Let’s Not Fool Ourselves
“We don’t live under the rule of law; we live under the rule of whatever at least five unelected justices decree.” Elie Mystal, The Nation
Very few people in the public sphere ask this question: if the Democrats rigged the election of 2020, why did so many down-ballot Republicans win their races? Why would the Democrats go to all the difficulty of stealing the election only to give themselves the slenderest of margins in Congress? Why would they stop at defeating Trump, why not grab all the levers of legislative power?
This logic is why Trump’s stolen election fable is simply that, a fable, but such is Trump’s skill as a ringmaster that millions of people believe him, including almost every member of the Trump GOP. But let us never fail to speak the truth: Trump lost. Millions of American voters rejected him and his brand of incompetent, corrupt, scorched-earth politics.
Every day I receive dozens of emails and text messages from Democrats related to the November 8 election, from Barnes and Demings and Beto and Fetterman and Reverend Warnock, all asking for money and predicting dire consequences if the Dems do not retain control of Congress. I get it, I voted, as has my wife and son, mother-in-law, and we have encouraged our daughter who is away at school in Philadelphia to register there. I think I have a better-than-average understanding of what’s at stake, but I’m also a realist, and whether the Democrats retain Congress or get hammered like they did in 2010, the aftermath will not be smooth or peaceful. It’s more likely that we will see violence come election day, at polling stations, as has happened many times in our turbulent history, and I fear we’re certain to see violence if Democrats win because Trump’s MAGA-followers will not respect the results. Trump snapped the election system’s back by constantly repeating his lies about 2020. Now, as I predicted in January of 2020, ALL elections are immediately suspect and will be contested by the losers. Trump showed the way to do it. The truth doesn’t matter.
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Those who perceive this as the end of the world as we know it, who fear a multi-racial, pluralistic society, are sure to react, and if they have been fed a steady diet of fear-mongering about people of color, foreigners, Jews, Muslims and whipped up to a fever pitch — and if they have weapons, which millions of Americans do — an eruption of violence seems unavoidable.
Democracy cannot function this way, but what’s to stop this trend? The rule of law? It’s been a year and a half since the January 6 mob attack on the seat of the legislative branch and Trump hasn’t been indicted. A year and a half. The wheels of justice turn so slowly for the rich and well-connected, and so quickly for the poor and powerless.
The more I read about Reconstruction and American history in the early years of the twentieth century, the run-up to World War I and the political unrest in the years leading to the stock market collapse in 1929, the more I feel like we’re headed for a confrontation, not only because our politics is corrupted by money and malfeasance by both parties, but because of the perverse concentration of wealth and economic power in this supposedly “middle-class” country. The scales of power are far out of whack. I’ve said the same thing for two decades — a society so brutally unequal can never be peaceful. Inequality was what animated the labor unrest, strikes and violence in the 1920’s. But today we see a toxic mix of grotesque inequality and the reality of demographics, a white majority that is headed for numerical minority. Those who perceive this as the end of the world as we know it, who fear a multi-racial, pluralistic society, are sure to react, and if they have been fed a steady diet of fear-mongering about people of color, foreigners, Jews, Muslims and whipped up to a fever pitch — and if they have weapons, which millions of Americans do — an eruption of violence seems unavoidable. How widespread and long the violence lasts and how much damage is done, people killed and injured, property destroyed, how law enforcement responds, is the open question.
The basic promise of democratic elections — that votes are cast, tabulated and the outcome accepted by all parties — no longer applies. Intimidation by vigilantes at polling places, rigid laws to make voting hard in certain places, among certain people, gerrymandered electoral maps, or even popular votes that are overruled by legislative bodies, this is the new normal, and it’s not democracy. It’s a recipe for single party minority rule.
I’m not advocating that any eligible voter sit this election out. Far from it. We need to vote in numbers too large to ignore, but we must also be prepared to defend the results against extra-legal challenges, a propaganda onslaught, and violence. Vigilance and fortitude will be required as we head into this winter of discontent.
