January 6 Hearings Live

[lpetrich]

Jim Jordan rejects Jan. 6 panel's request to cooperate in investigation | TheHill

He earlier said that he would cooperate. But now,

"This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core Constitutional priciples, and would serve to further erode legislative norms," Jordan wrote to committee chair Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), according a copy of the letter posted online by Axios.

"As you well know, I have no relevant information that would assist the Select Committee in advancing any legitimate legislative purpose," he added.

When asked what he talked about with Trump on the day of the insurrection, he said earlier

“Yeah, I mean, I spoke with the president last week. I speak with the president all of the time. I spoke with him on Jan. 6. I mean, I talked with President Trump all the time, and that's ... I don't think that's unusual,” Jordan said at the time.

 

[lpetrich]

Is the US really heading for a second civil war? | US politics | The Guardian - "With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbable"

Like the Irish Republican Army vs. the British authorities and the Ulster Defense Association.

A slew of recent opinion polls show a significant minority of Americans at ease with the idea of violence against the government. Even talk of a second American civil war has gone from fringe fantasy to media mainstream.

“Is a Civil War ahead?” was the blunt headline of a New Yorker magazine article this week. “Are We Really Facing a Second Civil War?” posed the headline of a column in Friday’s New York Times. Three retired US generals wrote a recent Washington Post column warning that another coup attempt “could lead to civil war”.

...
The anxiety is fed by rancour in Washington, where Biden’s desire for bipartisanship has crashed into radicalized Republican opposition.

...
Illustrating the point, almost no Republicans attended the commemorations as the party seeks to rewrite history, recasting the mob who tried to overturn Trump’s election defeat as martyrs fighting for democracy. Tucker Carlson, the most watched host on the conservative Fox News network, refused to play any clips of Biden’s speech, arguing that 6 January 2021 “barely rates as a footnote” historically because “really not a lot happened that day”.

Joseph Stalin would have been proud. Sort of like how party officials were painted out of official pictures when they fell out of favor. There is a book about this analog-medium Photoshopping: "The Commissar Vanishes". Party official Nikolai Yezhov led a purge so big it became known as the Yezhovshchina, but when he fell out of favor, he was painted out of a picture of him with Stalin.

After his death, Stalin himself received that treatment. I have a Soviet history book that describes the Stalin era without mentioning Stalin, saying that the Communist Party commanded this, that, and the other thing. One would never have gotten away with that in the Stalin years. One would likely end up taking a long involuntary vacation in a Siberian prison camp.

 

[lpetrich]

With the cult of Trump more dominant in the Republican party than ever, and radical rightwing groups such as the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys on the march, some regard the threat to democracy as greater now than it was a year ago. Among those raising the alarm is Barbara Walter, a political scientist at the University of California, San Diego, and author of a new book, How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them.

Walter previously served on the political instability taskforce, an advisory panel to the CIA, which had a model to predict political violence in countries all over the world – except the US itself. Yet with the rise of Trump’s racist demagoguery, Walter, who has studied civil wars for 30 years, recognized telltale signs on her own doorstep.

One was the emergence of a government that is neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic – an “anocracy”. The other is a landscape devolving into identity politics where parties no longer organise around ideology or specific policies but along racial, ethnic or religious lines.

Walter told the Observer: “By the 2020 elections, 90% of the Republican party was now white. On the taskforce, if we were to see that in another multiethnic, multi-religious country which is based on a two-party system, this is what we would call a super faction, and a super faction is particularly dangerous.”

The plot to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 may be a foretaste of things to come.

Walter suggests that opposition figures, moderate Republicans and judges deemed unsympathetic might all become potential assassination targets.

“I could also imagine situations where militias, in conjunction with law enforcement in those areas, carve out little white ethnostates in areas where that’s possible because of the way power is divided here in the United States. It would certainly not look anything like the civil war that happened in the 1860s.”

Who starts civil wars?

The academic explained: “The groups that tend to start civil wars are the groups that were once dominant politically but are in decline. They’ve either lost political power or they’re losing political power and they truly believe that the country is theirs by right and they are justified in using force to regain control because the system no longer works for them.”

