Ron Johnson. Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
The Republican Party has been taken over by a delusional, anti-American Trump cult and Wisconsin’s elected Republicans in Washington are among its most irrational disciples.
There was Republican Sen. Ron Johnson last week doing a dramatic reading from a rightwing website sounding like Mr. Rogers describing what “A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood” that violent mob insurrection was until all those mean Capitol Police spoiled the upbeat, festive atmosphere by shooting tear gas at everybody.
That was followed by every Republican House member from Wisconsin joining the rest of their party in voting against President Joe Biden’s $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill to restore the shattered U.S. economy. Really, why would voters in Wisconsin want Biden to end the pandemic through mass vaccinations, send them $1,400-dollar checks, provide tax credits of $3,000 to $3,600 per child, stop their state and local governments from going bankrupt, reopen schools, be paid livable wages for full-time work or receive decent unemployment benefits and protections from being evicted and starving until they can return to work?
All Republicans now appear to be totally out of touch with the needs of all but the wealthiest Americans because of the devastating health and economic crises left unchecked by their party’s ousted president. But Sen. Johnson raised that ignorance to a whole new level reading aloud a totally fraudulent “eyewitness” account from a writer for The Federalist website who joined the mob attacking the U.S. Capitol. It bore no resemblance to the scenes every American saw watching that violent insurrection on television.
Jovial and Friendly?
“Of the thousands of people I passed,” Johnson read, “some were indignant and contemptuous of Congress, but not one appeared angry or incited to riot. Many of the marchers were families with small children. Many were elderly, overweight or just plain tired or frail — traits not typically attributed to the riot-prone. Many wore pro-police shirts or carried pro-police ‘Back the Blue’ flags . . . A very few didn’t share the jovial, friendly, earnest demeanor of the great majority . . . the people that probably planned this.”
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Alexandra Petri is a satirical columnist for The Washington Post who remembers those long-gone days when Wisconsin Republicans elected to the House and Senate supported American democracy and respected U.S. election results. That’s because she’s the daughter of Wisconsin Republican Congressman Tom Petri from Fond du Lac who served for 35 years until his retirement in 2015 just before Trumpism hit.
Alexandra also knows a total political fraud like Johnson when she hears one. That’s why she wrote: “It was a wonderful day at the Capitol! The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and the large, jovial crowd was dressed in their very best, most jovial, most pro-police attire. . . Some of them had even brought baseball bats just in case anyone wanted to play baseball later. . . They even brought and erected a small rope swing, although it was not a very good or convincing rope swing and looked more like something else.” Sometimes the happy crowd was laughing so jovially, Petri said, it sounded as if they were chanting “Hang Mike Pence!” “But if so, they were chanting it in a loving, jovial way that gladdened the heart of all who heard it.”
Bad Satire
The original article quoted by Johnson read like really bad satire. It was by J. Michael Waller, identified as an analyst for strategy at the Center for Security Policy. The Southern Poverty Law Center has identified CSP as an extremist anti-Muslim hate group that has accused the Muslim Brotherhood of infiltrating the U.S. government to destroy democracy by imposing Sharia law. The group is so extreme it was banned from the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) this weekend celebrating Trumpfest.
Waller attributed the violence, death and destruction of the insurrection to “Fake Trump protesters—a few young men wearing Trump or MAGA hats backwards who did not fit in with the rest of the crowd in terms of their actions or demeanor, whom I presumed to be Antifa or other leftist agitators.” But Waller claimed it was the police firing tear gas who enabled small groups of two or three to incite the enraged mob. “They funneled and pushed hundreds if not thousands of innocent people into a crush toward the Capitol. They did so with the goal of forcing those people into a confrontation with federal police defending Congress,” Waller wrote.
That must explain those appalling videos shown at the impeachment trial of all those innocent, pro-police Trump supporters attacking and screaming obscene threats at police like “Shoot him with his own gun!” Through no fault of their own, they ended up murdering one police officer and injuring 140 others including many with serious brain injuries from being beaten with flag poles with American and Trump flags attached. Maybe even some of those “Back the Blue” flags.
