A drive along the backroads of rural Oklahoma and northeast Texas came to mind when watching the insurrection last week. Planted throughout the landscape were enormous Trump banners and flags boldly waving in the wind. The election has been over for a few months. Even so, whether country estate or wood-frame home along the highway, properties maintained 2020 presidential banners and flags, each as large as a van. These were the same super-sized Trump flags, some with his smiling face, carried by legions of enraged supporters mad as hell about the election and willing to storm our nation’s Capitol to stop Congress from certifying the election won by Joe Biden. The mob carried a variety of Trump political ad flags, some proclaiming “Trump Nation,” these alongside the Old South’s Confederate Stars & Bars, and a smattering of U.S. flags.
Thousands who showed up to Washington, D.C., midweek represent half the country. Like all those elected officials diving under their desks then snatched by police to avoid being dragged to the gallows set up with a noose on the front lawn, I was frightened by the murderous intent to overthrow the government. We who are not like them should be.
This is what democracy looks like
American ignorance has contributed to our current state of fuming division, that and a fat-mouth know-nothing lying braggart. The 2020 presidential election was not stolen. Trump did not win; he did not win by a landslide. Biden won. What makes me so sure? The only reason I understand and therefore have faith in American elections is from covering them as a government reporter. What I learned while doing the job was elections are local. They are locally controlled, from city to county, state and federal. On election night I always had a seat in the county clerk’s office. Alongside me in the office, where votes eventually come in, were both chairs of the county’s Republican and Democrat Parties. They were there eyeing the process and results for the very reason Trumpers revolted: to ensure no funny business and that their guy or gal wins or loses fair and square. Across the nation, there must be thousands of party chairs who oversee every county, state and federal election but especially presidential ones and more than ever this last one.
Typically older Americans operate the polls, and in large cities perhaps there are more minorities than white people are used to seeing in rural areas and small towns. They are paid a little bit for what they do, often working late into the evening election night. When the ballot boxes, locked and made of steel back in the day, are brought into the county clerk’s office, the staff checks and verifies figures. In all good time, winning candidates are announced.
With the evolution to computer voting machines, still it is the job of our nation’s county clerks—all locally elected officials—to validate the vote tallies, check for inaccuracies, ensure accuracy, and announce winners. Because of the pandemic, before the election many communities and states quickly switched to mail-in ballots to prevent long lines and avoid health risks. Nothing suspicious in the sudden move to do so, just an arrangement county clerks and all the other local officials assumed the public would understand, support and appreciate.
Fake news
Along with America’s near total ignorance about our own election process, there is the multiverse of news sources, with little distinction between news and views, what is called the mainstream media and what used to be called the alternative media. There is no secret about the animosity between CNN/ MSNBC/ABC/CBS/NBC and Fox News. The palpable rivalry is not just about Fox News’ viewer figures that far outrank competitors but really for serious journalists with integrity the way Fox News plays fast and loose with the facts. That said, throughout Trump’s presidency, national TV news reporters clearly opined negatively about him. Verbally Trump and the mainstream national media constantly punched each other in the face. But the same thing went on during Obama’s two terms as President when every action he took was scrutinized by Fox News and Republican guests like Mitch McConnell, John Boehner, Michele Bachmann and even conservative Christian leaders.
Americans were left in the middle—to think for ourselves. We had to decide what we wanted to watch, which reporters we agreed with, and where we wanted to get our news and hope for the facts. The most loyal viewers of Fox News have been adamant fans of President Trump. And vice versa for non-Trumpers who stuck with MSM. The same American divide continued with online mainstream news sources, many often rebuked by Trump either by name or lumped together as “fake news.”
But social media was and remains far and away from the old timey 20th century news format of network and cable TV. Throughout the Trump presidency, the heads of Twitter and Facebook maintained every time Trump told an outlandish lie on social media, he had a constitutional right to free speech. Irresponsible speech is what caused last week’s deadly insurrection. For weeks social media posts from Trump and his supporters bragged of a planned violent attack on the Capitol Jan. 6 to stop the U.S. Congress from certifying the 2020 Presidential election. That day thousands of Americans—egged on by Trump, donning black leather gloves and wool coat—arrived in Washington, D.C., intent on stringing up elected officials as traitors. Their mission was to ‘take back our country!’—like all of us wanted Trump to continue as President. Like none of us is capable of thinking for ourselves.
Imagine their dream for our country: life in a Republican regime. No free speech. No free thought. Keep your mouth shut and maybe stay out of prison or a concentration camp. That’s how citizens live in Russia, China, North Korea, now Hong Kong, some African nations, the Middle East and our neighboring banana republics. But as we live and breathe this moment, not yet in the U.S.
Epiphany
Exactly what do Trumpers want? Trump to be President four more years? Empowerment? Money? Tax evasion? Democrats dead? No more immigrants? No more American cities burned and looted? What are they so mad about that their lives are so awful? Are they starving, living on the streets, dying, unemployed, falsely imprisoned? No, from the looks of them at the capitol, they are typically healthy white Americans with good jobs, clothes, cars, money, security and guns. One rioter yelled at a reporter who asked the cause for violence at the capitol: “You drove me to this!!!!”
No, Trumpers, in their hopped-up fake media-induced need to be cynical, argumentative, overbearing, suspicious, intimidating and violent, chose to believe lies about a rigged American presidential election plus assorted convoluted conspiracy theories. It is enough to drive a person insane.
Democracy needs two things—besides intelligent citizens—to keep it going: calm rational thought and the truth. Trump was none of that. Same for his fans.
The epiphany is Trumpers are a cult. They believe like a cult. Now they act like a cult, ready to ‘blow up the system’ as ordered by their leader. For people like me who want and need to live in reality, truth matters. Truth is worth dying for, not fakery and phony balogny Trump or any elected official. We both have something in common, the Trumpers and the rest of us: We understand democracy is an ideal. Ideals are worth fighting for but not lies, and believing the election was rigged and stolen from Trump, of all people, is a big fat lie.