"sudden, decisive exercise of power whereby the existing
government is subverted without the consent of the people;
an unexpected measure of state, more or less violent; a
stroke of policy."
I did not vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
I am not a member of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
I have no allegiances to any of the above mentioned, and I have never been paid to write a political opinion. I have no corporate interest to stroke and everything I write here reflects my genuine concern for the nation that we all call home.
There was an organized attempt to usurp the rule of law and election integrity but Mr. Rather didn't address it at all and he demonstrates a facile take on the subject that is not worthy of someone with his professional experience.
I wrote a point for point assessment to give you an idea of where I was coming from but as I was writing it I realized that it misses the real issue entirely. Distractions are indeed a useful weapon of political warfare.
Elections are to be administered in a way that is unassailable, that is to say that there isn't anything anyone can say or do after the fact to call it into question. Elections give authority to human individuals---human individuals with personal interests, some conflicting with public interest. Some of these people are willing to cheat to advance those interests. We have over the years devised safeguards to protect our elections. We have a documented history of their success.
Perhaps you are fortunate enough to live in a state that handled its elections well and perhaps your preferred candidate won. But there will be be more elections and your candidate will not always win. Now is the time to hear your fellow citizens grievances and put in the extra effort to come to resolution. I can tell you with apodictic certainty that my state did *not* administer a certifiable election---and that means your vote matters less than you think. It also means that the presidential election was a fraud. I didn't pay much attention to Stacey Abrams when she claimed she was defrauded and I now regret not looking into it because we could have prevented this. Don't make the same mistake as me; it's alot harder to restore than you think.
There is nothing past tense about January 6, 2021, and there /shouldn't/ be. The past tense is reserved for events with conclusion, especially those with resolution. While we can be certain that the sun set that night and rose again the next morning and that it is no longer the sixth day of the first month of 2021, sunlight has barely touched this event. Conclusions and resolutions seem far away on this matter.
Is the congressional committee a fact-finding exercise at all? It has surely found facts, but any investigator would probably agree that precluding a set of facts that do not advance the investigator's desired outcome and fabricating facts to advance the same is an exercise not worthy of the job description of investigator. And firefighters don't light fires to fight fires unless they have lost control of the blaze and need to let a portion burn.
1. The threat to our democratic republic is /why/ the event happened not the result of it.. It isn't the cartoonish cult of personality of Donald Trump, either. Thousands of people (possibly millions) traveled to Washington D.C. that day with a purpose. I've spoken with hundreds of them (including a few that broke the law) and not a single one of them wants to "destroy the ... rule of law" nor do they want their personal preference to usurp election integrity---to the contrary, in fact. It is an obscenely disingenuous and absurdly inaccurate assertion (ignorant, at best) yet that is Mr. Rather's implication.
2. There is quite a bit of controversy regarding the last presidential election. That much isn't controversial. To pretend otherwise is also obscenely disingenuous and absurdly inaccurate (ignorant at best). You do not resolve controversy by gaslighting those with opposing views. You can start wars that way, however.
3. Mr. Rather doesn't know the "will of the voters" in the battleground states (certainly not better than the state legislatures, who appointed the alternative slates in according with their law). He says the goal was to "sow confusion, violence in the streets be damned, just as long as Trump could remain in power" without any evidence to support. This is pure conjecture and is not helpful. The will of many voters drove them across country to Washington, D.C.
4. "Trump and his confederates" --- Here, Mr. Rather demonstrates his contempt and bias explicitly, even noting the historical context.
5. Again, Mr. Rather pretends to know the innermost desires of Trump and unnamed confederates hearts and their implementation by vague "power and intimidation".
6. The talking point /du jour/ regarding Luttig appears to cast Luttig as an esteemed retired conservative judge. His testimony is relevant only insofar as to the advice he gave Mike Pence.
a) Judges are "esteemed" /de facto/.
b) He has been noted for having anti-conservative judicial opinions.
c) Luttig left his civic duty as a federal appellate judge because Boeing offered him more money. He's a retired corporate lawyer / Vice President of Boeing.
7. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger echoing the sentiments of the Democratic Party and the Never Trumpers are hardly indicative of any fidelity to the law and democratic principles---to the contrary, it indicates politics in spite of those things.
8. Taking issue with the 2020 presidential election can in no way be construed as an extremist position. Speaking of minority political opponents as "cancer" could easily be seen as an extremist position.
9. Mr. Rather seems to think that everyone trusts what politicians say yet I don't know anyone that does. What undermined the faith the American people had in our democratic systems were the people running the democratic system. Their demise is unavoidable.
10. The Dominion voting system is not trustworthy (see /Curling v Raffensperger/). And that was /before/ the election. So all of this could have and should have been avoided.
11. How ironic of Kinzinger (whose name is mud by anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi) to say that the Republican Party (the /minority/ that he is a member of) would rather hold on to power than our democracy. What power?!
12. "Autocracy"
Professional journalists should have a better command of the English language. What autocracy?
13. "Do we count the votes and declare those who won the most to be the winner?"
That's precisely the problem...we don't but /we should/ and /we will/.
14. Election integrity is not a partisan issue. It's an easy litmus test for separating the wheat from the chaff on democratic values. Mr. Rather appears to be a partisan here and uses "democracy" as a euphemism for the Democratic Party.
15. What is a would-be autocrat? Nobody said "If I win, I win, if you win, I win." Nobody even implied that. Nobody.
What are specific strategies Democrats can develop and specific actions to take to counter the rising "Independent State Legislature Theory?" Just calling out Republicans and "shaming" them is insufficient. In their quest for raw, unchecked power, they have no shame. Who can find the direct connection, as in named organizations and/or PACs, that prove Koch funding of this movement? We need direct, specific targeting to educate the public. We need this before November!
“Exposing an attempt to override elections and the will of the voters is not beating a dead horse, unless that horse is American democracy. Promoting the Big Lie as an excuse to nullify Democratic victories has become a mantra for large swaths of the Republican Party.”
You mean like - “Today, for nearly 20 minutes in the cavernous House chamber, a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, joined by a few sympathizers, tried in vain to block the counting of Florida’s 25 electoral votes, protesting that black voters had been disenfranchised,” The New York Times reported on Jan. 7, 2001. “Florida’s highly contested electoral votes were crucial in Mr. Bush’s victory after a prolonged legal and political battle following an inconclusive election.”
Or
Sen. Boxer and Democratic Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio, Fox News reported. “That forced the chambers to leave their joint session and debate separately for two hours on whether to reject Ohio’s electoral votes. Neither did. But the objection by Boxer and Tubbs serves as a modern precedent for what is likely to happen in Congress on Jan. 6.”
Or maybe
On Jan. 6, 2017, PBS reported at the time, “House Democrats objected to the votes from at least 10 states, raising issues of voter suppression as well as American intelligence showing that Russia tried to sway the election in favor of Trump. In each case, their objections were denied because they didn’t have the support of any senators.”
January 6th was a protest that became violent and got out of hand. The target of the protest and the building that was overrun was the Nation’s Capital and should not go unpunished. However, to focus on the events of January 6th and say they are a clear and present danger to our democracy while ignoring the illegal protests taking place today at the homes of the Justices of the Supreme Court is irresponsible. I see protests occurring at the Justices homes as more of an “organized attempt to destroy the United States as a nation based upon the rule of law…” rather than another politician trying to change electoral votes which isn’t something new or different.
Well said. I give meaning to the fact that the Republicans are a part of democracy. For some reason Democrats won't acknowledge the country as a whole. America Judges are in place to protect us from wrongs imposed on our democracy as is the case of phony electoral ballots. Steady team summed it up tomorrow we will be a democracy. It's time for the Jan. 6th committee to erase doubts that democracy is here today and gone tomorrow.
I have a request for a future article. Could you write about how those who currently hold power are failing to confront the reality we are facing? Be specific in who and how.
