District 1 may have a real fascist on its ballot.
Republican House candidate Logan Manhart from Bath lived in Wisconsin for the last three years campaigning for Donald Trump and other fascists. Amidst that campaigning, he participated in the Big Lie protest that turned into the Capitol Insurrection of January 6, 2021. Yesterday he commemorated his participation in that protest with this promulgation of the fascist lie:
“A year ago today we were told to protest ‘peacefully and patriotically‘,” tweets Manhart with pictures of himself smiling at the scene of a domestic terrorist attack, “and that’s exactly what we did. Protesting for a cause we believed in.”
The most generous interpretation I can make of this Tweet is that Manhart looks like Grandpa pulling out the photo album and saying, “Look at these swell pictures Grandma and I got of Japanese airplanes during our honeymoon in Honolulu on December 7, 1941. Hawaii is so pretty!”
But Manhart is not oblivious to historical and political context. He tweeted these photos and this text on the anniversary of the violent Capitol insurrection to promote his fascist cause, the Big Lie.
Don’t get lured into a debate over Manhart’s adverbs. The pictures offer no proof that Manhart himself participated in the non-peaceful activity of January 6, 2021 or himself waved any of the non-patriotic flags carried by the domestic terrorists who surround him in the crowd and who stormed the Capitol. Manhart disavowed the violence of his fellow Trumpists that day as the “absolutely disgusting” action of “a reckless few” that “tainted” the activity of “Millions of… Patriots peaceably assembled….”
Manhart’s day-of miscount of the crowd rallying for Trump on January 6, 2021—120,000 is far short of “millions”— shows Manhart’s willingness to participate in the fascist dictator’s willful lies. But the key word exposing his fascism in his yesterday tweet is “protest”. Protest what?
Logan Manhart joined thousands of others in the nation’s capital on January 6, 2021, to protest a free and fair election. To explain, let’s turn to the man whose honest victory by 7,000,000 human votes 74 Electoral College votes Manhart protests, President Joe Biden:
For the first time in our history, a president had not just lost an election, he tried to prevent the peaceful transfer of power as a violent mob breached the Capitol.
But they failed. They failed [President Joe Biden, speech commemorating the anniversary of the January 6 Capitol insurrection, Washington, DC, 2022.01.06; transcribed and annotated by Katie Rogers, New York Times, 2022.01.06].
President Biden yesterday spoke mostly about the violent insurrectionists who committed crimes inside the United States Capitol. But his words capture the intent of Manhart and all of his compatriots who assembled to protest the free and fair election:
They weren’t looking to uphold the will of the people. They were looking to deny the will of the people.
They… weren’t looking to uphold a free and fair election. They were looking to overturn one.
They weren’t looking to save the cause of America. They were looking to subvert the Constitution [Biden, 2022.01.06].
Manhart’s protest on January 6, 2021, and his continued celebration of that protest shows his fealty to the Big Fascist Lie that puts one man’s ego and his followers’ fascist impulses above the Constitution and the truth:
…The truth is that no election — no election in American history has been more closely scrutinized or more carefully counted.
Every legal challenge questioning the results in every court in this country that could have been made was made and was rejected — often rejected by Republican-appointed judges, including judges appointed by the former president himself, from state courts to the United States Supreme Court.
Recounts were undertaken in state after state. Georgia — Georgia counted its results three times, with one recount by hand.
Phony partisan audits were undertaken long after the election in several states. None changed the results. And in some of them, the irony is the margin of victory actually grew slightly.
So, let’s speak plainly about what happened in 2020. Even before the first ballot was cast, the former president was preemptively sowing doubt about the election results. He built his lie over months. It wasn’t based on any facts. He was just looking for an excuse — a pretext — to cover for the truth.
He’s not just a former president. He’s a defeated former president — defeated by a margin of over seven million of your votes in a full and free and fair election.
There is simply zero proof the election results were inaccurate. In fact, in every venue where evidence had to be produced and an oath to tell the truth had to be taken, the former president failed to make his case [Biden, 2022.01.06].
Manhart now refuses to talk to the press about what he was doing in Washington, DC, that day (and, hey, when a candidate for public office refuses to speak to the press, that’s a sign it’s time for the public to look for a different candidate). That may be because Manhart knows his Big Lie won’t play well outside of his Trumpublican echo chamber.
