Yesterday, February 17th, 2021, Rush Limbaugh radio/political personality died.

In the mid to late 90s I did listen to his radio program though I could never be called a fan and certainly not a ditto-head, a term for his most devoted followers. During my failed collegiate pursuits, I, for a while, majored in political science and as this blog indicates still have a deep and abiding interest in the political arts, governance, and public policy making at least occasional listening to his program something of interest. It never became a regular experience because even though at the time I was a registered and voting member of the Republican Party Limbaugh did not present reasoned argument from a foundation of logic and solid moral philosophy bur rather engaged in demeaning, cruel, petty, and personal attacks masquerading as humor in place of serious thought. He was not a satirist; he was a bully. Limbaugh’s crude and vicious attitude towards those he perceived as enemies established the moral direction of conservatism and cleared the path for the ascendency of Trump. Today’s ignorant, petty, lying, Republican party devoid of morality or honor is the crop that grew from Limbaugh’s popularity and unchallenged position as the party’s loudest voice. Before he himself went into the grave he first put serious conservatism there leaving behind its idiot and bigoted brother.

There are voices on the right demanding that Limbaugh’s critics restrain their voices and their tone out of respect for the dead. I will not mock or demean him or engaged in petty, puerile, personal attacks not because Limbaugh is deserving of respect but because he is not worth the violation of my manners or principals. Nor will I criticize those who are unleashing their own brands of cruel humor because to demand that this man be treated with a respect he never found for others is hypocrisy that is unmatched. Let him bask in the same respect he showed for his enemies.

He is dead but the wreckage on our political norms from his career lives on.

Among my political readings and podcasts there are two distinctly conservative voices, The Bulwark and The Dispatch. Both are staunchly ‘Never Trumpers’ who did not support and have consistently argued against and fought the Trump takeover of the Republican Party.

The Dispatch includes a number of writers exiled from National Review for their anti-Trump views including David French, Steve Hayes, and Jonah Goldberg. The Bulwark rose from the ashes of The Weekly Standard and includes the likes of Charlie Sykes, Jonathan V. Last, and Bill Kristol.

Among the ‘Never Trumpers’ one common divisor is the ‘Burn it All Down’ camp vs the “Reformers” camp, the former believing that the current GOP and its leaders must be driven from public life before conservatism can be reclaimed and the latter supporting a more limited expulsion of Trump supporters but not of the core GOP elected officers.  The Bulwark, while not uniformly, is pretty much a ‘Burn it All Down’ establishment and The Dispatch are ‘Reformers.’

Perhaps the most significant difference between these two conservative voices is the level of self-reflection they are willing to tolerate. Both camps hate Trump and his enthusiastic cult-like followers and call out the authoritarian bent that led to the Jan 6 2021 attempt to overthrow the election and the incoming legitimate government but there is a difference when it comes to the reason Trump took their party.

The Bulwark team has been much more willing to look much earlier than 2015 and search for what made it possible for a vile, corrupt, bigoted conman to leapfrog to the head of the GOP primary while The Dispatch’s team seem much more willing to label Trump a bolt from the blue, a strange and unique occurrence abetted by media influence, that is unlikely to repeat.

Frankly, I am with The Bulwark on this. Trump did not spring from the GOP fully formed like Athena from Zeus. The voting base of the GOP had been primed, cultivated, and molded for years into the sort of force that would respond to Trump’s brand of cruelty and without recognizing that fact and destroying that foundation there is no salvaging of any movement on the right.

Today, 20 Jan 2021, Donald Trump, grifter, liar, sexist pig, and the man responsible for more American deaths than all of the USA’s casualties from the Second World War and the only President to be impeached twice and who inspired and incited a seditious attempt to overthrow our democratic system of government, finally loses his grip on the power he so never deserved to be become, hopefully, our first and only pariah ex-president.

While Trump, his family of coconspirators and conmen along with their retinue of henchmen, yes-men, racists, and scoundrels, have exited the executive branch the festering pestilence that gave rise to them remains unburnt shot through with the spores for the next generation of monsters.

