If It Smells Like a Dictator….
Let me finish that line from the title of today’s TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less for ya, “If it smells like a dictator…..yeah, it’s a motherfucking dictator.” Now if you recall, I told you this was going to happen, but when Trump started tweeting last week that we should postpone the election in order to safeguard against potential fraud or other disruptions to the election process, shit got real.
First of all, let’s be clear about one thing: Trump has absolutely no power whatsoever to effect this change in the timing of the election. The Constitution firmly entrusts the right to establish the timing for presidential elections to the U.S. Congress, and if you think Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats who control the House of Representatives are going to cede that authority over to Donald Trump, a move that would be unprecedented in American history, well, I have a spot waiting for you at Trump University.
But that doesn’t stop his cronies from trying to trash every balance of power established by the Founding Fathers in order to somehow keep their boss in the White House. When asked under oath if the president has the power to alter the timing of the presidential election, even though the Constitution, and hell, just plain common sense, strictly prohibits it, all that Attorney General William Barr could muster was, “I’ve never been asked the question before, I’ve never looked into it.” Oh really, you sadistic, angry-looking Mr. Potato Head- you’re the goddamn Attorney General, for crying out loud (you know, the supposed foremost expert on the laws of the nation), and you’re going to suggest that you’re not sure if that Tasmanian devil you call a boss has the right to move presidential elections according to his own whims, even though the Constitution makes it perfectly clear that he does not? Meanwhile Secretary of State Mike Pompeo when asked about Trump’s tweet, said in a statement that should send shivers down the spine of anyone who still believes in the balance of powers this country was founded on, “In the end, the DOJ will make that legal determination.” Um no, you gaslighting blowhard, they will not, because being president or simply working for him does not grant you the privilege to re-write the Constitution and hijack the democratic process to serve your own purposes.
Furthermore, as to how those elections are conducted (be it in-person, mail-in or otherwise), that power is specifically reserved to the states themselves, and this is the backdoor that that greasy pig is trying to squeeze himself through. Trump, Barr, Pompeo, and the rest of these incompetent would-be gangsters all know that they can’t actually postpone the election. That is just a ruse, a diversion technique used to undermine the faith and trust the rest of us Americans have in the democratic process.
As we get closer and closer to election day, and even FOX News polls have Biden with double-digit leads over Trump both nationwide and in the key battleground states that proved central to Trump’s victory in 2016, Trump continues to push the envelope of American democracy as he blatantly and willfully ignores the Constitution, instead following the Dictator Handbook used by the despots and autocrats he clearly esteems. Trump knows he can’t win this election fairly, so he is instead going to question its legitimacy and try to convince his gullible supporters that he should somehow remain president despite the will of the American people.
Now, I’ve already covered this in my previous election piece entitled “Mailing In It”, but let me make this perfectly clear: There is absolutely no evidence whatsoever that mail-in ballots would lead to any increase in voter fraud. Numerous states have voted predominately by mail for years now, and Trump himself has used mail-in ballots in the past. But knowing that he cannot possibly win the election outright, Trump now wants to plant the seeds of doubt that American democracy will be compromised by mail-in ballots. So let me simply throw this out there: If you can find any credible evidence of mail-in voter fraud potential, send it to me, and I will publish it along with a retraction of this entire article. But I’m going to let you in on a little secret, you aren’t going to find any, because voter fraud is just a myth perpetrated by sore losers and would-be despots. And the fact that Trump is trying to foist this on us months before the election should be all the evidence you need to recognize that this is just part of Trump’s master plan to steal the presidency and do away with American democracy once and for all.
And that is just what is at stake here: American democracy itself. When Trump loses and then contests the election, refusing to leave the office until the “real winner” emerges (which could only be him), we are going to find ourselves smack in the middle of a Constitutional crisis that threatens to collapse the very underpinnings our nation was founded upon. Given that Republican leadership has shown no backbone for standing up to Trump, even when he clearly mortgaged financial aid to a foreign government as a leverage tool to obtain compromising information about a political opponent, we all know that we cannot rely on Congress to do the right thing. At that moment, the military will have to make the choice about whether or not to forcibly remove Trump from office. Personally, I do not like the sound of our nation’s both short-term and long-term future coming down to that. So what can we as the citizens of this great nation do?
Vote. I mean it. Y’all better vote, bitches. We need to send this dictator packing the same way Germany should have done more than 80 years before. If this comes down to a few percentage points in select battleground states, Trump’s subterfuge may just work, as he may convince enough of his supporters and the military to take up arms to defend his presidency. What we need to do is get out the vote such that there is no possibility of questioning the legitimacy of the election results, a margin wide enough to preclude any imputation of voter fraud. We need to send the message loud and clear that we the American people do not accept dictators.
Steven Craig is the author of the best-selling novel WAITING FOR TODAY, as well as numerous published poems, short stories, and dramatic works. Read his blog TRUTH: In 1000 Words or Less every THURSDAY at www.waitingfortoday.com
