This morning, John Pavlovitz wrote of wanting to go back to sleep when he wok up and realized that "people actually still support that unhinged madman. They admire him. They look up to him. They feel affinity with him. They are fighting for him." And he's one of millions of us who sees people regurgitating fictional Fox News talking points and hears them parroting back conspiratorial nonsense. It grieves him, he wrote, "to know how far gone so many around me seem to be. I no longer recognize the place I’ve always called home... It’s simply demoralizing sharing a country with people who think Donald Trump is someone worth emulating: to be surrounded by that kind of moral inversion every single day, to be continually encountering such cruelty. It’s a source of profound and sustained grieving to believe that everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and afforded opportunity-- and to know how many simply do not share that belief. I don’t hate these people but I am deeply saddened by them." John's a more Christian man than I am. I do hate them. I hate them for what they're doing to our country.
Yesterday, one of the GOP neo-fascist operations, FreedomWorks, endorsed far right extremist, seditionist and Trumpist Mo Brooks for the open Alabama Senate seat. Brooks is exactly the kind of character Pavlovitz was fretting about in his meditation on what the Republican Party is turning America into. Brooks is arguing with the Justice Department over his role in the insurrection and attempted coup of 1/6. There is no argument of his role as an instigator; there are dozens of videos that prove that. His claim-- and excuse-- in the hopes of avoiding a trial, is that he was just performing his official duties as a congressman when he urged the domestic terrorists to kick ass and take names as they were preparing to storm the Capitol and lynch Mike Pence and Nancy Pelosi.
This morning, The Hill's Harper Neidig reported that the Justice Department has to come down on one side or the other. "How the DOJ," wrote Neidig, "answers the legal argument from Brooks, who asked the agency to intervene in the case, could affect former President Trump, who is a defendant in the same court battle. It could also affect how the department prosecutes hundreds of cases against the rioters themselves." The deadline for a decision is July 27. If the department decides to recognize that Brooks was acting within the scope of his work as a congressman when he was inciting the crowd, he could receive immunity from the civil suit brought against Brooks, Trump and Giuliani by Eric Swalwell over their roles in the attempted coup. Swalwell accused them of inciting the riot, alleging violations of federal and D.C. law.
Earlier in the week, another far right extremist loon, Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), went on Newsmax to denounce FBI requests for help from the public in combatting violent domestic terrorism. "Tennesseans," claimed Blackburn, "are very upset with what they see as a double standard with how the FBI and other federal agencies move forward. But bear in mind, they were there collecting information or surveilling the Trump campaign. And for them to put this out, encourage people to do this... I have some questions about it and many others have questions about it. Of course, everyone wants to do their part to keep out nation safe and to keep our communities safe. But to put this out and to encourage people to begin to snitch on their family members if they have a difference of opinion is something that is a little bit over the top." This is what she objected to:
By the way, yesterday it came out that a 32 year old Trumpist psychopath, Wesley Martines, was arrested in the the South Bay on July 9 following a tip from a local business owner that someone was loitering and looking into vehicles and a storage shed. Blackburn may be upset one of her people was apprehended this way but the "police found a cache of weapons, ammunition, and racist writings in his vehicle saying he wanted to wipe out the Black, Hispanic and Jewish populations."