Like the Southern slave lords in the 1850's and 1860's.

 

[lpetrich]

US ‘closer to civil war’ than most would like to believe, new book says | US politics | The Guardian -- "How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them" by Barbara Walter

That book is scheduled to be published January 11.

Noting
Opinion | A researcher’s ‘How Civil Wars Start’ shows we’re closer to one than we think - The Washington Post

Her bottom line: “We are closer to civil war than any of us would like to believe.” She lays out the argument in detail in her must-read book, “How Civil Wars Start,” out in January. “No one wants to believe that their beloved democracy is in decline, or headed toward war,” she writes. But, “if you were an analyst in a foreign country looking at events in America — the same way you’d look at events in Ukraine or the Ivory Coast or Venezuela — you would go down a checklist, assessing each of the conditions that make civil war likely. And what you would find is that the United States, a democracy founded more than two centuries ago, has entered very dangerous territory.”

Center for Systemic Peace has a "Polity" dataset that measures the quality of a nation's democracy for many nations.

U.S. democracy had received the Polity index’s top score of 10, or close to it, for much of its history. But in the five years of the Trump era, it tumbled precipitously into the anocracy zone; by the end of his presidency, the U.S. score had fallen to a 5, making the country a partial democracy for the first time since 1800. “We are no longer the world’s oldest continuous democracy,” Walter writes. “That honor is now held by Switzerland, followed by New Zealand, and then Canada. We are no longer a peer to nations like Canada, Costa Rica, and Japan, which are all rated a +10 on the Polity index.”

But at the CSP,

NOTE: The USA dropped below the "democracy threshold" (+6) on the POLITY scale in 2020 and was considered an anocracy (+5) at the end of the year 2020; the USA score for 2021 returned to democracy (+8).

Then

Others have reached similar findings. The Stockholm-based International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance put the United States on a list of “backsliding democracies” in a report last month. “The United States, the bastion of global democracy, fell victim to authoritarian tendencies itself," the report said. And a new survey by the academic consortium Bright Line Watch found that 17 percent of those who identify strongly as Republicans support the use of violence to restore Trump to power, and 39 percent favor doing everything possible to prevent Democrats from governing effectively.

noting
U.S. listed as a ‘backsliding’ democracy for first time in report by European think tank - The Washington Post
and
Tempered expectations and hardened divisions a year into the Biden presidency | Bright Line Watch

 

[Patooka]

Is the US really heading for a second civil war? | US politics | The Guardian - "With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbable"

Like the Irish Republican Army vs. the British authorities and the Ulster Defense Association.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland was not that straight forward nor were the sides so clearly defined. If the US does go into civil war I suspect it would be more like Life of Brian's Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea sort of demarcation.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Seen elsewhere:

Be Wary, be wary of the 6th of January, Big Lie, Insurrection and Plot.
We see no reason, why Republican treason, Should ever be forgot!

Only on January 6th should the 45th President of the United States be remembered.
His name never mentioned.
Joe Biden's speech was spot on in these regards. I hope he does the same next year.

 

[lpetrich]

Back to The Guardian,

Sidney Blumenthal, a former Clinton adviser turned biographer of Abraham Lincoln and Guardian contributor, said: “The secessionists in 1861 accepted Lincoln’s election as fair and legitimate.”

The current situation, he said, “is the opposite. Trump’s questioning of the election … has led to a genuine crisis of legitimacy.”

Civil War II? Not very likely.

“… But given the proliferation of guns, there could be any number of seemingly random acts of violence that come from these organised militias, which are really vigilantes and with partisan agendas, and we haven’t entered that phase.

“The real nightmare would be that kind of low-intensity conflict.”

BW's response: Barbara F Walter on Twitter: "Thank you Mr. Milbank for this column. I wish I had better news for the world but I couldn’t stay silent knowing what I know. (link)" / Twitter

Barbara F Walter on Twitter: "The CIA actually has a Task Force designed to try to predict where and when political instability and conflict is likely to break out around the world. It's just not legally allowed to look at the U.S. That means we are blind to the risk factors that are rapidly emerging here. (link)" / Twitter
The FBI could fill in that gap.

