Recently, a friend of a good friend of mine (let’s call him “Sam” – not his real name) replied to a posting on Sam’s Facebook page of a photo of the US Capitol police officer Daniel Hodges who was caught in between a door and rioters on January 6th. This police offer was beaten, tear gassed, and almost very seriously hurt. You can see blood in his mouth in the now famous photo.

My friend “Sam” quoted Voltaire in the photo’s caption: “Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.”

This friend of “Sam” (let’s call him Art – his real name) tried to make a joke saying that if the police officer wasn’t hospitalized or died, it wasn’t such a bad day for him. So I decided to call BS on Art’s comment.

I said that I thought his attempt at a joke was in poor taste and that the event was a national disgrace.

To which Art replied, “I am not sure that I can agree with you based upon what is at stake right now in our country. It was a bad day, yes… and they will be getting worse because no one is willing to admit what is really happening, NOR can anyone do anything about it because the “establishment” is now “self-policing”. So, in my humble opinion… if you can’t take a joke, get out of the kitchen.”

When I asked him to tell me what he meant by this, he danced around the issue and asked for more context.

So, as I am fond of doing, I went on a bit of a rant because I have had enough of the BS from people like Art.

This was my response to him which I decided to copy here for posterity. Feel free to reuse any of it when responding to nonsense from people like Art who are struggling with accepting facts and reality.

Art, you said in your response to me, “no one is willing to admit what is really happening”. I’d like you to explain what you meant by that statement.

But since you seem to want to dance around the topic, let me tell you what I think is happening.

There is a significant portion of the country that has accepted the lies that were being spread by our former President that the election was stolen from him. He planted the seeds for these lies as early as 2016 when he was claiming that the election was rigged unless he won. When he did win, the claims of election fraud magically disappeared.

He has never presented any facts to support these claims. In fact, after the 2020 election, he filed over 60 law suits that were dismissed by over 90 judges, many of whom are conservative Republicans, as having no basis in fact. Yet he and the spineless sycophants who support him did everything they could to spread these lies in order to provoke outrage. They continue to spread these lies to this very day.

When it became clear that he lost the election in “a landslide” (his words describing his victory margin in 2016 when the electoral college vote was the same), he would not admit his loss and instead, kept insisting that the election was stolen from him. He didn’t even have the balls to call Biden to congratulate him on his victory and cowardly refused to attend the Inauguration, instead organizing his own private going away/pity party at Andrews Air Force Base before flying to Florida to soothe his fragile ego.

He did everything in his power to try to steal the election from the legitimate President-elect. When elected officials would not bend to his will by agreeing to throw out the results, he decided to try a new tactic: he appealed to a small group of far right extremists to try to steal the election by force.

His ultimate act of treason was to host a rally on January 6th where he incited a mob of domestic terrorists to march to the Capitol, breach security, assault police officers, and attempt to stop the House and Senate from certifying the results of election by force. Several of the these terrorists were intent on either taking hostages or doing violence to members of Congress. Some of them shouted “hang Mike Pence” and “where’s Nancy?”

During the raid on the Capitol, 5 people died, including a police officer who was beaten with a fire extinguisher.

These same domestic terrorists are planning more acts of violence, all because they have been lied to and are too gullible to know the truth. Either that, or they are just using it as an excuse to do what they wanted to do for a long time – try to start a civil war. And 45 didn’t try to stop them – on the contrary, he encouraged and emboldened them.

After these horrific acts, the House launched impeachment proceedings against the still President. The majority of Republicans did not vote in favor of impeachment. The 10 who did are being pilloried by their Republican colleagues as traitors.

In contrast to the expediency shown by Mitch McConnell in ramming through a conservative Supreme Court nominee to replace Ruth Bader Ginsberg in the final hours of the last administration, he dragged his feet and said that he would hold the impeachment trial only after 45 had left office. And now, Republicans are using the excuse that it is unconstitutional to try a former President for impeachment, which, by the way, is not their job to determine. If it is unconstitutional, the judiciary branch is responsible for that decision.

We now have elected Republican members of Congress who subscribe to conspiracy theories like the 9/11 attack or the shootings at Majory Stoneham Douglas High School were faked. And others who refuse to wear masks in Congress and want to concealed carry weapons onto the House floor. And rather than being denounced by their Republican peers, their ire is being directed at people like Liz Cheney who voted to impeach 45.

Now that the Democrats are back in power (enabled by 45’s complete political incompetence which led to Republicans losing both the legislative and executive branches of the government), Biden is working as quickly as possible to get the country back on track and reverse the damage 45 did of the past 4 years. He has put competent people in important roles in government. He governs by action, not by Twitter. And he is working with allies around the world to restore America’s place as a leader in the world and repair the damage 45’s isolationist policies have wrought.

Is my view of “what is really happening” clear or do I need to expand on anything I said with more details? Do
you need more context or is that enough?