Shame

Let’s be clear: Yes, there was absolutely an attempt to “steal” the 2020 presidential election. It was not some vast, secret, underground conspiracy of dead people voting and other plot points lifted directly from a Simpsons episode. It happened in broad daylight, in plain sight, and it was perpetrated by an array of right-wing groups (including Trump himself) in an effort to secure a second term for Donald Trump. It failed.

Joe Biden was elected president by both a (vast) majority of the citizens of the United States and by the Electoral College, in an election as free and fair as elections can be in a system overrun with gerrymandering and voter suppression that overwhelmingly favors Republican candidates.

Any discussion about the similarities or differences between the Black Lives Matter protests of the summer and the mob of armed insurrectionists who stormed the capitol building that focuses on their comportment misses the point entirely. BLM was protesting in an effort to stop extrajudicial executions by police officers. The insurrectionists were attempting to overthrow the results of an election in order to install a dictatorship, encouraged and assisted by the sitting President of the United States.

How they went about it matters less than the fact that their goals were absolutely necessary in one case (BLM, in case it needs to be said), horrifically unjust in the other.

Donald J. Trump has been a self-serving disgrace, unfit to hold public office, since long before he ever ran, and his election to the highest office in this country will remain a disgrace long after he is gone.

I will not be taking questions at this time.