Lucid and Steady both call out who is turning America into a theocratic authoritarian nightmare but neither has tackled the flip side. It takes multiple factors for this happen and those who are allowing it, through denial, incompetence or complicity, must be called out as well.
Everything you say is absolutely correct. How can it be so many Americans don’t see the or are indifferent to the threat to our very way of life? Who can l watch and still ignore the dangerous slope we are facing? Problem is those who need to watch won’t. Keep writing.
Judge Michael Luttig was not talking understandably. Not one sentence was followed even though we really tried, but, many others too were hard to follow. So, we wait for the unfolding of events and testimonies, hoping that the hidden truth can finally save our future, our present and our well-deserved leadership(s). We can`t live, develop, flourish without an understanding of what is good and what is bad in this world. The difference is vital, to know what is right and wrong. It has always been a basic for decisions and we should take that seriously, very seriously.
Perfectly said Dan. It scares me to death how our govt. came so close to throwing out our votes. What truly scares me though, Trump being allowed to run again! It’s also sickening we still spend millions on his secret service when he should be in jail.
Shocking that the R trolls and bots even read and participate here. But it seems they like to spread their lies and misdirection at every site possible. Thank you Dan Rather for sounding the needed bell.
Thank you for always telling the truth, and putting it all in perspective!! You are and always have been a fantastic reporter and person. I have missed your honest reports and glad to have found steady I am unable to contribute at this time, but truly thank you for Steady
You could not have summarized it any better. Watching the hearings has been difficult. Our house is being robbed in plain sight and what are we going to do about it? Again, you have articulated what needs to be done, Staying focused and not letting their obvious distractions take us off course is required for each and every one of us.
- coup d'etat:
"sudden, decisive exercise of power whereby the existing
government is subverted without the consent of the people;
an unexpected measure of state, more or less violent; a
stroke of policy."
I did not vote for Donald Trump or Joe Biden.
I am not a member of the Republican Party or the Democratic Party.
I have no allegiances to any of the above mentioned, and I have never been paid to write a political opinion. I have no corporate interest to stroke and everything I write here reflects my genuine concern for the nation that we all call home.
There was an organized attempt to usurp the rule of law and election integrity but Mr. Rather didn't address it at all and he demonstrates a facile take on the subject that is not worthy of someone with his professional experience.
I wrote a point for point assessment to give you an idea of where I was coming from but as I was writing it I realized that it misses the real issue entirely. Distractions are indeed a useful weapon of political warfare.
Elections are to be administered in a way that is unassailable, that is to say that there isn't anything anyone can say or do after the fact to call it into question. Elections give authority to human individuals---human individuals with personal interests, some conflicting with public interest. Some of these people are willing to cheat to advance those interests. We have over the years devised safeguards to protect our elections. We have a documented history of their success.
Perhaps you are fortunate enough to live in a state that handled its elections well and perhaps your preferred candidate won. But there will be be more elections and your candidate will not always win. Now is the time to hear your fellow citizens grievances and put in the extra effort to come to resolution. I can tell you with apodictic certainty that my state did *not* administer a certifiable election---and that means your vote matters less than you think. It also means that the presidential election was a fraud. I didn't pay much attention to Stacey Abrams when she claimed she was defrauded and I now regret not looking into it because we could have prevented this. Don't make the same mistake as me; it's alot harder to restore than you think.
There is nothing past tense about January 6, 2021, and there /shouldn't/ be. The past tense is reserved for events with conclusion, especially those with resolution. While we can be certain that the sun set that night and rose again the next morning and that it is no longer the sixth day of the first month of 2021, sunlight has barely touched this event. Conclusions and resolutions seem far away on this matter.
Is the congressional committee a fact-finding exercise at all? It has surely found facts, but any investigator would probably agree that precluding a set of facts that do not advance the investigator's desired outcome and fabricating facts to advance the same is an exercise not worthy of the job description of investigator. And firefighters don't light fires to fight fires unless they have lost control of the blaze and need to let a portion burn.
