Would You Believe--Satan?

 

Now, when Kyle Rittenhouse went on Tucker Carlson's show to tell the world that his first counsellor, Lin Wood, was a goddamn money grubber, it was almost worth the attempt at reputation resuscitation being attempted right there on ye olde tv screens. After all, Lin Wood was the guy who decided that the election system was so corrupt that he basically sabotaged the Georgia Senate runoffs to ensure Democratic control of the Senate, and that's no small deal. But shit has gotten terribly real now, because Wood's injured pride has him diming out the other Q-associated grifters, and yes, this is glorious. 

Now, I obviously don't love Mike Flynn, so we are gonna start with him, because how can we not, since he is the Russian-connected goon whose digital warriors furthered Pizzagate and assorted racist memes back in 2016. Yes--goon. He thinks he's a general, but since his forced retirement he's a catspaw for whoever's paying because this chicken-chested little very much fired from the military fuck for brains doesn't understand that he sold his credibility, his honor, and damn nearly sold out his country, but is getting the unique opportunity to sink into ignominy before getting properly keelhauled. 

TWGB: Chinese Thermometers and Italian Satellites.

 

There is something about TrumpWorld Grab-Bags that starts feeling like an old comfy shoe over time: the mediocrity. Hannah Arendt referred to the banality of evil, and yep. It doesn't fucking startle anyone with its brilliance or beggar the imagination with strategy and insight surpassing the norm. It's just grubby little ambitious motherfuckers going about what they consider their business even if it usurps the rights, comfort, or lives of  millions because they found themselves in the position to do it. It's chastening about the human condition but I drink and write bad poetry so I can handle that. 

So take your Trump Administration attorney, Jeffrey Clark, who had numerous letters in his quiver to different states but most particularly Georgia, who had a theory that that the election was flipped by hackers accessing a thermostat hooked up to the World Wide Web of stuff that shouldn't be hooked up to the internet, and that somehow got them access to the actual voting machines, a thing that is not possible for reasons that are numerous, obvious, and which Clark, upon being informed of them, did not believe because it didn't match his worldview. Which was informed by loyalty to Trump in the assumption this lead to rewards for favors rendered, I pretty much assume. 

I'm not sure myself how much of a pay rise it would take to make me cool with defending rapeor subverting US democracy. But Clark gives us a flavor of how it might just be for some folks. (I will say, there are people on social media fine with doing this for free and they are also in my humble opinion very bad, but lacking in the capitalist spirit.) 

TWGB: All His Trials

 

Despite the miserable reviews that Trump's own lawyers in the impeachment trial have received, even from Trump himself, I found myself tinged with wonder the six whole Republican senators agreed with the Constitution and precedent and found the proceedings to be constitutional. As many as that! Six! Because while the acquittal of Trump is perceived as likely given the Republicans' great moral failings, how much more preferable it might have been for them to dispense with a trial at all, and go on ignoring how much blame there is to go around.

Mitch McConnell certainly knew he didn't want a piece of this when he blocked Chuck Schumer's request for an emergency session while Trump was still in office. He still didn't when he voted that it was too late to go trying Trump now, even though this is only taking place now because he ensured it didn't happen while Trump was still in office. Republicans might like us to forget that part, too. 

But truth, justice, and the whole damn American way aren't served by forgetting these things. 

There will be focus on Trump's speech right before the attempted insurrection--but there's more to what happened than that. Trump and his team put the focus on the date, but Trump was undermining the results with his fabrications not just since the voting had ended, consistently using language that used words like "rigged" and "stolen", but had begun undermining the validity of the vote, especially the mail-in vote, well beforehand. (His bitching and moaning about a "rigged" system has been a constant, at least since Ted Cruz "stole" the Iowa caucuses from him in 2016.) Trump laid a foundation. brick by brick, for his supporters to think "they" (the evil Democrats) were out to get Trump, and by extension, them,

Take the last impeachment as an example--Trump's surrogates tried to assert that impeaching Trump was the same as impeaching his supporters. Even now, they are trying to claim such absurdities as Trump is being impeached not for what he did, but for who he is, or that somehow, by winning the election, the Democratic ticket has disenfranchised the 74 million Trump voters. (The latter strikes me as really rich considering my vote could have literally been thrown out as a Pennsylvanian if they had their way.)

What's more, Trump et als, even though they frame their argument (such as the 60 plus cases that were lost/laughed at of court) in terms of "election integrity" now, the rhetoric was often more apocalyptic: "Fight or you won't even have a country." "Save America." They were using a "Flight 93 election" narrative. Even if Trump didn't have the votes (and he looked, and he asked others to look!), what he wanted, and wanted his followers to want, was that the election be overturned for him. By force if necessary. 

And here's how you know: Trump had been hinting about use of force for a long time. He mused about "second amendment people" during the 2016 race. During 2019, he talked about the military, police, and Bikers for Trump as if he had his own militia. He has regularly used "civil war" language about out current-day divisions. He infamously told the Proud Boys to "stand by" in his first debate with Biden. And near to the events of the day in question, his recently-pardoned longtime associate, Roger Stone (accepted by the Proud Boys as one of their own), was seen palling around with Oath Keepers. 

And there's more where that came from. The House impeachment managers assure us that they will be presenting evidence that we have not seen before. And I believe they certainly will, because there is more to that story. 

