Daily Beast
David R. Lurie
Thu, December 30, 2021, 8:02 PM MST

Donald Trump’s January 2021 c**p attempt failed to overturn the e******n; but Trump has succeeded in t***sforming the GOP into an ever more radicalized party that rewards extremism, and punishes, or even banishes, those members who fail to support ever more audacious attacks on democracy and the nation’s e*******l process.

The Republican Party is now institutionally oriented to work towards the anti-democratic aims of its charismatic leader, Trump.

As the one-year anniversary of the Capitol i**********n approaches, we are only beginning to gain a picture of the full scope of what can now fairly be described as a c**p scheme, intended to void the outcome of a p**********l e******n. The scheme was encouraged, if not planned, by the White House, with Trump’s chief-of-staff Mark Meadows serving as field general for the putsch, and encouraging the pursuit of various extreme proposals and bizarre conspiracy theories from a range of co-conspirators, including members of Congress as well as state legislators and freelance neo-f*****ts such as Steve Bannon, Rudy Giuliani, and John Eastman.

It is essential that Congress’ J*** 6 c*******e, as well as the Justice Department and other law enforcement agencies, continue to seek out every relevant item of evidence regarding this effort to take down the nation’s democracy, and identify the role of each of the schemers. The evidence may well establish that individuals, potentially including Trump himself, are guilty of federal crimes arising from the putsch scheme, such as obstruction of the congressional e*******l v**e counting proceedings.

Yet regardless of what additional facts the congressional and law enforcement investigations establish, we already know that Trump has succeeded in a broader goal of t***sforming the Republican Party into a vehicle for ever more radical and extreme attacks on the democratic foundations of the nation. His success is reflected in the fact that Trump no longer needs to tell followers inside and outside of government to play their parts in undermining democracy—they now take the initiative to anticipate Trump’s desire for extreme actions and act upon them.

Historian Ian Kershaw famously described the Third Reich’s operating principle as “working towards the Führer.” Party members anticipated the steps its leader wanted, particularly attacks on political opponents and “undesirables” like Jews, and frequently took them without being asked. Over time, it became clear that those who pursued the most radical, and often violent, steps to serve the party would be met with approbation, while those who hesitated would be met with disfavor or worse.

While Trump is, of course, no Hitler, he and his acolytes have used a similar reward-and-punishment dynamic to relentlessly move the GOP towards a dynamic of ever greater extremism, in which adherence to legal and moral norms is viewed as intolerable weakness.

During 2016, Trump’s most dev**ed acolyte, his namesake son, responded to news that the Russian government was illicitly aiding his father’s p**********l campaign by exclaiming “I love it” in an email, and arranging a meeting in the hope of getting “dirt” on Hillary Clinton from Russia. In early 2021, after Trump lost the e******n, Meadows likewise responded to fellow extremists’ plans to undermine the e*******l v**e count by “replacing” duly designated e*****rs with Trump shills by, likewise, declaring “I love it.”

The Eyes Have It: Junior Just Wants Daddy’s Love

We do not know if Trump expressly blessed either scheme beforehand, but it is clear that both Don Jr. and Meadows understood that they would risk Trump’s ire if they failed to pursue the most extreme attacks on American laws and democratic norms available in Trump’s name.

The GOP’s dynamic of rewarding extremism, and penalizing restraint, has only strengthened since Trump lost the e******n. House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy disavowed his initial support for an investigation of J*** 6, and ultimately supported the sanctioning of Liz Cheney for participating in the Congressional inquiry into the c**p attempt. Cheney and fellow J*** 6 c*******e member Adam Kinzinger are now facing a call for their expulsion from the GOP caucus from prominent party activists and institutions that are now singularly dependent on Trump, such as Matt Schlapp and the Club for Growth, as virtually all of their House colleagues cower in silence. Meanwhile, McCarthy, recognizing that his hope to be elected Speaker depends on maintaining the support of Trump’s most radical allies, gives free license to members like Paul Gosar, who recently disclosed evidence establishes was an active participant in the c**p effort and who recently “joked” about murdering a House colleague.

At the state level, the impetus within the GOP to work towards Trump is likewise even more powerful than it was during the weeks following the e******n. Trump’s now-infamous call to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, demanding that he “find” additional v**es for Trump, failed to induce Raffensperger to corrupt the e******n, and Trump’s rejection of the e******n results likely contributed to the runoff losses of both GOP incumbent senators—costing Republicans control of the senate.

Yet during the succeeding months, Trump’s relentless attacks on Raffensperger and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp have induced other Republicans to join in attacking the two for not undoing the outcome of the 2020 e******n, and to induce opponents who share Trump’s extremist agenda to plan primary challenges against them, making radicalism the norm in the party.

