The choice is stark.
election
Supporters
Before Biden bowed out, a meme was going around among Trump supporters.
I’m not going to label his followers as this meme does, but anyone who can look at Trump and not see how completely unhinged he is almost all of the time, how uneducated he appears to be, how incapable of critical thought he seems to be — I just don’t understand.
I freely admitted that Biden was showing some mental deterioration. I never worshipped the man: I was only support him to do a job. Many Trump supporters, however, seem almost to worship the man. He literally can do no wrong.
And even if he does wrong they overlook it. The same individual posted this:
Signs 2
During our trips to Florida this summer, I noticed several interesting billboards. Many of them were theological; one was political:
Stolen elections have catastrophic consequences
This notion is perhaps the most loaded statement I’ve read in recent memory. It’s certainly the most terrifying.
From the perspective of those who financed the billboard it is a statement about the 2020 election and the ever-persistent myth that somehow the Democrats committed election fraud. The complete lack of evidence for this is no matter: those who hold this view simply acknowledge non-facts as evidence. Those of us firmly grounded in reality are simply and willfully ignorant.
But just what are those catastrophic consequences? Again, from their perspective, it’s multifaceted. First, there’s simply the idea that an unelected individual is currently holding the nation’s highest office. Were that true, it would be catastrophic. But there’s a second notion hiding in that statement: what are people who believe this — in their own eyes, good and God-fearing patriots, one and all — to do about it? A recent article in Newsweek points out that there are renewed calls from the far right for civil war:
[Trump’s post on Truth Social] warning that 2024 will be the new 1776 is in line with other threats of looming civil wars in the U.S. made by Trump supporters following the New York jury verdict on Thursday which found the former president guilty on all 34 counts of falsifying business records in a criminal hush-money trial.
Newsweek
In Boston University’s BU Today, staff members write,
A recent Washington Post headline says: “In America, talk turns to something not spoken of for 150 years: Civil war.” The story references, among others, Stanford University historian Victor Davis Hanson, who asked in a National Review essay last summer: “How, when, and why has the United States now arrived at the brink of a veritable civil war?” Another Washington Post story reports how Iowa Republican Congressman Steve King recently posted a meme warning that red states have “8 trillion bullets” in the event of a civil war. And a poll conducted last June by Rasmussen Reports found that 31 percent of probable US voters surveyed believe “it’s likely that the United States will experience a second civil war sometime in the next five years.”
BU Today
The billboard, then, suggests to informed drivers that a civil war might be the necessary outcome of such Democratic duplicity.
The attempted assassination of Trump will only add to this.
What politicians need to be doing now is talking us back from this brink. Biden and the Democrats seem to be doing this. What will Trump do? Will he try to quell this anger or will he stoke it? I don’t think there’s any doubt about how the man will react.
Those of us who warned friends and family around us who supported Trump in 2016 that he is a dangerous man continually feel more vindicated, but right now, I’d rather be proved wrong.
Babcia’s Candle
Any time the sky began growing dark with threatening clouds, Babcia would always shuffle to the kitchen, light a votive candle, and place it in a plate of water.
The motivation behind the small plate of water was obvious: it was protection against an unintentional fire. The bottom of the candle could get quite hot, after all — an entirely reasonable precaution.
The candle itself, though, was to ward off the approaching storm. I’m assuming prayers accompanied the candle, but they must have been silent because the only thing I ever heard Babcia say was, “I must light a candle to keep the storm away.”
If the storm never appeared or the clouds dissipated completely, I’m sure this felt like confirmation of the ritual’s effectiveness. But it didn’t always work. What then?
Looking back on it, this is the same approach Christians take to prayer in general. When a believer prays for something and God appears to have answered the prayer, then it’s confirmation of prayer’s effectiveness. But what happens when God doesn’t seem to have answered the prayer? Most Christians simply move the goalposts.
Let’s say a young child runs out into the road after an errant ball toss and gets struck by a car. The child’s family rushes out to the child lying on the street, praying all the way. If the child gets up, the prayers were answered: God saved the child from all harm. If the child gets taken to the hospital but survived, the prayers were answered: God saved the child from serious harm. If the child ends up paralyzed because of the accident, the prayers were answered: God spared the child’s life. If the child ends up dying, the prayers were answered: God has taken the child into eternal bliss.