But let’s be clear: Manhart protested the free and fair election of 2020. He maintains that lying about the results of the 2020 election, continuing to sow doubt in the results of a free and fair election, is a noble cause. Manhart now wants to participate in an election, which his fellow protestors are working to make less free and fair.
District 1, there’s a contradiction there. Y’all might want to elect someone else.
The Republican schism is on full display. Howdy Doody Dusty Johnson has moderated his Trumpette tone, too since he confessed he feared for his own safety during the attempted putsch and Mike Pence is cooperating with the House committee.
An Otero County, New Mexico Republican who dodged removal from that post is scheduled for trial on March 21 for his role in sedition.
Let’s trust that the FBI and Joint Terrorism Task Force had (have) a little conversation with Manhart.
Meanwhile Manhart, like Noem, Johns, et al., can parade around thinking they are “good Germans”.
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POTUS had a good speech. But good speeches are what senators do. Accomplishing things; less so.
What the nation NEEDS is action combating, deconstructing government illegitimacy, and constructing government legitimacy. The list is long. Longer than we have time for here.
Some of the illegitimacy is baked into the nation’s founding and its documents and institutions that are mired in the 18th Century – not having kept pace with the dynamic nature of the nation. Democracies die by suicide. The US is well on its way. Eight states hold half the nation’s population yet hold 16% of the senators. It’s long past the time to update the nation’s governing documents to reflect the nation’s 21st Century urban core vs its former 18th century slavery-based rural economy.
Agencies are also rife with illegitimacy. DOD’s done apparently nothing to the active duty crook who stormed the capitol Jan 6th, done nothing about the 59 nuts with military affiliations that stormed the capitol, done nothing to discipline the 124 flag officers who supported the insurrection, and of course, has done nothing to Micheal Flynn. The 2+ year running illegitimate actions and communications from the CDC/NIH/FDA are legend. The courts are not immune from their own special illegitimacy as the Chief Justice pretends the courts are beyond congressional checks and balances, refuses to discipline judges and justices for over politicking, and recently staying the military good order and discipline by inventing the myth of a military religious exception to a vaccination mandate. Other agencies (USDA, et al.) have their own special cases of acting, illegitimately or worse, refusing to act in the public interest.
We are disillusioned with the US democracy. With it’s court-invented nonsense that ‘money is speech’, of blanket qualified immunity.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/07/biden-trump-capitol-attack-riot-democracy
Trump watched his insurrection for three hours, hoping for its success, stopping the certification of his loss. Three hours! Do you think that’s a crime?
Thanks to these fake patriots, I no longer have a leg to stand on when it comes to persuading my cohorts to get out and participate in the one thing that can change the afflictions that ail them. I used to argue the suffrage others fought to endow us with is the only solution to their grievances.
Now, all I’m shut up with is the fact that their vote doesn’t count so, yeah, the battlefield at Gettysburg was hallowed in vain. These traitors of the constitution haven’t silenced us all. I suggest the people take some lessons from the ‘coupon Karens’ and get scrappy. Call Manhart’s offices as many times as it takes. Hoot and holler in the public square. Use every questionable tactic because its already an uneven playing field going against frauds who don’t truly want Democracy.
When people risk their very lives because they believe in something strongly enough to go to the poll during a pandemic just to have their vote tossed like junk mail, we have to fight to get the integrity of the vote back. Pink slip all these racist, sell out toads. If we put forth half the energy we see go into a Sunday football game to get our way, we have all we need to wave the current imposters too-de-loo. The possibility is so much more beautiful than what these basic-minded creeps are capable of imagining.
They are so confident in their seats because they got the wrong idea who their opponents are. Fair, level headed poindexters need to play full contact. I enjoy every shoulder check and grimy gain on on this blog. Keep inciting and the froth will plant some seeds of caution in the cowards. The good guys don’t have to behave like saints all the time.
Well Porter, Trump had to skip the Expanse at noon for his talk to the patriots, he liked watching it once a week on his noon break. After he got back he was watching Pittsburg play Syracuse. He was anxiously awaiting Young Sheldon and The Neighborhood on CBS, or maybe he was just waiting for the Masked Dancer, that was his favorite on Fox……He was a busy boy that day and time flies. Criminal, nah, just his typical working day.
