Those of you who know me know that I have shown remarkable
restraint since November 3. I have
consistently opposed Donald Trump, not just as President, but as a human
being. My first piece on this blog
raising issues with Trump was dated March 3, 2016. I am not a fan of Donald Trump and that is a
matter of record.
But I have friends and relatives who were, or are. I know that sick feeling one gets when the
candidate you most support and most care about loses an election. I felt sick when Beto lost. I felt sick when MJ lost. But I have never felt as sick as when Hillary
Clinton lost. So I have a sense of what
it feels like to lose. I got all the
emails and comments suggesting that I should just accept Trump as my President,
get over it, and give him a chance.
I did not have the opportunity to give him a chance as he
showed his true colors in December 2016 before he was inaugurated. You may recall that Trump bragged after the
election in November 2016 that he had won with a landslide and a mandate. No. He
lost the popular vote by 3 million votes to Clinton and his Electoral College victory
ranked 37th of 58. Trump
started his first witch hunt back then claiming that if he lost the popular
vote to Hillary it must have been because there was widespread voter
fraud. He mandated a national commission
to identify the fraud and appointed a loyalist to head the search. Six months
later the commission adjourned having found only 200 instances nationally of
possible voter fraud, well short of the 3 million more votes than Clinton had
over Trump. But we learned that Trump
would always declare the universe in which he lived was more real than
reality. And many believed him.
I suspect that if you were or are a Trump supporter you fall
into one of three groups. The first group
is that group of thoughtful, informed Conservatives who gradually learned that
Trump was a disaster. You stopped
publicly supporting him after a couple of years and may even have joined the
large number of conservatives in the Lincoln Project who campaigned against
Trump and for Biden. You may have kept
it to yourself awaiting your time in the voting booth to secretly cast a vote
for Biden. If you are in that group I
suspect you had a secret sigh of relief when it was clear Trump lost and a ray
of hope because the “blue wave” did not materialize and the likes of Cornyn,
Collins, McConnell, etc. were returned to office. Regardless, I am oh so grateful for you and
respect you tremendously if you fall into this group.
Or, you may have been a Trump supporter through the
election. But when you saw that he would
not accept the outcomes of the election, that he claimed victory, that he filed
suits to overturn ballots, that he refused to concede, that he was very slow at
releasing transition funds and very slow to implement a true transition to the
Biden presidency you abandoned him knowing he was in it just for himself and
had no respect or support for the most fundamental of American traditions: the vote.
All his court cases have been dismissed because there is no evidence of fraudulent
voting. None. You saw that and now have joined the ranks of
other conservatives who are abandoning Trump and supporting a peaceful and
healthy transition to a new administration.
You include many Republican governors and Secretary’s of State who know
the votes in their states were legitimate and resent the pressure applied by
Trump to lie so that he could be elected.
You include Republican Senators and Congressmen who have announced they
will retire or have announced they are leaving the Republican Party, claiming
family values and integrity have been abandoned. Finally,
when the writing was clearly on the wall you shifted. I also respect you and understand the depth
of your grieving at the loss on November 3.
But I respect you for your courage and commitment to the truth and to
the hallmark of our democracy.
Or, you may be what I now think of as the cultists. You are in the group where liars have
convinced you the truth tellers are the liars.
You believe in Trump. When he
says the election was stolen you believe him.
When he says there is a deep state out to get him you believe him. You support him regardless of the evidence,
regardless of the truth, and regardless of reality. You have grown to hate and fear Democrats
believing Democrats are all socialists if not communists who will kill babies
and take away everyone’s rights and guns.
You still believe there will be some last-minute miracle that will give
Trump another term of office. You
believe the Joe and Hunter Biden smear tactics.
You are protesting in the streets.
You are armed and threatening violence, and you still believe that God
choose Trump so anything you do to support Trump you do with God’s
blessing. The only available term for
folks who follow a charismatic person who defies logic, reason, and truth is a
cultist.
If you are in this group then I fear you. There is nothing more frightening to me than
a human being who will not respond to logic, reason, facts, and the truth. You are a believer, not a knower. You are a Trumper, not an American. You have elevated Trump to the level of hero-worship and there is no law, no Constitutional provision, and no evidence that
will sway you from your support. And
that makes you a Zealot, a cultist, and a source of fear. You would have been among those Christians
who tortured people during the Inquisition.
Or among those believers who burned women accused of being witches. You would have been among those followers who
drank the Kool-Aid because Jim Jones told you to. You would have been among those folks who
sold all their possessions and committed suicide while awaiting escape on a
comet because Marshall Applewhite told you to do so. Despite all the knowledge, all the reason,
all the higher cognitive abilities of humanity there seems to have always been
a group more than willing to sacrifice logic, the lives of others, and even
their own lives based on some belief contrary to fact.
The facts are simple.
Joe Biden won the popular vote by over 7 million votes. Joe Biden was named President-Elect by more
than 270 electors. There is absolutely
no evidence of fraud, or stolen ballots, or ballots that were changed. None.
Absolutely none. That is why
judges regardless of the President that appointed them have thrown out every
single suit brought by Trump and his lawyers claiming the vote was a fraud,
that the election was stolen from him. Every
single one of those 19 or 32 or 60 cases depending on how one wants to count
them were thrown out because when they got their day in court no Trump lawyer
could produce any evidence that anything was amiss. So the cases were dismissed. And while the rest of us moved forward toward
a new administration Trump and his zealots continued to say Trump had won and
the election was stolen. That is
blatantly false. No one has been able to
present anything to support such a statement except a string of unfounded
conspiracy theories and the people and media who support such nonsense.
Biden will become our 46th President on January
20, 2021. Democracy will prevail over
conspiracy theories and lies. Trump
supporters who remain steadfast Zealots will be in the position of opposing the
legitimate government of the United States and possibly using weapons to do
so. And such opposition is treason
according to the US Constitution and subject to imprisonment or death.
Please, please stop listening to those who are lying to
you. Please, please take a deep breath
and try to find some tangible evidence of fraud other than those who claim to
have such evidence but cannot produce it.
Please, please abandon a man who is so petty he will not acknowledge
defeat nor attend the inauguration of his successor as every other President in
our history has done. Please, please be
an American more than you are a Trumper.
Thank you.