This type of thinking persists in the conservative Christian community, and it begins to affect how they view other things. Just look at the followers of the MAGA movement, in particular Mike Lindell and his pronouncements that soon his lawyers will present information that will change everything about the 2020 election. He gives a date by which everything will change; that date comes; nothing changes; he grows silent; after a while, he gives a new date, and the cycle repeats. He’s been doing it for nearly two years now, and those who follow him and believe him give him a pass each and every time.
What can we make of this mentality? If nothing counts against a claim, then it’s not rational in any sense. Unfalsifiable claims are meaningless, and because they’re unfalsifiable, nothing counts against them. But in the case of prayer and the My Pillow guy, they have been falsified, time and time again, and yet believers hold fast. The belief itself, the faith itself, is more important, it seems, than truth.
Election 2022
It was a little after six when I realized I hadn’t gone to vote. I’d been putting it off all day, spending the day working on our yearbook for 2022, taking the kids on a bookstore outing, and learning that the $3,000 we spent to fix our outdoor HVAC unit was completely wasted. So, a mixed bag.
The line for voting stretched into the parking lot, but it was moving fast. Even if it wasn’t, I was going to stick it out: “Vote like democracy depends on it” has been an idea consistently popping up on social media, and I’m likely to agree. The radical GOP (which stands for Gaslight Obstruct and Project) seems determined to destroy our democratic institutions, and their traitorous support of a man who tried to overturn a fair election has made me say numerous times, “I’d vote for Satan himself before I’d vote Republican.” Besides, the Republican party of the past is just that: they are, by and large, a bunch of conspiracy theory anti-democracy grifters who take their supporters to be naive children who don’t remember what they said five minutes ago.
As I entered the voting booth, I clicked on the option to vote for the entire Democratic ticket, then clicked through the options to check each selection. It was only then that I realized how many races were one-person (usually one-man) races, with only a Republican running. In all of those races, I cast no vote, though I thought about writing in myself.
What an amusing situation that creates, though: so many Bible-belt Christians here are so anti-communist that they see communism where it doesn’t even exist. They equate anything left-leaning with socialism, which they in turn equate with the very worst version of it (i.e., the Soviet Union). However, elections in the USSR looked more like elections in South Carolina than Republicans here would probably like: one option, and one alone.
If the modern GOP had its way, that’s exactly what they’d enforce.
Return II
I’ve sometimes wondered what would be the reaction in the Christian community if somehow some irrefutable proof surfaced that Jesus would never be coming back, that the second coming was all a pipe dream. Now, I know that no such proof is possible, and the events of recent weeks demonstrate all too clearly that irrefutable evidence can be refuted simply by a movement in the will, a forcible rejection of what is clearly and demonstrably true. We see that in the election; we see that in denial of climate change and evolution; we see that everywhere. But let’s just run this thought experiment: there’s somehow evidence that Jesus’s second coming will never happen, that the Christians, who have been predicting for 2,000 years now that Jesus is coming back “any day now,” were completely wrong. What might that look like?
I think we’re seeing it in real time now as Qanon conspiracy theorists grapple with the reality that none of Q’s theories have come true and that, with Biden now sworn in, they won’t come true.
One account on Reuters:
On Wednesday, they grappled with a harsh reality check: Trump had left office with no mass arrests or other victories against the supposed cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibal elites, especially Democrats, he was ostensibly fighting.
Instead, Democratic President Joseph Biden was calmly sworn into office, leaving legions of QAnon faithful struggling to make sense of what had transpired.
In one Telegram channel with more than 18,400 members, QAnon believers were split between those still urging others to ‘trust the plan’ and those saying they felt betrayed. “It’s obvious now we’ve been had. No plan, no Q, nothing,” wrote one user.
Some messages referenced theories that a coup was going to take place before the end of Inauguration Day. Others moved the goalposts again, speculating that Trump would be sworn into office on Mar. 4.
“Does anybody have any idea what we should be waiting for next or what the next move could be?” asked another user, who said they wanted to have a ‘big win’ and arrests made. (Source)
Two movements here: one, a return to reality; the other, a doubling-down, squirming deeper into the hole.
The BBC includes this:
Many reacted with shock and despair as Joe Biden was sworn in as the 46th US president.
“I just want to throw up,” said one in a popular chat on the Telegram messaging app. “I’m so sick of all the disinformation and false hope.”
