A Baseline?

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One common definition of a baseline average is this:

A baseline is a fixed point of reference that is used for comparison purposes. A baseline signifies a normal, expected value and makes changes from the norm obvious and calculable. Baselines can be used for anything from health concerns such as heart rate, cholesterol or weight, to financial matters such as income and expenses. Essentially, a baseline calculates as an average taken when conditions are normal and not influenced by unusual events.

That is not what America has had since January 20th, 2017. To repeat President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s speech to Congress Dec. 8, 1941, it is now “January 6th, 2021, a date that will live in infamy…” for the rest of America’s history and darkest hours. A reality baseline became so elusive to half the nation for 3-years. It ramped up more starting in March 2020 with the coronavirus pandemic, then the November-December Presidential election with non-stop propaganda lies from inside the White House, finally culminating to the January 6th, 2021 scenes of what a cult leader and his cult are capable of doing. All reputable, licensed psychotherapists would describe this escalation from Trump as clinical Narcissistic personality disorder with delusional disorder.

This has become the image of the U.S.’s Constitutional baseline for the last four years

After the events that took place at the U.S. Capitol building Wednesday, January 6, 2021, that lead to five pointless deaths and the vandalism of the two chambers of Congress, any semblance of an American baseline has disappeared. Weapons were brought by the Trump-incited mob, including pipe-bombs and Molotov cocktails, as well as many USA chanting terrorists armed with their own riot shields, battering rams and baseball bats, and replaced what was remaining of American normalcy. Many of the Trump-incited mob were in full military combat gear. This is the image of violent anarchy, the antithesis of peaceful, law-based democracy:

Trump supporters clash with police and security forces as they push barricades to storm the US Capitol in Washington D.C on January 6, 2021. – Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the 2020 presidential election Electoral Vote Certification. (Photo by ROBERTO SCHMIDT/AFP via Getty Images)

It goes without saying, many Americans have completely lost sight of our Constitutional democracy’s baseline, the designed function of its supporting institutions, e.g. the Electoral College certification process, and its due legal, civil processes built into our three-branched government.

Our arrival to this unprecedented, disgraceful, globally embarrassing, beyond indecent, hate-driven insurrection and desecration of the citadel of democracy by our sitting President is so outside the parameters and spirit of a Republic and its Constitution’s guidelines of governing. Governing not by one narcissistic megalomaniac, but by a law-based, “trias politica” or equally impowered three-branched democracy. Nowhere in these two-centuries old basic principals is there mentioned or implied that one man or one office dictates his or its personal desires or seize total control of a nation ruled by laws, not ruled by men or one man. Why is that so often forgotten by American political (militant) extremists and armed protesters?

I have drafted this blog-post a number of times, but the insanity is now occurring so frequently and so fast that I have decided to give up and just publish this. Just an hour or two ago the news broke that Twitter banned President Trump permanently, finally! Finally a social-media platform/company is getting a clue about the serious legal ramifications of what is called criminal accessory. History has repeated and repeated multiple times how egocentric dictators gain control of their 88-million viewing cult members, i.e. gain control of the dissemination (platform) of information—as Joseph Goebbels did in 1939–1945 Nazi Germany—and/or in this case, starting a violent insurrection at the U.S. Capitol for a MAGA “show of strength.”

And then there are all the enablers of this insanely dangerous man FINALLY seeing what their cult leader is truly capable of and in which they supported blindly in denial. Either impeachment or January 20, 2021 cannot get here fast enough!

32 thoughts on “A Baseline?”

  1. I was talking to a coworker yesterday about this. He voted for trump twice, was shocked and embarrassed for what happened. It was pretty somber, but at the end of the conversation he said he would vote for him again. That’s not only amazing, it’s crazy. It’s cultish.

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    • Yep. Jim, if your coworker looked up scholarly and socially, psychologically based studies and he equitably researched what a cult looks like, how it is created, run, and eventually traps you (on several levels) into unquestionable TOTAL LOYALTY to it and its leader, he would probably realize that he too has been horribly duped.

      Great to hear from you my good Friend! 😉 ❤️

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  2. Nice to see your post. I feel as though impeachment is extraordinarily important but I don’t hold out much hope of it happening. As far as the term “enabler” goes, I’ve switched over to using the word “abettor”. Trump is insane. Supporters like Cruz, Hawley, and dozens of others are cynical and calculating demagogues. I wish I felt confident that I still lived in a country that would hold them accountable. At least there are still many voices calling out the lawlessness, corruption, and hypocrisy. Thanks.

