CT Blue

Way back in the year 2000, when the Supreme Court probably stole an election from the Democrats, an outcome that surely accelerated the tendency toward fascism in this country (George Bush and Dick Cheney are masquerading as good guys now, but they helped lay the groundwork for the very stable genius), we Democrats were advised to “get over it”, and some of us did. Even Al Gore accepted his fate with grace.

Fast forward to 2020 when there could be no reasonable doubt but that Joe Biden won the election, both in the popular vote and the Electoral College. Mysteriously, the same folks who told us to “get over it” in 2000 couldn’t bring themselves to get over it in 2020, even though, strictly speaking, there really wasn’t anything to get over.

Yesterday, the person who holds the office of President of the United States incited a physical attack on the United States Capitol and the United States Congress. That attack had been implicitly supported by a number of members of that Congress, who were prepared to contest the unquestionable result of a presidential election on the specious grounds that because their party had managed to delude a great number of people into believing that the election had been stolen, in large part because those very politicians refused to acknowledge that the election had been honestly won, it was necessary to set aside the results of that election in order to determine whether the delusions they themselves had encouraged had any substance.

It is not at all clear that the deluded Trumpers would have listened had every Republican but Trump strongly asserted the obvious: that Joe Biden won the election fair and square. They might still have believed Trump, but had the electoral vote count been treated as the formality it is, rather than as an opportunity to overthrow an election (and a Republic in the process) it is unlikely that yesterday’s events would have played out the way they did.

But as we’ve seen for Oh these many years, indeed since long before the year 2000, Republicans have no respect for the democratic process. They care only about securing power and using it to serve the interests of the autocrats.

So, if history is our guide, it is now time for the Republicans to tell us that we must get over it once again; that Trump is gone, or will be gone, and there is simply no reason to remember the past, the “past” including even yesterday’s events. Trump should now, we will be told, be considered an anomaly, despite the fact that he was a natural outgrowth of the Republican Party that supported and enabled him. That being the case, we should not hold the Republican Party responsible for the seditious acts of its followers, and perish the thought that we should attempt to hold people like Hawley and Cruz responsible for their actions. The time has come, we will be told in the next few days, to get over it. Much of the media will come around. Keep your eye on David Brooks, as he attempts to both sides it.

We will also be told that by no means should we hurt their feelings by using the “F” word against them, though fascists they are, or pointing out that they are handing their party over to some of the folks who were involved in the rioting, or that the number of arrests so far is suspiciously low, considering what happened and the ease with which so many could have been apprehended, had the planning been proper, all of which that nasty Paul Krugman is talking about, but who listens to him. No, we should keep in mind, as Lou Dobbs tells us, that in these times when the “country is dealing with trying to constrain lethal force”, something that never bothered him before, that this would be a “poor time to suggest that Capitol Hill police should draw their weapons on American citizens” since, we can infer, these Americans are mostly white and “most of whom are patriots”.

We lefties should remember that the memory hole is there for a reason, and these events should be rapidly consigned to that hole. After all, we have Hunter Biden to think about and that’s something we should never forget!

AFTERWORD: I stated above that the Supreme Court “probably” stole the election in 2000. I used the term as I wanted to be strictly accurate. They stopped a recount, which may well have tipped the scales to Gore, but may also have resulted in a Bush win. We will never know. What we do know is that the court had the mens rea, as we lawyers say, necessary to secure a conviction for attempted theft.