In their book “Peril”, Woodward and Costos report that two days after the election CarrieAnn Conway met with Trump and told him he had lost the election. She gave several reasons, the big one being that approximately 4 percent of middle and upper income, suburban voters who had voted for Trump in 2016, had switched their vote to Biden, The reason was Trump’s clumsy handling of the Covid crises. About the same time, Lindsey Graham told Trump to “forget Arizona” because “you can’t beat up a dead man” meaning Trump’s belittling of John McCain had driven off a significant number of Arizona Republicans. He cited McCain’s widow’s endorsement of Biden as being particularly telling. The election wasn’t close…thai’s part of the Big Lie. It wasn’t as close as Nixon-Kennedy, Ford-Carter, Clinton-HWBush, or Gore-Bush….it was close in seven states, but overall, Biden’s 300 plus electoral votes is a convincing victory. People like this Manhart fellow are dangerously delusional.
Woodward and Costos report the Capitol police estimated the crowd at the “Save America” Rally sponsored by “Women for America First,” on 1-6-21 at between 10 and 20,000. For a Washington protest it was a relatively small crowd. What made it different was the level of violence and its persistence.
What “freedoms” have the Save America traitors lost? I get it that women have lost freedom’s and equality, but white men, please. Someone, anyone, tell me what freedoms have been lost?
One “freedom” lost by everyone, including white men, if Roe is finally reversed is the freedom from state interference in private family planning decisions. Roe’s fundamental holding is that an implied, not explicit, “right of privacy” exists in the federal Constitution that limits the power of states to make generic family planning decisions. Without that “right of privacy” there is no federal protection available to limit what a state may do to white men in this regard, including bringing back previous state laws restricting or requiring birth control and involuntary sterilization of both men and women. See e.g.,
https://www.thoughtco.com/forced-sterilization-in-united-states-721308
And if the lack of an explicit “right of privacy” in our federal Constitution justifies permitting a State to restrct or require reproduction decisions, then it is not hard to imagine how lack of that same explicit “right of privacy” would prevent restrictions on the right of white men to marry outside of the white race or marry someone of the same sex, the right of white men to engage in private consensual sexual acts, as well as any other private and personal activity not explicitly protected in the Constitution.
I am not sure “lost” is the correct word for the “Save America” folks, however, as this “right of privacy” seems to a freedom that they are anxious to abandon.
Agreed, so the only ones who have consistently lost “freedoms” are women. The “right to privacy” was willingly given away after 9/11, so that is not a freedom that was lost, it was given. I forgot one more, the freedom of the airways. Senator Larry Pressler/Bill Clinton killed that one through his lamebrain legislation to give us 1984 (the book).
So when these traitors scream about freedom, they really are screaming about racism, the border, Mexicans with cantaloupe sized calves and all the rest of the tripe that goes with it.
Apartheid Party wants whites to rule in USA and women have to scurry back to the 1950s or 1850s and not have freedom of choice.
What can this blog and readers do?
Most of us do not accept apartheid?
DO is the key. It really is.
Seems like the only things that work are good candidates that win, lawsuits against bad laws, and Initiated laws and Constitutional amendments that win.
Seeing as how Democrats, Libertarians, and Other consistently are outnumber3d and consistently lose elections, what better model can we have?
Somehow 1 day out of 730 voters get to jump in a car and vote.
The other 729 days, is there anything to do?
There’s …..crickets. Or there IS something.
You can buy Google or Apple on the stock exchange. Democracy you can’t.
The will of nonvoters not to vote is very strong.
The days of …..crickets has to end, somehow.
My only idea now is that I don’t think voting will be as sexy as cell phones or bikinis, so since we are in the minority, hoping to be the majority sometime soon, we need to do something out of the ordinary.
Blathering about how awful X and Y are doesn’t cut it.
What can we do— a bikini or mankini that IS a cell phone, or something substantial that gets people’s attention. Maybe a company or nonprofit or social business that really puts South Dakota on the map in a big way. The after effect of this huge thing can be more people voting or several people from the companies or nonprofits becoming Governor.
We are all actually Governors, we just let our power be subsumed by Statutes that put a lot of people in jail and make it more difficult for people to exercise their will. To be Governors again, we have to use our power legally and do incredibly good things.
I’m for the other 729 days being just as powerful! We are what we choose.
Dangerous and delusional: those are the best words to sum up Manhart’s participation in the Big Lie. Thank you, Arlo.
Now we can only hope District 1 puts up enough other sensible candidates to keep Manhart’s fellow dangerous and delusional neighbors from sending him to Pierre to bring his smirking fascism to Pierre.