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    • Thanks Carol and thank you for your feedback! 🙂

      I’d go with “abettor” equally as well. Yes, the man is at the very least borderline insane, according to his niece, Dr. Mary L. Trump, a licensed psychologist and quite intimately knowledgeable about her crazy uncle. She said this:

      How many of “normal, sane, baseline” society has been saying and can now confirm… “I told you so!“ 😔 It is encouraging Carol to read and hear reports how the REMAINING loyal, enabling Republicans are abandoning him. But of course it is too little, WAY too late.

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    • Dear Professor Taboo and Carol,

      I concur with both of you. It is a difficult and trying time. Needless to say, we live in interesting times indeed, but often for the wrong reasons. What a day it was to unfold with sedition, insurrection and coup d’état!

      2020, the Year of the Rat, has brought us not the plague (black death) but Covid-19. And 2020 also brought out the worst of divisive politics and demagogic incitement. Could it really get even worse in 2021?

      Whilst some of us may take some comfort in our living somewhere else, there is the danger that oppressive politics may spread elsewhere or be mirrored by other corrupt politicians outside their origins.

      Democracy is not a given. It can be quite fragile, can fail rather badly, and often is approximately as good and benevolent (or bad and malevolent) as the members who practise, control and/or legislate it. We all need to do our parts in contributing to the smooth and equitable functioning of a civil country and democratic society. I have done mine in highlighting many of the most fundamental causes through my writings, and I hope that you will find more answers and solutions to these thorny issues in my latest and recently expanded post entitled “Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity” and published at https://soundeagle.wordpress.com/2020/12/19/misquotation-pandemic-and-disinformation-polemic-mind-pollution-by-viral-falsity/

      I would be delighted if you could kindly submit your comment to my said article, as I am very keen and curious to know what you think or make of it regarding the increasingly pressing issues that many of us are facing, worsen all the more by mental pitfalls (or even mental health), social media, digital globalization, populism, Trumpism, illiberal democracy, and other behavioural and sociopolitical factors.

      By the way, I would like to wish both of you a very happy New Year. May you find 2021 very much to your liking and highly conducive to your writing, reading, thinking and blogging!

      Liked by 2 people

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      • Thanks SoundEagle for your HNY wishes and your feedback. 🙂 I will try my best to hop over to your 12-19-2020 blog-post. Be patient with me however, because I have an out-of-town, out-of-state guest visiting. She’s here for about 3-weeks or so and we have MUCH to do and plan.

        And btw, a very safe, healthy, and happy New Year to you as well!

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        • Dear Professor taboo,

          Hello! My said post has now amassed about 160 likes and 75 comments, some of which happen to be excellent. As a result, I have been able to use a few of them as quotations in the body proper of the said post itself.

          I would like to inform you that the post has been extended by at least 100% of its original length, including a very detailed infographic, many extra new paragraphs, images and an additional video, plus a navigational menu, and eleven headings. I hope to be able to quote you, if you should decide to make a comment there, assuming, of course, that your forthcoming comment is going to be compellingly superb in one way or the other.

          My offer should not be construed as just an invitation for “a mere response or comment”. Rather, it is both a recognition of and a chance for your piquant thoughts and crystalized wisdom to be distilled into a brilliant comment(ary) so that I can immortalize it as a quotation in my said post.

          Should you accept the invitation, I look forward to your submitting a comment to my said post for posterity, whereupon I shall turn your comment into a quotation embedded and immortalized somewhere within my post entitled “Misquotation Pandemic and Disinformation Polemic: Mind Pollution by Viral Falsity”.

          Like

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    • Yes, you are (very sadly) correct John. 🤦‍♂️

      Later in the coverage of the attack news journalists were recording Texas Senator Ted Cruz moronically comparing “the Capitol mob/marchers(?)” identical to 1776 Continental soldiers & Colonial militia as Revolutionary patriots fighting the British Empire and army. Here is the transcript from CNN records from an airing Jan. 7, 2021:

      KEILAR: Senator Ted Cruz, another architect of the coup attempt, he stood before a crowd in Georgia over the weekend and said this.

      (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

      SEN. TED CRUZ (R-TX): I am inspired. Each of you look around, the men and women who are gathered here, you are patriots just like the patriots gathered at Bunker Hill, just like the patriots gathered at Valley Forge. Just like the patriots who forged this nation.

