All Because of a Lie

They came in answer to a lie, told by a tiny man with pointed them at out democracy and said ‘sic’ em’. Photo by Jessica Griffin.

2024. The election is a decisive one, the Democratic candidate wins the popular vote by some 8 million, the electoral by 30-40 points. Maybe even enlarging the senate control. Everything will be fine… right?

What happens when local GOP controlled election boards in both red and purple states decide they don’t like the way their own voters have voted, when Republican controlled state legislatures refuse to certify Democratic wins, sending instead their own slate of electors to Washington? What happens when a GOP House refuses to certify the presidential vote, when the GOP refuses to seat Democratic senators?

What happens?

Think this nightmare scenario can’t happen? Remember January 6th. We believed it couldn’t happen then. Well, maybe “believed” is too strong a word, “hoped” is better. We already had all the signs, the right-wing violence and threats against officials, the storming of state capitols and city councils, the lies from top officials, Trump on down. It was building, making the violent insurrection on the DC Capitol inevitable. It was a mad rush and build, an escalation to madness and attempted coupe, and then they all went home, contrite and regretful… right?

No. It’s not over. 1/6 was prologue. It was the person before the play, it was Shakespeare, sending his actor out on the stage to tell you what you will be soon seeing, that while you are witnessing this, there is so much more you don’t see. When you see fights, please, gentles all, imagine wars.

This is the GOP; they start fights but they are planning for wars.

All for a lie, all because the huge ego of a tiny man could not deal with the obvious fact that he lost an election, could not admit he was not the god of his speeches but the grifter and con man the election revealed him to be. So, he decided he didn’t have to admit it, didn’t have to accept it, and that his voters and members of his party would back him up. And they did, to the great disgrace of this nation and the weakening of our democracy.

A lie and a man’s ego has managed to kill people and brought us where we are today. It’s… crushing, the shear stupidity of it all. Here we are, still dealing with the muck and suck of the hate and violence. Because it ain’t over, as Yogi maybe said, ‘til it’s over.

Because the insurrection didn't end with the Capitol Hill police ushering the violent insurrectionists out of the Capitol. Like an out-of-control AI, they have learned, absorbed, pinpointed where they failed and are shoring up the weak spots; ridding themselves of anyone moral enough to say ‘no’ to Trump’s election lies, casting out anyone who might have enough principle to stand against a naked power grab, and readying for all-out war on a democracy that stands in the way of total power.

Citizens don’t want to vote for them? Fine. They’ll just take that little voting problem away, thank you very much.

No, the insurrection continues with the nearly 300 anti-democratic voting bills being introduced and passed around the country, with the 'forensic audit' being conducted by the GOP version of the 3 Stooges in Arizona for no other intention than to undermine a fair election and to bolster lies. This is all leading up to the 2024 presidential election where the GOP will try, once again, to steal an election.

This time, with those objecting purged, who will say no? That's a big thing that saved us; many in the local state GOP didn't go along. These are officials who I’m not so sure were brave, but defending a system that they set up to elect Republicans that failed to do so. Not sure much ‘brave’ as defensive and indignant. But they were there and they stopped it.  

Republicans are in the process of fixing that. Stefanik for Cheney, censure and eventual expulsion of anyone who pointed out the lies (listen, I have no love for Cheney, who supported wars and torture, but in this stand, she’s actually right) anyone who might slow the Trump train to election must be crushed, whether Trump is the engineer this time or not.  

The clear message the GOP is sending to its representatives is: you stand up for the Constitution and democracy, we’ll knock you down, hard. We’ll erase you not only from the face of the GOP but the earth. Scorched earth against their own party. The reps hear, and obey.

That's what this is about; hobble democracy with even more restrictive voting laws to make themselves completely voter-proof, and if somehow that's not enough, just take it. Claim victory anyway and this time with the entire GOP on their side, they're that much closer to succeeding. 2022, 2024, they will try until they succeed.

That's the plan; permanent Republican rule, voter proof. Will it work? doesn't matter, it's what they'll try. They've been setting it up for decades.

How can they be stopped? Through attention paid, taking them seriously and heading them off though public opinion and the courts (Trump and McConnell have made that much harder, but not impossible).

This is why there are and will be constant lawsuits filed against these bills, playing a legal whack-a-mole, that's why more grassroots are forming to re-register the people the GOP are purging from the rolls. It's why the spotlight has to keep shinning and pinning them down like an ant in the sun, paying attention to the state and national GOPs and their efforts to kill democracy and snatch power.

They love to work in the dark, the bright daylight gives them away.

They’re probably working on blocking the sun.

The Republicans Hate Our Democracy, They Just Hate it.

The poor, harried and over worked election officials of Clark County listen while a fool Trump supporter goes off on an angry, incoherent rant. They’s been hearing this cap all night at this point. He went away and they went on with their business.