Barbara F Walter on Twitter: "I so appreciate the chance to discuss the events of January 6th with @LinseyDavis and @ABCNewsLive. If you missed it, here it is." / Twitter
noting
ABC News Live on Twitter: ""My immediate thought was actually shock, not that it was happening, but the impunity and almost the righteousness by which these individuals were going about a deeply illegal and possibly treasonous act," @bfwalter tells @LinseyDavis, one year after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. (vid link)" / Twitter
White men wanting to take back what they considered "their" country.

BW then said that she was relieved that authoritarian tendencies were finally public. She then noted that the US is trending toward majority nonwhite by 2045, and that some white people feel very threatened by that. Then she noted that civil wars are typically started by those who were formerly dominant or who are losing their dominance, not the poor or immigrants. They do it because they want to maintain their dominance.

As to people more willing to endorse violence, it is because they see nonviolent means, like politics, less and less effective. As to what to do, she recommends ending the filibuster, ending gerrymandering, getting money out of politics, and ending the Electoral College.

Is the US really heading for a second civil war? | US politics | The Guardian - "With the country polarised and Republicans embracing authoritarianism, some experts fear a Northern Ireland-style insurgency but others say armed conflict remains improbable"

Like the Irish Republican Army vs. the British authorities and the Ulster Defense Association.

The Troubles in Northern Ireland was not that straight forward nor were the sides so clearly defined. If the US does go into civil war I suspect it would be more like Life of Brian's Judean People's Front/People's Front of Judea sort of demarcation.

What would that be?

About Northern Ireland, was it more like the IRA, the British authorities, and the UDA all fighting each other?

 

[lpetrich]

Barbara F. Walter - Professor. Expert on Civil Wars. Terrorism. Violent Extremism.

About her just-published book "How Civil Wars Start and How to Stop Them":

Political violence rips apart several towns in southwest Texas. A far-right militia plots to kidnap the governor of Michigan and try her for treason. An armed mob of Trump supporters and conspiracy theorists storms the U.S. Capitol. Are these isolated incidents? Or is this the start of something bigger? Barbara F. Walter has spent her career studying civil conflict in places like Iraq and Sri Lanka, but now she has become increasingly worried about our own country.

Perhaps surprisingly, both autocracies and healthy democracies are largely immune from civil war; it's the countries in the middle ground that are most vulnerable. And this is where more and more countries, including the United States, are finding themselves today.

Over the last two decades, the number of active civil wars around the world has almost doubled. Walter reveals the warning signs--where wars tend to start, who initiates them, what triggers them--and why some countries tip over into conflict while others remain stable. Drawing on the latest international research and lessons from over twenty countries, Walter identifies the crucial risk factors, from democratic backsliding to factionalization and the politics of resentment. A civil war today won't look like America in the 1860s, Spain in the 1930s, or Russia in the 1920s. It will begin with sporadic acts of violence and terror, accelerated by social media. It will sneak up on us and leave us wondering how we could have been so blind.

In this urgent and disturbing book, Walter redefines civil war for a new age, providing the framework we need to confront the danger we now face--and the knowledge to stop it before it's too late.

 

[lpetrich]

Barbara F Walter on Twitter: "If you didn't catch it live, I joined @amanpour on @CNN to discuss what scholars have learned from civil wars around the world and what this is telling us about our own country and our risks of violence. (link)" / Twitter
noting
Civil War in America: Can it happen again? - CNN Video
Christiane Amanpour:

Writer Fintan O'Toole and Barbara F. Walter, author of "How Civil Wars Start," discuss America's risk of sliding into a modern-day civil war.

BW said that many Americans have the stereotype of their 1861-65 Civil War, with two large armies fighting each other, like wars between separate nations. But what happens nowadays is much more decentralized, much less organized, with lots of factions and militias fighting each other, often using guerrilla warfare and terrorism.

The most important factor was "anocracy", halfway between democracy and authoritarianism. The next one whether the nation was divided into ethnic, religious, or racial factions that try to exclude others from power. She then said that the US has both factors.

