The Golden Oldies

This is old news, something I written about before – but then, the “Stop the Steal” crazy-bones conspiracy it’s in reference to is old news.  And like so many things from the past twelve months, it has sort of been placed in the dust bin of history and forgotten, as the crazy-bones lunacy has kept piling on top of it for a year.

But Golden Oldies are still golden.

For a year, the Republican base (and even many up the food chain) have been building themselves to a fever pitch of fury – hitting its most dramatic and violent peak at the January 6 insurrection storming the U.S. Capital – about how they believe that there was apparently and somehow massive voter fraud and so the election was supposedly stolen from Trump.  And his lunacy has built among thus conspiracy-soaked based.

What I (and there are others) wondered a year ago – and which holds true today, though largely overlooked at this point – is if Democrats used voter fraud to fix the election and defeat Trump…why didn’t they fix all the elections on the very same ballots and give Democrats more wins in the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, the state and local elections, and the proposition measures???!!  Why didn't they give themselves a solid majority in the Senate, so they wouldn't have to rely on a Joe Manchin or Kyrsten Sinema?  And why lose seats in the House?  Why only fix the Trump race?!  Isn’t that a monumental, indeed epic waste of what would otherwise be a spectacular voter fraud scam?  A scam so amazing that they were able to defeat a sitting-President, one virtually anointed by God, yet they overlooked every other race.  That’s breathtaking brilliance and soul-crushing stupidity all in the same package.

It’s like NASA sciences developing the technology to send a manned rocket into space to colonize Mars, shutting the door, and shooting the spacecraft off – and forgetting to put anyone on board.

But let’s even accept the ludicrous – that Democrats fixed all the ballots in those purple states that Trump lost but only fixed the race for Biden.  And the argument of the crazed Republicans is that therefore the ballots in those states were invalid, and the results shouldn’t count – correct?  But the thing is, if the GOP base wants to make that empty, inexplicable argument…then when you throw out all the ballots in those states – you have to throw out the results of all the races in those states.  You can’t just toss Trump’s results and presume everything else on the ballot is okay.  Because the point would be that even if somehow, bizarrely, inexplicably only one race was fixed, that one race means the – ballots – are – fraudulent – and—therefore – must – be – tossed.  In full.  And all the other races on those ballots must be voided, including all those won by Republicans.

To be very clear, as I think it is, the ballots weren’t fixed for Trump.  And I don’t believe in even the slightest corpuscle of my being that there was massive voter fraud cheating Trump.  I’m just saying that if one actually does believe that, then you must carry that to its logical end result.

So, those were the two questions from a year ago, and those two questions remain top priority to this day, a year later as the faux, manic outrage continues.  Because you’re not going to swat away such lost conspiratorialists who will only come up with new conspiratorial reasons for any reality you bring.  Instead, what all reporters need to do, I believe – and anyone in a debate that is spiraling deep into Hell – is just ask two basic questions:

If there was voter fraud to steal the election from Trump, why didn’t Democrats steal enough elections on the same ballots to give them a majority of Senators and not lose seats in the House?

If only Trump’s race was stolen, which would invalidate his race and therefore the full ballot, why doesn’t that invalidate all the races that Republicans won?

You’re not going to convince a crazy person that their craziness is wrong.  But you can at least make them try to explain the inexplicable.

And it is my hope that – even at this point – reporters start doing that.  Including asking elected Republicans in Congress and across the country who are still fine, even after a year, hiding behind their party’s “outrage.”

Because in the end, as always, this is about the elected members of the Republican Party who enable it all, including the fascism.