Joe Biden and Kamala Harris clearly won the election, and as much as we want to celebrate and move on, we must realize that we as a nation are at our most vulnerable right now. Organization and control of messaging to hordes of easily influenced and mostly non-college educated white Americans by anti-democratic and hostile actors, has led us to this precipice, and continues unabated. Indeed, disinformation and outrageous allegations designed to inflame and confuse continue to spread rampantly like the Corona virus. Truth and education are parts of the vaccine, but in this case, the vaccine must be repeatedly “boosted” by inoculations throughout the public arena.
Truth requires an ongoing understanding that Russia and Putin remain hard at work infecting the national discourse, stoking racial and religious antagonism, and helping Trump and his troops in their conspiracy. Defenders of truth and democracy must speak out more loudly now than ever! We are witnessing an attempt to subvert the will of the voters by strategic attacks on the election in order to give Trump either enough Electoral Votes to steal the election, or throw the final outcome into the House of Representatives. The crime they are committing in plain sight is “sedition.”
Their strategy includes propagating baseless allegations of “irregularities” and “fraud” in select states and districts to provide cover for disenfranchising Biden voters, most of whom also happen to be urban minorities. They’re using pressure and intimidation on individual Republican state legislators, soliciting them to break the election laws of their state by refusing to certify their states’ votes.
One of their goals is to have enough Republican states send ‘dueling’ slates to the meeting of their state’s electors on December 14th, ultimately throwing the election into the House of Representatives. If this were to happen, then each state is given one vote, based upon the political party which controls their delegation. Only a simple majority of the 50 states is needed to win. And, there are 26 state delegations with Republican majorities in the House, each of which presumably would ignore the results of the elections in their states, and vote to enable Trump’s stealing of a second term.
We should not dismiss the above (or anything else) Trump and Putin are capable of doing. The Russian influence over the Republican party, and the mutually desired outcomes they seek are enough to keep all Americans up at night and on alert. The saying “Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty” has never been more true than right now.