Others insisted “the plan” had not failed, finding new theories to latch on to.
For weeks, QAnon followers had been promoting 20 January as a day of reckoning, when prominent Democrats and other elite “Satanic paedophiles” would be arrested and executed on the orders of President Trump.
The 65 days that led to chaos at the Capitol
What is QAnon?But, as Mr Biden took his oath and no arrests were made, some in the QAnon community had an uncomfortable meeting with reality.
“It’s done and we were played,” wrote another. (Source)
Those who are doubling down are coming up with increasingly bizarre explanations of what’s going on:
— Coping MAGA (@CopingMAGA) January 21, 2021
Some of them just don’t even make any sense at all:
what did i just read pic.twitter.com/Ii27AK6UbC
— Coping MAGA (@CopingMAGA) January 21, 2021
Some of them are waking up, though. One TikTok video, now viral, is supposedly from a Qanon woman who has come to her senses:
So, who else is feeling just a little silly? […] I went too far down the rabbit hole, now I’m back out again — and it nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? And who the f*** is Q? Who is it? Who is this person? Because none of it has come true, and I was just thinking — what if this person knows that none of this stuff is true and they’re just messing with people, like getting inside their heads.
The video is here:
Seems like some of them are waking up pic.twitter.com/iaaDCpeTP0
— Coping MAGA (@CopingMAGA) January 20, 2021
So what does this tell us about Qanon and conspiracy theories? I feel like these reactions would mirror what would happen in our hypothetical proof of the non-return of Jesus. There would be some who would accept it — probably more liberal believers. For that matter, there are Christians liberal enough already to say that Jesus didn’t really rise from the dead, didn’t really ascend into heaven, won’t really return, but insist that that doesn’t really matter. “It’s all about the teachings!” they say, and then they paint this picture of Jesus who seems in some ways at odds with the Jesus in the Bible. (He certainly seemed to think he was coming back, so there’s that…)
Most believers would stick by their guns. Nothing — absolutely nothing — could convince them otherwise.
This leads to the thought that has plagued me for a few years now, a thought that ultimately pushed me back away from Christianity: If a belief is not falsifiable, if nothing counts against it, to what degree can we call it a rational idea?
This, in turn, leads to another thought I’ve had rattling around in my head for some time now: there are a lot of similarities between conspiracy theorists and religious believers. And in fact, I think an argument can be made that religion in general and Christianity, in particular, are, at heart, a gigantic, cosmic conspiracy theories.
Return
One of the things I’m most looking forward to in the Biden administration is being able to go for days on end without giving a single thought to the president and what he’s doing. That’s how it’s always been, even with presidents I didn’t particularly like or agree with. I’ve always just assumed, “Well, he’s an adult. He’s a reasonable human being. How much do I possibly have to worry about something over which I have no control?”
Shifting Ground
Coming out of cultic, conspiratorial thinking is a process. It’s not something that happens overnight. It’s not the flip of a switch: “I believe in lizard people. BOOM! Now I don’t believe in lizard people.” There’s a push and pull, a rise and fall to the process. It starts with the most basic thought: “I could be wrong about this.” But turning your back on a set of theories (for lack of a better term) that one has invested so much into is difficult, and giving up all that, admitting that one is wrong is tantamount to admitting that one wasted a significant portion of the short life we have here on earth.
DeAnna Lorraine, the QAnon conspiracy theorist and rabid Trump supporter who recently ran for Congress, seems to be making those mental movements in a recent video. She begins with the assumptions of QAnon:
Because we have so much trusted this plan, we always think he’s playing 5-D chess. Anything that looks questionable, we think, “Okay, it’s a strategy. He’s playing 5-D chess. We don’t have anything to worry about.” Is it possible that that is a detriment to us?
That’s a level of self-reflection and vulnerability I would not have expected. She seems to be suggesting that her assumptions about Trump’s acumen and about the whole farcical idea that he’s battling a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles that has embedded itself in the government and entertainment industry — she sounds like she’s suggesting she might be wrong.