Let’s be clear, levelheaded conservative philosophy is not the genesis of this rot but what the Republican party has become, after decades of playing to bigots of all types, is an anti-democratic party motivated by fear, hatred, and an eternal point of view that the world is forever victimizing them and in American being them victim of injustice justifies all manner of violence. From County music to Rap and in media from novels to feature films has been the glorification of revenge of the wronged and that fact that this poisonous political philosophy is not being victimized matters not at all. They believe to be true and in that find the justification to murder police officers defending our capitol. The mob has been dispersed but its members remain.

In the halls of Congress Representative and Senators furiously are trying to wash away Trump’s foul stink. Some play to his base while most attempt to play us, with words of how bad Trump was and how he lied. Yes, he lied and you stood by as he lied for your team, your cause, and said nothing. Trump’s people are not purged from the party, that control the party. The RNC chairperson dropped from her name the family surname that irritated Trump and bent her knee to him. She has retained her power and her fealty to Trump.

The GOP must be burnt to the group and rebuilt. The path ahead is long, hard, and I fear holds much violence, you cannot have literally millions of people convince that their ‘election’ was stolen without some taking matters into their own hands, but we must press on, we must fight for our republic and our union.

A putsch is a violent attempt to overthrow a government and what happened on the 6th of January 2021 was a putsch and I think it will turn out to be a more organized one that many currently believe. It was also not the first in this election cycle the disrupted plot my militia members to kidnap the governor of Michigan was also a putsch.

I believe that the seditionists on January 6 can be divided up into three elements, Useful Idiots, Trump Zealots, and Dedicated Insurrections.

The Useful Idiots are people of the rank-and-file GOP base that arrived at Washington D.C. that day to bleat and cry about stolen elections, make a lot of noise, but without any plans to actually do anything of substance. They are the ones most likely to believe that the vice-president actually had the power to throw out the election and most likely comprised the majority of the mob. Every army needs cannon-fodder and that are usually unaware that has been their designation. These would have been the cosplayers to the revolution.

Trump Zealots are the hard core and willing to be violent supports of Trump as strong man. I think that the ‘Proud Boys’ most likely fall into the element. These people are not particularly political but motivated more by hate, fear, and a deep desire for a social order that places them on top. It’s my opinion that these are the people who would have taken member of congress and the senate hostage and perhaps worse in their hatred of the world and would have fixed the eye of the media on themselves during the crisis. These are the people bearing flex cuffs and shouting for vice President Pence.

The third and by far most dangerous to our system of government were the Dedicated Insurrectionists. These men came armed, armored, and with a serious plan. They understood that the Pence couldn’t give the election to Trump and that the counting of the electoral ballots was the pivot joint to the transferer of power. These are the people who came with maps of the capitol’s underground tunnels and that ransacked not Nancy Pelosi’s office but rather the Senate Parliamentarian’s.

The Senate Parliamentarian is hardly a public figure of renown. I certainly could tell you their name with researching it and according to people who have worked in the capitol for years that office is obscure and not easily found. The insurrectionists that went there did so with a purpose and I think it was to find and destroy the paper ballots of the Electoral College.

If those ballots had been destroyed before they were counted congress could not have completed the presidential election of 2020. The Constitution makes no provisions for a ‘do over’ and all of the hard legislative deadlines were well past. The Constitution does clearly map out what happens if the Electoral College cannot select a president, Congress, voting by state delegation not individual members, elects the president and that would have given the office to Trump.

I have no faith, absolutely none at all, that the Republicans of this congress would have abandoned Trump for something so quaint as democracy and would have voted him in as president, some by cowardice, some by party loyalty over the nation, and some for sheer toadiness, but I have a certainty that would have been the outcome.

Perhaps as more come to light and the investigation progresses, we will discover things that makes these conclusions unsupported, if so, I will happily change my tune, but I think the opposite is more likely. As we uncover the facts of the failed plot, we will learn that more people were involved, perhaps people of high office, and that the putsch came dangerously close to succeeding.

Which is not to say that Trump isn’t monstrous because beyond doubt he is a monstrous human being, vain, greedy, slothful, and utterly lacking in nay compassion or empathy he fully fits the bill but the real monster is the one he claimed, the Republican Voter Base.

