Is It Really Happening?

On its face the question seems hyperbolic: Are we witnessing the collapse of the greatest democracy the world has ever known?  I would have laughed you out of the thread you were posting to just a few years ago, but after 4 years of Donald Trump and the January 6th riot and insurrection and now especially in light of the fact that the entire Republican Party save a handful of brave souls willing to speak out, seems to be on a runaway train ride into the political abyss.  The problem is, they're going to take our democracy with them if we don't act to put a stop to the madness.

It seems that we have now reached a place where if you are a Republican and you want to be supported by the majority of your colleagues in the House and Senate then you must agree to help perpetuate a lie.  It's being referred to as "The Big Lie" - a term Trump tried to appropriate and turn on its head in a recent press release. On its face, it's absurd.  The Trump Campaign launched dozens upon dozens of lawsuits in every contested state and case after case after case they were all summarily rejected by the courts as little more than frivolous complaints, none of which would have proven anything even remotely near the massive scale of fraud that would have had to occur in order to change the outcome of the election.  Let's remember here that Biden received 306 votes in the electoral college to Trump's 232.  In addition to this, Biden received 81,283,786 votes or 51.3% of the popular vote to Trump's 74,222,552 votes or 46.8% of the popular vote.  That's a difference of 7,061,234 votes.  That's more people than who live in Los Angeles, CA, Chicago, IL and Houston, TX combined.  Not an insignificant margin by any measure.  Donald Trump was soundly beaten.

But his refusal to accept that defeat has led to a political crisis like no other.  The Big Lie is a cancer on our body politic.  And the worst part of it is the fact that the Republicans in Congress and the Senate who are promulgating this lie KNOW it's a lie.  They just don't care about the harm it's doing to the country.  What they care about is acquiring and holding on to power.  And in order to have any chance to hold on to power they all believe they need Donald Trump.  In order to leverage the popularity of Donald Trump they need to stay on Trump's good side and the only way to do that now is to jump on board the delusional express train along with Trump and claim that the 2020 election was rigged and stolen from Trump.

Evidence?  None.  Because it never happened.  But that's not stopping anyone from asserting falsely that it did and whipping up gullible and frankly stupid people into a frenzy over it.