Happy anniversary
“Trust dies, but mistrust blossoms.” — Sophocles 497 B.C. It’s been one year since the November 2020 elections and still one-third of our country doesn’t believe in the election results. Thanks to one man, his sycophants and the right-wing media propaganda machine many people actually believe that the election was stolen. Why? Because one man told them so. There must be proof, evidence, documentation, data — something to prove this election was rigged. Nope, not a shred of proof and yet they still cling to this belief.
We’ve all heard the same generic terms post-election of “irregularities,” “election integrity” and “may have been.” Any innuendo or conspiracy theory that plants doubt without having to actually bring facts forward. During Dominion Voting Systems’ lawsuit against Sidney Powell, the judge asked her where she got wild accusations and Powell replied, “I made them up. No reasonable person would believe anything I said.” Ah, wrong. The rubes believed everything you lied about.
This week when Rudy Giuliani was being questioned under oath where he got his wild accusations and if he fact-checked them, Giuliani replied, “We didn’t have time to verify any of this information. That wasn’t my job.” So Giuliani was pulling conspiracy theories off the Internet and bringing them forward like they were Gospel. I read it on the internet, so it must be true. Sadly, a third of our country did believe Giuliani.
Former Attorney General William Barr told the AP, “To date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have affected a different outcome in the election.” Christopher Krebs, a lifelong Republican and Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency called the 2020 election “the most secure in American history,” which promptly got him fired by the former president.
I’ve read the quadfecta of books “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa of the Washington Post; “I Alone Can Fix It” by Carol Leonnig and Phillip Rucker also of the Washington Post; “Frankly We Did Win This Election” by Michael Bender of the Wall Street Journal and “Landslide” by Michael Wolff. All four books covered the final year of the Trump Administration, the 2020 Election and the Big Lie leading to the January 6 Insurrection.
Also just finished reading The Washington Post’s three-part series of the January 6 Insurrection, “The Attack: Before, During and After.” Some interesting new info from these various sources, such as the Congressman who muttered “The things we do for the Orange Jesus,” while signing the contested election forms. I’ll remind the Christian Trump supporters of Exodus 20:3 “You shall have no other gods before me.”
From the book “Peril”, Senators Lindsey Graham (R, S.C.) and Mike Lee (R, Utah) personally investigated some of former President Trump’s claims of election fraud with dead people voting. Since Rudy Giuliani said on national TV that “thousands of dead people had voted in Georgia”, they asked for names and addresses of just ten deceased people who voted. Days later they received one name. Both Senators concluded these claims were meritless (false).
Vice President Pence released a letter on the morning of January 6: “As a student of history … I do not believe that the Founders of our country intended to invest the Vice President with unilateral authority to decide which electoral votes should be counted during the Joint Session Congress…” While I disagree with Mike Pence’s politics, we have to give the former Vice President kudos for following the Constitution and not a demigod. If one man had invalidated millions of votes because his cult leader demanded it, we would be in another civil war today.
Today 33% of the country believes the 2020 election was stolen, yet in 2020 the Republicans did very well across the country, except at the top of the ticket. Also this past Tuesday, Republicans won many important elections. Not sure how the Republicans are doing so dang good when the election is rigged. Ask any Republican, “If the election process is rigged, why are Republicans winning so much?”
Many Republicans can’t wrap their heads around the fact that 81 million voters wanted Agent Orange gone. Most of the people I know didn’t vote for Biden. They voted for Bye-Don. As one person said to me, “I would have voted for a can of tomato soup over the crazy man.” I will give Trump credit for one thing. Never before in U.S. history has one man done so much damage to our country.