Trumpery and the harassment of the stewards of democracy

To little fanfare, Rep. Anthony Gonzalez (R, OH) announced recently he will not seek re-election. "The congressman, who has two young children, emphasized that he was leaving in large part because of family considerations and the difficulties that come with living between two cities. But he made clear that the strain had only grown worse since his impeachment vote, after which he was deluged with threats and feared for the safety of his wife and children." https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/16/us/politics/anthony-gonzalez-ohio-trump.html

I do not pretend to know much about Gonzalez. But I do know the constituents in his district thought enough of him to elect him twice to the House. Then came his vote to impeach the Orange Insurrectionist, clearly a bridge too far for some of those same constituents. Objecting to his vote is their right, as would be voting him out of office in favor of a Trump sycophant who endorses the Big Lie. Where things go jiggy is the threats of violence against him. He is not alone among POT congressmen who voted to convict Don to receive threats. Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), one of the 10 GOP members of Congress who voted to impeach President Donald Trump, said Thursday he believed his life might be in danger and he was planning to buy body armor to protect himself. https://www.forbes.com/sites/jackbr...ecause-he-fears-for-his-life/?sh=76d10eef12ac

Then there's.......
Trump-inspired death threats are terrorizing election workers
Election officials and their families are living with threats of hanging, firing squads, torture and bomb blasts, interviews and documents reveal. The campaign of fear, sparked by Trump's voter-fraud falsehoods, threatens the U.S. electoral system.
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-trump-georgia-threats/

These people comprise the nuts and bolts elements of our democracy. Unheralded election officials who do the thankless work of making sure the process by which we the people make our wishes known works. A combination of volunteers and poorly paid people who understand the vital work they do to keep the wheels of democracy turning are receiving death threats for trying to do their jobs. In newspapers around the country we're seeing headlines like..........

"Exodus of election officials raises concerns of partisanship"

"After a Nightmare Year, Election Officials Are Quitting"

"After threats and law changes based on false claims of voter fraud, many elections officials across US have had enough"

I have written a number of times in various threads that Trump's lies about election fraud are eroding our democracy. Each time that notion is uniformly dismissed by members of The Following. They say the violent Jan. 6 attack on the Capital to prevent Biden's certification, based on the Big Lie, didn't have a chance of succeeding and therefore what's all the fuss about. What I'm pointing out is more subtle than an attempted coup. It's an insidious attack by way of threats and harassment on the largely behind the scenes guardians of democracy. The persistent, daily harangue of good people who try to do the right thing by the agents of Trumpery trying to corrupt them. And when those good people resist Trump's mob it creates conditions forcing them to leave.

 

I find it incredibly ironic that those who say they are fighting for our democracy are doing everything in their power to erode it.

 

Who will replace the people that are quitting?

Heeding Steve Bannon’s Call, Election Deniers Organize to Seize Control of the GOP — and Reshape America’s Elections

One of the loudest voices urging Donald Trump’s supporters to push for overturning the presidential election results was Steve Bannon. “We’re on the point of attack,” Bannon, a former Trump adviser and far-right nationalist, pledged on his popular podcast on Jan. 5. “All hell will break loose tomorrow.” The next morning, as thousands massed on the National Mall for a rally that turned into an attack on the Capitol, Bannon fired up his listeners: “It’s them against us. Who can impose their will on the other side?”

When the insurrection failed, Bannon continued his campaign for his former boss by other means. On his “War Room” podcast, which has tens of millions of downloads, Bannon said President Trump lost because the Republican Party sold him out. “This is your call to action,” Bannon said in February, a few weeks after Trump had pardoned him of federal fraud charges.

The solution, Bannon announced, was to seize control of the GOP from the bottom up. Listeners should flood into the lowest rung of the party structure: the precincts. “It’s going to be a fight, but this is a fight that must be won, we don’t have an option,” Bannon said on his show in May. “We’re going to take this back village by village … precinct by precinct.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/...rol-of-the-gop-and-reshape-americas-elections

 

That's because to them, "our" means *just them* and Trump reinforces this every chance he gets by saying "they are taking YOUR country". Trump has a very niche market and knows how to get them worked up.

Take a peek at the CRT threads and the one on racial representation in tv commercials.

 

It’s a shame people are being threatened. Cheating an election sure comes with its own set of baggage

 

What's your problem? Now you all can "mail-in" a Democratic replacement.....

 

Yeah, Benedict Donald would stop trying to steal an election won fairly by President Biden maybe the country could get back to some form of normalcy.

