If journalism and the press are "the first draft of history," as many reporters and media like to say, then many more of them and their organizations need to have the temerity, intellectual honesty, and integrity to call out what happened in Washington, DC and simultaneously...

...in other places across the country on January 6, 2021, exactly what it was, coordinated domestic terrorist attack, insurrection, and rebellion. There is a constitutional break down in progress, and in some ways it seems that journalism is part of the constitutional crisis.

With all of the reportation around the Black Lives Matters marches and the violence and vandalism that was attempted to be seeded, the news media had absolutely no hesitation in reporting out the incidences while leaving plenty of space for doubt...

...even when it was crystal clear that peaceful marchers had nothing to do with the negative incidents. Sabotage was the specific goal, and the saboteurs were Proudboys and other racist, anti-government, anti-democratic elements aligned with Trump. But equivocating analysis.

...and false equivalency in reporting persists. Thus, unhelpful even harmful dialogue, discussion and propaganda has been permitted to persist to color the goals and objectives of the marchers, unfairly sway public opinion, and stunt some of the progress of that movement.

I am sick of hearing from the left, right and media, "but people fear him because 70 million people voted for him."

Guess what?

The loser of every election has people vote for them, too. That's why they're elections. But the continued weak kneed deflection to perpetuate that trope serves no purpose but to further enable Trump, while people use it as a shield for their inaction and political cowardice.

There's nothing magical about Trump or his voyers. Furthermore, while he may have gotten 70 million, Biden still got 80 million under some of the harshest, most adversarial voter suppression conditions ever, save the times when the nation has been involved in actual shooting war.

Therefore, anyone who defers to the weakness of invoking Trump and his voters to insulate and indemnify themselves against political repercussions, criticism, or as an excuse to perpetuate partisan paralasis, must have their careers ended.

And, those media outlets engages in those terror tactics in any way must be out out of existence. The first amendment makes no space for lies, propaganda, information warfare, or the promotion of fear and domestic terrorism.

Trump lost, he lost badly, and it's just that serious.

The U.S. national security and intelligence apparatus has said for years that climate change is the single greatest threat to the nation and world. While systems intrusion and hacking by foreign actors could potentially have replicated some of what happened in Texas, it didn't.

Climate change and failure to plan did that, along with incompetence, ineptitude, and sheer greed.

Not only was what happened in Texas the failure of governance and malfeasance, it was a complete failure of imagination, vision, and insight.

While some folks want to call it a "black swan event," the fact is what happened in Texas was not. Not only was it anticipated, it was predicted. The people in charge were told what the problems were, how to fix them and why. They were told what to expect if they didn't.

Not only was it a cyclical occurrence (the third time in just over 30 years), both the periodicity and severity are increasing and intensifying. Therefore, the choices for inaction paved the way for the occurrence. It was inevitable.

In this regard, conservative ideology, philosophy and fiscal beliefs are their own worse enemy. That's because conservatism's most natural response is at best to do nothing, at worst to resist. Therefore, the disaster was a multi-layered, time induced, mountain of self-sabotage.