2021, The Pandemic Against Democracy Begins

 So, we’re all sitting around in our socially isolated existence thinking, “when will this nightmare pandemic end? I desperately want to get back to playing golf with my buds, and hoisting a few at the pub.”  Well, it’s coming, it’s coming, say the wise health care professionals who are awaiting the arrival of enough vaccines to kill off the COVID19 virus, just by sheer numbers of immune folks—you know, that “herd immunity” thing.  And then, maybe we can hug our kids and grandkids again, and enjoy a nice family dinner, complete with arguments, or maybe a nice meal out at our favorite restaurant, assuming it is still in business.  Yeah, that will be great. So, 2021, bring on that herd immunity thing. We are more than ready.

But then, in the first few days of 2021, we have some evidence of something arriving that may well make the Pandemic look like a mild case of the flu.  And what is that something? A new virus strain . . . maybe a variant of COVID?  Well, no. It was Louie Gohmert telling his faithful to get out on the streets and protest the election results, violently if necessary.  And then Ted Cruz, Josh Hawley and several more senators came along and began yelling about overturning the state electors and objecting to the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. So far, I think about a dozen republicans have decided they will object rather than certify the election results as declared by the state electors.  Yeah, they don’t like the election of Joe Biden, and by God they are not having it. Apparently God herself chose these dudes to determine who the next President of the United States should be.  And no national election, or Board of Electors in that Electoral College thingie is going to get in their way.

Now, the fact that people like Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley are likely planning a 2024 bid for the presidency should not be confused with their effort. Surely, they would not allow personal ambitions to get in the way of doing the right thing for America. No, the fact that 81,283,485 Americans voted to elect Biden and Harris should never be confused with their facts, which mainly are that they imagine a different result could have been achieved in the World of Truthiness that they inhabit.

Now, why do I compare this action with a Pandemic? Well, mainly, it occurs to me that republicans have decided, as egged on by their glorious leader Trump, that the normal rules of our democracy no longer apply to them.  The glorious leader is pressing the Governor of Georgia to overturn the Georgia election results, because in his world of Truthiness, he actually won the Georgia national election by thousands if not millions of votes, if all those dead people had not voted.  Now the fact that the Governor of Georgia has checked and decided that the results as reported were accurate is irrelevant to The Glorious Leader.  His Truthiness Facts are all that matters.

So, is this brouhaha just another of Trump’s figments of his wild-ass imagination, or something more serious?  Well, were it only Donald Trump, I might be tempted to conclude that he was simply falling apart in a final psychodrama, whining and crying as he always does when he cannot get his way.  But then I look at the entire republic party, and begin wondering. Is this thing bigger than Trump?

Something rather dramatic and perhaps even pathetic has happened to the Republican Party over the last 6-12 months. Maybe it has been going on ever since Trump was elected.  And what is that something? Well, I see two things occurring:

1.      The Republican Party now sees actual Facts as irrelevant. They now appear to think and to operate as though whatever they wish to believe is the actual Truth, the very definition of Truthiness (Truthiness is the belief or assertion that a particular statement is true based on the intuition or perceptions of some individual or individuals, without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.)  You know—that Stephen Colbert Truthiness.  Republicans seem now to have adopted Truthiness as their underling logic model for everything they say or do. Until lately, this Truthiness thing could be treated as simply a bad joke by Donald Trump. All of his lawyerly efforts to overturn the election results were thrown out of court, quite properly, in some 50 odd cases. Amazingly, the lawyerly fees seem to have been paid by American supporters of Trump who appear to have more money than sense.  That is, the percentage of the donors’ money that Trump did not personally pocket.

2.       But then Republican party leaders, i.e., those elected to office in good faith, began adopting an “anything goes” philosophy of governance.  For example, the political leadership in various Executive Branch departments began telling officials to refuse to cooperate with Biden forces in terms of sharing information about the state of our world.  And others have begun asserting that they may well refuse to approve Biden’s cabinet picks, making his governing ability difficult if not impossible.  Now, I have been observing the peaceful transfer of power from one government to the next at least since the days of FDR and Truman. There have been a number of controversial elections, e.g., the 2000 election of Shrub over Al Gore, when the Supremes had to intervene to appoint George Bush the winner.  But in every case, the loser conceded and the winner assumed control of the government without any interference.

But now, we have active interference by the Republican Party, and promises to refuse to cooperate over Biden’s tenure. Now that is remarkable, because it suggests the actual coming apart of the American system of governance.  And that would be a Pandemic of catastrophic proportions, far worse than COVID19.  The outcome may be determined partly by the results of the Georgia election on January 6^th, which determines the fate of the United States Senate. But even should the vote help Democrats take control of the senate, we have no confidence that the republicans will cede the outcome. It is possible that this party has now been so traumatized that the party is effectively dead.  The presence of Neo-Nazi’s/KKK and other White Supremacists now affecting the party may be too strong for the party to resist. Think 1936 Germany folks.

Only if enough moral, thinking republicans begin to move openly to regain control can the party survive, and can we avoid something close to a Civil War Redux. So, stay tuned folks. Are there enough folks, of the Mitt Romney stripe to regain control?  We will see over the next few months. Otherwise, the young at heart may need to consider the need to migrate to some actual civilized Nation.