Your Vote is Illegitimate
“The only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged.”
If you don’t vote Trump, your vote doesn’t matter, and can be rejected. End of story.
This is the message Trump is telling his supporters, telling them that the other side, no matter who they are, are illegitimate; their votes are illegitimate, their opposition is illegitimate, their opinions are illegitimate, their protests are illegitimate, they, themselves, their lives, friends and families, are illegitimate. It’s okay to ignore them, okay to treat them as less, okay to maybe kill them, they’re illegitimate after all. As his HHS assistant secretary Michael Caputo said: “And when Donald Trump refuses to stand down at the inauguration, the shooting will begin. The drills that you’ve seen are nothing,” he added, “If you carry guns, buy ammunition, ladies and gentlemen, because it’s going to be hard to get.”
Okay to kill those who disagree with you; they are other, they are wrong in themselves, they are dangerous, they are illegitimate.
Trump also claims the Governor of Nevada, Steve Sisolak (D) “is the same guy that’s gonna be in charge of the ballots. I’m winning that state easily (he’s not) but the one thing we can’t beat, if they cheat on the ballots, now he will cheat on the ballots, I have no doubt about it.”
Trump is giving himself and his supporters permission to ignore the results of a fair election. Any election he loses is not a fair election. Any election he loses needs to be resisted, fought against, and put down.
Arm yourselves, they are coming for you.
This is designed to do tremendous arm to civil discourse and society. This is designed to encourage the violence and panic Trump claims he is against. This licenses his supporters to do anything, by any means, to keep Trump himself in power. This is openly calling for the civil war the right has been talking about, and thirsting for, for decades
This is the insanity that fuels the grievance on the right, the anger and belief that they’ve been screwed, and it’s the left doing the screwing. For this you have to ignore the decades of the GOP (and the Democrats, yes) shipping jobs overseas, of the ‘trickle down’ promises that never, ever materialized, of culture baiting for votes while shifting power and wealth to the rich. Once you’ve established this to your own satisfaction (not hard to do when you’re inside the bubble, talking only to true believers like yourself) than anything you do to ‘fight back’ is justified. Arm yourself, the ‘libtard’ mob is coming for your home, you women, your country.
This undermining of democracy is not a secret, it’s happening right in front of us, right in the open. Trump has captured most the election machinery, and what he can’t control, he is openly undermining, with the enthusiastic help of the GOP. First, you declare the other side to be illegitimate, you demonize them, making any move against you (like, say, voting) seem as a move against the country, against your followers ‘values’, as something ‘sick’ and unnatural. Then you go about encouraging violence against anyone who disagrees with you (see the support the armed mobs charging statehouses get, the police brutality and the shooting and running over of protesters), then denial of of legitimate votes that don’t go ‘your’ way, stating things like only that the votes counted the night of the election are legitimate, and then you undermine the USPS and vote by mail as ‘fraud’.
Trump is stealing the election and encouraging his followers to fight any vote that doesn’t end with four more years of Trump in the White House. He refuses to say if he’ll accept any result that doesn’t go his way. His minions have called for armed insurrection if they don’t get the result they want.
As David Frum said:
“If conservatives become convinced that they can not win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. The will reject democracy.”
They are warning us right now of what they intend to do.
Take them seriously.