Category: Anger
The clear and present danger of Trump’s enduring ‘Big Lie’
https://www.npr.org/2021/12/23/1065277246/trump-big-lie-jan-6-election
Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesPro-Trump rioters storm the U.S. Capitol following a rally with President Donald Trump on Jan. 6. His supporters gathered in the nation’s capital to protest the ratification of Joe Biden’s Electoral College victory.
It’s been nearly a year since the United States suffered an unprecedented attack on constitutional democracy.When a violent mob stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, the goal was to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election and install Donald Trump to a second term.
Call it an insurrection or a coup attempt, it was fueled by what’s known as the “Big Lie”: the verifiably false assertion that Trump won. Joe Biden won 306 votes in the Electoral College, while Trump received 232. In the popular vote, Biden won by more than 7 million votes.
Many are warning that over the past year, that “big lie” of a stolen election has grown more entrenched and more dangerous.
“I’ve never been more scared about American democracy than I am right now, because of the metastasizing of the ‘big lie,’ ” says election law expert Rick Hasen, co-director of the Fair Elections and Free Speech Center at the University of California, Irvine.
“This is not the kind of thing I expected to ever worry about in the United States,” Hasen says. “I kind of feel like a climate scientist from five years ago or [an] expert on viruses a couple of years ago, sounding the alarm and just hoping that we’re not too late already.”
A “big lie” with roots in history
In rallies across the country, Trump continues to hammer on the fiction that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him.
Speaking at a rally in Georgia in September, Trump trumpeted his familiar, baseless claim that the election was “corrupt” and “rigged.”
“I have no doubt that we won, and we won big,” Trump said. “The headlines claiming that Biden won are fake news — and a very big lie.”
A couple of weeks later, he repeated the fiction at a rally in Iowa. “We didn’t lose,” he insisted to a crowd that rewarded him with chants of “Trump won!”
By inverting the narrative, attempting to slough off the “big lie” and pin it instead on his opponents, Trump exploited an age-old tactic, says Yale University history professor Timothy Snyder.
Scott Olson/Getty ImagesFormer President Donald Trump repeated his lies about a “totally corrupt” election at a rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds on Oct. 9. “We didn’t lose,” he told the crowd, which rewarded him with chants of “Trump won!”
“Part of the character of the ‘big lie’ is that it turns the powerful person into the victim,” he says. “And then that allows the powerful person to actually exact revenge, like it’s a promise for the future.”
Snyder, author of the books The Road to Unfreedom and On Tyranny, has spent years studying the ways tyrants skewer truth. Snyder points to Hitler’s original definition of the “big lie” in his manifesto, Mein Kampf and the ways he used it to blame Jews for all of Germany’s woes.
“The lie is so big that it reorders the world,” Snyder says. “And so part of telling the big lie is that you immediately say it’s the other side that tells the big lie. Sadly, but it’s just a matter of record, all of that is in Mein Kampf.“
A lie that’s become embedded in public opinion
Over the past year, Trump’s lie that election fraud cost him the White House has become firmly anchored in public opinion.
According to a CNN poll conducted this summer, fully 36% of Americans do not believe that President Biden legitimately won the election. Among Republicans, that number leaps to 78%.
In an NPR/PBS Newshour/Marist poll conducted in October, just 34% of Republicans say they trust that elections are fair, while 75% of Republicans say Trump has a legitimate claim that there were “real cases of fraud that changed the results.” Just 2% of Democrats agreed with that statement.
What’s more, says Timothy Snyder, “the ‘big lie’ is not just in people’s minds. It’s also now in the law books.”
Snyder points to the raft of new laws passed in Republican-led states that restrict voting. Over the past year, at least 19 states have passed laws limiting ballot access.
Tyrone Turner for NPRThousands came to Washington for the March On For Voting Rights on Aug. 28. Martin Luther King III, the Rev. Al Sharpton and Texas Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee are among those pictured.
In addition, Trump loyalists in battleground states are running for powerful offices that control elections. These are candidates who are endorsed by Trump, because they’ve embraced his lie that he won the 2020 election.
And some Republican-controlled state legislatures have moved to seize power over elections, opening a path where they could overrule voters and substitute their own slate of electors to choose the winner.
All of it, Snyder says, is a direct outcome of Trump’s “big lie” and is deeply troubling for the future.
