Because....Of Course He Did

 

HI!

So, now that the Jan 6 committee is adjourned for the next 5 or 6 weeks or so, I thought I'd like to take a beat and sift through some of the evidence their mostly republican witnesses have presented.

There is no way to touch on every piece of the puzzle individually, but the picture that is coming into focus is pretty ugly. 

For a sitting president to conspire to destroy the very democracy that put him into power just to hang on to that power is astounding.

The planning, the meetings, the phone calls, the coercion, both successful and not so successful, the utter disregard for anything and anyone but himself, ignoring reason, even as it came from those who worked closest with him, all of it, is all at once shocking but not the least bit surprising. 

Person after person has come forward, each placing a few pieces of the puzzle squarely where it belongs. We've all had some idea of what the big picture would look like, but I, for one, am definitely dumbfounded by the sheer number of pieces. And, there are more to come. 

I kind of thought that this would be kind of like those puzzles you do when you're nine or ten, a couple hundred pieces, a challenge, but far from overwhelming. This, however, has turned out to be a gigantic, 50000-piece, 3-D puzzle of a pasture full of wildflowers... all red. 

As the rest of the world watched a mob slam, kick, punch, and pummel their way into the capitol building, screaming hateful, violent threats. As the rest of the world waited for the cavalry to come and save the day. As the rest of the world kept waiting... and waiting... wondering what the possible reasons might be that they weren't coming... that nothing was happening to stop this... that the President wasn't saying anything. Why he was doing nothing. 

Now we know. It wasn't that he was doing nothing. No. He was actively doing everything he could to keep it going. It wasn't until others worked around him to get military assistance and the tide had turned in the favour of sanity, that he begrudgingly told his violent minions to go home. 

He sat in the dining room that has hosted the meals of Lincoln and Kennedy, of Roosevelt and Obama, and watched what could have easily been the end of American democracy as we know it. Not only watching, but actively refusing to do anything to stop it. Repeatedly. 

Because, of course, he did. 

He sent out tweets to deliberately add fuel to the already enflamed crowd. Hell, even his own kids were begging him to do something. Not to save democracy, but because it might make him look bad, but even if the motivation was twisted and gnarled, the result would have been the same. But he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he called senators to push them to delay, even as the mob was crashing into the Chamber. 

Because, of course, he did. 

He planned all along to declare victory in the 2020 election regardless of the vote count. That was the plan. He planned to declare that, if Biden won, he would push the narrative that the election had been rigged. He hinted at it when he ran against Hillary, he hinted at it when he ran against Biden. Because he lost to Biden by almost 8000000 votes he put that plan into action.

Because, of course, he did.

He found clowns that would feed the fire of the lie, poisoning every willfully ignorant, gullible, mind along the way. The same minds he convinced to take horse tranquilizers to cure Covid, the same minds who waited on the grassy knoll for JFKjr to come back from the dead, the same minds that believed wind chargers cause cancer, and injecting household cleaners into your system is a good idea. 

He created an army of ignorance, sprinkled with militant insanity, and a thirst for violence. He convinced them they had been cheated, and anyone who didn't follow the gospel of Trump was evil and actively trying to stomp on everything he had convinced them was true. 

Because, of course, he did. 

After he lost, he proceeded to take his fight to the courts. The leaders of this fight? A former mayor who has gone to great lengths, working tirelessly, to destroy his reputation and become a joke. Another leader? Some unknown lady who divorced reality somewhere along the way, and got less than nothing in the decree. The third of the three stooges is a pillow salesman who can't control the volume of his voice, his paranoia, and has no idea what the word 'evidence' means.

So they took it to court. And they took it to court again, and again, and again, over 60 times. Each time having their cases thrown out because they had no evidence. Real evidence. They had conspiracy theories, they had rumours, they had laughable scenarios that had no base in actual reality, they had nothing real, so they lost. Every... case. 

When it was clear that going through the courts wouldn't work, he put plan B into action. Fake electoral votes. He tried to get people to "find" votes. He demanded recount after recount, never getting the results he wanted. He did all of these things as he continued to stoke the fire among his base, pushing them toward violence, stoking the flames at his cult gatherings and over whatever platform would still allow him to participate. When every pressure tactic he could think of didn't work he went to plan C.

Because, of course, he did. 

Soooo.... Jan 6. 

He hyped his followers up ahead of time, promising a wild time. On the day, he promised to march with them. He knew they were armed, but didn't care because he knew they weren't there to hurt him. He pushed them to hunt Pence by tweeting directives in real-time. He refused to do anything to stop the siege. He relished in it. He sat there and watched it like some twisted cock fight. He refused to listen to reason, no matter who it came from. 

He watched as people were beaten, pepper sprayed, choked, and trampled. He watched as people died, and actively did nothing to stop it, because he thought it would keep him in power. A power he feels he needs to keep from going to prison. A power he still believes will give him his get-out-of-jail free card.

He did, and continues to do worse than nothing. He is still spreading the lie that he won. He will only throw his weight behind candidates that will keep the lie alive. He continues to feed the flames of the willfully ignorant, hoping they can keep the truth from surfacing, and breaking the dam of bullshit he has created. 

Truth can take a while to dig through the muck and free itself to bask in the sun. But it happens. Always.

Because, of course, it does. 

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May the dam burst.

May accountability become the norm.

May all who troll the truth-tellers, attacking them for their courage, get bent.

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