THREAD: Why Anon?

1. Most of the social media world saw what @LLinWood posted to twitter recently. His post has drawn out much anger and much celebration.

He asked for prayer. He talked of potential death. He asked for protection.

He spoke of Isaac Kappy, who dared to speak.

THREAD: Exposure before Extraction

1. Many are screaming for the EXTRACTION of corrupt people. People are asking:

- Prosecutors will surely follow the rule of law, won’t they?
- Why can the people see the crimes, but nothing happens?
- Why are there no major arrests yet?

THREAD: January 6

1. It’s the first day of 2021 and I’ve been pondering some election questions that no-one is really asking.

But first, let's revisit some context:

- Trump said in 2016 that HRC would be arrested if he won office, AND that he would drain the DC swamp.

2.
- Trump said in 2019 that he’d beaten the Deep State and that no one else could have done it.

- Trump enacted EO on September 12, 2018 in order to track electoral fraud.

- Trump ignored obvious fraud in the 2018 US mid-terms, where video evidence was also submitted.

3.
- Trump held rallies like no other President, in front of crowds that were unprecedented.

Every indication was that a landslide was the only scenario unfolding and everyone who was watching closely, saw it.

Biden couldn't gather an audience, let alone a crowd!

4. To expose any election fraud, a landslide victory would always be necessary, or else it would be too easily covered up.

Post-election, we see Trump golfing, tweeting about election-fraud and appearing very calm.

It is all very odd, for a man who truly believes he was robbed!

5. On this evidence, I would question if he even cares about his own role as President?

However, I absolutely believe he cares about the rights of the people and their right to a fair election. This has always been Trump’s passion.

He is refusing to fight for himself.

THREAD: Joy

1. Joy is the experience of pleasure. Joy is contentment and adoration for the experience of being alive.

Clearly, 2020 has been a tough year to sustain a sense of joy.

However, joy is a powerful weapon we can deploy at this time.

Let me unpack this idea.

2. Humanity finds itself in the middle of a grand shift into maturity. It will be bumpy, but it is happening.

This shift began years ago when we chose love and peace, over destruction. We hated war and we rejected the idea that our enemies were people from another country.

3. We understood that no one is above another. We understood the value of life. We began to love the earth.

Fast forward to today…

We find ourselves facing powerful fears and emotions that were always going to be exposed during this shift.

4. Every day, we hear of a new crisis, civil unrest and community sadness. All this stuff had come into the light.

We are learning that authority figures and people of influence have ignored some very serious crimes.

It even 'appears' that election robbery could go unpunished.

5. During such a time, all historic beliefs are challenged, removing us from our comfort zone. Such a significant challenge will always activate fear and uncertainty.

At times like this, finding our inner joy can become a tad illusive. Sometimes it is impossible.

THREAD: Pence never mattered

1. Recall: None of the authorities or courts in disputed swing-states were interested in looking at the merits of the fraud allegations.

Recall: The swing-states rushed to certify the vote count, despite active court cases and mountains of evidence.

TRUMP: "I've decided to eat babies."

PEOPLE: "He can't eat babies, that's super illegal."

TRUMP, on TV, eating babies, not even cooking them first: "People are saying that I really am the best baby-eater, folks."

NYT: "Trump Vs. Babies: The Rhetoric On Both Sides Must Stop"

Jeff Flake tweets: "It is a sad day in America when this callous man can eat babies live on TV"

Jeff Flake, 10 seconds later, votes to help him install a series of 4,000 new judges that are very, very pro-babyphagia.

Judge Kavanaugh, found drunk in a Capitol Hill closet: "I LIKE BEER. OKAY? I LIKE BEER AND I LIKE BABIES AND THAT'S NOT SO WRONG. THAT'S RIGHT. I LIKE BABIES DIPPED IN BEER. I JUST DIP EM. IN THE BEER. THE BABIES. THE BABIES I EAT. OKAY? THAT'S AMERICA."

Mike Pence, wringing his hands about the baby-eating: "We must take care of our children. Our youngest must be protected on this troubling day."

Mike Pence then invites a Baby Chef to say a prayer.

Twitter Users: "It's a distraction technique! Trump eating babies is trying to DISTRACT YOU from ALL THE OTHER HORRORS, which are themselves distractions from the BABY-EATING. It's DISTRACTIONS ALL THE WAY DOWN."