(For what it's worth, there's more to the Russia investigation and what Giuliani and pals were up to in Ukraine that could all be aired in a bit.) 

Trump might still get acquitted in the Senate. But the public trial is, FWIW, where I think Trump's star implodes. And if there's justice, it drags several other truly deserving people down into it as it goes.

Wood's One Weird Election Trick!

 

Possibly Mad Genius Right Wing Attorney Lin Wood has One Weird Trick that is going to help Fight Back! against the scourge of election fraud in the upcoming Georgia runoff, and Gosh! It's so batshit IT JUST MIGHT WORK! All Republicans have to do is not vote for Perdue and Loeffler, and because the "algorithm" is rigged, the GOP votes will show as a negative, and we all know that's not possible. Then SCOTUS will have to make Trump President-for-Life, then the arrests, then other thumb-sucking wish-fulfillment will surely occur. 

What I like about this is it's just science, right? You have a theory: the machines are rigged, so you experiment. Now, no model is perfect, so personally, I think Wood may have to encourage Republican nonparticipation in any and all elections, not just the runoffs, until we actually do hit that negative number. 

Try, try again, and whatnot, right? If in the meantime it results in a lot of Democrats in office, oh well, eggs and omelets. (Mmmmm. Omelets.)

Anywhoo, because Lin Wood is mostly talking to Q fans, this might even sound reasonable, but I have to break the very bad news that now that he has mentioned Sekrit GOP Boycott Klub, the Powers That Be are just gonna change the algorithm to compensate for low Republican voter turnout. (Sad face.) That's why the big arrests never happen; because super patriot Q keeps telling people they're gonna happen. (Extra sad face). *

Check and mate, or something. 

* I have endeavored to know as little as possible about The Storm and all that rot because I am superstitious about meme contagion. You never know when so much as a splinter of The Crazy will break off and mess up your whole head even if you try to compartmentalize. What I do know is that a) "Where we go one we go all" sounds like a translation of a lemming family motto from bastard Latin and b) if someone was cryptically typing out secret messages on social media where everyone could see, they wouldn't be secret anymore, right? This is why Q is actually a traitor for telling, and can't be Trump. Or can it?

(Yes, Virginia, this is satire, except the Lin Wood bit, which is real and could be a grift or maybe Bubba really is that crazy, I don't know. I only wish I ever endeavored to learn as little as possible about anything.)

Simple Grifts

 

Here's Lin Wood telling Georgia Republicans NOT to vote for Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue next month.

"They have not earned your vote. Don't you give it to them. Why would you go back and vote in another rigged election for god's sake! Fix it! You gotta fix it!" pic.twitter.com/Uvj1QIpqFL

— Justin Baragona (@justinbaragona) December 2, 2020

It wasn't until I saw Lin Wood's mic skills that what he was doing fully made sense to me. I mean, sure, you can't go wrong flattering pathetic vain elderly people who are already obviously vulnerable to conspiracy theories by telling them they are good enough, they are smart enough, and god damnit, they probably won California. But that's only good for what? For Trump's PAC grift it's good for a few hundred million, and for folks in Giuliani's (former) circle it might help with potential legal liability to squeeze out some pardons along the way--this guy right here wants something more. He's taking high-value hostages. 

That it's a grift is clear--the lawyering here is designed to get things thrown out early and create pointlessly stupid delays while the grift keeps rolling on--it's a lot of superficial business without a lot of solid work. They don't want to bring actual cases in front of a judge because it's weaksauce. But then you see that mic-handling: Soros! China! Vote stealing! The Deep State! 

Hugo f'g Chavez. There's like, well over a decade or so of Pavlovian/operant conditioning to work with in that.

And all they want the folks they are terrorizing (Raffensperger, Kemp, Sterling, the employees of Dominion, the Republican Party) to do is, you know, what he said. "FIX it." Like, the words are right there. Leaving aside that I and about 80 million other people think that Wood and Powell leaning on their salivating hounds to fail to vote for two entire GOP US Senate candidates is super hilarious, you don't need to assume the Wood is a Democrat plant (as the folks at Breitbart are alleging) to get what they're looking for:

Stop the steal means "Start the Stealing". 

It's art. It's just a hand-full of grifters on the outside, begging a handful of potential grifters on the inside, via a ginormous PA system, to pull off an inside-job. Because patriotism, the Bible, the purity of our precious bodily fluids, defense against Communism and jazz cigarettes, mom's blessed stain-free knickers and pecan pie.

It's a lot more subtle in its tent-revival flavor than than virtually the same thing being put on in mock hearings in hotel ballrooms and apparently, the Michigan state legislature by Giuliani and Ellis, except that the Wood/Powell version uplifts its participants in a righteous rage instead of subjecting them to being a number in a slackjaw parade of folks who believe votes came in on (or went out on--it's a bit unclear) food trucks, that they were intimidated by BLM activists wearing rhinestones, that all Chinese people look alike, etc. (Trumpism has given a lot of attention to the wild slackjaw population, but it has lost something of its dignity.)  

It's stupid-dangerous and threatens to lead to actual violence. But as grift-as-performance, it has a certain robustness in its aesthetic. Very much "fascism holding a cross and wrapped in the flag", if you will.