      The men and women gathered here to cross the state of Georgia are fighting for the United States of America.

      (END VIDEO CLIP)

      KEILAR: Bunker Hill? Valley Forge? Fighting for the fate of the United States of America?

      When domestic terrorists were inspired to storm the capitol like a scene off “Braveheart,” here’s how they explained it to CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan and Elle Reeve.

      (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

      Source: http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/2101/07/cnr.09.html

      This idiot doesn’t know his own nation’s history!!! It begs the question, “now who was the invading, attacking British Army and who were the defenders outside and inside the U.S. Capitol trying to survive?” How are those two (anachronistic) events even closely the same!? Geezzz. 🤦‍♂️ Yes John, those are the idiots we have running our U.S. government and in Texas. It astonishes me how ignorant Cruz was and our former Gov. Rick Perry. Unbelievable.

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  4. One thing that truly made my heart sing was Lisa Murkowski’s rant against Trump! I totally agreed with every word. And to think the State of Alaska voted Red (!). One wonders if she’ll get re-elected …

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    • Yes Nan. I was pleased with her and a small handful of other Republican Congressmen and women. It is just so very sad they never had the courage to standup and speak out to the orange psychotic monster in the White House much, much sooner. They had opportunity after opportunity ad infinitum for at LEAST 3 1/2 years! Yet, it took what happened Jan. 6, 2021 for them to finally recognize they’ve been horribly duped—and it took 5 people’s deaths to wake the zombies up. 😔

      Now how the entire world laugh’s at “American democracy,” especially our foreign enemies. What a disgrace they’ve been.

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  5. As John Zande points out, they brought zip ties, which are useful for binding the hands of prisoners. They also set up a noose outside the Capitol. Some of the terrorists within the building were chanting “hang Mike Pence” — and I’m sure Pence wasn’t the only potential target. If that mob had gotten its hands on any congresspeople or senators, we would likely have seen assassinations. This was not so much a coup attempt or an outbreak of anarchy as a lynch mob.

    that lead to five pointless deaths

    As to that, one must distinguish. One of the five was a policeman murdered by the mob, and hopefully the individuals responsible will be identified, tried, and executed. Another was a woman terrorist who was shot by a security agent after the invasion of the Capitol. From what I hear, the other three were terrorists who died due to unspecified “medical emergencies” during the invasion (knowing what Trumpanzees are like, they probably shot their own dicks off trying to draw their guns out of their pants). The really disturbing thing here is not the number of deaths but the grossly-inadequate defense of the most important government building on the planet. The police and security people had guns, and reinforcements were available. The invasion of the Capitol should never have been allowed to happen.

    Impeachment may seem pointless just a few days before Trump’s term ends anyway, but besides removal from office, an impeachment conviction could also bar him from ever running for political office again, which strikes me as having some value.

    Murkowski apparently threatened to leave the Republican party if it fails to condemn Trump. If she becomes an independent and caucuses with the Democrats, that would give us a 51-49 majority and a bit more margin for error in the next two years.

    As to the baseline effect, a subset of the population is now operating from a different baseline, and that didn’t start with Trump. Over the last couple of decades, a toxic propaganda ecosystem of talk radio, Fox “News”, and social media has brainwashed much of what I call the “stupid one-third” of the US population into a cult living in an alternate reality. Trump didn’t cause that. When he entered politics, the cult embraced him because he embraced it, calling it out of the shadows by offering it legitimacy and a high-profile voice, stepping into the role of its advocate, its prophet. Now the mainstream Republican party, having helped create and nurture this monster cult as a weapon against us, is experiencing the classic problem of the monster turning against its creator. Whether they learn anything from that, remains to be seen. Supporting the second Trumpeachment would be a start, but no more than a start.

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    • Infidel, you’ve brought up many great points and updates. Thank you! See, it all happened so quickly Wednesday and accurate details are still developing. And yes, the investigation, further arrests, trials, hearings(?), and criminal sentences will take some time. Thank you for your feedback and updates.

      Give me an hour or so to respond to your own excellent thoughts. My girlfriend Qin (originally from Hangzhou, China) arrives here soon from Overland Park, KS. 🥰 I am doing a bit of “cleanup” and straightening up—because I am a bachelor in a bachelor pad 😄 —and she will be here for 2-3 weeks. You understand, yes? 😉

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    • The really disturbing thing here is … the grossly-inadequate defense of the most important government building on the planet.