How Donald Trump Could Help Stacey Abrams Win Georgia

The story is the same in many other states, including Wisconsin, where a GOP legislative leader has responded to Trump’s loss there by attacking the state’s bipartisan e******n commission (including a commissioner he appointed), while some Wisconsin Republican leaders, including Sen. Ron Johnson, are calling for what amounts to a GOP takeover of the administration of e******ns in the state. In Arizona, an “audit” that confirmed Trump’s loss has nonetheless served as a rallying cry for efforts to undermine v****g rights in that state and others. Across the country, people who claim the 2020 e******n was “stolen” by Biden are running to take control of the local e******n machinery to ensure that the next e******n can be stolen by Trump.

While they rarely direct these actions, Trump and his acolytes have praised these extremists while often threatening retaliation against party members who question such a radical approach.

A case in point is Michigan, where Trump supporters have demanded an Arizona-style audit of the e******n, despite the fact that a GOP-sponsored probe found no evidence of e******n f***d. A group of Trump supporters, some of them members of the state legislature, have commenced a campaign to intimidate state party leaders to support this audit, as a sign of support for Trump, declaring that their effort is the first step in a “revolution” against the e*******l system.

This brings us back to J*** 6. Trump’s address to a crowd of supporters that day came after a p**********l term in which he openly praised neo-N**i r****rs, encouraged gun-wielding protesters to go to state capitals to “liberate” them from C***D restrictions, and wielded a Bible in front of a church after a crowd of protesters had been cleared for him by a violent police and National Guard attack. It followed weeks during which Trump himself had waged a relentless campaign to delegitimize the results of the e******n, commencing even before it was held and using every legal and political lever that he could to get himself reinstalled against the will of the people.

The former president claims that he didn’t tell the crowd that gathered for his speech on J*** 6 to attack the Capitol, but virtually all of the people who did believed they were acting in his interests, and had every reason to believe that their attack would meet with his approbation.

Indeed, evidence that has come to light during recent months has only added further support for their belief. Trump has confirmed that he was wholly unconcerned with Pence’s safety during the i**********n, and failed even to call him as the siege proceeded. We are also now learning that Trump ignored entreaties from legislators inside the Capitol, and even from Don Jr., and Sean Hannity, to call off his supporters’ siege, as only he could have done.

It is also becoming increasingly clear that, as the siege proceeded, Trump’s acolytes, including Rudy Giuliani, and (as reported by The Daily Beast) possibly Peter Navarro, may well have been employing the disruption in the proceedings as an the opportunity to attempt to encourage more legislators to v**e against certification—or to at least to delay it until they could engineer the naming of “replacement” e*****rs.

We now know that in the weeks before J*** 6, a group of legislators had been working hand-in-glove with Meadows and other Trump allies to implement the c**p scheme. Most GOP members of Congress had not joined the scheme. But the i**********n contributed to making more of them more pliant Trump allies. Freshman GOP Rep. Peter Meijer has recounted that, in the immediate wake of the i**********n, a number of his colleagues who had planned to v**e in favor of certifying Biden’s e******n reversed course, some out of fear for their own lives.

Since that time, most GOP politicians have routinely endorsed, or at least chosen not to oppose, the extreme attacks on democracy and the e*******l system that have become core tenets of the GOP. As I have previously discussed, appeals to an extremist “base” are now such a central element of the party’s political strategy that GOP “leaders” fear losing support if they don’t support conspir****m and anti-democracy. For example, during a recent Minnesota GOP senate debate, all five of the candidates resisted acknowledging that Biden had won the 2020 e******n.

Even Trump himself has found that his power as a “leader” of an extremist movement depends on his own reliably continuous appeals to extremism. This was starkly evident last week when Trump himself faced criticism from some of his most fervent followers for acknowledging that the C***D v*****e saves lives, and admitting that he received a booster dose.

In short, extremism is Trump’s calling card, and the force that fuels his movement. Accordingly, whether or not Trump ordered the i**********n, he clearly chose to allow it to continue by his silence, likely because Trump believed the attack on the Capitol served his own ends. And during the months that have followed, GOP activists encouraged by Trump have normalized the goals and even the tactics of the i**********nists—who are now frequently described by Trumpist Republicans as harmless tourists, or patriots.

The party is working towards Trump.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/j***6-just-start-radicalizing-030206761.html

Daily Beast
Kent Sepkowitz
Mon, January 3, 2022, 2:57 AM

The Omicron variant of SARS CoV2 has quickly upended at least three facts we thought we had established about t​​he C****-** p******c.

First, the t***smissibility of Omicron has shattered all previous records, including those set by the Delta variant, which briefly had been considered just about worst-in-class due its extreme contagiousness. Second, it has shown us that C****-** can be a mild disease—if one considers a three- or four-day bout of fatigue, aches, and fever to be mild.

