Calling for Revolution
Terry H. Schwadron
Nov. 20, 2020
As citizens, there are times when we feel as if we’re putting up with a lot just to hear out our elected leaders pontificate. But then, there comes a select few whom we just ought to be telling to stop talking altogether.
Exhibit A this week is Rep. Louie Gohmert, the vocal East Texas Republican ultra-conservative who bad-mouths anything out his opponents’ mouths, told thousands of Donald Trump fans who gathered last week in Washington that they should consider launching a “revolution” like the Egyptian uprising seven years ago and colonial America’s revolt against England.
“They rose up though all over Egypt, and as a result of the people rising up in the greatest numbers in history, ever anywhere, they turned the country around. . . If they can do that there, think of what we can do here,” he exhorted.“This was a cheated election and we can’t let it stand,” said Gohmert.
It’s one step short of incitement — you know, just the kind of thing for which conservatives have been bashing leftist “antifa” street forces.
Now clearly, Donald Trump is declining to concede and is blocking transition planning by the incoming Joe Biden administration. And people like Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer are leading a set of futile legal appeals, and select congressmen, including Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-SC, are reaching out on the edge of official government ethics rules maybe federal law to hint about throwing out just mail ballots in counties voting against Trump. Indeed, in Michigan and Wisconsin, they are aiming contentiously at counties with heavy Black vote.
But we’re not hearing too many in Congress calling for revolution in the streets, citing the kind of uprisings in which guns and deaths have played a pretty good part.
Gohmert has called on his colleagues to stand up one by one and pledge allegiance to the idea of fraudulent elections, and doubled down in Newsmax interviews on insistence that widespread street demonstrations should sway court decisions towards overturning election results.
Actually, I’d like Republicans to stand up one by one to denounce a call for widespread street revolution that would inevitably include would-be militias and gun-toting Trumpists who want to overthrow elections in the name of American patriotism.
Outspoken and Clear
Gohmert is no stranger to controversy.
In 2009, he flashed his birther-conspiracy credentials by sponsoring a bill to require any presidential candidate to have to show a birth certificate (though he has been silent about requiring tax returns). He has repeatedly attacked the FBI and other agencies for attacking Trump — and, actually, for attacking Christian groups. He once nominated fellow conservative Allen West, who was no longer in Congress, as House Speaker.
He has been an active climate change denier, saying that science was fraudulent, oppos3es environmental rules, perceived gun limits and abortion — once even telling a witness that she should have completed her pregnancy despite medical opinions that the natal brain function was impaired. He opposed expanding federal crime law to cover attacks on gays and a bill to encourage science programs for women.
At a committee meeting on a proposed trans-Alaska pipeline, Gohmert said support was needed was as a means for caribou to have more sex because they were attracted by the warmth of the oil flow.
Gohmert proved positive for coronavirus and insisted on taking hydroxychloroquine and zinc, just as Trump had blessed — even while insisting that the rest of his congressional office show up for work physically.
On to Revolution
All of which brings us to the current-day petulance that is White House refusal to accept adverse election results. The courts are throwing out the arguments about fraud, the numbers show that the appeals would not be enough to change the presidential result, but Gohmert persists.
Acknowledging that he understands many can’t believe that Democrats “would be unfair and do something like stealing an election.” Gohmert added that given how many crimes were committed by the FBI and others to undermine Trump, “Do you think that there are these same people out there that would be willing to commit crimes to steal an election and silence Republicans and conservatives from now on? Of course, they would.”
He suggested that if you throw out voting in California and New York, and overturn hundreds of thousands of mail ballots, and have a positive U.S. Supreme Court decision, Trump would win.
As for fraud, Gohmert cited several allegations already dismissed and offered one about the U.S. Army raiding the Frankfurt office of Scytl, a software company, where he said there was evidence of voting problems. Both the Army and Scytl, which does not have equipment or offices in Frankfurt, refuted the false claims.
Perhaps ironically, Gohmert likened a huge, peaceful U.S. uprising now to fulfilling dreams of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., and insisted that the American Revolution was supported by only a third of the country at that time.
“One third of the Egyptian people in 2013 went to the streets, all over Egypt” to oust “Obama’s friend the Muslim brother,” Gohmert said. “They turned the country around, and it is not under control of the Muslim Brotherhood any longer.”
Vive la Revolution.
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