When LBJ arm-twisted, cajoled, and pushed through landmark civil rights legislation he is have said to have commented that the Democrats had lost the south for a generation. At the time the Democratic Party had two major social elements, the northern liberal wing and the southern segregationists. This split had been a major factor in Democratic politics for decades with progressive goals being achieved by continuing to give tacit approval by way of inaction to the racist policies employed in primarily southern states. LBJ ruptured this agreement and starting in 1968 with Nixon’s Southern Strategy the GOP made plays for the disaffected racists now soured on the Democratic Party. After a brief reversal with the election of Jimmy Carter the transformation was completed with the ‘Reagan Democrats’ of the 1980 and 1984 elections.

With subtle and sometimes not so subtle messaging the GOP whistled to this new fragment of its electorate with messages that provoked anger and fear because those are far more powerful motivators than policy. As the Democratic Party pushed to open society to more and more persons who had been pushed to the fringes with drives for equality and rights and numerous fronts the GOP responded by enraging this element more and more. Abortion, gays, and other ‘social’ issues which when you strip is all away always come back to individuals living their own lives, were the wedge issues to enrage the base and turn them out to vote. After the vote? The issues could be forgotten save for red-meat speeches to re-energize them for funds and marches.

The problem with anger as a motivator is that like a drug people develop tolerances. What was enraging last election is merely annoying this one and next cycle will be purely background. The doses have to become larger and more intense, distorted truth no longer works and manufactures lies and less coded speech are required to fuel the fury. This has the side-effect of driving away more moderate voices and voters but if you gain more than you lose then you still win and you control the mob, right?

You control until someone comes along willing to feed them hatred less diluted than your own. Trump rode down that escalator in 2015 and took control of a mob that had been decades in the making and with its fury fully behind him cowed the entire GOP into submission. Th elite well-educated master found themselves chained to the beast, dancing to its tune, and the tragic result we witnessed last Wednesday, the full-throated assault on democracy, the rage that demanded their whims be catered to and the power of their lies.

Trump fired the gun at the head of democracy with it was the GOP that forged and loaded it.

We are all familiar with the stories of Japanese Imperial Army soldiers isolated and out of contact on tiny islands that for years after the end the war continued fighting serving a cause that had ended with loyalty and devotion. The dedication to death of the Imperial Japane3se soldier seemed incomprehensible to Western eyes and was a cause of grave concern when planning the invasion of Japan’s home island. Major loss of life was avoided by Emperor Hirohito’s unprecedented radio announcement of the Empire surrender.

Surrender is the concession that you have lost the war and it is the permission structure that allows dedicated and loyal soldiers to lay down their arms and fight no more. It was the case for Imperial japan, for Nazi Germany, and the traitorous South in the American Civil War.

Following Biden’s victory in November there were a number of pieces published with the sentiment that while it would be nice if Trump conceded the election it was in no way a requirement. They argue that legally a defeated candidate’s concession held no weight on the matter, the process did not call for it and the transfer of power will proceed without. This is true for the legal argument. Nothing in the law requires the defeated candidate to give a concession speech or act with the honor that we expect from our election leaders but there is much more to this than legality.

Wednesday’s assault on Congress, instigated by the President after months of lies, was an attempt to prevent the peaceful transfer of power by a political force that has not accepted defeat and it has not accepted that defeat because there has been no surrender, no concession. Trump’s refusal to acknowledge the facts of the matter not only dishonor our process but in no unsubtle ways advises his followers that the fight is not over, that they do not have permission to lay down their metaphorical and all too often real arms in the fight. The absence of a surrender does the exact opposite it lays out the expectation that every true follower will continue the fight and never recognize their collective defeat. Concessions are not optional they are critical to political process but we must face the reality that Trump will never concede. His narcissistic ego will not allow it he will forever wail that he was cheated and in doing so will give continual permission for his followers to wage real war on his behalf. When senior Republicans asked, “what harm does it do?” in allowing Trump rants and lies about the results of the election aided and abetted by the likes of Cruz, Hawley, and McConnel, this is the answer, putsches and violence and we have yet to see the end of that.

We cannot force Trump to concede. Because we cannot obtain from Trump what our system so desperately requires, we cannot extend an olive branch of healing to either Trump or his followers. In the debate should Trump be prosecuted to the full extent of the law some have argued our nation requires  that we do not to heal our divisions and that may have worked in a world where Trump conceded but that is not the world we live in. Trump has not surrendered his war on our democracy and so we cannot abandon the fight. Our system of self-government would not survive if we did. Trump must be prosecuted for all his crimes and the so must every single person who violates the law for his cause.