But it is the third revelation that’s the most alarming. Omicron has scrambled a great deal of what we thought we knew about immunity to the infection in the first place. Witness the ease with which it has infected those with one or two—or even three—v******tions, a phenomenon referred to as v*****e evasion, or VE. Thankfully, the current v*****es still prevent most lethal infections, despite being less effective at preventing infection itself.

However, it is not v******ted people with breakthrough infections who comprise the most unsettling part of the immunity story, even as that makes headlines and dominates social media. Rather, it is the ease with which Omicron has evaded the immunity provoked by previous infection with the Delta or the Alpha (aka the British or B-117) variants that has ominous implications for what’s ahead—and raises the specter of more mass death.

Omicron Is Breaking Us. But We Can Still Avert Catastrophe.

For those willing to accept v*****es, this type of evasion less than a year after the m**A products entered widespread use is a serious but surmountable scientific challenge. We have long known we may need to develop just-in-time v*****es for a newly—and suddenly—dominant variant. M**A technology lends itself to exactly that. The technology is available, and though the product will always lag behind the latest p******c variants, tricks (like third doses and fourth doses of the old, less-finely tuned v*****e) to buy time or innovative technologic shortcuts surely will be developed.

V******ted people will—sooner or later—be able to keep up with the always-changing v***s.

But the implacable millions for whom v******tion represents some intolerable intrusion on their personal space—call them the Never V**xers—represent a very different problem, one that science, persuasion, or even harsh threats seem unable to resolve. We knew there were anti-v**xers, and we knew the p******c would not end easily, but these people will not stop dying any time soon.

The unv******ted are the ones who will continue to receive the brunt of wh**ever is next. Such is the case with the Omicron variant: Despite the fact that the majority of people in the U.S. are v******ted, the unv******ted are still filling hospital beds most often. In New York City, for example, the hospitalization rate this week is at least 8 times higher for the unv******ted.

This is just the start, though. Among v***l pathogens that affect the airways, the c****av***s family is a bunch of bad hombres, well known to re-infect year after year without major genetic shifts. (Though it may be that the genetic profiling developed during C****-** will, when applied to old-school v***ses, show much more variation than we have previously been able to discern.)

In the Before Times, pre-SARS, MERS, and C***D, we knew of four main types of c****av***s that caused human infection. Using then-modern techniques, scientists established that though one of the four dominated every year, last year’s bad cold from c****av***s gave you no predictable protection against this year’s model. Given that c****av***s causes up to a third of “common colds” each year, no wonder adults, no matter how buffed their i****e s****m might be, still get two to three “colds” a year.

Despite the c****av***s pedigree, many are already proclaiming (again) that the end of the p******c is in sight. To prove their point, they are drawing a connection between the milder disease and the increasing immunity of the human herd provided by v*****e or by actual infection (or both). The concept is based on real science relating to the two main arms of human immunity: that provided by antibodies, which are first responders but not reliable variant to variant, and that provided by the slower-moving but more thorough T-cells that maintain substantial punch regardless of the variant du jour.

It is a great and plausible story, but also smacks of a morality tale; a hard-fought battle has been won at tremendous cost, but redemption is just ahead. Somehow, the moral arc of the universe is assumed to bend towards p******c control.

V***ses—and especially c****av***ses and especially, especially the one that causes C****-**—surely have no moral compass, however, and almost never proceed according to the playbook. Rather, they jump around inexplicably and without particular concern to the human consequences.

More likely than a gratifying fade of the p******c is an increasing burden of disease for anti-v**xers. Whereas the rest of the world will have regular v******tion and the occasional infection to keep their i****e s****ms primed and ready, anti-v**xers will rely only on the much less frequent and equally imperfect infection-provoked immunity to see them through the next infection. And as we are seeing again with Omicron, the result is a rapidly divergent rate of serious disease and death between the v******ted and unv******ted groups. Though only an anecdote, it is memorable that the first death in the U.S. from Omicron is believed to have occurred in an unv******ted man with a history of previous C****-** infection.

The universal—and increasingly well-known—hazard posed by a large, recalcitrant pool of Never V**xers is its impact on public health, as millions of willingly unv******ted persons move trillions of v***l particles through their i****e s****ms. Application of this massive and unpredictable evolutionary pressure may produce a doomsday variant this year, or a wimp; we cannot predict what comes next. The point is that the Never V**xers are supplying the v***s with endless chances to break bad.

My guess is that our current Groundhog Day of variants every four or five months will continue indefinitely. Sometimes, we will meet a seemingly mild one such as Omicron, and perhaps a very mild one like an old-school c****av***s. But given the uneven immunity against C****-** in the world’s 7.8 billion humans, all we know is that the p******c will not go gentle into that good night.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/omicron-shows-unv******ted-never-safe-095716292.html