Later in the video, she says,
We’re going to know for sure. Is Trump really the 5-D master chess player who is just going to totally decimate the swamp and arrest all these deep state operatives and everything we’ve seen up to now is just a massive, you know, all these brilliant chess moves and it’s all going to come into play in a sting operation and QAnon is real and everything is happening and everyone was right. Is justice finally going to be served? Are we finally going to see that checkmate? Are we finally going to see the traps close? Or, we’re not. Or we’re going to find out the truth. Maybe things failed. Maybe QAnon operation wasn’t real. Maybe, maybe some things weren’t really the truth, right? But we’re going to know in about twenty-five days.
Such an admission, it seems to me, is something we should be applauding. Yes, Lorraine has done tremendous damage in spreading the QAnon nonsense, but if she can manage a shift, if she can see the light for herself, perhaps there’s hope for others. Perhaps she could be a force that mitigates the damage of the QAnon cult.
Unfortunately, I fear she’s going to be mocked. Right Wing Watch explained the video thusly:
Perhaps I’m wrong. Perhaps she’ll never stop rationalizing. One user tweeted in response:
https://twitter.com/WasOptimist/status/1344001808906256389
But maybe that pessimism is wrong. Maybe we should give her the benefit of the doubt and not mock her. Mocking never works. It’s fun, I know — I’ve done it enough in my online life. But we know it never works. It’s like a cold wind trying to blow the jacket off someone: she just holds on more tightly. It’s a natural reaction. Mocking certainly does little to reverse this slide into hyper-partisanship we’re suffering in America now.
If anything, the more I think about it, the more I realize folks like this need compassion more than anything. They’re trapped in conspiratorial thinking that is not often easy to escape. That sounds condescending, but it’s not meant that way. These people aren’t stupid. They might have ruts in their thinking; they might lack critical thinking skills; they might gain a certain comfort from this kind of gnostic, insider thinking; they might be lacking in education to one degree or another. But they’re not stupid.
I think Michelle Obama was right: when they go low (however we might define that), we go high.
Trump and Biden as Spiritual Warfare
It’s sad a tweet can be a tragic harbinger of things to come.
When one side portrays itself as being God’s side and sees the other side as being of the devil, no good can come of that. No unity is possible when things are framed in terms of a good-versus-evil, spiritual battle. One does not compromise with the devil; one does not work with the devil; one does not even talk to the devil. Instead, one fights the devil; one shuns the devil; one destroys the devil. Mixing politics and religion is especially dangerous for that very reason.
The Civil War created fissures in our society that exist today. How long will the damage Trump and the Evangelicals’ Faustian bargain with him last? For generations, I fear.
And this guy is from France for heaven’s sake!
Alternate Reality
Confirmation Bias
What does it take to change a “Stop the Steal” Trump supporter’s mind about the election? What about an outside opinion, reported in the Wall Street Journal?
A team of international observers invited by the Trump administration has issued a preliminary report giving high marks to the conduct of last week’s elections–and it criticizes President Trump for making baseless allegations that the outcome resulted from systematic fraud. (Source)
But see, it’s not so easy for Trump supporters who reject the election results. They’re predominately Evangelicals. They read the Left Behind series as history written in advance. They believe in an antichrist — probably the pope — who will literally perform miracles. They think that all the world will bow down and worship this man. They won’t see this as confirmation that the election is fair; they’ll see this as proof that it’s an international conspiracy. This culminates, they believe, in the creation of a one-world government that will strip America of its sovereignty as part of the coming tribulation.
They won’t see this as confirmation that the election is fair; they’ll see this as proof that it’s an international conspiracy. They will see this as part of the grand prophetic end of the world.
You can’t reason with that. It’s a faith as strong as any other, as strong as their faith that God will somehow deal with the coronavirus (those who believe it’s real, that is) and pray for it despite evidence to the contrary. Nothing counts against that faith. If someone goes through the pandemic without falling ill, it was through God’s grace. If someone falls ill but doesn’t become overly sick, it’s due to God’s mercy. If someone falls deathly ill and has lasting complications, it’s God’s grace that he didn’t die. And if someone falls ill and dies, it’s God’s mercy because he’s gone home to the Lord. Nothing counts as evidence against that kind of faith. If nothing counts against it, if there is no way to falsify it, it’s not a rational belief but merely a warm feeling.
Transfer that to the election: these Evangelicals see conspiracy everywhere. It’s in the DNA of their religion. To forsake that is to forsake their very faith.