Fintan O'Toole notes that the US far right already thinks that the US is in a civil war. He notes that a coming civil war may be a self-fulfilling prophecy, that people concerned about a possible civil war may end up preparing for that sort of thing and end up starting one. They may then say that they must attack before they become attacked.

Then a mention of the issue of the Jan-6 investigations not doing much about those at the top.

Who starts civil wars? The more extreme people. They recruit more moderate people with talk of how dangerous the other side is. Like making a big bogeyman out of Antifa. Or claiming that the Jan 6 attacks were due to villains like the FBI and the Deep State and Antifa.

BW then talked about social media and how it gets viewers by showing its users lots of outrages. Then how some people believe that the Jan 6 attackers were patriots who were trying to save America. FOT agreed, and he said that in such people's minds, the US is a nation of white people where all others are in a subordinate position, and that legitimate democracy is only white-people democracy.

FOT then says that Presidet Joe Biden ought to fight his bipartisan, consensus inclinations and recognize that much of the nation does not believe in democracy.

BW suggests that we increase checks and balances on the Presidency, that the President has become more and more powerful. I agree, because that seems like going in the direction of Caesarism, of someone in the system making himself an autocrat. Sort of like what Donald Trump tried to do. The highest-rated democracies all have parliamentary systems, where the legislature runs the executive branch of government. Furthermore, some research indicates that the strength of a legislature is positively correlated with the strength of democracy. So a possible fix is to downgrade the Presidency, and have Congress take over much of the Cabinet.

BW noted Arthur Schlesinger Jr. writing about "the imperial presidency". He wrote about Richard Nixon, and BW thinks that that is an even better description of Trump's Presidency.

 

[lpetrich]

Barbara F Walter on Twitter: "Thank you to @JoyAnnReid and @thereidout for having me on to discuss the changing demographics of our country and its potential implications." / Twitter
noting
The ReidOut on Twitter: ".@bfwalter on America shifting to minority White makeup: "To a subset of the White population here this is deeply, deeply threatening... They see the United States as a White Christian country. And they feel like they're justified to fight to maintain it." #TheReidOut #reiders (vid link)" / Twitter

She cites Muslims in the southern Philippines reacting to Catholics moving in, Assamese of eastern India reacting to Bengalis moving in, Northern Island, the Israel-Palestine conflict, ... she noted that the US's white majority is becoming less and less of a majority, and should become a minority by 2045.

 

[lpetrich]

Jan. 6 panel fires back at Jordan over refusal to cooperate | TheHill

The committee’s Monday statement goes further, alleging that Jordan had knowledge of Trump’s plans for contesting the election and that the former president’s legal team may be pressuring the Ohio lawmaker not to cooperate.

“Mr. Jordan’s letter fails to address the principal bases for the Select Committee’s request for a meeting, including that he worked directly with President Trump and the Trump legal team to attempt to overturn the lawful results of the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Jordan has admitted that he spoke directly to President Trump on January 6th and is thus a material witness. Mr. Jordan’s letter to the committee fails to address these facts,” the committee continued in its statement.

Also,
Hank Kronick on Twitter: "I sat in an “undisclosed location” at the Capitol with Jim Jordan for 8 hours after the insurrection. I watched him on the phone for hours, calm and collected while other members of both parties were panicked and in shock. What is he hiding? (link)" / Twitter

That's interesting, that he didn't feel that he was under threat from that angry mob. Why might that be?

That tweet noted
Jim Jordan Refuses to Cooperate With Jan. 6 Panel - The New York Times - he said that the probe was one of the Democrats' “partisan witch hunts.”

“It amounts to an unprecedented and inappropriate demand to examine the basis for a colleague’s decision on a particular matter pending before the House of Representatives,” Mr. Jordan wrote in a letter to Representative Bennie Thompson, Democrat of Mississippi and chairman of the committee. “This request is far outside the bounds of any legitimate inquiry, violates core constitutional principles and would serve to further erode legislative norms.”

 

[lpetrich]

McCarthy says he won't cooperate with 'illegitimate' Jan. 6 probe | TheHill

... asserting the panel "is not conducting a legitimate investigation."