Trump: *eats tons of babies at a rally*

*literal tons of babies*

Let's track some of Donald Trump's solutions to problems: Give Hurricane victims paper towels (to sop it up), rakes to wildfire fighters (make America rake again), teaching kids to look at solar eclipses (they're too smart for that), and asking for global warming in cold winters.

This is the perfect asymptotic approach to the extremes of both Republican and Democratic rhetoric (which are both inevitably devoid of any sound logic) - you eventually get presidents like this. This is a warning call to dissolve the Republican and Democratic parties.

It seems to me our nation is now tossed between two insane extremes, bickering and arguing with each other, embodied in the Republican and Democratic parties. When you get extremist politicians who adhere fully to broken logic and rhetoric, our future is laid waste.

New parties must emerge soon. For fun, I propose a new party : "Uniters" and call the other parties "Dividers" (Republicans and Democrats). We can say that the Uniters believe in uniting people rather than dividing people.

That implies that one 'dominant' world view cannot prevail (including the illusion that we are in fact a set of states United right now) - we have to work and labor hard together to fulfill the promise the founders sought to build this country upon.

Trump on climate: I don't believe it. Trump on Khashoggi: I don't believe it. Trump on Russia: I don't believe it. Idiocy? A canny game? Doesn't really matter as much as the underlying intellectual autocracy. In this administration only one opinion matters.

It's an assault on facts and reason. It's an assault on good governance. It's an assault on the bureaucracies that are being discounted. It's an assault on science and history. But it is also an assault on one of the underpinnings of democracy.

We live in a system that is grounded on the idea of collaborative government. Leaders may have a final word but even then, there are typically checks and balances. Hopefully, in this case, such checks and balances may work. But they also are being tested.

The president's position that he is smarter than all the world's scientists, than the entire intelligence community, than experts who have studied any issue all their lives, is, of course, asinine. But his belief that government turns solely on his opinion, is monarchic.

Louis XIV reportedly said, "L'etat est moi." That he was the state. Trump asserting that he knows better than all, discounts all advice, that his brain is enough to chart the course for America alone, is essentially saying the same thing.

The death of Alhaji Lateef Kayode Jakande brings to my mind the triumph of excellence in political leadership as well as rebellion against the political order.

A lot has been said about LKJ since he died yesterday and I hope only to contribute my perspective to enrich all said.

My emphasis with history has always been to draw out lessons relevant to the present, to show how trends repeat themselves and to show certain hypocritical contradictions within the present system.

Only few others qualify as well as LKJ to do all the three - I hope I do justice.

One area pundits have largely missed out in the Jakande story is the very beginning - both of his life and of his politics.

LKJ's parents were from Omu-Aran in present day Kwara State but he contributed more to Lagos than so many others - we will return to this subsequently.

LKJ was not originally a political ally of Awolowo - a number of elders were with Awo right from the very beginning but LKJ contributed politically to Awolowo at a crucial time of religious threat to the dominance of the Action Group (Awo's party) in the pre-Independence mid 50s.

A group had been formed in 1957 and named the National Muslim League headed by Alhaji R.A. Smith who had been very critical of Awolowo's AG as a Christian party and moved to align with the Northern People's Congress of Sir Ahmadu Bello.

The political threat to Awo was very real.

I don't think that "Democrats were cowards and couldn't stand up to McConnell" is the correct framing. Dems clearly made a political calculation. Plenty to potentially criticize about that calculation, but it was informed by factors unrelated to generalized "fear of republicans"

What we largely know now:
-There would never have been enough GOP votes to convict
-GOP had the power to hold up *all* Senate business & that means COVID relief (Dems would have been blamed for this hold up)
-Witnesses were uncooperative & would have had to have been subpoenaed

So I think the correct framing is that Democrats made a political calculation that the benefit of adding witnesses (who would not change the outcome) was not worth the political & moral cost of holding up COVID relief, as well as important confirmations. . . .

This calculation can be criticized on its own merits, but it's categorically different than just being scared of McConnell & the GOP.

For my own part, I think an error Democrats made w/r/t witnesses was not calling cooperative police officers who had been attacked that day. Just a few personal narratives from the police would have deeply embarrassed the GOP. That's a missed opportunity, in my view.