The Split
Today, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza tweeted the following:
There is a great shift under way. We are, all 70 million of us, and our families, going to make our exit OUT of liberal institutions of indoctrination. This means schools, universities, media, entertainment. This won’t happen overnight but it’s happening already. We’re outta here
— Dinesh D'Souza (@DineshDSouza) November 9, 2020
I’ve seen the same sort of pronouncement in other places. Trump-supporting conservatives are heading to alternate social media platforms, with MeWe and Parler being the most often mentioned replacements for Facebook and Twitter. The reason for this is fairly succinctly summed up on Parler’s “Values” page:
Biased content curation policies enable rage mobs and bullies to influence Community Guidelines. Parler’s viewpoint-neutral policies foster a community of individuals who tolerate the expression of all non-violent ideas.
What they’re referring to is FB’s and Twitter’s policy of labeling misleading information as such. Groups based on ideas with absolutely grounding in reality (like QAnon and white supremacist groups) get kicked off; groups that share clearly factually incorrect information have labels slapped on the posts. Is this censorship? I don’t know. But I see value in this. We’ve all seen the mess social media has made in our lives: it’s easy to live in an echo chamber of our own making, and if someone promotes dangerously deranged ideas that threaten the very underpinnings of a democratic society, someone needs to point that out. Will this help? I doubt it will for most people. But for a few? To see that fact-checkers have determined this meme contains incorrect, inflammatory information? It might just give second thoughts to someone.
But with everyone heading off to “free speech” social media platforms, the echo of everyone’s self-created echo chamber will only resonate more and more loudly. If many people do indeed follow through with D’Souza’s idea, we’ll have two parallel societies in America in life and online, two distinct realities. And one of those realities at this point seems decidedly disconnected for facts.
It will only get worse.
Stories will be invented whole-cloth. Conspiracy theories will no longer be hidden in the dark like mushrooms; they’ll be out in the open, flourishing but, like mushrooms, still fed on shit.
Shit in; shit out. Parler is already in the news for an Arkansas police chief’s call to kill all Democrats:
Would this have happened without Trump? Would these people have been as brazen in their ridiculously absurd notions, their shameless hatred, their unencumbered ignorance? Would QAnon have arisen without Trump? Would supporters of a non-Trump Republican president have come to doubt the legitimacy of the electoral system in America? Would this graph have looked the same?
This is simply insane.
Trust in the electoral process among Republicans has cratered from 68% before the election to 34% now.
The reason: Donald Trump can't accept that he lost.
This is the damage Trump is causing and almost every elected Republican is helping him do it. pic.twitter.com/rTO7xM0res
— Josh Jordan (@NumbersMuncher) November 10, 2020
Best case damage scenario: Trump takes down the whole Republican party. Massive restructuring and soul-searching takes place and the GOP emerges cleansed, humbled.
The LA Times thinks this might be impossible:
Because Trump’s narcissism was so profound, he responded to any criticism with the political equivalent of a nuclear counter-strike. And because Trump’s insecurity was infectious, his fan base — which had outsize power in primaries — would follow suit. This ensured that most Republican politicians shouted their praise of Trump and muzzled their criticism. […]
Institutionalized Trump narcissism probably cost him the election, because the superhuman image he insisted his loyalists embrace never reflected the reality on the ground. Many Republicans were in fact not that into him. They liked the judges, the tax cuts, even some of the “own the libs” bombast. But they were turned off by the self-indulgence, the conspiracy theorizing and the constant need for praise and attention. Still, few conservative politicians or media figures were willing to say so, at least not in a way, or on a platform, where the president would get the message. Trump believed his most fawning media and his fawning media told him again and again, “Never change.” […]
For four years, Donald Trump was president, which also meant he was the de facto head of the Republican Party. This allowed the acolytes of Trumpism — however you want to define that sloppy term — to marry Trumpism, nationalism, patriotism, populism, tribalism, MAGA, etc., to old fashioned party loyalty.
That marriage is over now. And the breakup is ugly and revealing in its ugliness. For many people, Trumpism wasn’t about the party. For a few it wasn’t even about the country. It was about him. His infectious narcissism and incessant victimhood fueled this cult of personality, which he valued more than the office he held. He’s lost his grip on the office, but he’s doing everything he can to hold on to the cult, by claiming he was robbed. It remains to be seen how many he’ll ultimately take with him. But we can be sure the answer will be too many.
