Hunting Lions

      Dandelions, that is.  I spent a couple of hours today removing them from the wildflower-thick front yard.  The bees can have the wild violets, the tiny purple blooms on Creepin' Charlie, the yellow flowers of the wild strawberries and the tiny, pink-streaked white flowers that carpet the yard every Spring, but I get the dandelions.  And I take them away.  I like them. But the neighbors don't, and the dandelions would crowd out the other flowering volunteers if I let them.

Yeah, Friday

      Migraine, dizziness and lousy eyesight.  Most of it allergy-triggered, though there are ongoing issues with my left eye since cataract surgery that lasering didn't help.

      I have hopes for this weekend but the weather is going to interfere with some of them if it goes as predicted.

Puffing Up

      Vladimir Putin has been working himself up to do...something.  V-E day fell on the ninth of May in Moscow, just a minute after midnight, and it's still a big deal in Russia. 

      I expect that by the end of that day this year, Russia will have taken some kind of dramatic action.  It could be very bad; Moscow's TV pundits are pretty much everything bad anyone in this county has imagined about the yapping heads on MSNBC or Fox News, turned up to eleven while fat and happy on government paychecks.  Discussing WW III, one of them recently pointed out that if worse came to worst, Russians could count on going to heaven while people in the West "would just croak."  --I'm starting to miss the atheistic Soviet Union; there are few things worse than a foe convinced of getting a good seat in the next life and the Soviets were (at least officially) sure that this life was all they were going to get.

      This is the world we've got and the clock's ticking.  Maybe it'll just be a ramp-up in the conventional war in Ukraine, and that will be horrific enough.  It could be far worse.  We're not going to know until May tenth.

      But I wouldn't start any really big jigsaw puzzles right now, just in case.

Oh, The Comments....

      As expected, several commenters have taken me to task -- they tell me those officers in the Capitol being menaced by rioters were heavily armed!  They (may have) had a path to retreat!  So it was perfectly okay for a mob to be bashing in doors with a helmet to get at them!  I guess the Capitol Police were supposed to leave the entire House and Senate, along with the Vice-President and all the staff, to fend for themselves?

      You're idiots, carrying water for thugs.  There are clear aggressors in the actual event, just as there are in the scenarios I sketched.  Somebody's initiating force.  It isn't the defenders.  And as for any "duty to retreat," that has never applied to police; Castle Doctrine laws explicitly extended to all citizens something police have always had de facto if not universally de jure: the right to self-defense. 

      If you are making excuses for howling, violent mobs -- and I don't care if it is BLM-associated rioters, an historical lynch mob, black-masked Antifa, the Capitol rioters of 6 January 2021, or any other bunch of self-appointed nitwits out to break heads, rules and property -- then you're arguing in favor of force over law, in favor of mobs over an elected, representative government.  Is that really the world you want to live in?

      If it is, you're an idiot.  Again.  Stop making excuses for the worst impulses of humanity.  Stop making excuses for the initiation of force.  Stopping violence against yourself or innocent others is a good thing.  Starting violence against others is not. 

So...

      Okay, let's run it.

     Here's the situation: you and your extended family have gathered in one room of your large house for some all-hands-on-deck thing you do regularly but not frequently -- working out income tax returns, watching The Wizard Of Oz, whatever.  Your family isn't especially popular, and even internally, it has split into two groups that rarely see eye-to-eye.  But you're all there, doing the thing.

     Other people gather in a big group outside on the lawn and start yelling.  Some of them break into the house.  Some adult family members gather the kids and old folks, and get them to a place of safety.  The mob reaches the (now barricaded) French doors that lead to the room you'd all been in.  Some have signs.  Some are shouting.  Others just mill around.  You shout, "Stop!"  You draw your sidearm and point it at the threat.  One of the members of the mob batters out the glass in the door.  Another of them starts to climb through the breach.  You shoot.

     Are you a murderer? 

     What if a similar thing happened at your workplace and a security guard shot a member of the mob that had broken in while they were coming through a just-breach internal barrier -- is he or she a murderer?

     If you are one of the people who has watched coverage of a BLM protest or riot, or saw antifa types running amok through a downtown, and asked why the police "don't just shoot them," then don't claim Capitol Police "murdered" Ashli Babbitt.  She was killed in the commission of a crime, while presenting a direct threat to other people as part of a dangerous mob. 

     I'm all for solutions that lead to fewer dead people.  I'm all for people making choices that lead to less deaths.  But ideal solutions are not always possible.  Don't want to get shot by Capitol Police?  Then don't break into the U. S. Capitol as part of a mob, don't bash through doors while police stand on the other side with guns drawn telling you to stop, and don't go through the broken door.

     Means count as much as ends, and must not be judged through a partisan filter.

     The lesson to take from this is the same lesson to be taken from any political riot: mob rule is not democracy.  Mobs do not lead to solutions.  We knew it in 1776.  We knew it in 1787 - 89.  Most of us still know it.

Not Now

      I had a long-ish post planned, but I'm all burned out on explaining reality slowly and carefully, and then getting inflamed comments from people who'd rather live in a bloody fantasy.  Maybe tomorrow, kid.  Maybe tomorrow.

