I would like to think, perhaps naively, that most of us are good-hearted, fair-minded Americans who believe in a basic code of conduct and principles of fairness. And I still believe that most of us feel that the same standards for public service should apply to all of us regardless of party affiliation or ideological belief. I would like to think that most of us still believe in the rule of law, hold the ideals of honesty and integrity in high regard, and prefer that our candidates and elected leaders conduct themselves in a manner that serves as an example to all of us, but especially to young, impressionable people. Wouldn’t it be great if we could get back to a place where the overwhelming majority of us still agreed that there are some basic rules of conduct and ethical guidelines that apply to our process of electing our leaders, especially for President of the United States? Wouldn’t we be alot better off and not spiraling towards disunion if could all just agree again that candidates who are willing to cheat to hold onto power are unacceptable and should be rejected by voters?
With this pretext, I would like to address those folks that are still in the camp defending Donald Trump’s myriad unethical and criminal behavior as just “perfect and fine”, as he is fond of saying. If possible try not to carry any what-about-isms into this. You don’t have to like Joe Biden but to compare the two is apples and oranges. There is zero evidence to suggest Biden has done anything illegal regarding anything to do with his son, who has had documented substance abuse problems, tax evasion issues, etc. Hunter Biden is being held accountable for any crimes he committed, and he should be. Meanwhile there is literally tractor trailers full of evidence of things Trump has done, some right out in public view (his shiftiest trick of all) and more evidence that investigators have compiled – some revealed to the public and other evidence that only the multiple Grand Jurys convened and prosecutors have seen. But don’t worry it will all come out, we will get to see it all.
So, let’s get going here. The thought experiment I’ll illustrate has been presented before, in different ways, by many different writers and pundits with varying degrees of effectiveness. I’ve put it out there with less detail in different pieces and posts I’ve written previously myself. I feel that the persistent, cultish, devilish grip Trump still has on a segment of the population and where that may be taking us as a nation urgently necessitates another go at it. I love this country and I just don’t know any better way than to keep trying through reason and logic to salvage it from the cynical – nothing matters – it’s all corrupt – grievance-based mindset. As a country, we must fight the deliberate efforts to undermine peoples’ faith in their government and the bedrock institutions of law and order and democracy.
Here goes: For the sake of keeping it as simple as possible, I’m going to primarily just focus on Donald Trump’s behavior running up to the election and his statements and actions afterward through till Jan 6th. So if you voted for Trump in the last two elections and still support him, I want you to imagine yourself in a universe where you find yourself standing in the shoes of your fellow Americans who voted differently than how you did in the 2020 election. Now that you have put those shoes on, close your eyes and envision the following scenario.
~~~~Beginning of fictional thought experiment~~~~~
How would you feel if everything were reversed from how it actually occurred? Instead of a sitting Republican President, there was a sitting Democratic President running for re-election in 2020, let’s just say it was Biden. The situation is just reversed. You can imagine it, right? I think it’s a reasonable and worthy exercise, to try and understand how your fellow Americans might be viewing the current national political situation. It couldn’t hurt.
Now the Democrat incumbent, Joe Biden, for months and months had been laying the groundwork with his supporters, whining on Twitter without any basis, that if he lost the election, it would be because of election fraud and his loss would be unfair. The Republicans were going to try and steal the election, he repeated. Of course, he was simultaneously saying, if it was determined that he won the election then it would, of course, all be a completely fair and legitimate process. Naturally, this behavior raises some red flags in your mind.
In this imaginary scenario, you were backing his Republican challenger, Donald Trump. So the election takes place, you vote for Trump, and it is determined that your candidate has won the election. The votes were tallied in all of the states, and despite a couple of states that are still too close to call, the election appears to be over. The incumbent, Biden, has been beaten and it is clear within a matter of days that your guy, Trump, has millions more votes and most importantly has won the electoral college vote. The incumbent, Joe Biden, does not concede his loss and begins to challenge the outcome despite there being no credible evidence, at all, of any significant election fraud that would change the outcome in any state. How does this make you feel? Well, of course, you’re pissed and angry about it. Your first thought naturally is, “What a sore loser, and of course he was going to try this bologna since he was telegraphing his strategy months before the election even happened.” It’s outrageous, par for the course with this guy, but you assume the process will begin to play out as it should following the initial period of challenges.