Those of us who said Trump might indeed be an existential threat to our system shouldn’t be gloating over being proved right, in part because the people actively working to help Trump destroy our system — i.e., his supporters — don’t even see it that way. They’re saving democracy. Sort of like destroying the village to save it.
The Walk
had a different feel this evening.
I understand that there are a lot of people out there who are feeling the same worry I felt four years ago when Trump unexpectedly won. I feel for them, but I don’t think their fears are as founded in reality as mine were. I guess that’s natural, that bit of self-centeredness in one’s thinking, but I really think the fears of Biden turning America into Venezuela are as unfounded as QAnon’s fears of the “true” nature of the Democratic party.
Contrasts
The reaction of Trump supporters to the mounting crisis is firm evidence of two things:
- This is no longer the Republican party; it’s the party of Trump.
- The party of Trump is not interested in democracy or the will of the people; it is interested in power.
How to hold on to that power? Well, at the simplest and most benign level, they are praying. There’s nothing really radical about that. These women are “praying justice will be done and righteousness prevails,” which in this case means the re-election of Trump.
Women just arrived at the Clark County election department. They tell me they’re praying justice will be done and that righteousness prevails. pic.twitter.com/xi0Q9hOS51
— alyssa estrada (@anenews) November 6, 2020
This might be achieved, I suppose, through some miraculous means, but it doesn’t necessarily entail overturning the will of the people.
Presidential spiritual adviser Paula White used her prayer session last night to call on God to keep Trump in office by overturning the will of the people in the election. pic.twitter.com/X2p6xV5kue
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) November 6, 2020
Yet not all Trump supporters wish for divine intervention to usurp the will of the people. Some are willing to just beat the other side down.
FWIW – these are the Proud Boys… pic.twitter.com/yFSUCvmvZE
— Rex Chapman?? (@RexChapman) September 30, 2020
Or kill them.
Or perhaps behead them.
Trump's old chief strategist (currently out on bond after fraud charges) having a normal one talking about how he would behead Fauci and put his head on a pike at the corner of the White House. MAGA ISIS https://t.co/jfnBdQdfBJ
— DarkMatter2525 (@DarkMatter2525) November 5, 2020
All this stands in stark contrast to John McCain’s concession speech in 2008 in which he showed what a real leader looks like.
For those wanting to see a concession speech, this one by John McCain — congratulating Obama in 2008 — is worth watching again. See how he faces down the boos from his own supporters. Very few greater moments of humility.
pic.twitter.com/3uJAwXL4eF— Jeremy Vine (@theJeremyVine) November 5, 2020
How did we devolve so far in just twelve years?
Only the Beginning
One
“I’m so glad the election today, and it will all be over soon,” said K yesterday as we were cleaning up after breakfast.
I put down the dish I was rinsing. “Are you kidding? This is only the beginning. It won’t be over until the inauguration.”
It was a thought I’d had along with many others: Trump, in an effort to usurp the election, might try to stop states from counting votes before all absentee ballots have been counted. That appears to be exactly what’s happening, and predictably the corrupt Republicans (are there any other kind these days?) are going along with it.
Two
When I got to school today, students were buzzing about the election. They were checking the news every few minutes, watching it in realtime during lunch, completely engaged, so perhaps that is one benefit of this divisive election: it’s getting more people involved than ever before, at least in my memory.
Will this translate into political activity and engagement when they’re eighteen? We should all hope so. And yet, if they’re not informed and principled voters, will it really do anything to solve the problem?
Three
We’ve all heard this argument for the electoral college’s continuing validity: “If we got rid of the electoral college, then three states would decide the election.”
I simply don’t understand that “logic.” States don’t vote. People do. The electoral college simply means that some individuals’ votes (i.e., voters in less densely populated rural regions) carry more sway than others’ votes (i.e., voters in more urban states). It seems to me to be an intentional biasing of the electoral system to favor the rural areas over the urban areas. This always means favoring the conservative vote over the progressive vote. Every time a candidate has won the electoral college vote and lost the popular vote, it’s favored the conservative candidate.
