Are We Paying Attention to the Warnings?

Bill Maher's Dark Vision is All Too Real

It's pretty clear Bill Maher is controversial and there are plenty of things not to like for people on any side of the political spectrum.  He uses comedy to make political commentary and that's offensive at times.  But he's giving out a legitimate warning here, and it needs to be heeded.  Yes, sometimes he can be offensively off-putting, but when Maher lays out facts like this, he's usually got a good source and he gets it right.  He's not revealing anything that we don't already know, but this needs to be said, over and over, and some fires need to be lit.  Maher is often the guy who is holding the smoldering match.

Please set me straight if my perceptions are a little skewed here.  I'm glad to see things seem to be moving forward on the January 6th investigation, getting information and finding out the extent of the conspiracy to try and pull off a coup to overturn the 2020 election.  But it seems to me that we should be seeing a lot more that we are, or am I just missing something somewhere?  There's been some tough talk about arrests of the people ignoring Congressional subpoenas, but none of the biggies on that list are in jail yet, that I know of.  It seems to me that they should be.  

It seems to me that something has fallen through the cracks somewhere.  Things started out great, the testimony of the four Capitol police officers a couple of months back was remarkably candid, clear and damning.  But that's been the climax up to this point.  This was an event that, from a journalistic perspective, falls in the same category as Pearl Harbor or 9-11 or the secession of 11 states from the Union.  But I'm not seeing much about it on social media, other than the insurrectionists were just tourists that got a little riled up, or "it's all about politics."  And frankly, what I'm not seeing worries me.  

What's going on with the DNC in Washington?  I send my contribution every month, I've been doing that for going on two decades now.  I was reading their news releases before they had a website.  I volunteer, make phone calls, show up for rallies and I've even walked the streets and knocked on doors for multiple candidates.  My expectations at this moment is that the DNC should be a beehive of activity, throwing out tweets and social media posts one after the other, and maybe that's the way it is and I'm just not noticing it because I'm fairly insulated in a Democratic state and we don't have any concerns about election integrity.  I just don't like all the "status quo" talk, i.e. "the party in power in the White House always loses mid-terms" and what it looks like to me is that there's not a whole lot going on other than occasional emailings asking for money.  

Not Many People Are Paying Attention

Every effort Trumpies have made to try and prove "the big lie" has fallen to its death on the facts.  By now, we've counted and recounted ballots, audited elections, had "forensic examination" of ballots, reviews of election and counting machines and procedures and the end result has been that the claims of "massive voter fraud" are blatantly false.  Even the ballot "examinations" (I won't call them "audits") done by crooks hired by Trumpies were unable to produce a single piece of evidence proving even tiny, much less massive, voter fraud.  There was none and they are having to come to grips with the fact that election officials, in most cases Republican election officials, aren't going to lie for them.  

So they are moving on to the next phase, which is to find people who will lie for them and see how many of them they can get elected to state legislatures, state offices and secretaries of state in charge of elections so that they won't have to worry about actual vote counts and totals, they can just challenge everything, make a mess and have people with the authority to change the results if necessary.  And who knows subversives who can run for office better than Steve Bannon, who would be in prison now if not for a pardon?  

Regardless of what you think of him, Maher is just using his celebrity status to shed some light on this and create a much larger awareness than currently exists.  We didn't avert a constitutional crisis on January 6th, that event simply plunged us right into one and if people don't pay attention, think its business as usual and avoid going to vote, there won't be a constitution.  When someone like Bill Maher picks up on something and starts talking about it, it should at the very least merit some attention. 

I Don't Care How "Political" It May Look

Anyone connected with that insurrection, and that is exactly what it was, who was or is in Congress, the Senate, the courts or the White House, should be appropriately charged with the fourteenth amendment.  It's not likely Republicans will want to do that so they need to be voted out of office.  Impossible?  I don't think so.  I just want to know when the DNC is going to get it's rear in gear and start putting together the monster campaign of its existence to make sure that Democrats not only win huge majorities, but that everyone knows just how dangerous Donald Trump really is and understand the possibilities. 

It's supposed to be out of line to compare things happening in America to Europe in the mid-twentieth century and use all of that terminology but if you look at how that happened, and what's going on here now, well, history has a funny way of repeating itself.  The groundwork is being laid and those who are putting it in place are even bold enough to let people in on what they're doing and not keep it much of a secret, if at all.  

So if arresting, trying and jailing everyone involved in that insurrection, right up to Trump the inciter-in-chief, is the legal way to handle it, then that's where this needs to go.  And that includes everyone who is working with him, or who was working with him, to try and pull off what still looks like a failed coup.  You can't run for office from prison.  And if spending a billion dollars to defeat this fascist resurgence and restore the Constitution's shine is necessary, then Democrats need to be raising the money and making sure the next election sends a clear message about what happens when you try to overthrow the United States Government.