Jan 6th Hearings

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What happened.....was that there was an attempt to overturn the legally-obtained election results.

It was an attempt at a banana-republic coup.

People like Nixon would never have even dared to attempt to pull this off.

You'll never get the point I'm trying to make. You and me were thrown under the bus ,decades ago by the political establishment. You live in a world of delusion if you believe the Dems will do anything for you.

I don't give a f**k about this "show trial " I give a f**k about saving this country from complete collapse. But go ahead and focus on this BS and bury your head in the sand.

This so-called show trial IS an attempt to save the country! It was Trump who was preparing to throw our whole constitutional democracy under the bus by denying the validity of a fair and legal election. If Trump could use terror to force congress to alter the electoral outcome so he could remain in power, what else would he have done? Margery Traitor Greene had talked about issuing martial law, while Ginny Thomas had advised Mark Meadows to have Democrats sent to Guantanamo Bay! And no, there has been no evidence that the Dems would have done the same thing. YUH HEAR???

There's no country left to save. It was taken over by the corporate donor class decades ago. The s**t they shuffle around every few years is nothing but political theater, and Americans keep watching the spectacle and believe voting is going to make any difference.

I'm not ready to give up yet. If anything, Trump is the living embodiment of the corruption that's been trying to take down our country, and so has become a clear point of attack.

I believe the true Americans are fighting a war on two fronts. One against corporate greed and the other against frenzied mobs of MAGAs. Both groups have no interest in the long term sustainability of the US as a united country,

Here's the thing: as long as voters have a say, the ship of government can be righted. We voters may not always be the smartest bunch, and we are far too often manipulated by misinformation, but as long as elections can change things, there is hope. It doesn't matter that you and I have completely different political views on what righting the ship might look like, it's about the structure, and the fact that we always know there is a chance the next crop we elect will do better.

Which brings me to January 6th. The point to what happened was to overrule the results of an election. For someone who lost to try to hold onto power. That is an extremely dangerous precedence. Cross that line, and all hope is lost.

So, yes, to me, these hearings are incredibly important. It speaks to the checks and balances. It speaks to the ability of the voters to change the course of government. It speaks to the heart of who we are as a nation, and the process created by our founders. I will never take my eye off the big picture, the basic structure for Democracy, in trade for a smoother path with day to day issues. Lose Democracy, you lose it all.

Look, I know that the past 40 years have gone poorly. That none of us realized the twists and turns were leading us, as a nation, to the place we are today. It's frustrating and disappointing to have hindsight and wish we hadn't fallen for so many things. The promise of my youth is not there for my kids, and it breaks my heart. I'm reaching retirement age and facing a future far more bleak than my parents did at the same age, despite a lifetime of believing we'd moved our family up the ladder. I understand why people are frustrated. We all, in different ways, fell for false narratives. But I'm not going to let go of my faith that what we have is still a whole lot better than what autocratic countries have. Democracy is not a failure. My kids still got to grow up in the land of the free, although, perhaps, they'll end choosing to make their futures in a different Democratic nation. That choice is theirs. The important thing is having a CHOICE. January 6th tried to steal that from us. THAT matters.

Would you rather live with a free press and frequent changes in power, or with a controlled press under an autocracy?

There isn't a country in the world right now that doesn't have an unfair concentration of power and wealth. But we DO get say in what kind of structure they are supposed to operate under. And our structure has had some very bright and shining moments. It will again. Today isn't the first time in our history its all seemed hopeless, and it won't be the last. But the structure allows the ship to right itself. So have some faith.

What kind a press do we have now? It's certainly not a,fair and honest one, where truth is valued. It's owned by about a half dozen corporations and a dozen or so billionaires who control the narrative Americans digest.

I don't believe the system can be reformed from within, since no good candidates have a chance to be elected. It's going to take massive resistance by the people, mainly to stop voting for Democrats and Republicans .

Having faith in our current political system is dangerous, actually. It's delusional thinking.

