Leo Conti: A New America with Limited Sovereignity?

9 Gennaio 2021 Pubblicato da Marco Tosatti

Marco Tosatti

Dear friends and enemies of Stilum Curiae, Dr. Leo Conti, from Washington, with his usual lucidity and vision examines the recent events in the Capital; events that, among other things, and this is also an interesting element, have prevented the discussion of the issue of fraud, raised by that part of the Republicans who did not betray Trump. Good reading.

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A New America with Limited Sovereignty?

(Dr. Leo Conti, Washington DC)

There are still many question marks regarding the reprehensible violence that caught the Capitol by surprise on January 6:

Why did the DC mayor (an ardent supporter of Black Lives Matter, hence an expert of street violence) expressly refuse, the day before the events, to call upon federal law enforcement personnel?[1]
Why was Ashli Babbit, an Air Force veteran and a Trump supporter, killed by a Capitol police agent while she was unarmed and while, behind her, there were other agents who were keeping an eye on what she was doing?[2]
How did the four other victims die (Benjamin Phillips, Kevin Greeson, Rosanne Boyland, and officer Brian Sicknick), and what was their exact connection to the violent events at the Capitol? (A prayer for their souls, for Ashli’s soul, and for the recovery of those injured in the course of that violence.)
During the congressional debates, Matt Goetz, Republican House representative from Florida, was booed for having dared say that “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters – they were [Antifa members] masquerading as Trump supporters”. Yet, it was later found out that, for example, a young man from Utah, who was a familiar participant in violent demonstrations organized by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, was also present at the Capitol when violence erupted.[3] Will there now be a thorough investigation of who organized, and took part in, the events at the Capitol on January 6?

In the meantime, Democrats and appeasing Republicans are competing among themselves to achieve the highest levels of empty rhetoric. Current lamentations portray the recent events as an unmitigated tragedy, from which it is even unsure whether the United State will ever recover. (Obviously, every event leading to the violent death of human beings is a terrible tragedy, but this is not the point here.) Senator Chuck Schumer of New York (soon to be Senate majority leader) spoke of “a stain on our country”.[4] Yet, with respect to the wild violence sparkled by Antifa and Black Lives Matter, which since last summer has forced on their knees a good number of large American cities, causing deaths and destruction on a much larger scale and within a much larger territory than violence at the Capitol, more than one politician, who is now shouting loud, was back then quoting Martin Luther King that “a riot is the language of the unheard”.[5] We fall here into the usual double-standard: violence from the left is simply a necessary means of social change (“the midwife of every old society pregnant with a new one” – Marx, Capital, vol. 1), while any episode of violence blamed on the right (even without ascertaining whether it is really so) is such that its authors are to be rigorously punished no matter what, as if they were the worst imaginable criminals who have ever existed on the face of this earth.[6] As a journalist of the New York Post cogently observed, “it’s not the crime you commit that matters any more, it’s who you are”,[7] contrary to the image that justice is (or, at least, should be) blind.

Moreover, the refrain by the (occasional and selective) enemies of violence blames Trump for the Capitol events, with no right of defense. Schumer again (he evidently speaks a lot!) said: “This mob was in good part President Trump’s doing, incited by his words, his lies”. Mitt Romney, Republican Senator from Utah and presidential candidate in 2012, criticized Trump for encouraging the “insurrection” at the Capitol. (Insurrection? Wow! A new Battle of Blair Mountain a century later?!) He then added that his Republican colleagues who objected to the Electoral College results would “forever be seen as being complicit in an unprecedented attack against our democracy”.[8] In other words, in addition to putting up with a stolen election, President Trump and his supporters (famously labeled as “basket of deplorables”) should also shut up.

Perhaps, the shock suffered by a number of senators and representatives, when being evacuated during the Capitol break-in, rushed them into pronouncements they would not have uttered under different circumstances (even though a neutral observer judging these past four years would likely conclude that the level of animosity against Trump has been abnormal by any standard). Anyone being patient enough to watch the video or read the transcript of Trump’s speech at the entirely peaceful rally attended by tens of thousands of enthusiastic Trump supporters on January 6, which preceded the facts at the Capitol,[9] will readily take note that there was no incitement to any violence, but only the legitimate presentation of detailed evidence of election fraud, and the equally legitimate warning about the gravity of an unconstitutional election for American democracy.[10]

Which conclusions may be drawn from this all, besides denouncing violence? The first conclusion is that no state or federal court (including the Supreme Court), no local authority, and no federal institution has been able (or willing) to “stop the steal”. Actually, with the excuse of violence at the Capitol, the Senate ended up cutting short the whole procedure, declining any consideration of Senator Cruz’s proposal to conduct a neutral investigation into the elections. Voting regarded only the electors of Arizona and Pennsylvania, whom a number of Republicans rejected, both in the House and in the Senate.[11] Hence the key question remains: if the steal was not stopped this time, will there not be an incentive to repeat it next time around?

