Feeling Flushed

I realize that this is a relatively good time to be an American. We have adult governance again and the children who misbehaved badly at the Capitol on January 6th are being rounded up to face their eventual legal dispositions. My 'toons, therefore, should be more festooned with rainbows and puppies rather than dour assessments of what's in the pus-riddled minds of the traitors previously known as the Republican Party.

But I know how they felt.

I asked myself the other day, "What if President Obama had told the country on November 10, 2016, that something was horribly amiss and that the Presidency had been stolen by a man who lost the election by almost three million votes?"

I would have believed Mr. Obama. With all my heart.

Hell, I would have believed ANYTHING other than that orange, racist con-man had somehow won the presidential election. But, first and foremost, after enjoying eight years of Mr. Obama's competent leadership I knew that he was an honorable, decent, trustworthy human and if he said the election results stunk to high Heaven, I'd have cried "Amen!".

(Technical note: Trump won the election by a mere sprinkling of 77,000 votes across three states. That's all.)

Numerous legal processes would have then ensued and there's no telling what the outcome would have been, but Mr. Obama was still President at the time and, as we've seen from Trump's last days in office, there's a lot of power that can be implemented from behind the Resolute Desk.

Most likely, as the voting data in critical state legislatures was controlled by Conservatives, there probably would have come a moment where no final, definitive decision could be determined, and that Trump was declared the winner.

If, at that point, Mr. Obama had said "That's it. The Russians have installed their puppet in the White House. It's up to the people now. You must rise up and fight for your country!", I would have been there.

I think this moment is what Republicans were referring to when they often said Obama wanted to be dictator. (They said a lot of other mean, nasty, ugly things, too.) It could be that they, and Mr. Obama, knew that this moment in our nation's history was possible, where the Republican Party had finally suppressed and gerrymandered enough votes to put a malleable sociopath in the Oval Office. Mr. Obama, being privy to security assessments regarding Trump, knew he would be a mortal danger to this country. Which proved true.

If Mr. Obama had told the American people that the only way to save the country was through active, possibly violent protest, the resultant crowds would have made the Million Woman March look like a corner lemonade stand. And there would have been death and destruction across this country as the fetal QAnon's grabbed their assault rifles and showed their displeasure in a way that would be horrifyingly ironic considering their actions in 2021.

Fortunately, the country made it through Trump's four years, but just barely. Though after sifting through the radioactive rubble Trump left in his wake maybe a 2016 Democratic insurrection would have been worth it. It would have been a good time to sit down and rethink who controls the President when the President is out of control.

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“I was allowed to believe things that weren’t true.” - Marjorie Taylor Greene

"Those who can make you believe absurdities, can make you commit atrocities." - Voltaire

=Lefty=