Never happened

Joe Biden is still president of the United States — No. 46. Threats, theories and theology, from QAnon and other creative minds, told us that the United States has been in stasis since 1871 because of an unspecified secret act of Congress that made all governmental activity “fake news” until last Thursday. At that time, said the oracles, the nation would resume its existence with the inauguration of Donald Trump as the 19th president, succeeding U.S. Grant (who would not attend his successor’s inauguration). It didn’t happen, at least not publicly in Washington.

The most interesting aspect of this phenomenal fabrication may have been the assertion that everything governmental between 1871 and last Thursday was null and void. Taken to its logical conclusion, this means we lost both world wars (as well as all the others peppered around them). The last 24 states, from Colorado forward, are still territories or less (including New Mexico). All those men who thought they were presidents Nos. 19 through 46 were just fooling themselves — and us, of course. That includes Trump; there was no president No. 45. He wasn’t sworn in by a Supreme Court justice on Thursday, so he still isn’t, is he?

QAnon’s fabulists solved our problem for us. The “long national nightmare” (to borrow un-President Gerald Ford’s phrase) between 2017 and 2021 never happened. The same sources would probably tell us, if we asked, that the pandemic didn’t happen either, and those half-million Americans are still alive.

Unbelievable.

Bill Dunning Eldorado