“All of those things set us up for a scenario where the candidate who loses by every measure, not just by the popular vote, but by the Electoral College, the candidate who loses by every measure will nevertheless be installed as president of the United States,” Snyder says. “I think that is probably the most likely scenario in 2024 as things stand now.”
That scenario needs to be confronted immediately, Snyder says: “It’s right in front of our eyes. The most interesting and the most distressing thing about American news coverage right now is that we don’t treat the end of democracy in America as the story. That is the story.”
We delude ourselves, Snyder says, if we think we’re immune from an anti-democratic turn. “We imagine that there’s somehow this immovable American democratic background, which doesn’t really exist,” he says. “We can lose democracy just like anybody else can, just like most people have in the history of democracy. We can lose it, and we’re losing it right now.”
“The fierce urgency of now”
As of yet, the Democratic-led Congress has been unable to pass legislation to protect voting rights, a fact that Carol Anderson, professor of African-American Studies at Emory University, finds appalling.
She argues that passing voting rights laws would “short-circuit the damage that the ‘big lie’ is doing and will do.”
Anderson sees “a Democratic Party that does not understand that American democracy is hanging by a thread, and does not grapple with the fierce urgency of now.”
We have been, in her words, “baptized in American exceptionalism” — the naive belief that the demise of democracy can’t happen here.
“Even after you have had the insurrection,” Anderson says, “even after you have had these legislatures write these laws figuring out not only how to stop Black people, brown people, indigenous people from voting, but also how to lower the guardrails of democracy that prevented Trump from being able to overturn the results in these states; so even after seeing this, to not move and do what needs to be done to protect this nation?” Anderson sighs. “It’s unconscionable.”
Scott Olson/Getty ImagesGuests arrive for a rally with former President Donald Trump at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Like Trump, his fans continue to perpetuate the “big lie.”
For Anderson, author of the books White Rage and One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression Is Destroying Our Democracy, Trump’s lie about the election sprouts from the same twisted roots as his birtherism lie, which is the conspiracy theory Trump peddled, falsely claiming that Barack Obama was born outside the U.S. and therefore ineligible to serve as president.
Linking both, she says, is a clear racist throughline.
“Foundational to that is the devaluation and the dismissing of American citizenship for Black people,” Anderson says. “This is about, ‘My nation is about the real Americans. And all of those folks aren’t real Americans.’ It is so vile. It is so racist. And it works. That’s the thing, it works.”
After all, Anderson says, if you repeat the lie enough times, it starts to sound like the truth.
A failed coup is practice for a successful one
In Congress, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol has interviewed hundreds of witnesses to establish the truth of what happened that day.
Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., is one of just two Republicans on the committee. An outspoken Trump critic, he has announced he won’t run for reelection.
Kinzinger compares conspiracy theories to a cancer eating away at the Republican Party, and feeding that cancer, he says, is the “big lie.”
“The thing that’s most concerning is that it has endured in the face of all evidence,” he says. “And I’ve gotten to wonder if there is actually any evidence that would ever change certain people’s minds.”
Beyond his committee’s mission of uncovering what happened on Jan. 6 itself, Kinzinger has broader questions.
“More importantly in my mind, what is the rot in the system that led up to Jan. 6? And where have we come since? And how do we stop anything like this from happening again?” he asks. ” ‘Cause even though Jan. 6 technically failed, there’s a lot of areas where you can learn from, if your goal is to overthrow a legitimate election and potentially do it successfully next time.”
And that is precisely the lesson from history, says Yale professor Timothy Snyder.
“It wasn’t enough, but next time, it could well be enough. And the fact that it’s been rehearsed makes me worry,” he says. “This is what historians and political scientists who study coups d’etat say. They say a failed coup is practice for a successful one.”
Samuel Corum/Getty ImagesVirginia National Guard soldiers march across the east side of the U.S. Capitol on their way to their guard posts on Jan. 16. After the riots at the U.S. Capitol Building, the FBI warned of additional threats in the nation’s capital and in all 50 states.
What we’re potentially looking at, Snyder warns, is nothing less than the end of the democratic United States as we’ve come to know it.
