Tag Archives: U.S. presidency

Don’t You Understand? They’re Victims!

“The Devil made me do it!”

Flip Wilson

You have to understand something about the people who stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6.  They’re not entirely responsible for their actions.  They had merely responded to the words of their newly-formed deity, Donald Trump.  In the hours leading up to the siege, Trump had infused them with idea that he had been wronged by the voting process; that the 2020 elections had been manipulated by covert gangs of leftist forces determined to enforce abortions and gun confiscations upon helpless, red-blooded, bible-carrying Christian American citizens to ensure his loss.  He was a victim, Trump maintained, and vicariously so were his minions.

CHARGE!!!!!!!!!

Thus, the Trumpians had been victimized by the same queer-loving renegades and they were justified in storming the Capitol, tearing through offices, screaming like children told to come in for dinner, threatening others because they got their feelings hurt – all while dressed like ghosts of the Civil War and refugees from a Comic-Con conference gone wrong.

Please!

The Capitol Hill warriors are no more victims of enraged rhetoric than porn stars are of poor script-writing.  For years conservatives have proclaimed the tenets of individual freedom and personal responsibility.  They declared such values in reactive angst to a welfare society and relentless victimhood proclamations.

They loathed when non-White people bemoaned centuries of Euro-colonial oppression and systemic racism.  They rolled their eyes at the thought of women hollering about sexual harassment in the workplace and on college campuses.  They snickered at queer folks complaining of innate homophobia on the job and in school.

Then the U.S. Congress met on January 6, 2021 to certify Joe Biden as the winner of last year’s presidential contest, and – as Dante Alighieri once wrote – all hell broke loose.

The Trumpian crowd became maddened by the process and felt they had no other recourse but to subvert that constitutional mechanism in the most violent manner possible.  Their voices and votes had been ignored and they had to stop the madness.

So, in the name of Ronald Reagan, where the hell was all that talk of personal responsibility?  Where were the people to take ownership of themselves and their actions?  In other words, why do the Capitol Hill rioters suddenly see themselves as victims of…well, anything?!

They all sound like a bunch of – oh, God!  A bunch of minorities, women and queers!  Pass the rifle and heaven forbid!  Now these “victims” have placed themselves in the same category as tree-loving, pot-smoking, Muslim-loving liberals!

What’s going to happen next?  The magnetic poles will switch sides – like communist traitors – and life as we know will extinguish itself?

Again – please!

I personally don’t care to hear the anguished state of mind of these mentally- challenged pencil-dick and cavern-cunt imps.  What happened with last year’s presidential elections is something known as democracy.  It’s the sustenance upon which civilized societies survive.  We cannot exist without it.  The goons who stormed the Capitol three weeks ago didn’t fall victim to the verbiage of Donald Trump; they were victims of their own damned stupidity.  If they truly were swayed by Trumpian oratory, they are as gullible as a child believing in Santa Claus.  They roared into that building because what was left of their brain cells had perished in the swamp of their own hysteria.

It’s just so incredibly interesting that these right-wing extremists who wrap themselves in the American flag and cry freedom – while waving the loser traitorous Confederate flag – are suddenly helpless and violated.  They couldn’t help themselves.  Their faux president told them to do it.

The reality is quite simple: they’re violent and they’re stupid.  But they aren’t victims.

Flip Wilson on “The Ed Sullivan Show” January 11, 1970

Leave a comment

Filed under Essays

First Photograph of a U.S. Presidential Inauguration

The first photograph of a U.S. presidential inauguration was taken by John Wood on March 4, 1857, when James Buchanan assumed the presidency.  Wood was the first presidential photographer who also documented the construction of the U.S. Capitol from 1856 to 1861.

Wood used the newly-discovered wet-plate collodion method invented by British photographer Frederick Scott Archer.  The process involved coating a glass plate with a mixture of a soluble iodide and a collodion solution.  Although complex and requiring a portable darkroom, the collodion method produced sharper images without lengthy exposure times that also could be more easily duplicated than the then well-used daguerreotype technique.

Leave a comment

Filed under Classics

Strangest Quote of the Week – January 23, 2021

“The mob was fed lies.  They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.”

