Don Flood’s Sept. 14 letter, “Democracy’s not a spectator sport,” showed us that he noticed that the Donald Trump strategy of declaring an election as being “rigged” if you don’t win has now been applied to the California governor recall referendum even before the referendum is over! I saw many media reports on this, too.
Flood’s letter actually responded to a prior letter that advocated for a “calmer” approach to our current turbulent politics. Flood, on the other hand, was worried that a “calmer” approach could make things too quiet and hinted that politics has become a “winner-take-all” sports or entertainment game bent on “winning” and putting on a good “performance” rather than a serious process of comparing proposed strategies or plans for getting the “greatest good for the greatest number.”
Whether you like “calmer” or “speaking up” is missing the really significant thing going on here. This thing has two parts: (1) a truth that can be established or disestablished just by speaking (Trump’s relevant magic phrases are, respectively: “I know the truth [others don’t]” and “fake news”), and (2) enough properly gullible people who will accept all of this without question. The kind of truth I am talking about is just like the con game rule, “Heads I win, tails you lose.” It immediately translates into, “If I lost the election, it was because the election was rigged.” Sell enough people that line of thinking and you will get the coup, and democracy goes poof.
Next, if you can see a “stolen election” that really was not stolen, then you can say you cannot see a real and deadly virus that can be fought with a vaccine, but it’s OK to make up any excuse you want to avoid the jab. Throughout all of this is a raft of QAnon thinking and sundry misinformation (mistakes from ignorance and sloppy thinking) and disinformation (deliberate lies and propaganda). These are all examples of defective thought processing, bad judgment, bias, and misplaced priorities. You are free to choose your politics and religions, and vote for your favorite politicians. But all knowledge is either subjective or objective. Your favorite color, food, or music is subjective and only your business.
But, objectively, you need to eat to live, pay rent or make mortgage payments to have a home, put gas in the car or it won’t go, and brush your teeth or you will be going more often to the dentist. If your car breaks down, you go to an expert mechanic to get it fixed. If you get sick, you go to a real doctor. If you want a much better chance of avoiding COVID-19, then get the jab. Science has proven that magic, witches, and witchcraft do not exist.
George Orwell’s novel, “1984,” was about a brutal and totalitarian dystopia. A central component of that story was the Ministry of Truth. The Ministry decided what “is” and what “isn’t.” It was a permanent and institutionalized source of “authority and inerrancy.” It was cast in concrete. You have to read the book yourself and read some of the public reactions to it to appreciate its genius. It is easy for me to think we might actually have - here in the USA and now - three Ministries of Truth: (1) the Democrats, (2) the anti-Trump Republicans (thank you, Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger, etc., and Mike Pence), and (3) the “Trump & Trumper” fanatics (I don’t consider them as Republicans). For people who cannot connect the dots, I can recommend the 1965 book “The Nazi Seizure of Power,” by William Sheridan Allen, for documentation of the Nazi movement and you will see its many parallels with Orwell’s “1984” and its many parallels with the Trump movement. Orwell’s story was fiction. The Nazi Germany period was historical fact, and it did not end well.
Trump’s coup is still a work in progress, with many real and new laws in place to control who can vote, new powers to recall or reassign electors, and the old Convention of States that may, someday soon, rewrite our Constitution. The ballot audit going on right now in Arizona looks to be “rigged” with unqualified staff that believe in Trump, conspiracy theory, white supremacy, reinstatement rumors, etc., and who would surely do anything to make the result whatever they want rather than what the people voted for. It is also easy to anticipate that they would disagree with all the other recounts that have shown no widespread or significant problems and thereby present their work as “proof” that all the other recounts were also all “rigged.”
At my age I have lived for about one-third of the history of the USA and have lived “OK” and satisfactorily with traditional, classical, regular Democrats and traditional, classical and regular Republicans.
They all had the honor to “play nice” before, during, and after elections. Trump and Trumpers did not. And that is a serious problem.
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