Election Challenges, Protests, Conspiracy Theories, and Moral Panics

[Dill]

(11-06-2020, 12:08 AM)NATI BENGALS Wrote: Here is a new one nobody has heard. Trump appointee Dejoy sabotaged the USPS to hurt mail in voting because it would hurt Biden.

I know totally out of left field and not a known issue. I will be chanting stop the count with other trumpets tonight at a local election facility as those who took this fake pandemic seriously and the fake record number of infections recently are not a legitimate reason for people to vote by mail. It’s all fraudulent and we should only be counting votes marked for Trump.

Dill you are like me sometimes and the sarcasm hits so hard you can’t stop. I hope you have seen the South Park episode “Sarcastiball”

LOL. "While we're at it, we'll have a balloon . . . ."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vlv6BrrxD_4

Most of my six decades of existence the US has represented itself as a force for liberal democracy whom allies trusted and counted on, a country which had really extinguished white supremacy as a living force in our internal politics, if not quite our foreign policy. A truly progressive force in world history. That is perhaps not the most honest self representation, but it had a plausibility and enough "buy in" from the US populace and politicians and much of the rest of the world to keep that representation as a standard, a goal, a criterion against which the "goodness" or "exceptionalism" of the U.S. could be measured. We could be shamed into good behavior, at least, striving to hold that ideal.

And now, even after FOUR YEARS of Trump, those progressive forces (including never-Trump Republicans) that made the US this supposed "beacon of democracy" are struggling to RETURN the US to this liberal democratic ideal, holding on against an irrational, angry leader whose incompetent, erratic, and xenophobic governance is an acceptable price to pay for rejection of that ideal and its replacement by a new one: America first! 

So yeah, we are living in surreal times. The most outrageous and patently false, self-serving rumors circulate as "breaking news" among the Trump faithful who dismiss responsible reporting at a nod from their leader.

Apparently it can happen here. Almost did.