Our long national nightmare is now one step closer to being over.
I suppose I should clarify which "long national nightmare" I am referring to.
No, not the pandemic. Yes, there have been some positive results on the vaccine development front but that's a long game thing. In the short term, the disease continues unabated with spikes in infections and deaths all across the country.
Tuesday morning I was startled by a loud buzzing alert from my phone, receiving a statewide emergency alert to reminding everyone that COVID-19 is still a thing and to remember to 3 S's:
- Stretch a mask across your nose and mouth if you have to go out
- Soap and water to keep your hands clean
- Stay the fuck away from each other!
As the coronavirus pandemic burns through the country like a house on fire, there are images on the news of people lining up at airports to catch flights to go back home for Thanksgiving to huddle up in close proximity with other people in enclosed spaces.
After all this illness, after all this death, there are still people who just do not get it. But damned they will be among those who will get it, coming down with a debilitating illness that can lead to death. And we'll be asked for thoughts and prayers on their behalf.
Sadly, that "long national nightmare" is still with us.
No, the long national nightmare that is one step closer to being over is the 2020 election.
Finally the Trump administration acquiesced to allowing the General Services Administration (GSA) to begin the formal transfer-of-power process with President-elect Joe Biden.
We can brief a small sigh of relief that this puts an official end to Trump's fact free challenge to his election defeat. Not that it will stop Li'l Donnie from still whining that the election was rigged and fraudulent and he should still be President WAH! WAH! WAH! WAH!
No, we are not done with this petulant man-baby yet.
With the GSA's move to allow the official transfer of power from Trump to Biden, a few more Republicans are actually admitting the obvious that Biden won the election. But the damage has been done after weeks of allowing Donald Trump's temper tantrum to play out on a public stage.
Sen. Mitch McConnell said that Trump is "100% within his right" to exhaust every legal challenge of his election defeat.
This reminds me of the joke told by Ron White about being arrested for being drunk in public. "The officer said I had the right to remain silent. But I didn't have the ability."
Yes, technically it is true Trump had every right to challenge the election in court. What he didn't have was a reason to.
Time and time again, Trump's legal team met defeat as lawyers stood before judges with zero in the way of actual evidence to support any of Li'l Donnie's scurrilous claims.
McConnell and all the other snivelling sycophant enablers who have propped up Donald Trump for the last 4 years knew he had nothing. Nonetheless they continued to assert Trump's "100% within his right" options to challenge the election.
One Republican congressman wondered what is the harm in giving Trump time to work through this.
Here is the harm: Trump has primed his base of supporters to only believe him. The media is FAKE NEWS and lying to you. Only Donald Trump is telling the truth.
When Trump says the election was rigged and fraudulent and he should still be President, there's about 72 million people out there who believe him. The news may report facts like Biden won the popular vote and the electoral college, that states have certified the votes and the courts are denying Trump's allegations due to lack of evidence, those 72 million people are not listening to that. They are only listening to and believing Trump.
Even as court case after court case flounders in defeat and incompetence, even as the day inevitably approaches when Joe Biden will take the oath of office, Trump will have convinced 72 million people that Biden stole his job, that the election process is not trustworthy and democracy does not work.
72 million people will have no faith in our nation or it's government and will only have faith in the delusional word of one desperate little man.
That is the harm in that.
With the GSA officially acknowledging the transfer of power from Trump to Biden, yes, our long national nightmare is now one step closer to being over.
But we have oh so many steps still to go.
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What are my family's plans for Thanksgiving? A second post on that subject will be going live on the blog later this morning.
Spoiler Alert: it involves staying the fuck home!
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