They are putting up razor wire around the Capitol
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The area around the Congress of the United States is being turned into a militarized Green Zone. There are armed troops along every boulevard and side street around the Capitol. The building itself is surrounded by 10 foot high fencing. This is the fencing they are in the process of topping with coils of razor wire. This is what we are doing to protect a Democratic president and vice president as they take their oaths of office.
This is what the Republican Party has brought to America. An armed state. A militarized capital city. Bridges between the District of Columbia and Virginia blockaded. Shut down. Guarded by heavily armed soldiers.
We will never again visit our capital city the way we could visit it last month, the month before that, a decade ago, or even a century ago, for that matter. This has never happened to our country before, and it has happened for a reason: because Donald Trump incited a riot to overturn the election he lost, and because the Republican Party -- enormous swaths of it, elected officials, party officials and Republican voters alike -- countenanced Trump's assault on a co-equal branch of government, the Congress, and on the Constitution itself.
They had a choice, the Republican Party did. Should they uphold their oaths of office to protect and defend the Constitution and the rule of law? Or should they stand with a man who with their support launched an attack on the government, and indeed, on the very Capitol building where they do their jobs as legislators and have their offices?
They chose Trump over law, they chose Trump over order, they chose Trump over their oaths, and they chose Trump over their country.
They have strung razor wire around our democracy. This is where we live now. At least until we hold Donald Trump accountable for violating his oath, betraying his country, and his crimes against the Constitution, at least until we run more of these corrupt, soulless Republicans out of office, we live within the walls of oppression they have created.
My Congressman in Florida is one of the 126 spouting election fraud nonsense, won his seat with a 65 to 35 majority. Another Republican who is really a Trumpster, Greg Steube.
I gave been referring to this state as DeSantistan for the past few years.
After the bombing in Oklahoma City, Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed to traffic. My boss and I walked down the middle of it the first day it was opened as a pedestrian thoroughfare. We both felt a sense of foreboding that day although over time it seemed normal as if the change wasn’t made to prevent a truck from driving onto the grounds to bomb the White House. The fencing and barbed wire will come down, but other barriers will take their place. The Cult, however, will just reproduce itself in all its malignancy, evil, and hatred.