      Maybe not at all.

Had To Work Today

     A routine failure at work, for which we have backup, managed to turn into a full-fledged disaster of the kind that you just have to ride out, at the mercy of outside forces.

     Power went out and the backup generator came online.  And then after awhile, it died without warning.

     It wasn't fun, especially since we were all counting on the normal, routine, automatic solution.  It did work -- for a couple of hours.  It's supposed to hold up for three days.

     I showed up, shortly after Power & Light fixed the problem and left -- the same problem they had showed up to fix hours earlier and given up after leaving voicemail for our Accounting people, despite our installing their special locks on the gate and having the account marked as "critical, cannot be left off, must speak to a living person," and giving them home and emergency numbers for our techs and managers.

     That frustration was compounded by a genset that mysteriously stopped pumping fuel.  Not my department, and I left the specialists to their problem-solving after one effort sprayed everyone around with diesel fuel, including and especially me.  Yeah, thanks, and if I can ever do the same for them?  I won't.

     What a day to have misplaced my clown nose and floppy shoes.  Fucik!  Send in the gladiators!

Nota Bene

      Just for the blood-and-soil racist nitwits, you can make oblique and supposedly disparaging references to my Cherokee-and/or-African-American ancestor all you like, but the fact is, I am proud of her. 

      We don't know a whole lot about her, but she made hard choices and lived with them.  She was upwardly mobile.  She had smart kids, smart grandchildren, and I like to think subsequent generations weren't especially stupid, either.  Heck, I even have IQ tests to support my opinion.

      My ancestors look like America.  They're from all over -- 19th-Century German farmers and schoolteachers (many of them Mennonites or Old Order Dunkards), 18th-Century Britons and Scots, and who knows what else.  They were farmers and millers, teachers, college professors, heavy-equipment operators starting back when that meant enormous horses and an array of arcane equipment, sailors, carpenters, mechanics, fathers, mothers, homemakers and homebuilders.  Just about all of them could cook.*  There were a few drunks and even one lawyer; but that's not atypical, either.

      I'm proud of them.  They survived, even thrived.  I'm not going to be cowed by any sneering weasel submitting a blog comment; I can outrun and outshoot most people, and I have backup.
_______________________
* Both of my parents were younger children of large families with a pronounced gender imbalance: Mom had four sisters and one brother, Dad had six brothers and three sisters (of whom he knew only one, twin girls having died in early childhood of probable TB).  That meant they both had to learn a wide array of skills, and took for granted that any competent adult or diligent child could cook a meal, hammer a nail, sew on a button, hang a picture, sweep floors, wash dishes, paint walls, plant/weed/harvest a garden and so on.  My sister and I weren't allowed to drive until we could check and change oil and coolant, change spark plugs after checking and setting the gaps, and demonstrate a basic understanding of how the car worked.  These were simply "background skills."

Insultingly Ignorant Nonsense

      That describes all of the comments I have received so far to yesterday's post.

      I stayed at home most of 6 January 2021, with the TV on while I worked.  I watched the events live, usually with the sound down but not always.  I know what I saw: chaos, mobs, doors being forced, windows being broken, chanted threats.  The rhetoric at the rally earlier had come just short of inciting violence.

      Since I had watched extensive coverage of the BLM demonstrations and subsequent rioting in Indianapolis earlier in the year, it was pretty familiar, and the gradual sorting-out of the crowd as the most violently-inclined moved themselves out from the people who were only there to wave signs and make noise was familiar, some of the sign-wavers being swept up in the moment.

      I work in television.  I am aware of the context-limiting nature of TV cameras, and channel-hopped, looking for wide views.  I know what I saw that day.  I wrote about it that day.  I wrote about it the next day.  I wrote about it the day after that.  I stand by what I wrote.

      I saw it happen while it happened.  Not an edit.  The cameras available for live coverage that day didn't catch everything but they didn't add anything.  So what should I believe, my own eyes or the retconned fictions of the Right-wing punditry?  (Or for that matter, of the Left; despite a lot of speculation, to date no clear evidentiary line has been drawn from the Trump Administration or the rally speakers to the subsequent riot and insurrection, and given the chaos of that day, the lack of cooperation from witnesses and some missing call logs, there may never be.  On that, I have my opinion -- they were egging the rioters on and hoped to put a scare into Congress -- but no, I can't prove it.)

      I'm going with what I saw.

      I'm going with my observations about who was serving up distorted versions of the events afterward and what those distortions were.  Fox pundits and the news providers to their Right were peddling bullshit and politicians on that side, after a short period of shock and a few condemnations, joined in and pushed the fantasy even farther.  Pundits on the Left exhibited a kind of rueful glee, but the fantasy content was much lower.  Actual mainstream media, in their actual news segments, generally stuck to the facts.

