American Carnage or Promise?
Stopping the Insurrection
A country, like a person, is a complex entity. Defining either one definitively is impossible because both humans and nations are in a constant state of becoming. In our often polarized world, it’s important to remember that words, too, cannot completely encapsulate the subtle intricacies of a human or a nation.
Yet we must try to define ourselves, our values, and our dreams, as individuals. We must legislate and govern as best we can, as a nation. An informed, engaged citizenry is essential to a healthy, functioning government—of the people, for the people, by the people.
It’s clear, however, that both the United States of America and its citizenry are in crisis.
The bedrocks of individual freedom and representative democracy, upon which the USA is founded, are principles that make me proud to be an American.
Last Wednesday, when an angry mob desecrated the walls of Congress with feces, chanting “Hang Mike Pence,” that pride flickered into shame.
With the FBI’s recent warning of violence being planned at every one of our State’s Capitols and at Biden’s inauguration, like many of you, I am truly frightened by what is happening in our country.
In the immediate aftershock of the riot, I reached out to a childhood friend who had signaled, in the past, that she agreed with Trump (she was against what she saw as excess-regulation and the loss of First Amendment rights in the “culture wars”). I wanted to find out if she believed that the 2020 election had actually been stolen.
Instead of being able to answer with a simple yes or no, she said it was “complex.” Claiming that “both sides were corrupt,” she feared the civil war she’d often spoken about, was finally here. She then informed me that she had decided not to engage in political conversations for the time being, and refused to discuss the matter further with me.
If this is a civil war, I wondered, what are we fighting over? Where, exactly, are the battle lines? What underlying values are at stake? And most importantly: What fissures in our imperfect Union can somehow be seared back together during this incendiary time, stronger than before, so that the great American experiment may continue?
This is my humble attempt to shore up the rupture tearing at the fabric of our lives as Americans.
We need to come together on the sacred ground of shared reality.
So let’s begin with Trump. Because my wish to reach across the divide is sincere, I promise not to demonize him or critique his policies or speak to any other part of his administration. I just want to focus on the 2020 election and the current crisis that has left many Republicans believing that the election was stolen. I will carefully rely only on fact-based journalism about Trump’s claims of voter fraud and his or his teams’ words and actions.
For many months leading up to the Nov. 3rd election, Trump warned that the election would be rigged (unless he won), refusing to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he lost.
That, in and of itself, is a pretty remarkable stance, wouldn’t you agree? Throughout our 250 year history, our nation has prided itself on holding fair elections resulting in the peaceful transfer of power.
However, in the early morning of November 4th, 2020, before the States or media outlets had called the results of the presidential election, Trump claimed at a White House press conference that he had won.¹ He has repeated claims of a “landslide win” and elaborated on his voting-fraud assertions ever since.
As vote counts and recounts dragged on, several dozen court cases contesting the validity of the election were initiated by Trump lawyers, only to be dismissed (sometimes by Trump-appointed judges) for lack of evidence, lost or dropped by Trump’s legal teams.² Nevertheless, Trump has raised over 400 million dollars since mid-October, mostly under the prospect of overturning a purported “stolen election.”³
Still, Trump and his legal teams have been unable to prove a single case of widespread fraud in the courts, and his own Attorney General, the now-resigned Bill Bar, has said that the election was fair and Biden’s win legitimate.⁴
Take a closer look at Trump’s lawsuits in Georgia.
It’s been lost in all the fallout after the riot on Congress but it might come as a surprise that Trump’s lawyers dropped all four lawsuits alleging election fraud in Georgia⁵ the day after Rudy Giuliani claimed, during the rally that preceded the riots, that “over the next ten days, we get to see the machines that are crooked, the ballots that are fraudulent and if we’re wrong, we will be made fools of but if we’re right, a lot of them will go to jail. So let’s have trial by combat.”
If Trump truly believes there was fraud in the Georgia election — and since he clearly has the money to continue to try to prove that in the courts — why did his lawyers drop the case?
More false assertions of election fraud.
Let’s look at Trump’s speech on January 6th, where he again claimed that the election was stolen.⁷ Here’s one of his claims about voter fraud in Pennsylvania: “You had 205,000 more votes than voters.”
According to PBS, Trump’s assertion is false. They write:
“The claim that Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s win in the state was fraudulent comes from a period when records were not consistent. The numbers certified by Pennsylvania counties showed that 6.9 million ballots were cast, while a different state data system showed 6.7 million voters turned out to the polls. There was a simple explanation: Election officials hadn’t yet finished uploading their data to the latter system.” ⁸
There are many other claims Trump made in this speech about voter fraud, including: “Over 8,000 ballots in Pennsylvania were cast by people whose names and dates of birth match individuals who died in 2020 and prior to the election.”
But according to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the reality is:
“There’s only evidence of one attempt to cast a ballot on behalf of a dead person: Delaware County prosecutors charged a Republican with registering his dead mother and submitting a mail ballot in her name, along with registering his dead mother-in-law. The man said he cast the fraudulent ballot for Trump.
