Malevolency in High and Low Places and the Downgrading of Democracy

Malevolency in High and Low Places and the Downgrading of Democracy

Six weeks have passed since the presidential election of 2020. After 60 unsuccessful lawsuits, including two failed attempts to petition the Supreme Court, Trump still cannot attain sufficient traction in his nihilistic effort to overturn the results of the election in his effort to dismiss the not insignificant 332-232 victory of Biden over Trump in the electoral college and over seven million popular votes. This week, the Electoral College officially declared Joe Biden the winner of the 2020 race. While claiming, without credible evidence, that the election was stolen from him, any prospect of him overturning the vote would result in a disenfranchisement of major proportions that would rip at the very heartbeat of this fragile, but thus far, enduring republic of ours. Whether it is to remain in power so that he does not have to face a series of legal and civil charges, especially at the state level, or simply because he cannot bear the stigma of being a “loser,” the broader issue underlying Trump’s bogus charge of a stolen election, is the disruptive impact of this monstrosity on the body politic of this nation.

At the level of governance, this dysfunction is amplified through Trump’s high-powered authoritarian tactics in attempting to silence and ridicule officials that disagree with him. For example, Trump simply fired Chris Krebs, former Director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, who reported that the election was “was the most secure in American history,” in which there is “no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised.” Attorney General William Barr, who was forced to resign this week, effective 12-23, stated that the DOJ did not find any significant regularities in the voting procedures that would alter the election. Trump’s ire at Barr is the AG’s refusal, at least in this case, to participate in the chaos machine that undergirds Trump’s tactics, with the hope of fomenting sufficient confusion among a large segment of the public and to arouse the passions of millions of his own followers in believing his charge that the election results, as reported in the “mainstream press,” was a fraud. Trump has also sought to intimidate governors, secretaries of state, and local officials who refused to go along with his scam, while whining about the way “The Supreme Court really let us down.” 

 Without the traction provided by a large segment of the Republican Party and such right-wing outlets like Fox News, Newsmax, and over 75% of the Republican voters who have been persuaded by Trump’s never ending conspiracy rants, the latest bombasts of the former fading reality star would not extend beyond this pathetic man’s inner rage. Thus, while state officials directly responsible for assuring an accurate count along with the courts largely withstood Trump’s authoritarian pressures, the same cannot be said about the US Congress. In addition to the 17 state Attorney Generals, from states Trump won who signed on to the Texas lawsuit to delegitimize the electoral results of Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, 126 Republican House members endorsed the suit. Whatever sources of motivation underlying the behavior of these defectors to authoritarian rule, in seeking to undermine the legitimate results of a duly held election, they are showing their disdain for the very democratic institutions undergirding this nation’s most basic political values and making a mockery of the very patriotism to which they rhetorically give allegiance, without demonstrating an iota of its true character.

 Equally egregious, in seeking to cast a dark shadow on the legitimacy of the 2020 election, they are doing everything they can to kneecap the Biden administration even before it comes into power, and in the process, are making a laughingstock of the United States of America throughout the world.  A Biden administration can, at least temporarily, stem some of this authoritarian slide into know nothing right wing populism, but it will take a robust bi-partisan effort to begin addressing the substantial problems this nation faces. Such an effort calls in part, for responsible governing in coming to terms with the systemic challenges this nation will face in the upcoming decade in a variety of areas where government, in conjunction with other private and public sectors, needs to play a significant role.  It is far from guaranteed that we will rise to the occasion and much in current operating procedures to impede any such effort. In the meantime, for the next 34 days, we will be subjected to all the destructive forces to our public life that the current occupant of the White House can muster through his megalomaniac behavior.


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