get Prison, 7th ed. (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2004).↩
- [9]David Benfell, “Why Donald Trump won,” Not Housebroken, November 9, 2016, https://disunitedstates.org/2016/11/09/why-donald-trump-won/↩
- [10]Jane Mayer, “Why Trump Can’t Afford to Lose,” New Yorker, November 1, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/11/09/why-trump-cant-afford-to-lose↩
- [11]Wanda D. McCaslin and Denise C. Breton, “Justice as Healing: Going Outside the Colonizers’ Cage,” in Handbook of Critical and Indigenous Methodologies, eds. Norman K. Denzin, Yvonna S. Lincoln, and Linda Tuhiwai Smith (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2008), 511-529.↩
- [12]David Benfell, “The testosterone
insurrectioncoup,” Irregular Bullshit, January 21, 2021, https://disunitedstates.com/2021/01/19/the-testosterone-insurrection/↩