McCarthy, in a statement released hours after the committee asked him to voluntarily cooperate with its probe, maintained that the "illegitimate" panel was seeking to interview him about “private conversations not remotely related to the violence that unfolded at the Capitol.”

January 6th Committee on Twitter: "The Select Committee ..." / Twitter

The Select Committee is seeking info from individuals who were involved with the rally at the Ellipse. Protests on that day escalated into an attack on our democracy.

The Select Committee issued subpoenas for
• Andy Surabian
• Arthur Schwartz
• Ross Worthington

Andy Surabian and Arthur Schwartz both served as advisors to Donald Trump, Jr. and were communicating with individuals including Donald Trump, Jr. and Kimberly Guilfoyle regarding the rally.

Ross Worthington helped draft the former President’s Jan 6th speech for the rally.

We have reason to believe the individuals we’ve subpoenaed today have relevant information and we expect them to join the more than 340 individuals who have spoken with the Select Committee as we push ahead to investigate this attack.

Select Committee Subpoenas Individuals Involved in Events Immediately Preceding Violent Attack on the Capitol | Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol

Getting closer and closer.

 

[Patooka]

What would that be?

About Northern Ireland, was it more like the IRA, the British authorities, and the UDA all fighting each other?

And themselves. For example the IRA fragmented several times. Same as there was a difference between the Ulster Volunteer Force and the Ulster Defence League but no one except those two groups could tell you what the difference was. To use your hypothetical US civil war as an analogy, it would be like if a bunch of Republicans formed their own factions and started calling each other RINOs whilst trying to own the libs.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

There already are two groups, the alt-right wing (Gaetz, Greene, etc..) that like to verbally pwn the libs and the nearing closer to authoritarian right-wing that are actually pwning the libs, by stealing a SCOTUS seat, endless obstruction, gerrymandering, etc...

 

[lpetrich]

 Ulster Defence Association and  Ulster Volunteer Force -- they seem pretty much alike. They are both pro-UK and they both have a long history of terrorism.

 

[TV and credit cards]

Founder of Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy

I find this statement to be key:

Rhodes did not enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6 but is accused of helping put into motion the violence that disrupted the certification of the vote.

Message to other participants who did not enter.

 

[jab]

I remember watching this on television. I can't even begin to imagine Trump giving a speech anything like this. Nixon was previously the most corrupt President in my lifetime. Watching this contrasted with the reports of Trump "gleefully" watching the Capitol riots a year ago is a helluva thing. This is how far we have fallen.

I think Shrub was more corrupt than Nixon.

 

[jab]

But wait! It gets even more ridiculous! House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy today on Fox News:

“You watch what they did last week when we were out, trying to politicize January 6th,” McCarthy said. “And everybody believes what happened on January 6th was wrong beyond wrong.”

Yes, the Democrats are attempting to politicize the political attack on the building where our politics was happening. The nerve!

What category of life do they think the incident belonged to? Entertainment?

religion--cue the golden fatted Don-calf

 

[Ford]

Founder of Oath Keepers charged with seditious conspiracy

I find this statement to be key:

Rhodes did not enter the Capitol building on Jan. 6 but is accused of helping put into motion the violence that disrupted the certification of the vote.

Message to other participants who did not enter.

And Thursday night on Tucker Carlson's show? His very special guest was one of the 11 charged with seditious conspiracy. Did Tucker ask hard questions? Did he challenge his guest?

Nope. He fawned over him, led with his veteran status (FYI, Tim McVeigh was a veteran, too), and allowed the guy to play a whole deck of victim cards. Did you know he's a Christian? Did you know his life has been upended? Did you know he's on disability? He couldn't possibly have been involved in a plot to overthrow the government! He loves Jesus!

 

[Keith&Co.]

Did you know he's a Christian?

Chances are good the people charging him are, too.

Did you know his life has been upended?

Upended, huh? How about those cops who committed suicide because of that day? Their lives, their families'?

Did you know he's on disability?

So were some of the congresspeople that feared for their lives that day.

Speaking as a decorated vet, myself, who took the same oath he did to defend the Constitution, i implore you to recall that oath, keep that oath, and cooperate with the prosecution. Then fuck off to prison.