Look what arrived in my mailbox today:
It looks like the antidote for what’s been ailing me (and the Nation)!
By just about any standard of measurement, it’s been a horrible year for America: catastrophic natural disasters, one after the other; a pandemic; an economic collapse; mass protests and rioting in the streets; allies giving up on us, and enemies licking their chops; and lie after lie from our “leader” in Washington D.C.
It’s like he’s living in one reality and the rest of us are coping with another. Trump’s idea of “great” leaves a lot to be desired: the guy ran out of ideas back in 2016, and most of them were bad ideas; he needed to unite America and, instead, divided the Nation; the U.S.A. is circling the drain thanks to the clown.
It’s embarrassing, to be honest. If I was traveling the world, I’d hide my head in shame.
Anyway, Charlie and I did our patriotic duty today and mailed in our ballot. I hope it gets to Election headquarters in Las Vegas.
Isn’t that a horrible thing to say… in a democracy? That you actually have doubt that your vote will be counted? I’ve never felt this way before, and I’ve voted umpteen times since 1968. Of course, we didn’t have the current President then.
Donald J. Trump seems to have a thing about elections: he doesn’t trust them to be fair…unless he wins. In 2016, on Election Day, he reiterated his oft-spoken claim that the election was “rigged”. The next day, after it was apparent that he’d actually won, he proudly announced that America had spoken…correctly.
However, he later went on to claim that he would have won by a larger margin (he lost the popular vote by almost 3 million votes) if millions of illegal ballots hadn’t been counted. Neither the new President nor his specially-appointed commission on election fraud was ever able to generate a scintilla of evidence to back up this claim. And yet, he continues to claim that the election was rigged…but not enough to deny him victory.
(A massive conspiracy, it was, probably orchestrated by the “Deep State”, George Soros, the New World Order, or left-wing socialist antifas. It couldn’t possibly be the Communists because, as we found out later, those Russkies were actually helping Trump “rig” the social media in his favor.)
So, what we now know is that our President is opposed to “rigging” unless he’s in charge of it. And, since he’s quite concerned with the 2020 election, my guess is that his agents haven’t worked hard enough to rig the election in his favor.
Which brings me to my concern about the ballot that I just put in the mailbox.
The President dislikes mail-in ballots, despite the fact that he votes absentee, himself. He’s publicly dissed all voting schemes that don’t involve the individual voter going to a polling place and physically voting there. Less chance for fraud, supposedly.
The Trump re-election campaign has also filed lawsuits in many election “swing states”, challenging mail-in voting. As the President has said publicly, mail-in voting disadvantages Republicans, because it skirts voter suppression schemes.
Lost of potential voters can’t get to their polling place…because Republican elected officials in their state have come up with ingenious ways to deny them their Constitutionally-granted franchise. Statistically this unfairness falls upon minorities, poor people, folks living in heavily-Democratic districts, etc. Republicans feel that voter suppression like this gives them a better chance to win elections, and so it is justified in their minds.
In the Jim Crow south, in some precincts, Black citizens had to correctly estimate the number of jelly beans in a jar to demonstrate required intelligence to vote. Some polling places were moved inside police stations to intimidate Black people.
Except that it isn’t right, morally…not that there is anything called “morality” left in this Nation of tribes, cults, and deceivers and their believers. No one cares about anything anymore except raw political power…and who cares how it was obtained.
A right-wing militia group was arrested this week in Michigan. They were plotting to storm the State capitol, kidnap the Governor, try her for treason (for Covid-19 restrictions), and perhaps execute her.
This year our President has encouraged right-wing militia groups to defy State authority (where there is Democratic leadership) and has inferred that these gun-toting goons may be needed to straighten things out in the even that he is defeated in November. Our President has refused to denounce such groups and has publicly implied that he may not leave office quietly, if defeated.
There’s 13 Trump votes in the bag.
But, seriously, isn’t that a great attitude…the President of our democracy refusing to gracefully admit defeat, if it happens. :Publicly telling the Proud Boys, another White supremacist militia group, to “Stand down” but “Stand by”.
This is how the Civil War got started, a bunch of hardheads flipping off their Federal government.
Dictator-in-Chief Trump has tried to engineer a version of voter suppression through “his” U.S. Postal Service. He planted an agent (Louis DeJoy, nicknamed “Delay”) atop the hierarchy with instruction to slow things way down so that all those mailed-in ballots might not arrive at election headquarters on time. It was/is a brilliant idea, if you’re a Republican and are down with winning at any cost.
Dedicated postal service workers were not amused and blew the whistle on DeJoy. He acted contrite when questioned by Congress, but pressed on with the his cost-cutting moves to slow service with the President’s blessing.
Some people intend to fill out their mail-in ballot and then hand-deliver it to a ballot drop-off location in their county, thereby avoiding possible Covid-19 infection at crowded polling places on November 3rd. That would take care of the Trump/U.S.P.S. threat.
(However, in Texas, the Republican governor countered by reducing the ballot drop-off locations to one per county, to make it harder to vote in heavily-Democratic counties.)
It’s not a very American thing to do, i.e. using the U.S.P.S. as a component of one’s re-election campaign organization, but, then again, Donald J. Trump has never given a rat’s ass about tradition, rules, laws, or his Constitutional responsibilities. All he cares about is himself and retaining power…so he can do more un-American shit.
And, so, I am somewhat skeptical that my mailed-in ballot will arrive at election headquarters on or before November 3rd, even though I put it in the mailbox today…October 11th.
That gives the Postal Service almost three weeks to process it for delivery only 70 miles from my house…or find a dumpster to toss it in.
I sure hope that our democracy hasn’t deteriorated to that level because, if it has, the fascists have succeeded and we’re doomed.
