Scattered clouds with occasional shivers of sunshine this near-noon hour Monday here in California’s Central Valley –we’re still dry and still awaiting rain from off Hilary, though, it apparently seems the blunt of the tropical storm’s presence is being felt to the south and east.
We’re forecast for rain this afternoon, but it’s not supposed to be much.
Meanwhile to the east and the continuing shitstorm of the T-Rump and the insurrection against democracy. In this particular case the violence dripping from the longtime asshole-mouth of the T-Rump against the legal apparatus:
“The regime Trump is trying to establish ‘always comes down in the end to what happens to small, inconvenient people’ like Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman. People like Freeman ‘are lied about, criminalized, terrorized, threatened and smeared.’”https://t.co/yWg9IJl2if
— Laurence Tribe ?? ?? (@tribelaw) August 21, 2023
Austin Sarat, the William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Jurisprudence and Political Science at Amherst College, along with Dennis Aftergut, former federal prosecutor and civil litigator, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy, have a good op/ed piece at The Hill this morning on the non-empty threats from the T-Rump:
Of late, the media have been much astir about former President Donald Trump’s refusal to heed the admonitions of judges in his various criminal and civil cases not to post social media messages that smack of tampering with witnesses, juries and justice. Reporters and commentators have even speculated about Trump being jailed by D.C. District Court Judge Tanya Chutkan, who is presiding at his federal election fraud trial.
It is clear that the former president wants to send the message that he is ready to defy any legal authority and play by his own rules. But as bad as that conduct is, Thursday’s news brought a chilling example of something far worse.
“The Fulton County Sheriff’s Office,” The New York Times reported, “was investigating online threats against the grand jurors who voted this week to indict former President Donald J. Trump and 18 others, accusing them of conspiring to overturn Georgia’s 2020 election results.”
We’re seeing in real time what journalist Masha Gessen has called “the performance of fascism.” Former Secretary of Labor Robert Reich agrees and encourages us not to shy away from using that word as the threat of fascism grows in America.
[…]
The history of civil society is a history of efforts to encourage and enlist citizens to do the important work of service that democracy demands. It a history of the struggle to foster civility and build the rule of law as a bulwark against the rule of violence.
The walls around a safe and stable society are built brick by brick. From time to time, citizens are called on to display what might be called “civic courage.”
This is one of those times.
On Thursday, an individual who leads a powerful organization of law showed that kind of civic courage. Mary Smith, president of the American Bar Association, quickly issued a statement after news broke of the threats against the Georgia grand jurors: “The civic-minded members of the Georgia grand jury performed their duty to support our democracy. It is unconscionable that their lives should be upended, and safety threatened for being good citizens.”
T-Rump is a menace from all angles — the Republican party itself, too.
And the most-disheartening example: ‘A Southern California business owner was shot and killed Friday by a man who objected to an LGBTQ+ Pride flag displayed at her clothing store, officials said.‘
Violent assholes, or not, yet once again here we are…
(Illustration out front: Edvard Munch‘s ‘The Scream,’ lithograph version, found here.)