1. The threat to our democratic republic is /why/ the event happened not the result of it.. It isn't the cartoonish cult of personality of Donald Trump, either. Thousands of people (possibly millions) traveled to Washington D.C. that day with a purpose. I've spoken with hundreds of them (including a few that broke the law) and not a single one of them wants to "destroy the ... rule of law" nor do they want their personal preference to usurp election integrity---to the contrary, in fact. It is an obscenely disingenuous and absurdly inaccurate assertion (ignorant, at best) yet that is Mr. Rather's implication.
2. There is quite a bit of controversy regarding the last presidential election. That much isn't controversial. To pretend otherwise is also obscenely disingenuous and absurdly inaccurate (ignorant at best). You do not resolve controversy by gaslighting those with opposing views. You can start wars that way, however.
3. Mr. Rather doesn't know the "will of the voters" in the battleground states (certainly not better than the state legislatures, who appointed the alternative slates in according with their law). He says the goal was to "sow confusion, violence in the streets be damned, just as long as Trump could remain in power" without any evidence to support. This is pure conjecture and is not helpful. The will of many voters drove them across country to Washington, D.C.
4. "Trump and his confederates" --- Here, Mr. Rather demonstrates his contempt and bias explicitly, even noting the historical context.
5. Again, Mr. Rather pretends to know the innermost desires of Trump and unnamed confederates hearts and their implementation by vague "power and intimidation".
6. The talking point /du jour/ regarding Luttig appears to cast Luttig as an esteemed retired conservative judge. His testimony is relevant only insofar as to the advice he gave Mike Pence.
a) Judges are "esteemed" /de facto/.
b) He has been noted for having anti-conservative judicial opinions.
c) Luttig left his civic duty as a federal appellate judge because Boeing offered him more money. He's a retired corporate lawyer / Vice President of Boeing.
7. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger echoing the sentiments of the Democratic Party and the Never Trumpers are hardly indicative of any fidelity to the law and democratic principles---to the contrary, it indicates politics in spite of those things.
8. Taking issue with the 2020 presidential election can in no way be construed as an extremist position. Speaking of minority political opponents as "cancer" could easily be seen as an extremist position.
9. Mr. Rather seems to think that everyone trusts what politicians say yet I don't know anyone that does. What undermined the faith the American people had in our democratic systems were the people running the democratic system. Their demise is unavoidable.
10. The Dominion voting system is not trustworthy (see /Curling v Raffensperger/). And that was /before/ the election. So all of this could have and should have been avoided.
11. How ironic of Kinzinger (whose name is mud by anyone to the right of Nancy Pelosi) to say that the Republican Party (the /minority/ that he is a member of) would rather hold on to power than our democracy. What power?!
12. "Autocracy"
Professional journalists should have a better command of the English language. What autocracy?
13. "Do we count the votes and declare those who won the most to be the winner?"
That's precisely the problem...we don't but /we should/ and /we will/.
14. Election integrity is not a partisan issue. It's an easy litmus test for separating the wheat from the chaff on democratic values. Mr. Rather appears to be a partisan here and uses "democracy" as a euphemism for the Democratic Party.
15. What is a would-be autocrat? Nobody said "If I win, I win, if you win, I win." Nobody even implied that. Nobody.
Thank you!
What are specific strategies Democrats can develop and specific actions to take to counter the rising "Independent State Legislature Theory?" Just calling out Republicans and "shaming" them is insufficient. In their quest for raw, unchecked power, they have no shame. Who can find the direct connection, as in named organizations and/or PACs, that prove Koch funding of this movement? We need direct, specific targeting to educate the public. We need this before November!
“Exposing an attempt to override elections and the will of the voters is not beating a dead horse, unless that horse is American democracy. Promoting the Big Lie as an excuse to nullify Democratic victories has become a mantra for large swaths of the Republican Party.”
