Saturday political rant

I got one of those dear john letters the other day. It was over. The letter was polite and respectful but it basically said that the person didn't want to hear from me again because he hates my politics. It did bother me because I love my liberal and conservative friends equally and don't enjoy alienating anybody. And I have known and been friends with this particular guy for over twenty five years.

But I obviously pissed him off. This was the link that put him over the edge. In retrospect I guess it is one of those "don't you see what assholes belong to your side" posts and in retrospect nobody wants that thrown in their face. Like me having to answer for anarchists burning shit down in Portland or Minneapolis. For the record I don't believe in political violence in any form, from any side.

Anyway it is so remarkable how few people do cut me off totally, this is the second in the last year or so and both did so politely. No "You are a fucking asshole and are going to burn in hell" stuff. 

I have to walk a fine line sometimes. I am what I am and you are what you are and we are defined by about the age of seven I think and people don't change much, if ever. And you can't please everybody, you have to be true to yourself. Or restrict discourse to plants and birds. As the bard so eloquently said, To thine own self be true.

I am not exactly democratic with the blog, more like a sensitive despot. I don't publish unsigned troll comments that are real nasty unless I feel like it and I try to cut off unsupported ad hominem attacks against fellow bloggers.

I have had several conservative friends tell me that I need to show more balance. One friend tells me that he has to grit his teeth when he reads it. Thank you for your honesty. I will try to understand your point of view better, I don't want to preach to the choir. 

I got this comment the other day and didn't post it but do want to print it here because it is rather instructive.

This narrative doesn't hold water for me. That if we wanted to burn it down we would have, so shut up. Might be true but this past effort was pretty concerted and beyond vile. Somebody needs to own these guys and figure out how we got here. And I don't want to break bread with any of them because frankly they are so creepy. I don't want anything to do with the MAGA base that elects a Boebert, King, Gohmert or Greene.

The first reaction from the right I read after January 6 was that a couple trespassers broke a few windows and now everybody is freaking out. Then the story was that the riot was full of antifa plants who were steering and fomenting the violence. Now it was directed by the nefarious Lincoln Project, at least according to Giuliani.

This is bullshit. From what I have read there was exactly one man associated with antifa there, a black guy who was merely filming the destruction. One guy.  And like these rioters were ever going to take direction from him... From the arrests it is clear to me that the insurrectionists were pure MAGA and the right needs to own that.

And it was not just a few windows broken, of course. These assholes were playing for keeps. Five deaths and numerous injuries. 

"Between USCP and our colleagues at the Metropolitan Police Department, we have almost 140 officers injured," union chairman Gus Papathanasiou said in a statement released Wednesday. "I have officers who were not issued helmets prior to the attack who have sustained brain injuries. One officer has two cracked ribs and two smashed spinal discs. One officer is going to lose his eye, and another was stabbed with a metal fence stake."

Sounds like a war to me. The Capitol Police chief said that his department was not set up for five hours of continuous hand to hand combat.

Metropolitan Police Department acting Police Chief Robert Contee, who ordered more than 1,000 of his officers to help defend the Capitol, provided his own testimony to the closed-door congressional hearing, telling the committee, "This assault on the Capitol has exposed weakness in security in the most secure city in the country."

The unprecedented attack had police "engaged in literal battle for hours," Contee said. "Law enforcement training neither anticipates nor prepares for hours of hand-to-hand combat."

You have to wonder why the National Guard were issued orders to be disarmed by the Acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller prior to the riot? Almost like somebody knew what was coming? Of course this is the guy who was praising Russia so.

People on the right think it is time to "move on" usually with a false equivalence shot across the bow that mentions BLM and antifa. We have members of congress taunting school shooting survivors and promoting theories that democrat leaders kill children and drink their blood. Jewish cabals with rayguns. And the party for the most part is totally mum. I guess it is a very big tent and pretty much anything goes. 

And we not only don't censure a Marjorie Taylor Greene, we give her a seat on an education committee. Amazing country we got here.