"If I Can't Have The White House..."
Trump’s Attempts to Overturn the Election Are Unparalleled in U.S. History
This article illustrates how bad things have become.
Imagine you're holding an election on a spaceship. The votes have been cast, and one side has a clear majority. But the other side is so intent on winning, by any means, that they start opening airlocks to flush ballots out into space. Not only is this obviously an illegitimate tactic, it's also dangerous. You're throwing away precious oxygen. You're risking not just the election's integrity, but the safety of the whole crew.
This is what the Grifter Oligarchy Party is doing. They're playing to win at any cost, and the cost now extends to basic norms of behavior. A system of laws stops working when a significant part of the population just decides to ignore them, and do whatever they feel like.
The cost extends to making bald-faced lies, planting ideas in the heads of disgruntled Trump voters -- who have been primed, over the course of the past several months, to believe that Trump could only lose if the election was stolen. Well, it wasn't stolen; there is no evidence that it was. But believers in conspiracy theories are people who don't know how to judge whether an accusation is reasonable or ridiculous.
America is not the land it occupies. America is not its wealth, its military might. It is not even its government or its people. America is a shared set of values, based on a belief that we don't need a king to rule us -- we can damn well govern ourselves, thank you. The Constitution does its best to enshrine those values. But even that is just words on paper, if people don't subscribe to the values.
The GOP stopped being a political party when they proved willing to sacrifice even those values to get what they want. They crossed a line and became a criminal enterprise. What we're now seeing is an attack on that fundamental value system, an attempt to subvert and discredit democracy led by the cretin who would be king.
Attacking the foundation of democracy (the belief that we should count every vote, and honor the result) is attacking the country, and that's treason. Trying to hold the Presidency once you've clearly lost is an attempted coup. The fact that it's a ham-fisted and transparent attempt, with no wit or subtlety about it, is not in any way a defense. In general I'm against the death penalty, but it'd be right and proper to see Trump hanged in the public square. Those actively assisting him should at least serve life in prison. Those Republicans refusing to denounce his behavior (the silent enablers) should be kicked out of office, for failing to uphold their oaths.
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