You mean like - “Today, for nearly 20 minutes in the cavernous House chamber, a dozen members of the Congressional Black Caucus, joined by a few sympathizers, tried in vain to block the counting of Florida’s 25 electoral votes, protesting that black voters had been disenfranchised,” The New York Times reported on Jan. 7, 2001. “Florida’s highly contested electoral votes were crucial in Mr. Bush’s victory after a prolonged legal and political battle following an inconclusive election.”
Or
Sen. Boxer and Democratic Ohio Rep. Stephanie Tubbs objected to Bush’s 2004 electoral votes in Ohio, Fox News reported. “That forced the chambers to leave their joint session and debate separately for two hours on whether to reject Ohio’s electoral votes. Neither did. But the objection by Boxer and Tubbs serves as a modern precedent for what is likely to happen in Congress on Jan. 6.”
Or maybe
On Jan. 6, 2017, PBS reported at the time, “House Democrats objected to the votes from at least 10 states, raising issues of voter suppression as well as American intelligence showing that Russia tried to sway the election in favor of Trump. In each case, their objections were denied because they didn’t have the support of any senators.”
January 6th was a protest that became violent and got out of hand. The target of the protest and the building that was overrun was the Nation’s Capital and should not go unpunished. However, to focus on the events of January 6th and say they are a clear and present danger to our democracy while ignoring the illegal protests taking place today at the homes of the Justices of the Supreme Court is irresponsible. I see protests occurring at the Justices homes as more of an “organized attempt to destroy the United States as a nation based upon the rule of law…” rather than another politician trying to change electoral votes which isn’t something new or different.
Well said. I give meaning to the fact that the Republicans are a part of democracy. For some reason Democrats won't acknowledge the country as a whole. America Judges are in place to protect us from wrongs imposed on our democracy as is the case of phony electoral ballots. Steady team summed it up tomorrow we will be a democracy. It's time for the Jan. 6th committee to erase doubts that democracy is here today and gone tomorrow.
I have a request for a future article. Could you write about how those who currently hold power are failing to confront the reality we are facing? Be specific in who and how.
Lucid and Steady both call out who is turning America into a theocratic authoritarian nightmare but neither has tackled the flip side. It takes multiple factors for this happen and those who are allowing it, through denial, incompetence or complicity, must be called out as well.
I don’t know who Maverick purports to be..
Why do we have to keep reading his nonsense?
Absolutely agree with you. Why don’t others understand the extremely slippery slope we face with these kind of tactics?
This was a wonderfully written article and I thank you for it. I shared it in hopes others will read it. American needs to wake up.
Everything you say is absolutely correct. How can it be so many Americans don’t see the or are indifferent to the threat to our very way of life? Who can l watch and still ignore the dangerous slope we are facing? Problem is those who need to watch won’t. Keep writing.
Judge Michael Luttig was not talking understandably. Not one sentence was followed even though we really tried, but, many others too were hard to follow. So, we wait for the unfolding of events and testimonies, hoping that the hidden truth can finally save our future, our present and our well-deserved leadership(s). We can`t live, develop, flourish without an understanding of what is good and what is bad in this world. The difference is vital, to know what is right and wrong. It has always been a basic for decisions and we should take that seriously, very seriously.
Perfectly said Dan. It scares me to death how our govt. came so close to throwing out our votes. What truly scares me though, Trump being allowed to run again! It’s also sickening we still spend millions on his secret service when he should be in jail.
"Constitutional depravity" - succinct summation of what is occurring in this ongoing coup.
Shocking that the R trolls and bots even read and participate here. But it seems they like to spread their lies and misdirection at every site possible. Thank you Dan Rather for sounding the needed bell.
Thank you for always telling the truth, and putting it all in perspective!! You are and always have been a fantastic reporter and person. I have missed your honest reports and glad to have found steady I am unable to contribute at this time, but truly thank you for Steady
You could not have summarized it any better. Watching the hearings has been difficult. Our house is being robbed in plain sight and what are we going to do about it? Again, you have articulated what needs to be done, Staying focused and not letting their obvious distractions take us off course is required for each and every one of us.