2020, the year the GOP stopped trying to hide their slow destruction of democracy, and openly took sledgehammers, jackhammers, and bulldozers, setting them loose on the foundation of our country; specifically, our right to vote and have that vote counted.   

This is not new, the GOP has been suppressing votes and intimidating voters for decades (the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, William Rehnquist, used to challenge Latino voters who would dare to try and vote in Arizona back in the 1960’s), in fact, this was the first time in decades that the GOP wasn’t under consent decree to not intimidate voters. Oh, you don’t know about that? Okay, let’s have Politico explain it to you:

“The decree, which dated to 1982, arose from a Democratic National Committee lawsuit charging the RNC with seeking to discourage African-Americans from voting through targeted mailings warning about penalties for violating election laws and by posting armed, off-duty law enforcement officers at the polls in minority neighborhoods.” 

Yep, that’s true. The GOP posted armed ‘watchers’ at ‘certain’ (read ‘Black or minority) communities and were righty slapped down for it. 2020, that didn’t apply anymore, because (as Chief Justice Roberts reasoned in gutting the Voting Rights Act), since it worked, it’s not needed anymore. We don’t need to protect the votes of Black folks because you know, racism is gone, everyone will play fair and do the right thing… right?

Right.

As soon as that ruling was published, states rushed to pass laws they’d already written, restricting voting; shortening, or taking away early voting, requiring voter ID’s, requiring street addresses, passing ‘exact match’ rules on voter registration, blatant gerrymandering by race, doing away with polling places in poor and minority neighborhoods, all affecting those non-White voters who stubbornly refuse to vote for the one-true party, the GOP.

Trump has been setting his plan in motion for months by crippling the United States Post Office, lying about the ‘dangers’ of vote by mail, refusing to say whether he would abide by the results of the vote, questioning whether ‘late’ ballots (those postmarked by election day and arriving during the legal window) should count, and if we should just stop counting altogether at the stroke of midnight. He wants to disenfranchise millions of legal votes, and many ion the GOP are either actively helping, and trying to ignore it.

It’s insanity, and we would never allow any elected official to go off like this without serious consequences. Yet, there’s Trump, running down democracy for all the world to see. And the world is watching and wondering what the hell is wrong with us.  

Now, we and the world are seeing Trump not only refusing to concede an election he lost by 7 million votes, he is actively undermining the election and the election officials themselves by claiming massive ‘vote fraud’ (really election fraud) perpetrated by Democrats and Republicans somehow working with the Democrats (yet, somehow, the Democrats weren’t able to steal the senate outright? And down ballot races the GOP won are still good?). And he has plenty of help from far-right media such as NewsMax (rapidly growing as Fox can’t lie fast enough anymore) and OAN, an outlet that will say or do anything to support far-right power and Trump. The fact that this threatens to tear the country apart seems to be the goal; grab and hold to power, no matter what.  

For the Republicans, it’s always about power, whether that power be in the form of money, influence, threats, or armed far-right terrorists in the streets. Right now, they still control the presidency and the senate and will use them both as weapons against democracy. This minority government will work to undermine confidence in the vote, in elections, in government, in democracy itself because those institutions are a threat to their power, and a constraint on their permanent hold on that power.

Burrowing in for destruction

How will they continue their destruction once they are out of power? By making sure they are never out of power. They have been constructing a minority government and judiciary, impervious to votes and who or what the majority wants. Running down and choking the vote is just one way of doing it. Another is to take over the government itself without have to win any votes. To this end, Trump has stripped by Executive Order, thousands of civil servants of their job protections (ones that protect them from political whims) claiming them to be 'policy making' positions. Trump then demanded lists of those workers made up that fit his new guidelines. These lists are due by January 19th, the day before inauguration. The goal here is the mass firing of thousands of essential government workers, to be replaced by 'presidential appointments', basically turning purposely non-partisan positions into politically partisan ones. It is called 'burrowing', placing political allies into civil positions, but this is on a mass scale unlike anything ever done before, and of questionable legality.

Jason Briefel, director of policy and outreach for the Senior Executives Association, a professional organization for senior civil servants, called the order “a constitutional dumpster fire that everybody’s going to have to figure out how to put out together.”

Trump soaks the place in gasoline and throws a match on the way out the door.

Boom. Doesn’t care. Anything he and the GOP can do the destroy the place, our place, our democracy, they will do. It’s what they do.

This is a Republican takeover of the government, a government-wide minority power grab of a government they, by democratic vote, lost. They have to be called out, exposed, dragged into the sunlight to show everyone what they have been doing and how close we could be to losing our democracy.

The Republicans don't care about democracy if it gets in the way of their power. They will choose power over country every time.