I have no illusion that the years ahead are going to be difficult. I fully expect that of the millions who have accepted the lies that this election was ‘stolen’ there more than a few willing to commit violence even after Trump’s departure from the White House. The attempts to kidnap a sitting governor, to subvert elected government are not over.

When the enemy army is in the field and pressing their attacks, no matter how hopeless, is not the time to abandon your positions and give them the field.

Despite the snarky title of this post Wednesday’s assault on our government is a deadly serious incident. Violent, right-wing reactionaries stormed our nation’s capital with the intent to prevent the transfer of power to next president who had been legitimately, freely, and fairly elected. They did this after months of lies from the head of our government who himself had been supported by his party in these lies of ‘stolen’ election. Even after the invasion of the congress with Representative, Senators, and journalists in fear of their lives, and people had died, more than 100 Republican Representatives still voted to disenfranchise millions of Americans and to overthrow this election. As I write this five people have died from this riot, this act of political terrorism, and cowards who were more than happy to bask in the glow of Trump’s abuse of power are scuttling for safety and demanding they we respect them as principled people. They are not, they are merely self-serving, greedy, cowards that are now seeking to save their skins and careers after standing by and watching this man corrupt his office and refuse to take any rational action to save lives during the worst global pandemic in a century.

It is a blessing that this action was performed by idiots but we are far from safe even after Trump is expelled from the office and a sane person replaces him.

Trump is the accelerant for the bonfire that is burning down our political house but he is not the arsonist. A sane, healthy, and reality-based political party would not have been ripe for Trump brand of white-grievance, fascistic politics. Trump walked in and took controls of a base that had been built over decades, one that the elite like Hawley and Cruz thought they could command and are even now trying to wrest back from him. That base, the ones that been encouraged to think Obama was a foreign-born Muslim, that had been taught to never trust any source outside of the Conservative bubble, that had fully supported every action to make it harder for the ‘wrong’ kinds of people to vote, are the same people who stormed the capital and waved treasonous flags during their putsch. This is not conservatism. Around the world there are sane, rational conservative political parties. This is the modern GOP, it is vile, it is racist, and it is solidly anti-democratic. Trump did not create it; he merely took it off its mask and revealed the monster underneath.

The United States of America joined in the first World War to ‘Make the world safe for Democracy.’

We fought in the Second World War to defeat fascism in the west and in the east, liberating millions of people and bringing them into the light of self-governance.

We stood with the United Nations and saved the people of South Korean from subjugation by the anti-democratic forces of communism.

Our nation stood guard and paid with both blood and treasure to defend the free world against the tyranny of Soviet Communism defending the rights of all people to self-determination.

In the struggle for self-determination and democratic ideals the Republican Party led the way, always ready to defend democracy.

Today, that party stands against democracy.

It stands against free, fair, and legitimate elections favoring power over principle. GOP’s leading voices are calling to the disenfranchisement of millions of Americans, to subvert and overthrow an election that they lost for the ego and greed of one man, to make a mockery of a century of defending freedom, and the leadership of the party shows no intention to rebuke or punish those throwing aside our most cherished ideal, self-determination.

The new Senate is coming into session and normally the decision with which party to caucus is scarcely a decision at all, but these are scarcely normal times. To caucus with the Republican Party is to reward that party for its anti-democratic behavior with an extension of the power it is already abusing.

No reduction of marginal tax rates will erase that fact.

No amount of sensible de-regulation will defend our elections.

No appeal to traditional values will restore the defense of democracy.

If you caucus with the Republican party the good works you have done will be destroyed and you will simply be part of the machinery griding to dust what has been built for generations. That is a deeply unpleasant fact.

If you caucus with the Democratic Party, the entire conservative community will turn on you like ravenous wolves and it is likely that you will lose your positions and your offices, but you will not be destitute, none of you, and it is best to remember that hundreds of thousands of Americans have died for these rights and these ideals and now it is your turn to sacrifice so much less than they did.

The choice is yours and yours alone.

You three have the power, no matter the outcome of tomorrow’s election, to decide the course of this nation and your party and for better or worse it is what you will be remembered for.