 

But......that's just another way to downplay what's going on. Because of the Big Lie, to which you duplicitously referred, faith in election integrity has diminished. Honest participants in our election system who each time an election is held ensure its integrity are quitting their positions under threat of physical attack. If you read an article about election officials in another country resigning due to intimidation by members of a political party you would rightly conclude democracy in that country is in trouble.

If Trump were a proponent of democracy he would decry these threats. He'd implore his supporters to stop. He would not cheer at the announcement a House member will not seek re-election in part due to the thuggery of his minions.

"It’s a shame people are being threatened." That's it? You couldn't be more dismissive if you used the Trump "nothingburger" meme. Is it really so inconsequential for you to see this degradation of democracy by way of violent threats?

 

When a pandemic is exploited to change a safe machine based voting process into an archaic and ancient paper system and an election is cheated there are long lasting effects.
Faith in the election process will be diminished forever.
As far as threats go, I don’t think it’s right. I’m not being dismissive of it. Maybe they should start anonymous voting? Or harsher penalties for those that make threats?

 

When you refer to the election being cheated you might as well say you saw someone walking down the street with two heads. For those of us grounded in reality the use of the fact free refrain of election fraud immediately causes your comments to be regarded as worthless tripe.
My thread is about the actual, real world effect threats of violence by Trumpette's is having on democracy. Your response is about how 2+2 = a ham sandwich.

 

Succinctly put.

 

Special Report: Backers of Trump's false fraud claims seek to control next elections

Sept 22 (Reuters) - One leading candidate seeking to become Georgia’s chief elections official, Republican Jody Hice, is a Congressman who voted to overturn Democrat Joe Biden's 2020 presidential win in the hours after the Jan. 6 riots at the U.S. Capitol. Hice had posted on social media earlier that day: “This is our 1776 moment,” referencing the American Revolution.

In Arizona, the contenders for the elections-chief office, secretary of state, include Republican state lawmaker Mark Finchem, who attended the ‘Stop the Steal’ rally before the deadly insurrection and spoke at a similar gathering the previous day. In Nevada, one strong Republican candidate for elections chief is Jim Marchant, who unsuccessfully sued to have his own defeat in a 2020 congressional race reversed based on unfounded voter-fraud claims.

The three candidates are part of a wider group of Republican secretary-of-state contenders in America’s swing states who have embraced former President Donald Trump's false claims that he lost a “rigged” election. Their candidacies have alarmed Democrats and voting-rights groups, who fear that the politicians who tried hardest to undermine Americans’ faith in elections last year may soon be the ones running them - or deciding them, in future contested votes.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/ba...ms-seek-control-next-us-elections-2021-09-22/

This is more or less in line with post #3. The inmates are trying to take over the asylum.

 

Meanwhile, the amateurish “stop the steal” efforts of 2020 have given way to an organized nationwide campaign to ensure that Trump and his supporters will have the control over state and local election officials that they lacked in 2020. Those recalcitrant Republican state officials who effectively saved the country from calamity by refusing to falsely declare fraud or to “find” more votes for Trump are being systematically removed or hounded from office. Republican legislatures are giving themselves greater control over the election certification process. As of this spring, Republicans have proposed or passed measures in at least 16 states that would shift certain election authorities from the purview of the governor, secretary of state or other executive-branch officers to the legislature. An Arizona bill flatly states that the legislature may “revoke the secretary of state’s issuance or certification of a presidential elector’s certificate of election” by a simple majority vote. Some state legislatures seek to impose criminal penalties on local election officials alleged to have committed “technical infractions,” including obstructing the view of poll watchers.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/09/23/robert-kagan-constitutional-crisis/

‘Get on the team or shut up’: How Trump created an army of GOP enforcers

In Oklahoma, the newly installed party chair is endorsing a primary challenge to GOP Sen. James Lankford, the home state incumbent who crossed Trump by voting to uphold results of the November election. In Michigan, the state party chair joked about assassinating two Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump. Arizona’s state chair accused Republican Gov. Doug Ducey of nothing less than killing people by restricting the use of hydroxychloroquine, a Trump obsession, in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

There and elsewhere, state party chairs have been at the center of a raft of resolutions to censure or rebuke GOP lawmakers deemed insufficiently loyal to Trump.

In red states, blue states and swing states, these leaders — nearly all of whom were elected during Trump’s presidency or right after — are redefining the traditional role of the state party chair. They are emerging not just as guardians of the former president’s political legacy, but as chief enforcers of Trumpism within the GOP.
https://www.politico.com/news/2021/07/13/trump-gop-enforcers-state-chairs-499456

Trump loyalists on the board appear to be oblivious to how the POT is being remade in the image of the Orange Fraud.

