This column was first set to run in December 2020.
We seem to be living in an age where truth no longer matters. But I’m old school, and it still matters to me. So I am going to bother stating a few obvious truths that nobody seems to want to say.
#StopTheSteal is a hoax. Any 10-year-old with the most fundamental understanding of how an election works knows you have to count all the votes before you know who the winner is.
The fact that the hoax is obvious does not stop millions of people from pretending it is the truth. There are only two possibilities, regarding those who are going along with this charade. Either they do not know it is a hoax, or they know perfectly well it is.
For the first group, the most charitable thing we can say is that they are blinded by love. As for the second group, I hate to say it, but they are traitors, knowing full well the true outcome of the election, but attempting to overturn the results. They show nothing but utter contempt for the truth, nothing but utter contempt for their fellow countrymen, and nothing but utter contempt for their country. It is a rebellion against everything America stands for.
Every objective indication is clear. In spite of all the forces arrayed against it, the election was conducted fairly and freely. There were some irregularities; in a country of 300 million people, with the election conducted in towns both big and small, across 50 states, in the middle of a pandemic, with thousands of human election workers, there will be some hiccups. But there is absolutely no evidence of any coordinated conspiracy to rig the results. None. Even Attorney General William Barr says so, and up to that point he had been the still-President’s faithful lapdog. All the courts before which the #StopTheSteal hoax has pleaded its baseless and slanderous case say so, including the Supreme Court, loaded with six Republican appointees. And common sense says so.
Common sense would ask the question: if the Democrats conspired to steal the election, why did they leave control of the Senate in Mitch McConnell’s hands, when the polls all indicated Democrats would win a majority there? And why did they lose seats in the House? Reflecting on this question, the claim of a conspiracy is totally absurd. It requires us to believe that the conspirators rigged only the Presidential election. If you’re going to pull off a feat of fraud that prodigious, why settle for such a small reward? If the still-President’s defeat was a fraud, then so were the victories of all the down-ballot Republicans.
The still-President himself is fully aware of the true outcome. Nevertheless, he launched this hoax on the cynical calculation that his supporters would go along with him, and that Republican state officials would bow to his pressure and join in his dictatorial power-grab.
Nearly everyone paying attention knew most Republican voters would vote on election day, and those votes would be counted first. That would give the appearance of a big lead for the still-President in the first few hours of returns. It was even given a name: “The Red Mirage”. Nearly everyone paying attention also knew that the early votes, and the mail-in votes, which would be heavily Democratic, would be counted last. So the loser sold the mirage as reality.
Remember that kid you played with a few times, who would always accuse you of cheating if you were ahead in the game? The one who would turn the table over if there was no way he could win? That kid is still President.
Free and fair elections, and our faith in them, are the foundation on which our entire way of life is built. Destroy that, and you destroy America. This con man is trying his best to do just that on his way out the door.
May God save the United States of America, if God in his infinite wisdom and stunning goodness still considers it worth saving.
