MAGAmuricans say that Donald Trump won the election by a landslide. Math says that a majority of American voters did not want Trump to be President in the last election.
Math says that three-million more Americans voted for Hillary Clinton to be President than the number who voted for Trump when given a choice between the two.
Math says that four-million more Americans voted for Joe Biden at the end of Trump’s term in the Oval Office than the number who voted for Trump at the end of Biden’s term in office.
Over 76.5-million Americans voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election two weeks ago. It has left the rest of us contemplating how so many Americans could vote for a man who has done countless things, any one of which, even MAGAmericans would say should disqualify any other candidate from the office of the President. I have heard many explanations but no one else has expressed the reason that I think Trump was elected.
I have listened closely to MAGAmericans express the reasons why they support Trump and why they opposed Kamala Harris (and before her, Joe Biden). I have also noted their responses to me and others who have expressed why Trump is disqualified for the White House. I have seen a dynamic that has been consistent in all of these observations. When it comes to MAGAmericans’ perceptions of both candidates, they have been untethered from objective reality.
MAGAmericans have created a persona of Trump in their minds that does not reflect the person that he actually is. It’s a caricature of him that has only positive characteristics MAGAmericans want to see.
MAGAmericans have also created a persona of Harris that does not reflect the person that she actually is. It’s a caricature of her that has only characteristics they consider negative. For example, they say that she’s Communist when they obviously don’t even know what communism means.
And the only criticism that they can level against her is that she “cackles.” Granted, there are short video clips of Harris laughing in a strange manner but, if MAGAmericans were to watch extended videos of her, they’d see that most of her laughing is very normal. She laughs no more frequently than the typical person with a positive demeanor does, not to mention that it’s irrelevant to her qualifications to be President anyway.
I have also seen that MAGAmericans’ alternative reality is not limited to the candidates’ personae. It extends to the issues surrounding the campaigns. For example, they think that President Biden has made the United States more reliant on foreign sources of petroleum. The truth is that the United states is a net exporter of oil (i.e. it produces more than it consumes), a level of production that is greater than at any time Trump was President and America is now the largest crude oil producer in the world.
They think that crime is increasing when, in fact, violent crime is declining in America. I even know a Trump supporter who regularly blamed President Biden for the conditions in the United States in 2020. When I reminded him that Trump was President then, he simply denied it, insisting that Biden was President in 2020. He had literally convinced himself that President Biden had mismanaged the year of the pandemic because it fit his MAGA narrative.
These are just a handful of the countless examples of MAGAmericans’ alternative reality that I could cite. When they don’t have a grasp on reality and they think these caricatures are representative of the real candidates, it makes sense for Trump’s supporters to make the choice that they did two weeks ago. They don’t have to be racist or fascist or stupid to have a reason to decide to cast their ballot for Donald Trump.
After four years of divisiveness in the White House, many Americans are calling on President-elect Joe Biden to govern in a bipartisan manner. They claim it will promote healing from the open wounds President Donald Trump has inflicted on the United States of America. But a wound cannot heal if the patient keeps picking the scab away.
Everyone who joined Paxton’s motion is guilty of sedition. How can the United States make them accountable? It can look to the 14th amendment, which says that:
No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress … who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress … to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same.
Section 3 of the 14th Amendment of the United States Constitution
The congressmen’s attempt to subvert a free and fair election for the president of the United States is a clear act of rebellion against the United States Constitution.
Today I’m calling on House leaders to refuse to seat any Members trying to overturn the election and make donald trump an unelected dictator. pic.twitter.com/icTmGKCpuR
Some would say it’s a rash action and that congress should try to foster bipartisanship instead. Forget about trying to foster bipartisanship. The Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has not changed a bit in the four years since he opposed everything President Barack Obama did. And these 126 congressmen comprise 65% of the GOP in the House. They have made it abundantly clear that they will do everything in their power to cheat the Democrats and thwart President Joe Biden at every turn. That will defy the will of the American people who spoke clearly what we want in the election last month. It’s time for Democrats to fight fire with fire.
That said, I would support one concession to Representative Pascrell’s demand. If one of the seditious Members made a formal statement on the floor of the House under oath, they could be seated in the House. The statement must affirm Trump’s own administration’s position that the 2020 presidential election was the most secure in American history and that there is no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost votes, changed votes, or was in any way compromised. Absent such a statement, those Members can sit out the next congress.
Seating those Members who tried to overturn last month’s free and fair election would send the signal that they can get away with sedition in congress. Not only would that encourage them to do it again, the Republican track record indicates that they would try something even worse next time. And if Democrats don’t fight back hard now while they have a majority, Republicans will overrun them at their next possible opportunity. We already know what that would lead to. The GOP has demonstrated that it fully supports an autocracy in the USA — as long as the autocrat has an R behind his name.
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