'Legitimate political discourse' took the wrong course
By Sid Schwab / Herald columnist
American Nazis in Florida, upchucking anti-Semitic hate from their suppurating ids. Delusional QAnon supporters parading at the U.S.-Canadian border, defaming immigrants; shutting down the National Butterfly Center, of all things, having pushed Qrazy conspiracies to the point of endangering its employees. Fraudulent Electoral College electors. These are people Republican leaders won’t criticize. So, pardon my cacoethes for the purple prose; it’s called for.
Election workers quitting in fear. Rally-addicted Trump, suborning mob rule against guardians of our laws as they investigate his personal and “presidential” crimes. Interminably pushing his election fabrications. Dangling pardons for the Jan. 6 insurrectionists, video of whose criminality he replayed repeatedly that day, pleased. Making plans to confiscate voting machines. Urging replacement of honest election officials with ones who perpetuate his lies. Feloniously destroying or absconding with White House records throughout his “presidency.” That’s the man to whom “law and order,” “family values,” “patriotic” most Republicans pledge fealty; to whose reelection they’re committed. This is only the most recent news.
He’s now admitted he wanted Mike Pence to “overturn” the election, something Pence had authority to do only in Trumpically infirm minds. But his Freudian use of “overturn” is telling; you can’t overturn something that’s not upright. Somewhere unreachable, he knows the election was lawful and decisive. (Or he’s clinically insane.) He just hopes his idolators stay stupefied. It’s never been about righting a fraudulent election. It’s about nullifying a legitimate one, then, now, forever.
Ironically, their un-American, anti-democratic behavior is acceptable only because our country isn’t yet the authoritarian, illiterate, history-denying black hole of their dreams. But they’re getting disturbingly close. They couldn’t have made more clear what’s at stake: If today’s Republican Party, enthusiastically embracing lawlessness and ignorance, gains majority power, fair elections are over. The voice of the public will be rendered irrelevant. Lies will become truth; truth become lies. Not pretending otherwise, they are, in fact, running on it (Washington Post: tinyurl.com/welie2u).
https://www.heraldnet.com/opinion/schwab-legitimate-political-discourse-took-the-wrong-course/