The second conclusion has to do with the verbal (and not only verbal)[12] reaction to those who have raised doubts on how the elections have been conducted, and have requested that electoral reform be urgently introduced against future manipulation.[13] The concern is that some sort of limited sovereignty (to borrow an expression that captured the lack of freedom of those living within the Soviet orbit) might be emerging: electors may vote for whomever they choose but, if their choice is so “repulsive” as to be unbearable to those in power, the election result reached through constitutionally cast votes is reversed through unconstitutional ones. On top of that, no talk against this injustice would be tolerated. Is this what is in store for us?

[1] See her letter to the Acting Attorney General and Acting Secretary of Defense, dated January 5, at https://twitter.com/mayorbowser?lang=en.

[2] See https://townhall.com/tipsheet/mattvespa/2021/01/07/new-footage-yields-more-questions-regarding-the-woman-shot-and-killed-inside-the-n2582741.

[3] See https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2021/01/07/utah-man-with-a-history-of-organizing-blm-protests-was-inside-the-capitol-n2582766.

[4] This and other quotations from the congressional debates are taken from the (fairly tendentious) account in https://www.cbsnews.com/live-updates/electoral-college-vote-count-biden-victory/.

[5] The Other America, at https://www.crmvet.org/docs/otheram.htm.

[6] Judgments in our time are often confused, and defy any logic. A prominent example is that, in the United States, the paradigm of moral corruption remains today the Watergate scandal, namely the 1972 break-in of the DNC headquarters in DC, which led to Nixon’s resignation two years later. Around the same time, in 1973, the US Supreme Court rendered its infamous decision in Roe v. Wade, which sounded the death knell for millions of innocent babies through abortion. The absurdity is that the exemplary case of moral corruption, which is so often cited, is the Watergate scandal, and not abortion, the gravity of which is incommensurable with the former one!

[7] https://nypost.com/2021/01/06/trump-destroys-republican-party-on-way-out-the-door-devine/.

[8] The reality is the exact opposite. Fr. Frank Pavone, Director of Priests for Life, has rightly warned against the hypocrisy of denouncing Capitol violence, but condoning electoral fraud, not to speak of the hypocrisy of condemning Capitol violence but remaining silent before the slaughtering of innocent babies murdered through the abominable crime of abortion. (Homely during the Holy Mass of January 7, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orkRxEIJDGA.)

[9] The video is at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrGJfQzUrnY. (President Trump comes on stage at minute 3:33:30.) The transcript is at https://www.rev.com/blog/transcripts/donald-trump-speech-save-america-rally-transcript-january-6.

[10] In addition to being briefly discussed in Trump’s speech, frauds and unconstitutional procedures (whereby state legislatures’ prerogatives have been usurped by judges and/or the executives) are extensively documented in the submission by Texas to the Supreme Court (https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/22/22O155/162953/20201207234611533_TX-v-State-Motion-2020-12-07%20FINAL.pdf), and in many reports that are easily searchable on the internet.

[11] For Arizona, the vote was 93-6 at the Senate and 303-121 at the House; for Pennsylvania, 92-7 at the Senate and 282-138 at the House. The names of the senators and representatives who voted against are listed at https://www.lifenews.com/2021/01/07/heres-the-full-list-of-members-of-congress-who-objected-to-the-electoral-college-vote/.

[12] The publisher Simon & Schuster is reported to have canceled a contract (which it had signed with Senator Hawley for the publication of a book) on account of the position Senator Hawley took on election fraud. If this were not enough, the publisher reiterated (thus displaying a certain sense of humor) that it remains faithful to its mission “to amplify a variety of voice and viewpoints”! (See https://www.theblaze.com/news/simon-schuster-cancels-josh-hawleys-upcoming-book-citing-his-role-in-what-became-deadly-insurrection.)

[13] A clear sense of the low degree of interest by Democrats in electoral reform was conveyed by Conor Lamb when, in the course of the congressional debates, he said, amidst the cheers of the other Democrats, that the Republican objections “don’t deserve an ounce of respect. Not an ounce”.