ABC News (among many others) reports:
Outraged Georgia election official decries threatening rhetoric against election staff: "Mr. President...senators, you have not condemned this language or these actions. This has to stop! We need you to step up—and if you're going to take a position of leadership, show some."
The election official was making a statement, in front of reporters from a variety of outlets, from a podium bristling with microphones. He was righteously pissed. He went off script. He was speaking from the heart.
Death threats had been made to the Georgian politician tasked with certifying the votes in the presidential election - a Republican. Death threats had been made to the righteously angry man at the podium - a Republican. A noose had somehow made its way to threaten a 20 year-old Georgian who had merely taken a job relating to the election.
I welcome this man’s anger. It’s about time.
As of today, the goons who are doing the bidding for the husk of a man who inhabits the White House, are 1 for 40 in court cases. The only court win was something minor and inconsequential.
As of today, every contested state election has been recounted and, as a result, Joe Biden’s lead has grown.
As of today, my inbox is overflowing with desperate appeals for donations from the sorry sack of a human who will never be punished for the damage he has done to the country, to our system of government, to our norms and sense of decency. I’ve seen worries that he’s a flight risk, but, honestly, wouldn’t that be for the best? There will only be show trials if there are any trials at all.
Today a disgraced and pardoned former general, who, if I recall correctly, took the QAnon Oath that was ricocheting about the internet like the ice bucket challenge or the TidePod challenge, called for suspending the Constitution and declaring martial law.
Another general, apparently, has also suggested martial law but the only websites and news sites reporting it - so far - are affiliated with white supremacists, Deep state conspiracies and the whole concoction of right wing nut job theories. Regardless of who you are, you can spout that sort of nonsense without fear of retribution because of your First Amendment rights.
Without fear of retribution FROM the government. Theoretically.
And that brings me back to our outraged Georgian official whose life, and the lives of his family, have been threatened because he had the audacity to put his country before his party. He had the audacity to follow the rule of law. He had the audacity to do his job to the letter.
The CEO of America, Inc is responsible for all of the chaos in America as it is manifesting itself today. And he fits the bill of a CEO perfectly. A study showed the more time a CEO of a company spent out on the golf links the more likely a corporation would be in dire straits.
Well, America is in dire straits. America’s CEO has done nothing BUT golf and tweet and spew lies.
The pandemic would be far less catastrophic if the president had been honest about it from the beginning. The pandemic would be spreading far less tragedy if the president had advocated for the simple solutions scientists, doctors and epidemiologists finally settled on last spring.
(Just today, one of the airheads on Fox’s morning show said, after reading aloud the results of a study on masks out of Kansas comparing counties with mask edicts versus those without, “I guess masks do work”. If these nitwits had been on message months ago the country would be in a much better place as well).
The pandemic would be far more manageable if the president had not dismantled the pandemic task force put in place by the previous administration and if the president’s namby-pamby son-in-law had not played games with the Federal stockpile.
The sowing of division and ignorance and hate has been non-stop from one man for the past four plus years. If not online, in person at his pep rallies to his ego. If not online, in person at his sloppily arranged press conferences. He’s been a one-man wrecking ball of misinformation. He has been inciting people to riot or to take justice into their own hands for his entire presidency.
It is no surprise we have arrived at this moment.
I want to thank this official for speaking out but - at the same time - I want to know why it has taken so long to speak out? And why nationally known conservative politicians, other than Mitt Romney, have not condemned rhetoric that, at minimum, can foster death threats that require government employees to hire protection and, at worse, might ignite violence in the streets?
This isn’t a game.
If Michael Flynn wants to see “blood and guts and gore and veins in his teeth”, I suggest we put him back into the military, bust him to private and post him at a forward operating base in Helmand Province, Afghanistan.
But not a FOB as nice as the one in that video.
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Here is the video of the righteously angry Georgian election official:
Also, a photo essay titled Hidden in Plain Sight: Ghosts of Segregation. Some powerful photos from around the nation. Very much worth thumbing through.
Thanks for reading, watching, sharing and responding. - JLM