Editor’s note: This commentary is by Walt Amses, a writer who lives in North Calais.
Fireworks lit up the skies over London; church bells echoed through Paris; and Kool and the Gang had a nationwide resurgence as millions took to the streets, dancing, jumping and shouting in a “celebration” of democracy, four years in the making, that was so joyful, so pure, and in its rejection of a hate-filled administration, so absolutely necessary, you’d have to be made of granite not feel just a little emotional. It was democracy, increasingly threatened, emerging in full flower, at exactly the right time to begin healing a wounded country.
The scope of what was happening was reminiscent of 2017’s Women’s March, when tens of millions demonstrated around the world in response to the election of Donald Trump mere hours after his scathing, post-apocalyptic “American Carnage” inauguration speech, a pitch perfect omen of what we would endure the next four years. While that chilly afternoon recorded a full throated roar of defiance, Saturday’s revelry was exuberance personified, on a placidly sunny day with unseasonably warm temperatures as though the elements conspired to announce: “This is your moment … enjoy the hell out of it.”
Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, an unlikely yet highly effective partnership, made history beyond earning a record number of votes as Harris became the first woman and woman of color to ascend to the second-highest office in the land. Paired with the former veep, who will be 78 on Inauguration Day, they made an odd collaboration, victorious in part because they weren’t the incumbent, offering a return to sanity that sounded almost quaint at times but clicked with the majority of voters, emotionally debilitated by relentless chaos.
While the president- and VP-elect dove right in earlier this week, creating a new pandemic task force whose mission goes beyond protecting the boss at the expense of the nation, the soon-to-be-former POTUS distinguished himself by crying the same foul he’s been crying since he lost the popular vote to Hillary Clinton. Citing “voter fraud” in a number of states, his horse stumbled right out of the starting gate as it became apparent that a “fraud” of this magnitude was virtually impossible to pull off, and, supporters simultaneously chanting either “stop the count” or “count the votes.” depending on whether you were ahead or behind was just dumb.
But reality was never much of a motivating factor for the president and losing certainly wasn’t going to change that. Consequently his post-election behavior, along with a small hierarchy of Republicans has been completely outrageous, superficially at least. Though fanning the flames of a “stolen” election for months, Trump appears the only one who still believes he has any alternative to boarding a Marine chopper on Jan. 20, flying over a far bigger inauguration crowd than his and into well deserved obscurity. No one told him the scam would only work if the election was really close. Whoops.
A careful listen to congressional sycophants yields mostly deafening silence save a few outliers simply stating the obvious: “The president has the legal right to blah, blah, blah like any other American citizen,” which adds up, no matter what math you use, to absolutely nothing. Never one to burden himself with nuance, Trump has utterly no idea that this is all lip service. They all know his presidency is one and done and they couldn’t care less. With their huge corporate and uber-wealthy tax cut, a stacked judiciary, and the apparent retention of their Senate majority, they’ve squeezed about as much juice out of this lemon as they can.
The GOP surrounding the president does not revere him, hardly. They tolerate his antics not just because it benefits them, but also because his presidency is an all too obvious symptom of what Republicanism has become and 70 million true believers are too valuable a commodity to risk. So they tiptoe past the graveyard, falling into line, coddling Trump like a pouting child, wary of the danger he presents these next two months, not for the country, but their own political careers and outsized legislative power.
Their genuflections are as fake as William Barr’s “investigation” of voter fraud. Their entreaties to count all the “legal” votes nothing more than subterfuge to keep POTUS from exploding in paroxysms of vengeance toward all those who he perceives as insufficiently loyal. Their cooing and coddling akin to how you’d behave walking into a room and being confronted by a monkey with a loaded gun. Far too timid to take an ethical stand, they choose instead to assuage Trump’s famously fragile ego by throwing down against both democracy and reality.
Meanwhile, back at the asylum, the administration instructs federal agencies not to cooperate with Biden’s transition team; Secretary of State Mike Pompeo predicts a “smooth transition to a second Trump term”; and Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick extends an offer of a million dollars to anyone coming forward with voter fraud evidence. The GOP appears intent on providing the reportedly despondent president with his expected inaugural ball even if the only thing he’s actually getting in January is a helicopter ride to nowhere.
America is left with two choices: Either Republicans believe what they say about a “stolen” election, which is patently terrible; or they don’t, but are repeating the lies anyway to curry favor with Trumpists, which is far worse. But it’s immaterial which path the GOP picks, reality is stalking their every move.
Case in point — Wednesday’s New York Times, contacting officials of both parties in nearly every state, found bipartisan agreement that there was no election fraud, noting it “A forceful rebuke of Trump’s false claims.”
