A Michigan judge has denied the Trump campaign’s request to halt the counting of ballots in the state. Arizona expects to count their 450,000 remaining votes by tomorrow. Pennsylvania says it should be ready to announce a winner by the end of the day.
Meanwhile, in Minneapolis, Portland, Seattle, Detroit, Phoenix, and Philadelphia, Trump supporters are menacing vote tabulation sites, holding signs that say “stop the steal” and “stop the cheat.”
Officers have seized multiple firearms, ammunition, a knife, fireworks, body armor and gas masks from the pro-Trump protesters.
They haven’t countered with any tear-gas, though. No mass detainments or kettling. No bundling into the backs of unmarked vans. No riot shields. No beatings for these fine patriots.
Funny how that works.
The fact that we’re not entirely surprised armed, hysterical crowds of white Trump supporters are swarming should tell you something about where we are and where we’re going.
On some level, Donald Trump has won, if not the election, then in his quest to shatter the uneasy truce between Us and Them. His consistent and ill-concealed calls to violence are working.
Martyrdom is even more powerful than a win.
To his supporters, anything other than a landslide victory is a sign they’re being cheated. It’s a call to take up the arms they have all so carefully stockpiled through years of being told “the Democrats” are out to get them.
There is no outcome here that won't lead to more strife and more violence. There is no answer decisive enough to quiet either side.
And while I’m sure many of you will disagree with this, it’s worth noting that Democrats’ persistent claims that the 2016 election was “stolen” and that Trump was “installed” doesn’t exactly give us much room to object to the current hue and cry.
Either we respect the voters’ wishes, or we do not.
Before you tell me it’s not the same thing, look at it, for a moment, from their perspective. Remember these people are being willingly fed a constant line of conspiratorial bullshit, and told that no one outside the red circle can be trusted.
Remember that they are embracing the false idea of that they’re victims of a fraud so complex, any shred of proof to the contrary can be easily written off as another lie.
After Michigan was called for Biden, Trump supporters held a rally in Detroit. “The MAGA army is not going to let our vote, democracy, be stolen,” one said, promising to be, “out here every day until we feel like every legal vote was counted. The polls were fake, the news was fake, the votes are fake, and the candidate is fake.”
Though it seems clear Biden will eke out a win, we all lose when a quarter of the populace is not only happy to re-elect an aggressively racist, compulsively lying fascist, but gullible enough to believe every wincingly stupid conspiracy theory their god emperor can vomit out between doses of Adderall and steroids.
I don’t know what will happen when Biden is finally and officially declared the winner. Will they take their toys of mass destruction and go home, or will the simmering rage erupt into nationwide violence?
Whatever the outcome, there will be no unity. Not today, not tomorrow, not in four years. We are way past that point.
These aren't rifts that can heal, and they shouldn't.
Welcome to the new normal.
Thank you for pointing out the similarities between refusal to accept Trump's win and refusal to accept Biden's. Every tactic that we use will be escalated and infantilized by the right. That includes the marching in the streets, the breaking windows, the molotov cocktails. The nightly protests that never stop.
The absolute refusal to see the other side as human.
It's time to evolve or die. We need to find the connections with others, even the people that grew up surrounded by ignorance and hate. Even the less educated. Even those unaware of their privilege. Because we won't change them with violence, we'll only make it worse. We won't shame them back under their rocks, because they are desperate. They are also the voices of the unheard... they just don't know it.