      As I’ve pointed out elsewhere, what if it had not been the homegrown variety of protesters? IOW, a foreign enemy onslaught of the White House? Can we say it would have been handled any differently? In actuality, we don’t know that there weren’t foreign agents mixed in with the crowd — perhaps “surveying” the place for weaknesses (which were definitely there).

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      • Exactly Nan. Great point! And that is why those domestic terrorists with/from QAnon are totally wrong in believing or promoting that they are U.S. patriots for what they did. At the very least they were illegally trespassing into a federal building, as you are alluding to and so much more. 👍🏼

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        • It was far more than an attack on a building. It was an attack on Congress, on the core of the republic. Threatening our senators and representatives and disrupting their work attacks and undermines the democratic rights of all of us who elected them. It was an attack on democracy itself. Which, of course, is why it’s such a grave matter that Trump incited and (with a tissue-thin effort at plausible deniability) endorsed the attack.

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      • And yet, this is where a large portion of Americans are at; from NPR Morning Edition, Dec. 30, 2020:

        “Even If It’s ‘Bonkers,’ Poll Finds Many Believe QAnon And Other Conspiracy Theories Article link…

        https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers-poll-finds-many-believe-qanon-and-other-conspiracy-theories

        Meant to add this in my previous reply, but I’m TRYING to multi-task preparing for Qin’s arrival 😉 and check here. LOL

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      • That is a good point. The nature of this mob assembly was plotted openly online for days in advance. If Russian intelligence was on the ball, they could have infiltrated a couple of agents or sympathizers into the crowd. As far as I’ve heard, the terrorists leaving the Capitol were not even searched to determine if they were carrying away any sensitive or classified documents.

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        • Yep! And it seems others are thinking the same. From an article at azcentral.com —

          You think North Korea or Iran or Russia or even China didn’t see what happened and recognize the massive cracks in the foundations of American democracy?

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    • Well, as it turns out Nan’s fine article she shared with us was exactly what my additional thoughts were and THEN SOME! It was so very accurate and spelled out precisely within the full spirit and letter-of-the-law of why and how our three-branched Constitutional democracy functions in a healthy (yet fragilely dependent on all its citizen’s civil involvement) and designed method of utilizing our 1st Amendment rights, “Congress shall make no law… abridging freedom of speech” and how a U.S. citizen can rightfully, peacefully, and legally protest! However, that “legal right” does NOT include private businesses who own social-media websites, i.e. Twitter and Facebook!

      Trump and his Trumpanzee minions clearly do not comprehend nor understand these distinctions. And anyone who believes ANY QAnon b.s. anti-patriot propaganda is simply an ignoramous. Period. Learn your Constitutional rights correctly you terrorists!!!

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    • That’s an outstanding article Nan, thank you! It expresses many of my own and I’m sure yours and millions of other sane Americans thoughts for sure, it was all just happening so damn fast Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday that I could not keep up and finish this blog-post. 😵

      Michael Gerhardt (the article’s author) nailed it! Thank you Ma’am for sharing it. 👍🏼

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  7. Howdy Professor!
    I’m blown away by the thoroughness of the post. Well researched and very detailed.

    As shocking and horrific as Trump’s insurrection riot was on 6 January, it really does show the impotence of the right. They had no end game. There was never a chance that the American government would fall. There was never a chance that Trump would get another term. Even if they had killed Pence and Pelosi, it wouldn’t have changed things. In fact, it would’ve made us more determined than ever to swear in #BidenHarris. Public opinion would be running against them even more strongly than it is now — FiveThirtyEight’s polling average of Trump’s approval rating has him 20 points below his disapproval about as big a gap as there has been for him.

    Don’t get me wrong. These people need to be rounded up, prosecuted, and jailed. And, some of them were organized and using the mob as cover to try and achieve whatever nefarious goals they had. There were cops and government officials aiding and abetting them including some elected Representatives and Senators. But, they couldn’t derail democracy.

    They may even wreck some havoc on Inauguration Day. But, it won’t change anything. Trump is out. Biden is in. And, god forbid Biden can’t, his successor won’t be Trump.

    The good news is that political violence is not part of our deep culture. The only legitimate path to government office is through electoral politics not through violence.

    Huzzah!
    Jack

    Liked by 3 people

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