Our president is still chasing after windmills. There is the one that says Barack Obama was born in Kenya, another that says Mexico will pay for the “wall,” and yet another that says the recent presidential election is a fraud. The problem with that last windmill is that there was no fraud, no “lost” ballots, no malfunctioning voting machines.
Donald Trump called his lawyers to help him defeat that last windmill. Of at least 57 cases that have been filed, at least 50 have been denied, dismissed, settled or withdrawn. Apparently, his lawyers missed that day in law school when they were taught that they needed evidence to back up their complaints.
The people voted for president, the votes were counted — sometimes more than once — the votes were certified by the secretaries of state for all states and Washington, D.C., and the Electoral College cast its votes in accordance with state election results. Joe Biden won the election. He got more votes than Trump — 7,061,141 more, to be exact —and more votes from the Electoral College — 306 — than did Trump, at 232.
On Dec. 8, and in spite of the overwhelming loss by the president, 126 Republican congressmen signed a lawsuit filed with the U.S. Supreme Court by the state of Texas to stop the electors in Georgia, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania from voting. The suit was joined by the president and by 17 other states, all of which are led by Republicans. It took the Supreme Court a mere 137 words to dismiss this frivolous case outright.
A few Republicans in Congress also launched a last-minute stand to reverse the election by objecting to the votes of the Electoral College of certain states made on Dec. 14. U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., has been one of the more vocal supporters of such a move. The effort is doomed, of course, but not without offending the Constitution.
These members of Congress are entitled to their opinions, of course. They surely knew it was a fool’s errand to participate in this national embarrassment. Their participation in this exercise is not only futile but can easily be construed as anti-democratic and un-American.
In pursuing this lost cause, they have also disrespected those who gave their last full measure of devotion to this country. I’m sure if those people were still around, these misguided actions would feel like a punch in the gut to them. The same is true of the thousands of poll workers who were dedicated to making sure the election results were as accurate and fair as they could make them. They got a slap in the face.
From Hanna Arendt’s “The Origins of Totalitarianism”: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
And that, in my opinion, is exactly what is happening today.
And, all of us should remember Teddy Roosevelt’s imperative: “Patriotism means to stand by the country. It does not mean to stand by the president.”
Or a windmill.
Herb Van Fleet is a former Joplin resident who lives in Tulsa, Okla.
The Link LonkJanuary 03, 2021 at 08:00PM
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Herb Van Fleet: Doomed effort offends Constitution | Columns - Joplin Globe
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