Brief Jan. 6 thoughts

Is it arguable Trump is a quasi-insurrectionist? Yes.

Note the exact phrasing on that.

One of Trump's largest assets is being weaselly. Hence my caveats and qualifiers.

My best guess is that Trump did not want violent action on Jan. 6, 2021. That said, he was stupid enough not to consider the possibility that the event would go beyond intimidation. And, he may have lost control of things to a degree.

Is Trump legally an insurrectionist? Given the above, no, even before John Roberts' presidential criminality ruling, there's no way you could hang a charge on him.

Since then, is the national security state paranoid? Yes, and here's Ken Klippenstein:

Today is not a day to celebrate democracy. January 6, 2025 represents a leviathan, a juggernaut of government extremism casting a shadow over American civic life. An event meant to ratify the will of the American public will be flooded by an army of federal agents, police, and military personnel from all over the country.

Well put.

And why?

This:

If Washington does anything well, it is overcompensating for past embarrassing failures. Like 9/11, January 6 represented an intelligence failure for which none of the responsible agencies were punished. In fact, the opposite happened, with more resources lavished on the same agencies that had dropped the ball. For the national security state, every failure turns into an opportunity to “learn,” which really means punishing the public through demands for greater surveillance, policing and of course bigger budgets. 

Again, well put.

We continue to take our shoes off at airports even though another shoe bomber Richard Reid hasn't happened since then and almost certainly never will. This is political kabuki theater.

As a third-party voter, I consider the real threats to democracy to be both duopoly parties, but especially Democrats, fighting against third-party ballot access, both duopoly parties fighting against ranked choice voting, and more.

Obama politicizes terror like Bush

That's the claim of the Guardian, saying the Obama Administration politicized terrorism issues with its recent travel alert about Americans going to Europe.

Glen Greenwald is a bit skeptical, but, let's see if this has legs.

Pakistan's ambassador to Britain claims it's the Obama Administration attempting to justify its surge in attacks not just by drones, but also by helicopters, inside Pakistan. Considering that Pakistan retaliated by temporarily closing the Khyber Pass route into Afghanistan, this claim could be seen as having legs right there.

And, here's a summary of the European stance:

By making it clear that the US drone strikes were pre-emptive, and were not in any way combating an imminent threat, European officials raised fresh questions – this time directly involving a British national – about the legality of the attacks, which could be viewed as assassinations.

Yes, a lot of this is anonymously sourced, which starts Greenwald's complaint, but no more than in a typical U.S. newspaper.

That said, Glenn seems to have reduced some of his original skepticism.

That's in part because NATO is willing to jump on the politicization bandwagon. Of course, "NATO" should be in scare quotes, since it's a U.S. admiral doing the jawing.