      You are welcome to your own opinion.  You don't get your own set of facts.  What happened, happened.*

      For the record: no Trumpist Republican will ever get my vote.  Insurrectionists and fellow-travelers don't get votes from me, not now and not ever.  If you vote for this vileness, you are voting to put an end to America's great experiment in popular rule.  Don't the Founders and Framers deserve better than a descent into Caesarism?  Don't we owe it to to them and to our posterity to not let it come crashing down in exactly the way 18th-Century critics predicted it would?  The French had the Terror followed by Napoleon; let us learn from history, and not follow that path.

     The economist Adam Smith comforted a friend, "There is a great deal of ruin in a nation."  Things can go on almost as before even while the underpinnings fall to pieces.  Rome outlasted her Republic by some five hundred years.  Nevertheless, there's nothing good to be gained by trying to hurry it along.
_____________________
* In a telephone conversation about an entirely different topic with my oldest niece last night -- she's a retired Nurse-Practitioner, who specialized in difficult intensive-care work -- she pointed out that human beings are not wired up to process really terrible news all in one go; people have to hear it over and over, and the worse the news it, the more times it may take.  In some cases, it may take nearly twenty encounters with the same facts before the hearer can accept them.  An attempted coup in the service of people willing to tell outrageous lies in order to hold on to power is very bad news indeed.  Denial is a normal part of the grieving process -- but it does eventually run out. 

Opinions Are Not Facts

      Nearly a year and a half on, I still get comments telling me that the 6 January 2021 assault on the U. S. Capitol and interfering with the normal functioning of the Federal government was a "demonstration" or a "visit."

      Sure it was -- in much the same sense that trying to burn a Federal courthouse or a mob destroying a city police station is a "demonstration:" they all demonstrate criminal activity.

      You want a normal "demonstration?"  People did that at the official rally earlier that day: speakers, flag-waving, sign-carrying, shouts and for all I know, happy songs.  The organizers got permits and everything.  You want a spontaneous demonstration?  That same day, people, many of them from the rally, walked down to the grounds of the U. S. Capitol, waving flags, carrying signs, shouting, etc.  They had no permit, which makes the police unhappy, but this is something that does happen from time to time in that spot.  It's as American as apple pie. Some members of the crowd trashed an outdoor news camera position and put the journalists to flight, which is what we call a crime, just as it would have been if they'd done the same to a tourist from New Jersey.  Still, this is the kind of thing that does from time to time happen at a "demonstration."

      Overrunning barricades around a building, breaking in, smashing doors and windows and putting the Vice-President, House, Senate and staff to flight while they are in the process of counting electoral votes for the next President and Vice-President?  That's not a demonstration.  That's an insurrection.  (Nor does it matter if, as is still being claimed by some on the Right, "the police let them in."  It's not true, but even if it was, that's not a decision the police are empowered to make: the building was closed, period.)

      Stop trying to sell me a crock of authoritarian shit and claiming it's Constitutional cheese.  It's not, and no amount of fast talk and handwaving will change that.

      And stop claiming nonsense about the 2020 election, either.  I get that a sufficiently ignorant or stupid person might have doubts, but everything from the actual way voting machines work to the multiple recounts in multiple states to Joe Biden's profound lack of coattails to the narrow GOP Presidential losses in states with Republican administrators firmly in control of running the elections make it very clear to me that no skullduggery was afoot -- which puts a mob trying to change the outcome on the day of the final count of electors very much in the category of insurrection or attempted coup.

      Mr. Trump's Republican party lost a lot of respect from me on 6 January 2021 and the party in general has only lost more by their behavior ever since, with a very few exceptions, men and women excoriated by their party.

      With the Democrats, I have substantial disagreements about policies and politics, about specific laws and administrative actions, but we seem to be in general agreement about things like freedom of the press, freedom of religion and the normal operations of a functioning republic including free elections.  With Republicans, many of their leading lights have put in a lot of work trying to undermine elections, questioning our form of government and trying to force Caesarism on our country.  The party of Judge Roy Moore and Matt Gaetz has become preoccupied with a definition of "grooming" quite at odds with the actual meaning of the term while they wink at the actual sexual exploitation of underage people.

      So, look, if you're still banging that tired old Trumpist drum, do so somewhere other than my Comments section.  Freedom of speech protects you from government interference; it doesn't mean I have to publish any crazy thing you write.

      This is the United States.  You're welcome to your own opinions.  You don't get your own set of facts.

From The Irony Desk

      As near as I can sort out, Congresscritter Marjorie Taylor Greene is irked that some folks are "gaming the system" by using existing laws and Constitutional provisions to mount a challenge to her reelection effort.  Read about it here or here,* it's the same story.  This approach has already been tried elsewhere and didn't succeed; the burden of proof is high.

      I guess it's only engaging in legitimate political discourse when you do it to other people, not when they do it to you?  Curious, that.
__________________
* I would have linked to it at Fox News, but they seem to have buried the story so deep search engines can't find it.  Here's a link to a site using Fox video, if you'd like.  Apparently both participants never heard of the Reconstruction Amendments, and don't think they were a good idea.

-No-

      This morning, I woke up, looked out the window and saw about a half-inch of snow on the ground, with more falling.

      I disapprove of this.