There are a handful of states where President Biden lost by tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of votes, and he begins to launch legal challenges to have recounts done and most concerning of all initiates a broad media campaign to spread falsehoods of election fraud and plant doubt among the public in the integrity of the election. One major network, with the exception of a couple of anchors and hosts, happily goes along with his lies and BS and helps to cement the false view that the election was stolen with their viewers, his base. You gotta be kidding me, you think to yourself, is this really happening?
Numerous challenges are brought before courts and judges around the country, many of them Democrats who have been nominated by the President himself. In addition to court cases, every one of which is dismissed or rejected due to lack of any evidence, the President and his team begin to reach out to election officials in the contested states to pressure them to overturn the results of their states’ free and fair election. Biden is desperate to hold onto power. They push lies and baseless misinformation to secretaries of state including one phone call to the Virginia Secretary of State that is recorded. Biden asks them to “find” 11,280 votes, in order to change the outcome in the state. He asks them basically to throw out and manufacture the right combination of votes so he could win the state and change the outcome of the election. In this call, he is bald-faced lying to state officials, directing them to commit election fraud and subvert the will of the voters of the state. His statements are not free speech, they are deliberate falsehoods spoken in the furtherance of a conspiracy to overturn a free and fair election.
This is the point where you really begin to get upset as a Virginia voter who voted for Trump, the Republican challenger. How could this be happening? It is becoming clear to you and millions of other Americans that President Biden is weaponizing his office and blatantly trying to steal the election from your guy. It is obvious to most Americans that democracy itself is under threat from this President who is refusing to go along with the orderly and peaceful transition of power.
After all of the court challenges are thrown out, lacking any evidence of fraud, and all of the states have certified their results the election is 100% decided. There is no question that your candidate, challenger Donald Trump, has won the Presidential election. President Biden and his allies continue to falsely claim victory and spread lies about the election despite no evidence and most alarmingly a majority of his supporters continue to buy into it. How could this be happening in America? This is turning into a very volatile and dangerous situation. Many in Biden’s own cabinet tell him privately though that he has lost, that it’s over, and that for the sake of the country, he should concede. His own Attorney General even tells him that “it’s all bullshit”. His primary lawyer tells him there is no more recourse and it’s nuts to continue chasing these conspiracies down rabbit holes.
All along he has brought in one nutty character after another and more and more dubious lawyers willing to tell him what he wants to hear. One of these individuals actually helps concoct the fake-electors scheme but admits that it has zero chance of making it past the Supreme Court. Yet, the fake electors scheme is exactly what Biden and his co-conspirators continue to push as their last-ditch effort to overturn the will of the American people. As part of this scheme, they plan to pressure the Vice President, Kamala Harris, against all historical precedent, to question and challenge some slates of electoral votes to be cast on January 6th, in an effort to delay the certification, throw it back to friendly state legislatures, and ultimately replace legitimate electoral votes with the fake ones. Could you imagine how you would feel, watching and hearing this all unfold nationally? What in the hell is going on here, you think?
Fast-forward to Jan 6th, Biden has continued to spread election lies to the country, whine and complain about how unfair this has been, and to top it off he has directed a mob of his supporters to come to Washington to protest and disrupt the certification. All hell breaks loose and the capitol is stormed. Police officers are beaten and assaulted, the property is damaged, and the President even publicly states that Vice President Harris has failed to do what needed to be done, she has failed us, he says. Consequently, segments of the mob begin to chant “Hang Harris, hang Harris”.
Several hours go by, violence erupting outside and in the halls of Congress, and Biden sits watching it all on TV and does nothing to stop it. His own children, members of Congress, and close staff all beg him to call off the mob. They know it will all end as soon as he does, but he does nothing for hours, reveling in the chaos and destruction being carried out in his name. How does this make you feel, watching this tragic chapter of American history unfold? So much violence, people are killed, and democracy itself seems to be hanging on by a thread? Your emotions alternate between seething rage and heartbreak for your country. This man’s fragile ego and sociopathic drive have brought the country to the brink of widespread political violence. How would you feel, knowing that Biden had done this to the country? All so he could stay in power. The selfishness, the recklessness, the reveling in the violence perpetrated in his name. How could people still support him, you ask?