Listened to ~all of episode 3 this morning before I got out of bed. A CSPAN stream happened to start when I first woke up (I'd left fb streaming on my phone all night again I guess) so I just stayed in bed and listened. Anyways, no maaaaajor surprises - but a whole lot of "they all definitely Knew this was illegal af." My biggest wonder is if any maga-types out there watched episode 3 and then had a brainsplosion and realized that "Zomg!; Mike Pence is the patriot!! ! " Hmmmmm..

True. It is garbage. Maybe even more so garbage than Canada's also garbage system. Illusion of choice with 2 party politics and nothing really changing to benefit the populace is pretty garbage for sure. Bernie Sanders should have been president for 2 terms by now.

If you're talking about Fox, then that's certainly the truth. While there might be a particular political slant to CNN and MSNBC, the news delivered by both is still reliable.
As for need for reforming the system - - when hasn't that been the case? It was imperfect back when those flawed men we call our founders created this country. The fact is, perfection can never be attained, just something that's functionally better.

Fox, CNN, MSNBC....they're all equally distributors of garbage.

You can't reform the system if the people are running it are invested in maintaining the corporate state. Voting is meaningless at this point.

I do not think it's true that all media outlets spew garbage equally. That's the rallying cry of those on both extremes of the political spectrum who want you to leave reality behind and join their little walled garden of shills and nutters. And it works, worse luck.

Over here, both the Times and the Guardian definitely print biased editorial pieces, one to the right, the other to the left. But I trust both of them to get the actual FACTS straight. Their decades-long reputation for accurate reporting is not something they would trash overnight. Their trashy equivalents, the Sun and the Mirror, on the other hand: I tend to assume that if there's a true fact anywhere in their reporting, it got there by mistake. Evaluate your sources.

I have yet to see CNN or MSNBC falsify and distort the truth nearly to the same degree as Fox and its imitators.

Loud, noisy, more interested in what sells than in facts, but also DIVERSE, running the full gambit of interpretations and opinions. Meaning all the facts and sides are out there, mixed into the exaggerations (and for some sources, lies), and it is possible to use critical thinking skills to figure what the truth most likely looks like. Even intelligent people with good critical thinking skills can still make wildly opposite assessments, but hasn't it always been like that?

It's the blessing and the curse of a free press, but would you really prefer to be in a country with a state controlled press, where only the side the government wants you to see makes its way into the discourse? If you think the narrative is controlled by limited interests now, try accessing information in an autocracy. It feels simple, peaceful and predictable, even it is often a lie, but getting there carries a huge cost. A cost I absolutely am NOT willing to bear.

We've got some issues to figure out in the way press - and social media - currently works in our country, but the pendulum is still swinging, and changes haven't stopped. The pendulum doesn't stop swinging until it finds its natural center.



What is the alternative? The only decent alternative, really, is moving to another country you think has a better system. Revolution and insurrection are messy and inappropriate; usually making things worse (the American Revolution was more an exception than a rule, but not exactly pretty, either). Self-correction may not happen within our lifetimes, but the system has been massively corrupted before, and it DID recover. There is only so far things can swing before the voters figure it out, and only so far before idealists find solutions to try. There can be comfort in listening to American history professors talk about what really happened, far beyond what we ever learned in school, because you see how distressing patterns don't last forever.

None of that means we should all just sit on our hands and wait. Get involved in the process, ways big and small. One swing of the pendulum is having its moment because of grass roots investments made decades ago. I'm seeing a very politically different group (one I personally favor much more) making its investments today. Life is about making mistakes and learning. That has never been limited to one's personal life; it also applies to communities, businesses, and governments. I see proposals for change ALL the time. There are people out there testing alternatives and pushing them into the discourse. Most may not be feasible today, but nothing is permanent.

And, whether or not anyone believes the Jan 6th hearings are positive, it is part of the process. Gather information, share it. Get people thinking. It isn't an end so much as a process. It's when we give up that we're lost, not when we can't find the door.

i still believe that trumpy will ultimately escape all earthly justice. but as the good book says, "god is not mocked..."