A Requiem For January 6, Democracy, And Meat

Consider the burger.

More specifically, consider the McDonald’s burger, perhaps a Quarter Pounder. Consider the little circle of waxen meat sitting atop its paper wrapper. A bite has been taken from it, perhaps two. It lies in repose on a table in this well-appointed dining room, nearby TV blaring indecipherable wingnut agitprop in the wah-wah-wah cadence of an adult in a Peanuts cartoon, as it awaits the moment it fulfills its destiny of being fully consumed by a pumpkin-colored homunculus, its various components to be broken down further into protein to provide nutrients, cholesterol to clog some arteries, solid waste to be evacuated into a gold-plated toilet or a fresh Depends.

And then, tragedy. The partially-eaten burger finds itself hurled with full force into the wall of the dining room, the ketchup that had a moment ago smothered it now splattered outward as if a bomb had gone off in a vat at the Heinz factory, its dream of accomplishing its purpose as a provider of nourishment sacrificed to the narcissistic rage of a giant baby. The burger slowly slides down the wall towards the floor, limp, uneaten, broken, leaving a trail of lettuce and melted American cheese in its wake, awaiting the intervention of the White House valet who will pluck it from the ground and throw it onto history’s trash heap. Literally.

On Monday, the four-year anniversary of Donald Trump’s attempted coup of January 6, as Congress counts the electoral votes that will return that blow-dried pile of shit to the White House, we are all that Quarter Pounder.

You do not need Wonkette to tell you that what we are seeing Monday on Capitol Hill is a grotesque spectacle, in some ways even more grotesque than the one we all watched unfold live on TV four years ago. Unless you are Republicans like Rep. Mike Collins of Georgia, who has apparently had his head wedged so far up his own ass for four years that it is stuck in the gap between a couple of his ribs, and who on Monday shared his own special take on January 6:

Absolutely. Who can forget the sight of all those peaceful grandmothers clad in tactical gear and carrying zip cuffs as they shattered windows and barreled through the halls of the Capitol looking for Vice President Mike Pence so they could hang him. And by “barreled” we mean “shuffled slowly, leaning on canes and walkers or sitting on Rascal scooters, for they were peaceful grandmas with bad hips but vigorous spirits.”

To borrow a phrase, the gaslighting will continue until morale improves.

Nor do you need us to provide yet another list of reasons of How We Got Here, partly because that list is sooooo long: cowardly and insane Republicans, feckless Democrats; a judicial and political system entirely too sclerotic to react with the necessary urgency the crisis demanded; a national media addicted to false balance; a right-wing media that exists to polarize the discourse along partisan lines; the utter shamelessness of Trump and his sycophants; the conviction of a lot of Republicans that they are enmeshed in a battle for Western Civilization and failure means the end of America.

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Seriously, here is a Tennessee Republican ranting about that last fear during the Tennessee Three crisis, two years after January 6, when the GOP in the state’s legislature was under intense fire for expelling two young Black members for participating in an anti-gun protest on the floor of the House:

“I think the problem I have is if we don’t stick together, if you don’t believe we’re at war for our republic, with all love and respect to you, you need a different job. The left wants Tennessee so bad, because if they get us, the Southeast falls, and it’s game over for the republic. This is not a neighborhood social gathering. We are fighting for the republic of our country right now.”

Whoa, whoa, whoa, let’s take it down a notch, Sparky. Chickamauga has been over for 160 years. Guess which side won. We think you might be surprised!

We could go on, but you get the point.

So let us again consider the burger, half-eaten, sliding down the wallpaper like the world’s most obvious metaphor. We do not have video of it. But we have plenty of video of what was happening down the street at that moment. We know exactly what the point was, gaslighting by Republican lickspittles notwithstanding. We all saw it happen. And we are all going to remember.

OPEN THREAD.

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[Tennessee Holler]

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