Part 1: The Rat King and the Ship of State
Though it seemed to take Capitol Police by surprise, the insurrection that led Trump-supporting rioters to invade the Capitol was entirely predictable.
President Trump had laid the groundwork for the above by repeatedly telling his followers that the election was “rigged” before the first votes had ever been counted. And he had conveyed the same message in the run up to the 2016 election as well—the results of which surprised not only the pollsters, but Trump himself.
During the last year or more of his presidency, many had warned of the likelihood that Trump would refuse to leave the White House, should he lose the 2020 presidential election. The hints of a feared attempted coup to come—or at least, Trump testing how much he could get away with—were also telegraphed in the run up to the 2020 elections when he’d employed federal forces to come down on those protesting the killing of Blacks by police, and by erecting barriers around the White House, tear-gassing protestors, and bringing the military to bear against American citizens. (An unsightly tableau that was to be immediately followed by the obscene photo op of Trump standing outside a nearby church holding up a Bible).
And at the time, this prompted further warnings from the nation’s former military leaders, followed by a public apology from current Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Millay (for his having accompanied Trump and William Barr during the photo op). Warnings of a related sort had also come in the Trump regime’s attempt to eviscerate the post office’s capacity to convey voting by mail in a time of pandemic, as well as a bevy of other attempts to restrict voting. Which should tell you who truly was attempting to “rig” the 2020 elections.
Rather than for the framers of our Constitution, Trump’s true admiration had been for autocratic leaders who rule without checks and balances—or any time limits placed on their rule. But none of these warning signs were taken seriously enough, but more as the paranoid conjectures of America’s progressive left wing.
For such a thing as a president refusing to leave office after a defeat had never happened before in the history of this nation. In fact, one of the initial and signal aspects of American democracy was, in 1797, the then novel experience of a political leader voluntarily leaving office, and providing a peaceful transfer of power to his successor—a process which had continued ever since.
It was thus taken for granted that such a refusal to step down could never happen here, but only in third world banana republics, and other nations not based on the rule of law. Also not taken seriously enough was another player in the dark history of these last four years.
For sowing divisive seeds of doubt about the integrity of elections—and about the viable nature of democracies themselves—had been part of the thus-far successful game plan of Vladimir Putin. And thus the true, victorious beneficiary of Trump’s four years in office has lived, and will continue to live—in Moscow, not in Washington D.C., or a pricey golf resort in Southern Florida.
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Like a football team engaged in a nail-biting, game-ending goal-line stand, American democracy remained intact—if just barely and inconclusively. For a fundamentally corrupt president who’d gone AWOL in response to the pandemic, and in response to Putin placing a bounty on American soldiers stationed in Afghanistan, as well as Russia’s recent hacking of our governmental agencies and major businesses, still garnered over 74 million votes for another four years of his kleptocracy, and his self-serving, if not delusional failures to address the central issues of our time—the rule of law, and an adequate response to a pandemic, and global warming.
Many had feared that the way the Trump regime had stacked the courts—especially the Supreme Court—with conservative judges, would come to Trump’s rescue in a contested election.
Trump and Senate Majority Leader McConnell had telegraphed this also in the frantic, last minute attempt to nominate and confirm Amy Coney Barrett to the highest court in the land just prior to the 2020 election. But to their credit, the nation’s judges repeatedly shot down Trump’s attempts to get the election overturned by the courts.
Having now lost in the courts, in the popular vote, and in the Electoral College, Trump’s last stand in obstructing Joe Biden’s installation as the nation’s 46th president was left in the hands of the angry, unruly mob of lunatics who stormed the Capitol.
Even a much-abbreviated account of these polarized recent times must now focus on the shameful role of the Republican Party—who until the last days of Trump’s presidency continued to aid and abet the most chaotic and destructive president in the nation’s history.