Four
When the results of the 2000 election were dragging out, it became clear that more than just the presidency was on the line. The faith in our political institutions was also under fire, and when all legal means had been exhausted, Gore conceded. In his concession speech, he said:
Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”
Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country. Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended, resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy. […]
This has been an extraordinary election, but in one of God’s unforeseen paths, this belatedly broken impasse can point us all to a new common ground, for its very closeness can serve to remind us that we are one people with a shared history and a shared destiny. Indeed, that history gives us many examples of contests as hotly debated, as fiercely fought, with their own challenges to the popular will. Other disputes have dragged on for weeks before reaching resolution, and each time, both the victor and the vanquished have accepted the result peacefully and in a spirit of reconciliation. So let it be with us.
I know that many of my supporters are disappointed. I am too. But our disappointment must be overcome by our love of country. […]
President-elect Bush inherits a nation whose citizens will be ready to assist him in the conduct of his large responsibilities. I personally will be at his disposal and I call on all Americans — I particularly urge all who stood with us to unite behind our next president.
This is America. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. And while there will be time enough to debate our continuing differences, now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us. […]
And now, my friends, in a phrase I once addressed to others, it’s time for me to go. Thank you and good night and God bless America.
He did not suggest there had been fraud. He did not suggest that elements within the government had conspired against him. He did not suggest that Bush was evil. He did not predict failure for Bush and therefore for America.
He stepped aside and accepted the results of our institutions. He called for healing and unity. His actions were guided by the simple principle that the country is more important than his personal political ambitions.
In a similar situation, can anyone imagine Trump doing anything even remotely similar?
Election 2020
Our first task of the day: voting. We didn’t want to head out and wait in the lines like everyone else in the morning, but would there even be lines? The last election, K was there before seven and waited over an hour.
“We’ll wait until about 10 and then check the lines.”
At ten, the Boy decided we should make a fire, so K went to check on the situation and came back a little over a half an hour later saying she’d voted.
“There’s a line outside,” she said, “and a bit of a line inside, but it looks longer than it is because of social distancing.”
So I went ahead and drove up to the Methodist church that is our polling location and was done within a few minutes.
I voted for Biden, knowing very well that my vote wouldn’t count in the grand scheme of things because South Carolina is solidly Evangelical, which these days means solidly behind Trump. Noah Lugeons said a few months ago that the right and the religious right have become one and the same, and that’s particularly true here in South Carolina. It makes me wonder, though: how many people don’t go out and vote for the Democratic candidate they want in office because they know they live in a solidly red state? Isn’t that some sort of not-so-subtle mental voter disenfranchisement?
Still, my disgust with the Republican party at this point is so complete that I’ve joked I would vote for Satan himself if he were running against the GOP. In the eyes of my neighbors and some friends, I did indeed vote for Satan, but since I don’t believe in him anyway, it’s just a rhetorical flourish.
The afternoon includes a game of Monopoly. I really dislike that game, but I really like spending time with our kids, so I agree to play it. (Isn’t that the case with most adults? Who over the age of fourteen or fifteen really likes this game?)
For the Boy, it can be an up-and-down experience, this game. At the beginning, he’s so very excited about playing. When I agreed to play, he was literally bouncing around the kitchen in joy.
And it’s great fun for everyone for a while. And then we start getting property, and E, with his own little quirky tactical sense, refuses to buy anything other than the utilities and the railroads, so fairly quickly, he’s behind in development. So when he lands on my property and has to pay $650 because I’ve built it up quickly, it creates a breakdown.
And when he lands on free parking, he can hardly stand it. In the end, I surrendered like I always do: just when it’s clear that I’m going to be wiped out if I keep playing, I give all my property and money to the Boy, who is usually quite low on cash as well, and hope for the best. L, though, has good strategic sense, and she quickly dominates the board and the Boy.
The rest of the day is filled with trampoline jumping, a bike ride, and games of Sorry and Candyland. And the election? As far from our thoughts as possible.
It’s Fine When We Do It
A lot of people are supporting Trump because, although they don’t think he’s an ideal candidate, they see him as better than the boogie-man-Stalinst-wannabe straw man they fear Biden is. In other words, they see it as a question of the survival of the republic: if Biden wins, he and far-left radicals will work to turn the US into a socialist/communist country, they fear. The United States will cease to be, they say.
Yet some take it a bit further:
Radical right-wing conspiracy theorist Rick Wiles declares that "if Joe Biden wins on Nov. 3, the American people cannot allow that man to be sworn in." pic.twitter.com/RHDasrPwpP
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 19, 2020
Someone like Wiles would likely be willing to let Trump be president for life, and make it hereditary — get rid of elections, in other words — in order to protect the US against this perceived threat. In other words, to save the country, he would be willing to destroy the country. Shades of the Battle of Bến Tre.