Luckily Kamala Harris held strong, she did her duty and certified the election of Donald Trump later that night after Congress reconvened. But the damage was already done. Impeachment proceedings were brought against Biden for his unprecedented and unlawful efforts to overturn the election and stay in power. Testimony, under oath from his own staff and Democrat Party leaders across the country paints a damning picture of the actions he took to overthrow our democracy. His inaction to stop the assault on the Capitol that day jeopardized the lives of lawmakers from both parties as well as thousands of Americans and constituted a gross dereliction of Presidential duty. For a second time, Biden is impeached in the House of Representatives. You think certainly, he would lose the majority of his supporters who finally realized he’d gone too far this time and was a real danger to America, right? The vast majority of his political allies in Congress and around the country will decry what he did and stop backing him, right? There is a brief flurry of statements from Democratic leaders denouncing Biden’s actions, then there is deafening silence. Besides a few brave Democratic lawmakers willing to tell the truth to the American people, the majority fall back in line fearful of Biden and his vocally-threatening base.
As the weeks and months that followed January 6th turned into years, despite the growing log of evidence and testimony, the support amongst his Democratic Party base remained strong. Yes, some Democrats did abandon him, but roughly 75% of Democrats continued to stick by him and believe his lies, despite evidence to the contrary.
Ongoing investigations in the justice department and in state attorney general’s offices across the country have been compiling evidence and witness testimony, in numerous instances from Democratic Biden loyalists. Eventually, Biden is indicted on numerous counts related to his efforts to steal the election. In the Spring of 2023, he declares his candidacy. Now, these investigations were well underway before he declared he was running for President again. The acts he committed that resulted in those indictments all occurred prior to the launch of any candidacy. Yet despite this, he and his supporters claim it’s all politically motivated and try to shift blame from his own behavior and actions. So, he shouldn’t be held accountable because he has decided to run for President? That gets him off the hook all of a sudden? It’s hard to believe the gas-lighting going on from Biden and his supporters but it continues unabated. They refuse to accept that he should be held accountable for actions that previously would have disqualified any political candidate, Democrat or Republican.
How could this be happening in America you ask yourself, in the country that you love? Why would millions of people still believe the horse shit coming out of the mouth of such a sore loser, who lost fair and square? How could any of your fellow countrymen and women still support this man if they believe in the integrity and sanctity of our democracy and election process? Shouldn’t we all prioritize country over party and personality? It’s tribalism on steroids you conclude. Maybe it’s a cult, what else could explain it? Seriously, how could anyone, who believes in the rule of law, still back a man with a long documented track record of lying and inciting violence? How could more than half of voters in one of two major political parties still support someone who has engaged in numerous incidents of fraud, is facing 91 counts of indictment, and is actively perpetrating a grift on the American people with the sole objective of trying to stay out of jail? It boggles your mind to think that on September 7th, 2023 millions of people are still supporting Joe Biden in his effort to regain the White House in 2024. They literally believe anything that he says despite the existence of facts that seem apparent to most people. It’s hard to understand how we got to this point and the only conclusion you can come to is that they are in a cult and he is their sociopathic, messianic leader. You are demoralized by the whole thing, you are fearful for America’s future, but you are determined more than ever to fight for the truth and ensure that the dangerous, wanna-be-dictator, sore-loser Joe Biden never gets near the People’s House again.
~~~~End of fictional thought experiment and back to reality~~~~
Back to reality or the surreality that we are all currently living in dealing with the twice-impeached, sexually-assaulting, disgraced, indicted former President, Donald Trump, running for President, again. This man is somehow receiving the support of a majority of the Republican Party voters, despite having plenty of other qualified candidates to choose from. How would you feel if you were in the shoes of the majority of Americans, who voted for Joe Biden, and who have been scratching their heads watching this all unfold? If you went through that thought experiment and concluded that someone who did that on the opposing side to your politics was unfit to ever hold office again, then how could you give Trump a pass, apply a different standard, and support him in the next election? Seriously, how?
I mean, we can all vigorously debate the issues of the day such as foreign policy, abortion rights, environmental regulation, and tax policy but we have to agree to the basic rules of engagement regarding elections and picking and choosing our leaders. If we can’t agree to the basic rules of the road for our democratic republic, then nothing else really matters. If one side decides they are giving up on that process – disregards state-certified election results, ignores a mountain of court decisions, and continues to support a lying cheat obsessed with holding onto power by any means necessary – then we are in real trouble. Donald Trump Trump is hell-bent on destroying our democracy, tearing down our sacred institutions, and exacting vengeance on his opponents and anyone who questions him. That’s his plan for America. He has no grand visions for the country’s future – he hates America in its current pluralistic, democratic, and diversified manifestation, he aspires not to unite the country nor make the lives of ALL Americans better, but instead to turn us against each other. His is a campaign fueled almost entirely by grievance, retribution, and destruction – just listen to his own words. If Trump regains the Presidency, my fellow American, I’m afraid we have lost our democracy and we have lost our country.