“That’s just the reality,” he says. “And in order to prevent things from being frightening, you have to look right at them and say, ‘OK, that’s the monster. How can I disassemble it? How can I take it to pieces? How can I make sure that that story isn’t our only story?’ But it will be unless we tell it to ourselves straight.”
We have to confront that reality, Snyder says, if we are to find the courage and conviction to do something about it.
Tell the truth, Gov. DeSantis. Florida doesn’t need an election-crime investigation office | Editorial
https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article256735862.html
File photo of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on May 6 in West Palm Beach after he signed a sweeping elections bill into law that he and other Republicans said would place guardrails against fraud, even though there were no signs of voter irregularities in the November presidential election. AP
No one is “for” election fraud, but Florida lawmakers returning to Tallahassee next month should still reject Gov. Ron DeSantis’ unnecessary, expensive — and potentially mischief-making — proposition that the state needs a 52-person, $5.7 million Office of Election Crime and Security.
The immediate outcry from prosecutors — and the lukewarm reaction of even some Republicans — should be a clue: This is an attempt to exploit the fears of the public while allowing DeSantis to cast himself as the superhero of election integrity. And it’s no coincidence that this effort also dovetails with the false narrative that Donald Trump — DeSantis’ mentor — only lost the 2020 election because of fraud.
The state already has the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, counties already have states attorney and there are federal prosecutors to boot. This new office would have the power to take control over any investigation conducted by local police or prosecutors. That’s unwise and unnecessary. And don’t forget, Florida is already in court defending another DeSantis-driven law supposedly aimed at election security by making it more difficult to vote by mail.
VOTING FRAUD RARE
The main issue, though, is that election fraud in Florida is relatively rare and — here’s the cynical part — the governor knows it. He even bragged about the wonderful success of the 2020 election under his stellar leadership.
Let’s hear it from DeSantis himself, back on Nov. 4, 2020:
“People are actually looking at Florida and asking the question, ‘Why can’t the states be more like Florida? Florida was able to handle 11 million ballots,’” he said then, fresh off the election that delivered Florida to President Trump, though Trump lost the White House. “The way Florida did it, I think, inspires confidence. I think that’s how elections should be run.”
He went on: “Perhaps 2020 was the year that we finally vanquished the ghosts of Bush vs. Gore.”
That doesn’t sound like a man who is so wracked with worries about election integrity in Florida that he needs to create an entirely new office with more staffers than most police departments to combat the problem.
His own secretary of state jumped in as well. “Florida’s election in 2020 was accurate, transparent and conducted in compliance with Florida law,” Republican Laurel Lee said, as quoted in the Orlando Sentinel. “Florida has already conducted both pre- and post-elections audits, and we are confident in the security and integrity of our 2020 election results. . . . The post-election audit confirmed that Florida’s 2020 election was secure and accurate.”
And yet, take a wild guess at who would get to oversee this vast new office that is suddenly required to root out election fraud. Lee, of course.
2020 ELECTION WAS ‘GOOD’
DeSantis has said the office is needed because local prosecutors and police aren’t always pursuing election problems with the vigor that he apparently thinks is required — even though he said he also believes the most recent election went well. As recently as Oct. 12, he tried to split the difference, telling the media at a St. Petersburg press conference that the 2020 election had been “good” but then adding: “I think the issue is, Do you want to make sure you continue doing that, going forward?”
That sounds an awful lot like he wants to create a $5.7 million, 52-person office purely on spec. But of course, it’s not his money paying for it.
His spokeswoman, Christina Pushaw, continued to sound the “curbing future crime” theme, telling the Herald Editorial Board that, “Having a dedicated team responsible for investigating alleged election-related crimes will function as a powerful deterrent to would-be perpetrators of election fraud. Alongside other election-integrity reforms, this measure will go a long way toward strengthening public trust in elections.”
In 2018, as Pushaw noted, Palm Beach County ran into trouble completing state-mandated recounts for the November election. DeSantis replaced the elections supervisor there shortly after he got into office.
Certainly, some election-law violation cases are being prosecuted right now — but that is happening with existing law-enforcement resources. Three residents of The Villages in Central Florida were arrested this month on charges they cast more than one ballot in the 2020 election. (Two were Republicans and the other had had no party affiliation.) There’s also the ongoing case of former GOP state senator Frank Artiles, who has been accused of recruiting and paying a no-party candidate, Alexis Pedro Rodriguez, to sway the outcome of a Miami-Dade state Senate race.
