Pics Of The Day -- The New Norm: Validating Fascists

 

"Don't bring norms to a Trump fight." -- Marc Elias

This is what happens when "norms" and "ceremony" are more important than fighting for freedom and democracy against American fascists.  You undercut that fight by participating in acts bestowing honor and legitimacy to the leader of that fascist movement.  You show your party that everything that was said about the existential threat posed by that leader and his movement was just ... words.  You've become part of their "proof" that the fascist leader is a "uniter."  You sat there in the Rotunda and listened to his lies and threats and ... sat there. 

(Welcoming the Trumps to the White House with smiles/ AFP News via YouTube screenshot)

 

 

(The Bidens, Clintons, and VP Harris at the Trump inauguration/ Shawn Thew, pool, AFP via Getty Images)

(Sens. Schumer and Klobuchar, left, and Rep. Jeffries, right, more smiles/ Melina Mara, WaPo via AP, pool)

 

None of the institutionalist Democrats in these pictures (or any of  those who attended the ceremony) should ever hold public office again, regardless of any half- assed reasoning or historical tradition.  There are things that are more important than "norms," and the most important of those things is fighting for what's left of our democracy.  As Paul Campos pointed out:

"Note that Biden issued a bunch of pardons of innocent people this morning — their crimes consisted of either investigating Trump’s attempt to overthrow the government, or in Anthony Fauci’s case inadvertently becoming the focus of the current paranoid style in right wing politics — because of a very reasonable belief that Trump would hold Stalinist-style show trials of these people.

Nevertheless the Dignity of the Institutions must be maintained (Offer not applicable to Democrats).

All this gives today’s proceedings a weird double quality, in which Biden & Co. are signaling that they understand on some level what they’re dealing with, while simultaneously conveying that they absolutely don’t, or more accurately refuse to."

We can't move forward with "leadership" that can't understand the moment, show moral courage or get out of its own way.