December 7, 2020
A Gazette Editorial
Today is the somber anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 that led to America’s entry into WWII. “A date which will live in infamy,” is how FDR characterized it in his message to Congress. What followed was an epic, years long battle between the forces of Western Democracy, the Allied Powers, and those of fascist autocracies, the Axis Powers of Japan, Germany, and Italy. With every drop of strength, unity, and resources the light of Democracy shined on after the terrible destruction of the world war and the nuclear bombs that ended it.
What followed were decades of regional wars within a largely stable international order that tended in the general direction of more Democracy and less dictatorship. The end of the Cold War was a moment in which America stood atop the world scolding other nations over unfair or nonexistant elections, government corruption, and maltreatment of ethnic minorities within their borders. We were so admired, supposedly, that even hard case Conservatives pointed out that there were long lines of people hoping to get into our country and to get out of the ones they were in.
This was a time, just a few years ago, when America proudly described itself as a nation of immigrants, a melting pot. As elementary school kids we were taught a version of history that minimized the atrocities of slavery and genocide. But even those sanitized myths never failed to highlight the Albert Einstein-eque stories of desperate people fleeing far flung despotic hellholes for our welcoming shores. The Statue of Liberty was practically a religious icon in our country, reverently visited by millions every year, as was Ellis Island. Cynical wannbe foreign despots scapegoating the Other were roundly mocked by good, red blooded Americans, most of whom gave at least lip service to the ideals of freedom, Democracy, and equality before the Law. Countries that didn’t adhere to our standards were dismissed as Banana Republics, ruled by strongmen primarily for their own and a small circle of their oligarch friends’ benefit.
Things that were literally textbook unAmerican just a couple of elections ago have somehow become prominent features now. We have in President Trump a national leader who has gone out of his way to appease killers like Duterte, Kim, Putin, Erdogon, and MBS while dealing insult upon insult on leaders of western democracies. He has ‘joked’ about shooting somebody on 5th Avenue and serving beyond the Constitution’s two term limit. He has asserted that Article II says he can do whatever he wants. The idea that the guy who gets the most votes wins the election is now scorned as ‘mob rule‘ by the rightwing “we’re a republic, not a Democracy” crowd. China, North Korea, Iran and Syria are also republics, not Democracies. Totally normal.
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The antidemocratic drift of the Right over past few years set the stage perfectly for the post election shenanigans we are now witnessing across half a dozen ‘battleground’ states that Biden won. The present controversy rests upon a fantasy: that a President elected with 3 million fewer votes, whose approval never hit 50%, and who lied & played down a pandemic that has taken a quarter million lives so far could only lose if there was massive voter fraud. The monumental stupidity of this argument is easily shown: try imagining these same fired up trumpists in the following scenario: a Democrat President with Trump’s exact record loses his bid for reelection. Do they even bat an eye? Or do they scoff and assert that of course he lost?
Which brings us back around to the old autocracy or Democracy standoff. Last September, long before the first votes were cast for President, the ABA Journal foresaw the moment in which we now find ourselves. In an article titled, “Dec. 8 ‘safe harbor’ deadline is a critical date in nightmare election scenarios,” author Debra Cassens Weiss writes:
…The other date, which is six days before the electoral college date, is the “safe harbor” deadline for states to choose electors that they can ensure will be accepted by Congress. That date is Dec. 8 this year.
What if the votes are not counted by Dec. 8 because of delays from mail-in ballots, vote-counting disputes and recounts? And what if states, swayed by claims of vote fraud, decide to appoint electors that appear to contravene the vote count?
And here we are, December 8th. God help us.