Assuming you’re like the rest of America – which is bad news about 50 percent of the time – you might be asking yourself the age-old question that has plagued mankind throughout its comparatively brief history:
“What the fuck?”
(Frankly, I’m appalled by your language, but we have more important issues to deal with today, so we’ll move on. Nevertheless, don’t let it happen again.)
As people who have been in the eye of a hurricane can tell you, it’s often hard to understand just exactly what occurred and how your Cavalier King Charles Spaniel wound up driving you to the Emergency Room to have that 2 x 4 removed from a bodily orifice because you have no memory of the 2 x 4’s arrival or giving the car keys to your dog, which doesn’t seem like something you’d do because being a puppy he’s still working on his learner’s permit.
That being the case, confusing events are often most accurately described by people one step removed from the incident in question.
For instance:
At the time, shooting the Archduke Ferdinand probably seemed like a good idea to Gavrilo Princip, but we now know it led to the flu epidemic of 1918 and a generation of history students asking themselves, “Who the hell is Gavrilo Princip? Is he one those morons on Jersey Shore and if so, can I follow him on Instagram?”
But we digress and along with cleaning up your potty mouth, I wish you’d stop doing that.
Today on History Corner (or maybe that should be in History Corner, your call) we’re going to examine the events that led to yesterday’s riot at the U.S. Capitol. And as most of our current national problems so often do, it starts with Donald Trump.
Despite having no evidence that will hold up in court – including the one presided over by Judge Judy – Donald Trump tells his followers that he couldn’t have possibly lost to a loser like Joe Biden, so therefore he must have been cheated. Trump also assures his supporters the Abominable Snowman does indeed exist and assumed Mike Pence was genetically related to one when he picked Pence for his running mate. And the family resemblance is remarkable.
On Tuesday, Trump erroneously tweets that Mike the Snowman has the power to reject fraudulently chosen electors if he feels like it and if Mike doesn’t do it, Trump will ban him from the treehouse Melania let him build in the backyard of the White House. During an appearance with Wolf Blitzer, Trump’s interpretation of the U.S. Constitution is called into question by CNN regular, Thomas Jefferson.
On Wednesday morning, confident the group of assembled dumbbells will believe anything he tells them, Trump encourages the crowd to walk toward the Capitol and tells them he will go with them, while crossing his fingers behind his back and whispering, “In spirit.”
Trump also tells them “You have to show strength” immediately before hiding behind a group of Secret Service agents who bundle him into an armor-plated car where he hides on the floor as they drive him back to the White House so he can go sit in his tree house.
Without Trump to show the way, rioters seem lost until law enforcement officers throw rose petals in their path and hand out diagrams of the Capitol, so rioters will not be confused as to which windows to break. When later asked why they didn’t use tear gas or rubber bullets to stop the rioters, law enforcement officers plead confusion: “We didn’t realize they were the bad guys; none of them seemed to have natural rhythm.”
Patriotic supporters of the law-and-order president then break windows and enter the Capitol where one of them sits in the Senate dais chair recently vacated by Mike Pence who has headed back to the safety of Nepal. The rioter then receives a phone call from President Trump asking if he’ll reject the Electoral College results because that wimp Mike Pence doesn’t seem up to it.
At one point lawmakers are advised to reach under their chairs because Oprah Winfrey has decided to give each and every one of them a new car. Along with the car keys, each chair has a self-inflating gas mask which lawmakers are advised to put on as quickly as possible because Sen. Josh Hawley is about to speak.
White House staffers surround the Presidential Tree House and plead with Donald Trump to call out the National Guard, but Trump wants to wait to find out if he’s still president of the new government after the riot he started throws out the old one.
After the House is restored to order, a small group of lawmakers comes close to having a physical fight when Morgan Griffiths (R-VA) objects to Conor Lamb (D-PA) saying that Republicans had been telling lies about votes; a statement Griffiths finds overly accurate which violates the U.S. House of Representatives rules of decorum.
When Nancy Pelosi calls for order on the floor, the fight breaks up which is what you do when you really, really want to fight and show everybody you’re a tough guy, but an 80-year-old woman who appears to weigh about 65 pounds tells you to shut the fuck up. (HEY! I’ve warned you about the profanity.)
After long-time ally and Trump-enabler Lindsey Graham gives a speech which amounts to: “Enough of this shit, count me out” several Democrats suffer medical emergencies which are eventually diagnosed as shock, related to hearing Lindsey Graham saying something coherent.
Objections to the Electoral College results are defeated overwhelmingly, but not before everybody gets a chance to give speeches that refer to their grandkids or tangentially-related anecdotes about Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln. The mob – which had dispersed – considers re-storming the Capitol.
Trump attacks Mike Pence for not overturning the election results by calling on his Yeti relatives to join the rioters, overthrow the government and declare the New Republic of Trumpsylvania.
After several embarrassed White House staffers resign and Republican leaders float the idea of invoking the 25th Amendment, which allows for the removal of the president from office and includes the words “tranquilizer dart” Trump promises an “orderly transition” – a new and rational position for the president; a mental state possibly brought on by Twitter withdrawal after Trump’s account is locked down for 12 hours because the Twitter platform can only sustain a finite amount of bullshit, which Trump is exceeding hourly. The gremlins that maintain Twitter fear Trump’s BS overload might crash the system.
After inciting a riot that caused the U.S. Capitol to be assaulted for the first time since 1814 – a record that is called into doubt because the British were rumored to be using PEDs – Trump refers to his four years in office as “the greatest first term in presidential history” an honor conferred by a secret ballot of The Union of Political Cartoonists, Stand-Up Comedians and Late-Night Talk Show Hosts. The vote was unanimous.
Been an interesting start to the New Year, hasn’t it?
I'm doing a one man standing ovation at my work desk. Not one foul word has escaped my lips either (but that might be because I used them all up yesterday).
Once in a while, ya gotta say ... what the fuck.
-- Miles, "Risky Business"
:)