Wow, haven't done one of these in a little while. This is the heading I use for a little political rant, and in case you didn't notice, quite a major political development happened this weekend. The day I've been dreaming of for four years, The Furious Orange defeated. But of course, from before the election, I knew that if Biden did win, Orange Julius would be a sore loser, and not go away without causing a whole heap of trouble. Now thankfully, despite all of The Cheeto's boasting, and his lawyer displaying his legal prowess at in a car park between a crematorium and a dildo store on Saturday (that will never stop being hilarious!) his chances at actually changing the result are at a very low to negligible probability. Here's a thread that can explain a lot of these reasons why better than I can. The short version is that plain and simple, the sheer scale of electoral fraud he'd have to prove across many states, to get five digits' worth of votes disqualified in each one, when so far the only possible case of voter fraud to be seen is... a Republican voter trying to vote twice, it's impossible. (Mind, I am still touching wood after saying that; this is 2020!) What I'm going to do here is just give my thoughts on why the administration is doing this, why some Republicans are going along with it... and a little prediction for something that might happen before this all ends.
Tangerine Nightmare's lawsuit's now are ideal proof of the old adage that when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Throughout his business career, Biff Tannen has made it a long habit of promising his contractors one price, then when completed only paying them a fraction of the cost and saying "take me to court" for the rest, knowing full well that it would cost those contractors more to do that than the amount they'd get back. He has been involved in over 34,000(!) lawsuits over the years, so it's by second nature to him. There's a big difference in this case though; most of the times that Shitler has done this, it's been people less financially well off or less powerful than him, he's been punching down. As such, all it's usually taken is to turn up looking like you're ready to fight, doesn't matter if you really are, it's just have the position of higher leverage when you start. But what happens when you don't have that?
BZ is going up against the US Electoral System itself, institutions of government that have been around longer, and are more respected than him. This is quite a different balance of power, in that power is balanced in this case, in fact if anything it's weighed against Max Schrek for once. He's playing with the big boys, which means playing by the big boy's rules. At the already infamous Four Seasons debacle, Rudy Giuliani just trotted out a lot of stuff that's hearsay (and a sex offender). In fact, in one of the actual lawsuits brought in already, Giuliani's entire case amounted to... some hearsay on a post it note. I really don't think that he or his boss realise that at this level, you need actual evidence, and to deal with something like this, you need A LOT of it. The allegation amounts to nothing less than a full scale organised coup organized by one of the political parties, you need serious proof to back that up if a court is not going to straight up hand your arse to you, and even a group bought in by Trump himself to observe the elections didn't see a damn thing untoward. I am reminded of the time games journalist Jim Sterling got hit by a similar lawsuit full of conspiracy theories and hearsay, except in this case it's more pathetic, because that was by a small time grifter on Steam, not the ruler of a nation. I'm with Keith Olberman in the below video on this one; the only practical thing they can get out this, is some more cash to cover Agent Orange's (OK, I'll stop that now! I'm running out of names anyway) debts before he's kicked out.
So then, why are so many Republicans saying they are going to go along with it, with just as I started typing this, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo saying something VERY unprofessional. Well some are saying that it's to keep Trump himself happy, but that's not quite right; it's to keep his base happy. He has a base so rabidly devoted to him, that it would be no exaggeration to call it cult like (I'm frankly amazed, when he talked about injections of bleach that one time that it didn't end all Jonestown). They are going along with Trump for the moment because they REALLY don't want to lose their votes. They have seen how the Trumpites have even turned against Fox News for not going along with him (now that really is a sentence I never thought I would ever type!), so they know that to stay secure, they have to appear on Trump's side... for now. Unfortunately for them (and fortunately for us), that puts them in an extremely awkward position.
Here's where I get to my prediction; I foresee that sometime in the next few weeks, at least a few major Republicans will break rank against Trump, and potentially even go so far as to sabotage the administration's attempts to bring the matter into court. Why? Well plain and simple, tampering with the election is a thing that happens regularly in US elections... by the GOP itself. Not actual fake votes or the like, but things like gerrymandering, voter registration acts, voter purges, voter intimidation, hell, the whole Electoral College system come to think about it. They have been using these tactics across many red states for years, and it's why so many Republican senators have lasted so long. Now, if Trump calls into active question the validity of this election (and let me remind you that President, Representatives, and Senators are all on the same ballot), it calls into question how everyone else was voted in. It's long been a joke that Trump and his cronies have a habit of saying the quiet part loud, well this is one quiet part the GOP wants to stay quiet. They don't want in court the defense team for the Electoral System (who again are already certain to win) to go "yes, whilst we're talking about election manipulation, let's look at some other issues that have come up...". They don't want any of that to start being ruled against. So I believe they will end up having to go against Trump, simply because he'll end up exposing the dirty secret behind their success too.
After all of the posturing the GOP are doing, the fact remains that Trump lost, the ritual of the Electoral College will be followed, and he will stop being President on the 20th of January. Leaders around the world have already made that point plain by congratulating Joe Biden (many of them have worked with him before) which means that if anyone is going to do any trade with the US again, it's going to be through Biden. This protest is ultimately one last grift from Trump, one last attempt to fleece his followers before the end (and what an end it will be, with a lot of debt looming and a mess of criminal charges awaiting him). The Republicans are being forced to go along with the charade, but at the end of the day, behind closed doors, they know it's all over, but because of tying their success for the last few years so directly to Trump's they can't say it... yet. Before Trump leaves the White House though, the rest of us still have some work to do; if we can help the Democrats win their two Senate seats in Georgia come January, the Dems will control all three branches, and finally the mess of the last four years can start to be cleared up. So everyone, even those outside the US (like me), do everything you can to help; share petitions, details of Georgia voter registration, everything to help flip the House. Let's press home the advantage. And let's send one last message to Donald Trump; that for all his blustering, he's already finished. Actually, considering his terrible diet, and what the stress of all this must be doing to his health, perhaps I should phrase it as... Omae wa mou shindeiru.
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