Skip to main content

The end is near


Our ersatz president would like us to believe that he isn't fighting for himself but for the 74 million persons who voted for him.  A record number, he points out, for a sitting president.  No surprise he was appalled that the Supreme Court rejected the suit that was filed by Texas AG Paxton to nullify the results in four states that Trump had won in 2016 but lost in 2020. Only conservative old farts Alito and Thomas were willing to hear the absurd suit, which claimed these unbelievable results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia represented an existential threat to the security of the Lone Star State.  "No Wisdom, No Courage," Trump shouted on Twitter!

Trumplicans still aren't done.  Alabama Rep. Mo Brooks threatens to challenge the Electoral College results in January, now that there is nothing to impede the college from convening on Monday and formally certifying the election for President-Elect Biden.  Mo will no doubt have the support of other Republican representatives who swear their loyalty to Trump.  Not since antebellum days have we seen such a brazen defiance to an incoming president.  Some states are even threatening to secede if Biden is inaugurated on January 20.  

All this bluster has given false hope to Trumpists across the land who refuse to concede this election to the Democrats.  The vast majority of Republicans believe that the election was fixed and that Biden is a fraudulent president-elect.  Ted Cruz has threatened a "blockade" of the Biden administration, not allowing a single one of the presumptive president's nominations for cabinet positions to be approved. He and other conservative legislators are very anxious to gain the approval of the vast number of dissatisfied conservatives who firmly believe their votes were discredited in this election.

It's not like the Republicans haven't lost before.  Clinton ended the Reagan-Bush dynasty in 1992.  Obama crushed both McCain and Romney.  While conservatives did fear the end of the world as they knew it, they didn't go to such extremes to nullify the results.  So why are Republicans so much more aggrieved to have lost this time around?  It seems it is largely due to one man's exceedingly bloated ego, which we have watched slowly leak out over the past five weeks as he tries to hold onto the reins of power that he fully believes are rightfully his.  

You would expect to see this kind of truculence in Belarus or Venezuela but not in the United States.  We are the land of the free and the home of the brave.  Even when faced with a president not to our liking, we go on about our lives and impatiently wait four years to remove him from office through the democratic act of voting.  The one and only time states rose up against an incoming president ended very badly.  I don't think anyone really wants to repeat the Civil War, but that appears to be where we are headed if our Republican lawmakers don't settle down and accept the reality of the general election.

It would be more a virtual civil war fought on social media with a lot of blocking, defriending and nasty jibes thrown at each other.  We don't really have the stomach for actual battle.  However, that appeared to be the case back in 1861 with a lot of posturing along the borders before the war finally broke out in April when the federal garrison refused to abandon Fort Sumter.  This time we might see the situation in reverse with Trump refusing to leave the White House, calling in his "Proud Boys" to defend him.  We all hope it doesn't go that far, but we are dealing with a severely emotionally retarded man.

There is this belief that truth and justice will prevail, Trump will accept his loss no matter how begrudgingly, and we will move on with this great experiment we call the United States of America.  We assume his showman instinct will know when to draw the curtain on his reality show. The problem is that Trump isn't acting.  He genuinely believes he was robbed and will resort to whatever pathetic means he has at his disposal to stave off the inevitable right up till noon on January 20 when he formally has to relinquish the White House to President-Elect Biden, and possibly beyond.

There is no wisdom nor courage in his actions.  He is a hopelessly insecure man who fears no longer being the center of the world's attention.  Never were his television ratings so high or has he enjoyed so many followers.  As a result, he desperately flails around hoping that we will continue to watch him even after he is forcibly removed from office.


Comments

  1. The "Proud Boys" are criminal thugs. No surprise that someone with a long history of associating with the Russian Mafia is so disposed to being in league with those crooks.

    https://www.newsweek.com/manafort-trump-putin-russia-mafia-strzok-fbi-1076582

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like how the WH tried to claim the Proud Boys were just there on a tour. I wouldn't be surprised at all if he hires these guys to be his bodyguards when he refuses to leave the WH on January 20.

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer.  Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions.  I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters.  Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs.  Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77.  I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not.  Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

  Welcome to this month's reading group selection.  David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908.  At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades.  Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society.  I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran.  Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud.  -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!