Stranger
Another week or two, this will seem normal. This country is fucked.
Fucking hell, we’re fucked.
Fucking fucked,
Never in my life did I think I would ever see a sitting US Senator face down with American law enforcement officers pushing him into the ground and getting cuffed, simply because he tried to ask a question. He had his hands up and fully identified himself. Absolutely appalling.
Thank you, @Stranger_On_A_Train for starting this topic as being separate from the other topic of “POTUS sends 2,000 National Guard troops to L.A. to handle ICE protests”. I STRONGLY believe this is a very important topic on its own.
I have never posted here or pretty much anywhere else on political issues, but this seems to me to be a tipping point (or at least it should be) and has my ire up enough to comment on it. I never thought I’d see something like this happen in my country. It’s just unconscionable. I’m truly at a loss for the right words to describe my anger about this situation.
I guess brown Senators need to keep in their place around Kristi or suffer the consequences.
The tiny fisted Baby-In-Chief wets himself.
Anyone who watches cable news or the nightly news - I’m curious how or if they covered it.
I think the level of sanewashing and compliance they have goes far beyond normal negligence and far into complicity. Adds this to the list of items where they’re going to act like this is within the norms and nothing to worry about and not obvious evidence of fascism and help to normalize all of this to the general public. Within a few months, violent suppression of the speech of even democratic Senators will be the norm.
Despite the DHS secretary’s lies, the Senator did identify himself.
My almost certainly to be denied hope is that the complicit Legislative and Judicial representatives of our government look at this and realize if they keep enabling Felon47, that they quickly become superfluous. All evidence to date however indicates that they’d rather keep clinging to their current power and assume that they’ll get to keep said power and influence.
I’ve taken to quoting from this clip in Star Wars far too often…
No one seems to be making a big deal out of the fact that the statement he was asking a question about was:
“We are not going away. We are staying here to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership that this Governor Newsom and this mayor placed on this country and what they have tried to insert into this city…”
Liberate the city from its legitimate government? The administration just declared war on Los Angeles and EVEN IN A STORY ABOUT AN EVENT THAT HAPPENED 5 SECONDS LATER no one seems to care.
She claimed he “lunged” at her and that she did not know he was a US Senator. He did not lunge, he took a step forward and he did identify himself as a senator. But you would think that the Secretary of Homeland Security would know who the senators were in the state that she is visiting. Yes, absolutely appalling.
I started to link to Noem’s post-assault presser and Speaker Johnson’s response but I could not bring myself to give space to either of their constant stream of abject lies. As much as anything, the willingness of MAGA-affiliated Republicans to flatly lie about and deny facts and events that are caught on camera without batting any eye or making any pretense of subjectivity is an indication of just how far down the path of authoritarianism the party in full control of the federal legislature and executive and 21 statehouses has gone.
Except they aren’t even ‘clinging to their current power’; they’re literally handing it over, virtually unbidden, to the executive branch without batting an eye. Insofar as the legislature has become completely broken and incapable of passing meaningful legislation or even a functional budget without great distress, they could at least retain what authority that has not already being relinquished through decades of capitulation and not wanting to do their collective job, but instead Congressional Republicans they are competitively prostrating for the title of “Most Compliant Toe-Rag”, even the ones who obviously dislike Trump and have been threatened by the MAGA movement. At this point, they are just abject cowards, looking to cover themselves by betraying their oath, duty to serve constituents, and any shred of self-respect just to get a thin sliver of MAGA pie.
I’ll just point out that at any time a dozen Republican Senators and about the same number of Representatives could locate their spines, stand with opposition colleges, and end this by impeachment and removal of Trump and anyone who aligns with him. That is literally all it would take to put a stop—at least temporarily—to this third base slide toward autocracy. And yet, not a one of them—even Susan Collins regardless of how “concerned” she gets—will do so.
The performance is the point; to see who will comply and who will resist. The more outrageous the stunt, the more absurd the claims, the more inflammatory the language, the better of a filter it is to winnow out the the resisters from the compliant.
Stranger
This will bring a lot more ire out here for the ongoing protests, and I worry anyone protesting this event or even carrying a sign in support of Padilla will be the lame excuse the DHS is looking for to do-- I don’t know what next. Use the marines? Martial Law? Fuck.
Fair point, I should probably have said something like “presumed power” and actual privilege. Technically, they DO have the power, but your criticism is fully accurate, in that they choose not to exercise it because, well, they’re afraid of Trump. But since we’re moving into a reboot of pre-World War 2 Germany, you’d think they’d all know exactly how well appeasement turns out.
I should add that while it’s not their responsibility in the way it is for the Republican cohorts, I also sadly assume far too many Democratic members of the legislature will be far too diplomatic in their responses, when I think we’re far past that (@Elmer_J.Fudd’s link to Warren being close but still not harsh enough).
Yes, the idea that the people need to be saved from their elected mayor and governor is frightening.
And I heard Noem calling Padilla’s actions political theater; ironic given that sending in the troops was certainly political theater.
Unfortunately this behavior is like catnip to conservatives.