Tuesday, June 01, 2021

“I know that you believe you understand what you think I said, but I am not sure that you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.” – Robert J. McCloskey

"I think the first order of business this morning is to dispel a horrible incident of fake news,' Powell told the audience. "The fake news has grossly distorted what General Flynn said yesterday in response to a question about Myanmar.

"There are no circumstances under which he urged the military to take any action to unseat the president. We all know our that in our government, the military serves as our commander-in-chief and General Flynn in no way encouraged any act of violence or any military insurrection. It's very important that be clear.

"The clip that has been put on Twitter and which has gone viral and has become a story in every newspaper is simply not a fair or accurate representation of the conversation."
Sure he didn't.  But "The military serves as our commander-in-chief"?  Is that a typo?

I was going to make this a separate post, but decided the two are conjoined: Note to self: stay off "legal" Twitter. Like the old "Moral Majority," it ain't. "Me? Or your lyin' eyes?" v. "Eats, shoots and leaves." I liked that line better (the first one) when it was confined to comedy in the movies. I don't like it when it escapes into real life.  It's almost as bad as arguing over commas in speech, and whether or not we actually use them when we talk.

Or does the video speak for itself?

Maybe this one does:
Is this dangerous? Or just delusional? (Yes, it could be both.) But the First Amendment allows for people to speak in public about matters like coups. Carrying them out is when matters become criminal.  Flynn can talk about overthrowing the government all he wants (notably, he doesn’t want to be responsible for what he said).  Is such talk dangerous?  Yes.  Is it also delusional?  Yes.

Those pasty white people talking sedition and overthrow don’t have the nerve to so much as show up on the streets at a protest.  They gather in safe numbers and tell each other comforting lies, tell them to people who agree with their fantasies rather than challenge them, and then from the safety of such a gathering they tell reporters what they want to do.  Except they don’t want to do it; they only want to talk about it, brag about it, fantasize about it.  These people no more want an armed insurrection than they want Joe Biden to be President.  They aren’t taking up arms; they are gathering in small groups to comfort themselves.

I remember the ‘60’s, when people took to the streets, defied government power, police power, to force society to recognize them to change the laws.  They were brave together, but they knew they had to force change.  I remember the ‘70’s, the outfall of the “revolutionary” ‘60’s, when political violence became so common it was background noise.  So common that, like the Tulsa race massacre, we have stuffed it down a memory hole, because we have decided, collectively, to forget it.  Those were truly dangerous times.  These clowns? They are more a danger to themselves.  How many of them are plotting true political violence?  How many of them will even go so far as the Symbionese Liberation Army did, a group of clowns who kidnapped Patty Hearst as their one and only act of revolution, and who wouldn’t be remembered today but for her name. These people need to be watched; they need to be noticed; they need to be observed.

They do not need to be feared.  They don’t want to act:  they want action taken for them.  “The military,” they say, will perform their revolution.  Something will happen to restore Trump to the Presidency.  They won’t have to act; all will be done for them.  Just like John Kennedy, Jr. will return from he dead and expose the pedophiles; or have they abandoned that one already?  It all raises a question:  do these people even vote?  Or is that something else they don’t have to do, because that will be done for them, too?

In that they are just like Trump. He wants things done, things he will benefit from; he just doesn’t want to be responsible for doing them. Neither do his supporters.

And Trump?  Trump is crashing into his narcissism, his psychopathology, his absolute inability to cope with reality.  He will be reinstated to the Presidency because, somehow, that is his right.  He will be protected from the consequences of his actions because he cannot bear responsibility for them.  Bear responsibility in his psyche, I mean.  He will insist all charges are a “witch hunt,” even if he’s dragged away to prison.  He wants to return to the Presidency because he sees it as the only shield against criminal charges he has.  But he doesn’t have it anymore, and he never will.

Rather like his Q supporters, insisting the world stop challenging them by not being an extension of their egos, of the fragile boundaries of their identities.  They are peas in a pod, Trump and his most ardent supporters.  And about as dangerous as peas, too.
Oh, alot of things will; this just doesn't happen to be one of them.
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