5 thoughts on “Tuesday Open Thread”

1. Heather Cox-Richardson says "Wow!"

   Sedition is the crime of inciting a revolt against the government, and conspiracy means there was an organized group of people with a plan.

   A grand jury indicted Tarrio and Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl, and Dominic Pezzola, all of whom had already been charged with crimes; this filing adds to those charges. The indictment says that the five men “did knowingly conspire, confederate, and agree, with other persons known and unknown to the Grand Jury, to oppose by force the authority of the Government of the United States and by force to prevent, hinder, and delay the execution of any law of the United States…. The purpose of the conspiracy was to oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force.”

   Wow.

   The DOJ is acknowledging that the insurrectionists were trying to overthrow the government. As retired Harvard law professor Lawrence Tribe tweeted, “Seditious conspiracy is huge. No more serious federal crime short of treason.”

   …

   But the Tarrio indictments have always indicated there was something big afoot, and now that seditious conspiracy charges are on the table, they are worth revisiting. Both an earlier indictment and this one have this paragraph: “Between December 30 and December 31, 2020, TARRIO communicated multiple times with an individual whose identity is known to the grand jury. On December 30, 2020, this individual sent Tarrio a nine-page document titled, ‘1776 Returns.’ The document set forth a plan to occupy a few ‘crucial buildings’ in Washington, D.C., on January 6, including House and Senate office buildings around the Capitol, with as ‘many people as possible’ to ‘show our politicians We the People are in charge.’ After sending the document, the individual stated, ‘The revolution is [more] important than anything.’ TARRIO responded, ‘That’s what every waking moment consists of…I’m not playing games.’”

   There is also this: As these five Proud Boys were near an entrance to the Capitol, “[s]econds before 12:53 p.m [on January 6], BIGGS was approached by an individual whose identity is known to the grand jury. The individual put one arm around BIGGS’s shoulder and spoke to him. Approximately one minute later, this individual crossed the barrier that restricted access to the Capitol grounds. This was the first barrier protecting the Capitol grounds to be breached on January 6, 2021, and the point of entry” for the Proud Boys.

   Both the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers storming the Capitol appeared to fancy themselves as heroic revolutionaries defending America. Clearly egged on by someone talking about “revolution,” they took up a great deal of space in social media and on private chats thumping their chests about “revolution” and “1776.” Charles Donohoe, who was not charged here because he is cooperating with the Department of Justice, wrote that Washington, D.C., officials were limiting access to the city “so that they can deny Trump has the People’s support. We can’t let them succeed. This government is run FOR the People, BY the People…. Congress needs a reintroduction to that fact.”

   The Proud Boys—and the Oath Keepers, too—also talked about civil war. 

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2. LOCK EM UP!  THROW AWAY  THE KEYS.  On with the next miscreants all the way to the Orange Julius 

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3. From Jeet Heer at The Nation: Libertarians go MAGA as they embrace bigotry.

   Ron Paul's news letter always included a White Supremecist angle, as has the NRA's gun rights terrorist movement. The economic tradition has also had a Fascist if not Feudalist angle, looking at you Hayek and The von Mises Institute.

   Of course we also have the Russian Oligarch align Koch Brother(s), funding anti Climate protection agitation, and the Federalist Society. 

   Anyway, this article points out how the US Libertarian party is absorbing white nationalism.

   … the Libertarian party was quickly wracked by its own internal strife thanks to a guerrilla faction that wanted to take up culture war politics.

   In July 28, 2017, Jeff Deist, the president of the Mises Institute, named for libertarian economist Ludwig von Mises, published a blog post arguing that “blood and soil and God and nation still matter to people. Libertarians ignore this at the risk of irrelevance.” The phrase “blood and soil” already had an unmistakable fascist overtone—but it took on an even more gruesome connotation two weeks after the post during the infamous Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally of 2017, where an anti-racist protester was killed. The white supremacists who tried to dominate the streets of Charlottesville chanted “blood and soil.” Several of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally identified as libertarians. In the wake of that event, Nicholas Sarwark, chair of the Libertarian Party, signed an open letter warning of the dangers of fascism. Arvin Vohra, vice chair of the Libertarian Party, wrote a post arguing that the “Mises Institute has been turned into a sales funnel for the White Nationalist branch of the Alt Right.”

   The ensuing arguments over “blood and soil” lead to the creation of a Mises Caucus, which aimed to overthrow the pragmatic Gary Johnson wing of the party and adopt the incendiary culture war politics of the hard right.

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4. Big day for primaries … but we already know one set of losers around the country:  election officials [my emphasis].

   AP News: A looming Supreme Court decision on abortion, an increase of migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border and the midterm elections are potential triggers for extremist violence over the next six months, the Department of Homeland Security said Tuesday.

   One example from today's primaries:

   AP News: Frustrated county election administrators in Montana are increasing security for Tuesday’s primary election while the state’s commissioner of political practices says misinformation about election security is eroding people’s faith in democracy.

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5. A story of Democrats losing Dubuque and Dubuque County, IA in The Atlantic may help the Democrat to Republican shift in some parts of Colorado — Are Iowa’s Democratic Days Gone for Good?

   After 60 years, voters in Dubuque County seem finished with Democrats. Nationwide, the trends are the same: Working-class voters without a college education are voting more in line with Republicans, while Democrats make inroads among more educated voters. …

   America’s growing education gap has led to an imbalance, some political analysts argue, in which the highest-educated, most-liberal members of the Democratic Party control its messaging—alienating less educated, less liberal Americans who might otherwise be open to voting blue. “I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the people we’ve lost are likely to be low-socioeconomic-status people,” the Democratic pollster David Shor, one of the leading proponents of this theory, told Ezra Klein in an interview last year.

   I'm not certain education is the absolute divider — but as an educated elite [in Communication Studies] myself, I think about how candidates [and "the party" as a whole] sound.to different audiences.

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