After all, it’s worked before, so nothing really unusual about Ron Johnson (R-Stupidville) insisting that it wasn’t really a riot….ok, maybe it was but it was Antifa disguised as Trump supporters, which would be news to “close ally of…Majorie Taylor Green” Anthony Aguero, as well as other participants, while KKKarlson deadpanned how he looked far and wide for evidence of QAnon, but gosh, there’s not even a website, so what’s all the fuss/it’s all in the libruls’ heads, hahaha, blah blah blah, and unless the media dutifully chants “both sides” it’s further proof they’re infested with librul cooties, etc.
Nice there’s a little pushback, though it’d be nicer if the corporate press pushed just a bit harder, considering what happened over the last four (or more) years, culminating in an actual and ugly riot.
A riot by people who willingly went along with the biggest of big lies about non-existent voter fraud and an equally non-existent election theft pushed by the political-party-mutated-into-authoritarian-cult (Qult?) that is the GOP.
And it’s not like the big lie or psychotic rhetoric/behavior is anything new. It wasn’t just fringe lunatics who accused Hillary Clinton of murder.
I remember Senate Majority Leader Moscow Mitch (uh oh, now I’ve upset Joe Manchin), anyway, Moscow Mitch threatened to “shoot the hostage” in 2010-2011 during budget deficit negotiations, the hostage being…the fucking country.
WMD was another big lie, with the added bonus of bipartisan support (I vote Democratic, but never forget that in most cases it’s as lesser of evils). In the 1990s we were told horror stories about super-predators, while the pre-internet Stone Age of the 1980s included endless cable TV coverage of things like the McMartin day care scandal that turned out to be total nonsense, though nonsense that hurt a number of innocent people and brainwashed a fair chunk of the public.
QAnon, in some respects, is just the distilled and/or regurgitated essence of decades of pretty rank crap. And now there’s a whole generation that’s grown on little else.
It’s a deep hole that’s been dug, and I’m not really sure how to get out…