Other than that, there’s simply no evidence of ballots being cast in the names of dead people. Philadelphia City Commissioner Al Schmidt, a Republican, has had his office look into several specific claims about dead Philadelphia voters. None were real.
Another point about misuse of data: If you’re looking for matches between names and dates of birth, you’ll find plenty. There are more than nine million registered voters in Pennsylvania, and there are people who share the same name and birth date.” ⁹
Our information bubbles are so airtight that it’s quite possible any attempt to counter Trump’s numerous allegations of election fraud will only be seen as, well, fraudulent. I would assert that shared reality is not adjudicated on social media or in rumor mills, it’s actually right under our feet.
We are all innocent until proven guilty, therefore the onus of proof is always on those who assert guilt. It’s not my responsibility to prove the election was legitimate — it’s up to Trump and his lawyers to prove that it wasn’t.
In fact, the lawsuits alleging fraud have been thrown out of court because they lacked evidence or had no jurisprudence (such as the State of Texas claiming it had the right to tell other states how to manage their elections, which the US Supreme Court dismissed¹⁰).
If Trump’s own lawyers have dropped their cases, why do so many people still believe the election was stolen? Maybe it’s because, as I learned as a kid from The Rock Man, in Harry Nilsson’s The Point: “You see what you want to see and you hear what you want to hear.”
Lies, no matter how often you repeat them, are not facts.
“And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed — if all records told the same tale — then the lie passed into history and became truth.” ~ George Orwell, 1984
Imagine your beloved Commander In Chief insisting (as Trump did last week) that “this is the most corrupt election in the history, maybe in the history of the world.” Pretend he was admonishing you to “fight like hell and if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Isn’t it conceivable that you might feel compelled to try to forcibly overturn the election? Could you imagine, under those circumstances, that only an armed insurrection was the solution? This might help explain—but certainly doesn’t justify—the grotesque lawlessness we witnessed on January 6th by Trump supporters in the sacred halls of our democracy. Sadly, nothing can erase the disgusting racism and antisemitism that were also on display there.
I am afraid that the five people who died in last week's riots will not be the last to perish because of Trump’s lies about this election. I hope and pray that the violence will not spiral out of control in the coming days or years. To stop the insurrection, we must, as a people, admit that the votes have been counted, the election has been certified, and Biden won, even if Trump won’t.
Admittedly, it’s painful to lose, and no one likes it, but a peaceful transfer of power is necessary for the continuation of our Democratic Republic —if we can keep it. So while Trump has been unable to secure a second term, let’s not let him destroy our nation by inciting the “American carnage” he spoke about in his inauguration speech.
We can and must return to the noble work at hand: making the United States of America live up to its promise as the land of the free. As Trump said in his first speech as President, “ What truly matters is not which party controls our government but rather whether our government is controlled by the people.”
Our government must never be hijacked by mob rule. We must remember that we are a nation of laws (and for those Christians who support Trump, Thou Shalt Not Kill is God’s law too). Our shared reality cannot be dictated by social media algorithms. Truth does not capitulate to the “alternative facts” of political spin. We control our government not by tweets or insults, not with guns and threats. We control our government by voting.
May God, and every one of us, bless America.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Trump’s premature and false announcement that he’d won the 2020 election: https://www.youtube.com/w atch?v=rSXb9GUeIaM
[2] Wikipedia’s list of all pre and post-election lawsuits brought by Trump: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-election_lawsuits_related_to_the_2020_United_States_presidential_election
[3] WSJ article on Trump’s fundraising: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-fundraising/2020/12/03/3aa1091a-35b6-11eb-8d38-6aea1adb3839_story.html
[4] Business Insider reports on Bill Bar’s statement that the election was fair: https://www.businessinsider.com/ag-barr-confirms-lack-of-widespread-fraud-in-election-2020-12
[5] Microsoft News article: https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/georgia-denies-trump-claim-of-settling-election-fraud-suit/ar-BB1cyJg3 Also see reason.com article: https://reason.com/2021/01/10/trumps-lawyers-surrender-in-georgia-despite-giulianis-conclusive-proof-of-election-fraud/?fbclid=IwAR24pkPKXIZpvGenOZqEChl8UrecJ1LNc4WEqPhGR8JjRskhfGABsMjWRNo&
[6] The Associated Press reports on Georgia’s recount: https://apnews.com/article/election-2020-joe-biden-donald-trump-georgia-elections-4eeea3b24f10de886bcdeab6c26b680a
[7] A full transcript of Trump’s January 6th, 2020 speech: https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2021/1/11/full-transcript-donald-trump-january-6-incendiary-speech
[8] PBS fact-checks Trump’s speech on January 6 https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/ap-fact-check-trumps-false-claims-fuel-on-a-day-of-chaos
[9] The Philadelphia Inquirer fact checks the president: https://www.inquirer.com/politics/election/trump-washington-rally-pennsylvania-fact-check-20210106.html
[10] The Supreme Court’s docket on “Texas vs. Pennsylvania”: https://www.supremecourt.gov/search.aspx?filename=/docket/docketfiles/html/public/22o155.html