Sen. Mitch McConnell, about the mob of Donald Trump supporters who invaded the U.S. Capitol on January 6

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Worst Quotes of the Week – January 23, 2021

“A new report says that some far-right protesters have discussed posing as members of the National Guard to infiltrate the inauguration — the way Democrats infiltrated two weeks ago and put on MAGA clothing.”

Maria Bartiromo, claiming Capitol Hill rioters were actually Democrats disguised as Trump supporters

“Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms – they’re not who America is.  They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about.  Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker.”

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, claiming multiculturalism is authoritarianism

“Looking forward to working on this important designation honoring one of the greatest Presidents in American History.  This legislative session I will be sponsoring an amendment to rename U.S. Highway 27 as the ‘President Donald J. Trump Highway,’ This great highway runs through the heartland of Florida in the State that President Trump calls home.”

Rep. Anthony Sabatini (R-Fla.), on his proposed legislation to rename the U.S. 27 Route in Florida as the “President Donald J. Trump Highway”

Rep. Sabatini told the Orlando Sentinel that he chose Route 27 because it passes through Lake County, his home district.

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Video of the Week – January 16, 2021

Donald Trump calling for peace during the presidential transition.

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Worst Quotes of the Week – January 16, 2021

“There’s no comparison.  The disgusting events of January 6 do not threaten this country nearly as much as the suppression of free speech does.”

Dennis Prager, columnist and radio talk show host, on the January 6 riots

“What we have here is a classic collusive oligopoly, a kind of new wine in an old bottle.  What we saw with this attack on Parler was chilling to me. It’s one thing to de-platform everybody for free speech. But, this was a pincer move where Google and Apple, [the] first part of the pincer, was to not allow Parler apps to be down.”

Peter Navarro, Director of the White House Office of Trade and Manufacturing, on the move by various media firms to remove Parler from its platforms

Parler is a conservative alternative to Facebook and other social media venues.  Apple and Google removed Parler in the wake of the January 6 Capitol Hill riots.

“We have an executive order – not from Congress or D.C., but from the desk of the CEO of heaven, the boss of the planet.  He said from his desk in heaven, this is my will; Trump will be in for eight years.”

Brandon Burden, pastor of Kingdom Life in Frisco, Texas, in a sermon on Sunday, January 10

Burden had insisted that God told him Donald Trump – a serial husband, tax cheat and draft dodger who once grabbed about grabbing women by their genitalia – was destined to serve 8 years as President of the United States.  The FBI has been in contact with Burden.

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Best Quotes of the Week – January 16, 2021

“He will go down in history as the worst president ever.”

Arnold Schwarzenegger, comparing the Capitol Hill riots of January 6 to Nazis attacking Jews in World War II-era Europe

“But maybe, just maybe, Mr. Cruz has finally overreached with this latest power grab, which is correctly seen as an attempt to corral Mr. Trump’s base for his own 2024 presidential ambitions. This time, however, Mr. Cruz was spinning, obfuscating and demagoguing to assist in efforts to overturn the will of the voters for his own ends.”

Mimi Swartz, in a New York Times editorial

“The White man’s audacity does not concede; it coerces; it demands.”

Mitchell S. Jackson, in an editorial for Esquire

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Cartoon of the Week – January 9, 2021

Kirk Walters

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Most Prophetic Quote of the Week – January 9, 2021

“The die is cast for the Republican Party.  It will be destroyed on January 6th in much the same way the Whig party was destroyed by the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854.  The act unraveled the Missouri compromise and allowed for the westward expansion of slavery.  The party could not survive its factionalism.  There could be no more accommodation, compromise and partnership between pro-slavery and anti-slavery Whigs.  A new political party was born, the Republican Party.  That party will divide into irreconcilable factions on January 6th.  The 6th will commence a political civil war inside the GOP.  The autocratic side will roll over the pro-democracy remnant of the GOP like the Wehrmacht did the Belgian Army in 1940.  The ‘22 GOP primary season will be a bloodletting.  The 6th will be a loyalty test.”

Steve Schmidt

Leave a comment

Filed under News

Worst Quotes of the Week – January 9, 2021

Courtesy of Donald Trump:

“So look.  All I want to do is this.  I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.  Because we won the state.”

In a recorded phone call to the Georgia Secretary of State, Brad Raffensperger

“To all of my wonderful supporters, I know you’re disappointed, but I also want you to know that our incredible journey has only just begun.”

In response to the riots of January 6

Leave a comment

Filed under News