Caffeinated Politics

One does not even need to do an online search for the latest criminal behavior from the MAGA males who violently stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. One only needs to read a newspaper or listen to the news on the radio.

There’s a certain grim predictability to these people and their low-brow behavior. They live their lives with such self-contempt that it seems the only thing they have gained over the years is a bad collection of news headlines. The press they have garnered after the insurrection urged by Donald Trump on January 6th is proof that when pardons are handed out like commemorative coins, no one can be shocked when the recipients treat the law like a suggestion. If we have learned nothing else about this segment of society, it is that they have no basement room that cannot be dug deeper.

Ryan Nichols, 35, became the latest such Capitol attacker on 10 May, when authorities in Harleton, Texas, say he threateningly displayed a handgun to a person with whom he was arguing in a church parking lot.

Nichols in November 2023 had pleaded guilty in connection with the insurrection at the Capitol from Trump supporters after his first presidency ended in defeat to Joe Biden after the 2020 election. Among other things, he acknowledged attacking officers with pepper spray and making a video during the riot in which he said, “It’s going to be violent and … if you are asking, ‘Is Ryan Nichols going to bring violence? Yes, Ryan Nichols is going to bring violence.’”

I will go wwwaaayyyy out on a limb and guess this guy was not his school valedictorian.

A federal judge later sentenced Nichols to five years and three months in prison. But Nichols was freed early when he was pardoned along with 1,500 other participants on the first day of Trump’s second presidency in January 2025.

Then, on 11 May, the sheriff’s office of Texas’ Harrison county – which includes Harleton – said its deputies encountered Nichols one day earlier while responding to a complaint about “a person reaching for a firearm during a dispute outside the church”. Investigators learned Nichols had confronted someone in the church’s parking lot and continued doing so even after that person tried to leave, a sheriff’s office statement said.

The alleged victim reported turning away from the confrontation and trying to usher his family towards their car while asking Nichols to go away. The victim alleged that he eventually turned around to face Nichols, who then raised his shirt up, showed a gun and wrapped his hand around the weapon’s grip.

“The victim advised that he was in fear for his life due to this action,” and deputies arrested Nichols on a count of deadly conduct, the sheriff’s office said in its statement.

He was also booked on unrelated warrants alleging harassment. County jail records show Nichols was released two days later on bond in the amount of $8,000.

Nichols was part of a violent attempt to derail the peaceful transfer of power under the constitutional equivalent of trying to “fix” your computer with a sledgehammer. And yet, in the grand tradition of rewarding bad behavior, which Trump has enjoyed his whole life. Nichols received a presidential pardon, a gesture that said, in effect, “Don’t worry, buddy — consequences are for other people.”

He took that to heart. As have other angry white males within MAGA.

What truly amazes me is how these people think. Or do not think. This person did not grasp that the pardon was a second chance, but instead clearly viewed it as akin to a VIP wristband to create any chaos he desired in society. I said at the time of the pardons, which was appalling to reasonable and decent people in the nation, that when you tell those people they’re patriots for smashing windows and assaulting police officers, they don’t suddenly transform into model citizens. Thugs do not morph into butterflies.

This type of male harbors his resentments and grievances, retaining them like a camel stores water. Along the way, they treat the justice system like a revolving door. It is almost as if Nichols and that type have a conception that they carry some cache because they are MAGA, as if their 10th arrest will allow them free entrance to a mud bog weekend.

MAGA wants us to think all this is normal. We’re told to keep calm while the same people who once tried to overturn an election now treat their criminal records like merit badges. We’re told to accept that the rule of law is optional or negotiable depending on whether you voted for Trump or not.

As I stated in January 2025, when you pardon people who attacked their own government, you’re not healing the nation. You’re greenlighting the next attack.