No doubt, there are some cases that should be pursued, but aren’t. The Miami Herald noted that local prosecutors have a “mixed track record” on going after election-related allegations.
DEMANDING FLORIDA AUDIT
And yet, there is little evidence that vote fraud is rampant, despite the GOP’s focus on this issue nationally. A recent Associated Press review of voter fraud in the six battleground states disputed by Trump found fewer than 475 cases. They didn’t look at Florida because its results weren’t disputed. In other words, even Trump’s camp believed the election here went fine.
That hasn’t stopped a small number of Florida Republicans from loudly demanding that the state conduct an audit of the 2020 election results, an obvious nod to Trump. DeSantis has resisted — hard to do anything else after he proclaimed that Florida’s handling of elections “inspires confidence” — but he’s also under fire from Trump’s pal, Roger Stone. Stone has threatened to challenge the governor in the gubernatorial primary next year as a way to siphon off votes unless DeSantis says he won’t run for president, especially against Trump.
What’s a governor-slash-potential-presidential-candidate to do? Create a diversion, in the form of a new state office with unprecedented authority to investigate claims of vote fraud — even if it’s overkill. This would have been the perfect time for the governor to stand up to a bully, to make clear that he will base his career on doing what’s right, not what’s politically advantageous. Unfortunately, that has never been DeSantis’ M.O. So, he knuckled under, to Floridians’ detriment.
If the governor truly wants bolster confidence in Florida’s election system, we have a radical idea: Just tell the truth — that we all can be proud that there’s little election crime in Florida, and that his election-crimes office is totally unnecessary, after all.
But don’t hold your breath for that one.
Fresh turmoil hits Wisconsin vote ‘audit’ after top ‘investigator’ calls on GOP senator to resign
https://www.rawstory.com/wisconsin-audit-2656111857/
On Thursday, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported that Michael Gableman, the former Wisconsin Supreme Court justice turned pro-Trump elections “investigator,” is calling for the resignation of a Republican state senator who criticized his purported probe into election security.
“Republican state Sen. Kathleen Bernier of Lake Hallie this month referred to Gableman’s work as a charade and said he should wrap up his review quickly,” reported Patrick Marley and Katelyn Ferral. “Bernier said she would bring a concealed weapons permit with her if she went to see Gableman address a crowd because his work ‘keeps jazzing up’ people who don’t know what they’re talking about.”
According to the report, Gableman fired back with a speech posted to the Facebook page of the Chippewa County Republican Party, where Bernier lives.
“He noted Bernier had said she would bring her concealed weapons permit with her but added he did not believe she had any intention of shooting him,” said the report. “‘It’s just that she had been so afraid of her own constituents that she wanted to be armed,’ Gableman said. ‘And I guess I had several reactions to that, one of which was, geez, if you’re an elected official and you’re so afraid of your constituents that you think you have to bring a firearm to see them, you should take a long hard look at what you’ve been doing. And then, frankly, resign.'”
Gableman, who was charged with finding fraud in the 2020 presidential election by state Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, has swiftly become controversial.
Local papers have described his probe as a “fraud” and a “train wreck.” He has tried to order the Waukesha County Sheriff’s Office to arrest the mayors of Green Bay and Madison for allegedly defying his “subpoenas,” even though the information requests went to the city governments’ spam filters under a false name and even though they already provided the documents he was demanding.
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Daily cartoon / meme roundup: Under 18 is either a kid with all that means or we get real and lower the age of adulthood. The idea that they are kids for everything until we want revenge / vengeance / punish is bullshit to the max
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Scottie’s world today
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People are slowly starting to see what progressives have been saying all along.
Our language has developed to describe capitalism’s massive shortcomings and failures.
Hurting children and parents are pro-life bona fides.
Reminder for the soulless gun enablers in church.
This is yet another warning: our biggest threat is right wing terror. The cult have no guard rails.
Certain Americans fall for Russian propaganda. They call it ‘research’.
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Misleading right wing media cartoons / memes
Even with the Q-publicans doing all they can to obstruct and defeat any attempt to make things better, I don’t think that Biden’s pols are as low as Trump reached.
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And now some for fun
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That’s the opposite of “hands-off.” It’s actively pro-pandemic.
