Let the Waters Roil Is this the way real Americans react to treason? By Bruce Bawer *****
https://amgreatness.com/2020/11/28/let-the-waters-roil/
“And let’s teach them that when barbarians try to sabotage a cornerstone of civilized society—an election—then civilized people will, finally, act.”
“Time isn’t on our side,” said President Trump on Friday. “Everything else is on our side. Facts are on our side.”
The president was referring, of course, to the vote counts that currently are being disputed in several states. Indeed, if you’ve been following the actual developments on this front closely, you are becoming increasingly aware of just how much evidence there is of massive electoral fraud.
The question is not whether the Democrats tried to steal the election; they did. At this point, there’s no honest question about that. The only question is whether there’s enough time to prove it in court, and whether the judges involved will dare to make honest rulings.
To tens of millions of Americans, to be sure, there’s no story here. Since Election Night, they’ve been told by the media sources they trust that there’s no doubt about the results. Biden won; Trump is a sore loser; all claims of electoral fraud are “baseless” and “false”; right-wingers, by maintaining otherwise, have abandoned all reason.
There’s one thing you can fairly say about all of the so-called journalists who dismiss claims of fraud as “baseless” and “false”: not a single one of them actually examines the evidence. Not in writing or on camera, anyway. Not objectively. Not honestly. All they have to say about the evidence is that it doesn’t add up to anything.
And they don’t prove this. They just assert it. Indeed, assertion—repeated assertion; endless, mindless assertion—is their favored rhetorical device. When in your life have you ever run across the word “baseless” so frequently?
Trump’s baseless claims of Georgia voter fraud spark fears among Republicans (Guardian, November 28)
Trump’s baseless election fraud claims in Georgia turn Senate runoffs into a “high-wire act” for Republicans (Washington Post, November 28)
Trump’s ex-lawyer rebuked by election technology firm over baseless fraud theory (Independent, November 28)
The word “baseless” (or one of its synonyms) doesn’t just appear frequently. Over and over again, it crops up in ways you wouldn’t ordinarily expect. Ways that sound awkward. As if editors are under orders to make sure it’s there, and to put it in if it isn’t.
Some so-called journalists have gone the extra mile to discredit the blatantly obvious fact of calculated, organized fraud. The premise of David Brooks’ Friday column was that Republicans are “detached from reality,” while Democrats are, well, the opposite.
His first piece of evidence? Seventy-seven percent of Trump supporters believe that Biden “won the presidential election because of fraud.” Which, he implied, is proof of mass delusion.
All this, mind you, while mountains of evidence were being laid on the table in Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan, and other states.
The sheer chutzpah is beyond belief.
For most of this year, leftists have rioted in the streets of major American cities. Democratic mayors and governors have defended them—or, at the very least, refused to condemn them or send police out to crush them. Decent citizens have been robbed, burglarized, beaten, and even killed.
Before the election, there were widespread fears that a Trump victory would lead to a spike in violence. But the media called the election for Biden—and was there violence? None. Then evidence of fraud surfaced. Was there violence? None.
Trump supporters—repeatedly demeaned by Democrats, and by NeverTrump Republicans like David Brooks, as low-rent vulgarians—remained civilized.
As this despicable story has developed, the mainstream media, and the Left generally, have gone beyond all previous bounds in dismissing the plain, cold facts—and in smearing Trump supporters as reality-denying cretins.
Meanwhile those Trump supporters have behaved themselves. Many pro-Trump politicians and commentators have reacted with equanimity to the smears against them—as if it’s all in a day’s work, all just politics as usual.
Indeed, some Trump supporters have even suggested that the proper move, at this juncture, would be to bow out gracefully—to accept defeat, however illegitimate, and walk offstage. To borrow a favorite expression of George H. W. Bush, they feel that doing otherwise simply “wouldn’t be prudent.”
Is this the way real Americans react to treason?
In a word, no.
Some of us may tell ourselves that this isn’t a big deal—that, in the name of national unity, continuity, harmony (you pick the word), this crime should be accepted, swept under the rug, so that we all can move on and live together under a Biden presidency.
I’m sorry, but this is the logic of domestic abuse. My limp? That scar on my forehead? No, I just fell. Really. Honest. We have a good marriage. We love each other. Really we do. Even if something should come between us, even if there’s yelling and discomfort, it’s not worth making a fuss over.
Excuse me, but you wouldn’t have encountered that kind of thinking among George Washington’s young soldiers at Valley Forge. Or the Union forces at Gettysburg. Or the men who stormed the Normandy beaches on D-Day.
For 16 years, Americans lived under two of the worst presidents in our entire history. However disappointed we were, we endured them because we believed that they’d both been elected fair and square.
Trump has been in there for four years. He’s made up for those sixteen crummy years, and then some. He deserved another term. He earned it. He won it. And now they want to steal it from him—from us.
And they expect us to roll over—to deny another term to our duly elected president and allow them to install, in his place, their morally bankrupt, half-dead tool.
All for the sake of peace. All to keep from roiling the waters. All to preserve an illusion of civilized institutional continuity—an illusion that only an imbecile, or a low-information voter, could ever believe in.
To hell with them. Let the waters roil. They’ve already shown us that they’re prepared to tear down homes and businesses for no reason whatsoever. Well, let’s give them a reason. Let’s make it clear to them that if we’ve been reticent so far, it’s not because we’re weak—it’s because we’re civilized.
And let’s teach them that when barbarians try to sabotage a cornerstone of civilized society—an election—then civilized people will, finally, act.
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