This sort of worship of Trump is surprisingly common in the evangelical community.
For a group that calls itself Christians and swears never to put any god above their god, they certainly do that an awful lot with Trump.
GOP Establishment and Trump
Lindsey Graham called Trump a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot” in 2015. In fact, he said in full,
I think what you like about him, he appears to be strong and the rest of us are weak. He’s a very successful businessman and he’s gonna make everything great. He’s gonna take all the problems of the world and put ’em in a box and make your life better. That’s what he’s selling.
Here’s what you’re buying: He’s a race-baiting, xenophobic religious bigot. He doesn’t represent my party. He doesn’t represent the values that the men and women who wear the uniform are fighting for.
And yet Trump went on to win the nomination. Bobby Jindal called Trump a “narcissist” and an “egomaniacal madman” but went on to support him “warts and all.”
If Graham (and others in the GOP who criticized Trump at that time) had truly meant those words then his victory should have given the leaders in the GOP pause, for it meant one of several things, none of them good:
- They assume their constituents are too stupid to see this.
- These men were not as worried about Trump’s real flaws as they were about the perceived threat of Clinton, which suggests they have no unbending principles.
- These men understood perfectly what was said and agreed with Trump’s race-baiting and xenophobia.
Trump Versus Reality
Does Trump forget that everything is recorded nowadays and his characterization of an event can be compared with the event itself? I’m no fan of Obama, but the man handled himself excellently in this situation. A man was protesting. Obama defended his right to protest, and even took the crowd to task for booing him. Trump characterized this as screaming at the protester. Trump suggested that if he spoke to protesters in a similar way, the media would declare “he became unhinged.” I think he’s right: if Trump ever speaks respectfully to a protester instead of inciting violence against him, many would believe he was unhinged — because it would be so out of character for him.
How do we explain this? Either he lied or he has terrible trouble interpreting body language, tone of voice, and the linguistic content of an utterance. Or he takes his supporters for chumps and thinks, “Well, even if they do go back and check on this clip and see I’m making things up, I won’t lose supporters.” Of course, if he hasn’t lost a given supporter by now, he never will. He probably could, as he bragged, shoot someone and not lose a certain segment of his supporters.
Tilt
I’ve heard it all my life: the mainstream media has a liberal bias. When I considered myself a liberal, I didn’t really believe it — how can one see one’s on bias? Now that I’m moving more politically to the right, it seems more obvious. Of course one could argue that I see what I want to see, that just as I didn’t see liberal bias as a liberal because I didn’t want to, now I see liberal bias as a moderate because I want to. But as I watched the debate this evening, I couldn’t keep myself from snapping a few screen shots to see if I was right.
I was.
First, there’s the question of selecting which social media comments (Tweets and Facebook updates) to run across the screen. During the few minutes I watched, I saw a few anti-Obama comments:
I saw a few anti-Romney comments:
This is by no means a scientific sampling: I’m sure I missed a lot, and I certainly missed some anti-Obama ones among them. But the vast majority were highly critical of Romney. Now, someone had to choose which Tweets and FB status reports to post, and something had to inform that choice. Perhaps they wrote some scripts to pull random samples. It would be nice to believe that, but it would be naive given the independent polling that shows the two candidates just about even.
The next type of bias came in the form of info-blurbs flashed on the screen while a candidate was speaking. While Obama spoke, all sorts of facts about the administration’s achievements were flashed on the screen. It almost seemed choreographed:
All these factoids do what? They present an image of a man who is faithfully conveying facts, devoid of rhetorical twists or omissions. It’s Cliff Notes, in essence: it makes sure that viewers fully understand all of Obama’s accomplishments.
During the same period of time, I saw two such factoids flashed for Romney:
I didn’t watch the whole debate, so perhaps I was missing something at the beginning. But the somewhat random sample I got, within about a twenty-minute period of time toward the end of the debate, seems to be blatantly pro-Obama.
This of course doesn’t even take into account the moderator’s defense of Obama regarding the declaration that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and not some spill-over from a protest. K looked at me and asked, as if she were missing some nuance of the language, “Is she defending him?” I nodded. “That’s embarrassing,” she concluded.
Well, it should be.