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.
-----------
“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=
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