 

What happened to the democratic party? There was a time when democrats generally acted honorably. I haven't seen that now for quite some time- and that increased dramatically when Trump entered the picture. When you discard your values and pretend you are the righteous one while conducting yourself with a total absence of integrity- than have the gall to blame others for the things that you are causing- there is nothing left to respect, and such people are only a toxin, a poison to the society they live in. The level of self-delusion is mind-boggling. Surely, they can't actually believe all this crap they are professing?

This will end in one of two ways. It will destroy the democratic party and it's sympathizers- or it will destroy the nation. Fact is- Trump was never the problem. Trumps appearance on the political scene was a wake-up call to America, a call to put a stop to the erosion of character and values that had been growing and return to the values that built the nation and made it great for 250 years. Only the weakest, most callous people can object to that- but many of the left-leaning democrats hate that idea, along with their cohorts in the liberal and socialist groups. It's not uncommon in human nature for people to hate those who achieve what they cannot, hate people with confidence and capacity they do not have- but it is beneath human dignity for those people to torpedo their own nation to satisfy that emotional hostility.

There are facts that are real here, and facts that the left manufactures by distortion of what's real or simply produces from fantasy. Their delusion that the conflict they have invented can be won by doing so is something they believe- but of course is total fantasy. There's nothing to be argued, because there are no benchmark values among the left; nothing legitimate or of value to win. The only right is what they want to believe; the only real is what they want to believe. It's like believing that 2+2 can be either 3 or 5- but can never be 4, because they don't like 4. An alternate reality, that is not true and was never true- except in the imagination of people who don't like the reality that actually exists... and decided they can refuse to live in that world by making up their own reality. Because some of these people have been able to seize power, we now see exactly what happens when you apply that kind of thinking in the real world.

Instead of logic and appropriate actions, we all see the blunders, the catastrophic failures adding up day by day. We see not appropriate changes or corrections- instead we see diversions, attempts to distract us from the immediate disaster- either with a focus on the irrelevant, or the promise of something with no substance or potential to actually work. There are no accomplishments, no achievements, no victories- just one failure after another. We see the denials continue, the hate continue- and the damage to the nation continue. While many of those who bought this delusion and helped it achieve power are now rightfully appalled and shifting positions.... others continue to support it and defend it, continuing the hate, the denial, the incompetence.... and the continuing destruction of both people and nation.

WHY do YOU continue to carry their banner, Lee Atwater?

 

I'm not quoting any of that diatribe, @spirtguide. But, you managed to accuse Democrats, in an overly long post, of everything tRump and his tRumplicans did for his entire term.

And, let me point you to January 6th, and his "Big Lie" before you think you've gotten away with the nonsense that "tRump was never a problem".

 

And statements like , "Cheating an election sure comes with its own set of baggage"
fuels the flames and encourages the death threats..

 

So does controlling free speech
If someone wants to make death threats that’s on THEM and nobody else.

 

FoxHastings said: ↑
And statements like , "Cheating an election sure comes with its own set of baggage"
fuels the flames and encourages the death threats..

Aside from not addressing my post your post is just ridiculous...inflaming people to do stupid things and then claiming , "it wasn't me"...is so disingenuous...and silly and can be seen as not taking responsibility for one's actions...a cop out.. a Trumpism, a scapegoat...

 

Why don't you ignore Trump? There is no need let him pester you. I ignore Biden. Every time he speaks he makes me angry. I don't listen any more since anger doesn't do me any good.

 

I had to read that twice to make sure. Wow.

 

I mute the TV any time I see Don's orange face but how can you ignore the leader of the POT who won't stop promoting the Big Lie to The Following?

 

I would expect nothing different from someone who thinks trump is responsible for the Jan 6th rioters instead of the Jan 6th rioters
Your dream of a nanny state May yet come true though
You should be careful what you post here. You wouldn’t want to “incite” anyone and get blamed for THEIR actions
Be careful what you wish for

 

It is easy. I can ignore anything I want to ignore.

 

You are talking to a person that has a different view than most free Americans when his signature states..

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion." Chomsky

 

Because I believe he intends to steal the 2024 election with help from State legislatures. And once he does, he will install himself as permanent President, with the help of the trumpublican House and Senate, and HIS Supreme Court. Which, of course, means the end of Government by the People.