The Last Gasp?

 This is going to be tough to write from the standpoint of expressing what I am actually feeling. Bear with me, if you will.

From before Trump's election, up to this very day, I have made no apologies for how much I dislike the man. I find no redeemable traits in him, as a private citizen or as a political leader, and I just knew the American Voter was too smart to elect him as President. When it happened, I was in shock. Seriously. It threw me into a four-year depression that caused me to doubt everything I had ever believed about my country. We have our problems, of course, but I have never felt so devoid of faith in our system of government or in some of my friends and neighbors as in these last four years.

When I was still teaching, I didn't talk politics with my students except to encourage them to think for themselves and make informed decisions about every issue in life. Know what you stand for, and why. Dig deeper into the facts. Do your part to make a difference in the world. I live by that, myself. Or try to.

Donald Trump took all that away from me as I stood helplessly by and watched him make a mockery of everything I believed in --while people cheered him on. I lost longtime friends because of him, merely because I simply could not reconcile their rabid, cult -like support of a narcissistic madman with my naive belief that God would somehow make it all come out okay. **I** wasn't okay, so surely I was off base, right? I felt angry, betrayed, incredulous, and frustrated. I could no longer even watch the nightly news on TV. It was that bad. My overgrown Fairness Gene was working overtime as I was forced to watch the abundant hypocrisy and political manipulations of one man, abetted by a cadre of other politicians in his party attached to his coattails, playing games with the lives of American citizens and our international allies for his personal aggrandizement. We all watched after he pulled rank, over and over again, to get away with breaking ethics laws and creating constitutional challenges daily. We had been warned, but apparently no one was listening.

So here's the thing: the only voice that American citizens have that is considered sacred is through the ballot box. It is the very basis of our system of government. We all watched as Trump spent months laying the foundation to be able to call the 2020 Presidential Election "rigged" if he didn't win. Of course, I had very little faith in the system, based on the 2016 election --especially considering that Trump made his intentions known way ahead of time. (Again, we were warned.) I expected he would behave just as he has, post-election, since he really DID lose. He didn't disappoint in that regard!

Then came the legal challenges. More than 50 of them, all in an effort to disenfranchise millions of ballots submitted in good faith by millions of American voters. Even the Supreme Court, which has three Trump appointees among the 6-3 ratio of Republican to Democrat justices, turned him down flat. Twice. The lesser courts have done the same. No evidence of fraud presented. Even after three recounts in one state. Even (and especially) courts of law are wary of siding with a power-grabbing sore loser at the risk of opening a Pandora's Box of challenges to the Constitution of the United States, and our republic.

Having exhausted most attempts to overthrow the election, Mr. Trump has now caused 16 or 17 Republican states to launch what he calls "the big one" in one last gasp to try to overturn the election results. It is led by an Attorney General from Texas who is already under indictment for crimes. There are assumptions that the man, Paxton, is showing Trump loyalty in hopes that he will be pardoned for his crimes by Mr. Trump. (I don't know or care, but it certainly does show motive.) I just "discovered" yesterday that Indiana is among the states that are joining in the lawsuit, hoping to overthrow the election results. (To be honest, it infuriates me.) The logic of the suit, presented to the Supreme Court of the US, is that the election results in the "swing" states (where Trump lost) affect the rest of the states (where Trump won). Um...yes. That's how elections work! They are claiming, without reliable evidence as shown by well over 50 previous lawsuits in lesser courts that have been dismissed, that the election results in the swing states are unconstitutional. This is what Americans call a Hail Mary--last desperate effort--to change a system that has been unchallenged in well over 200 years. It's the very same system that gave Donald Trump the presidency, even though he lost the popular vote by three million votes. (Yes, the Electoral College system needs to change!!) What is being attempted here can only be described as a coup. Every legal eagle whose opinions I have read (from both sides of the political aisle) say that this lawsuit is a joke that has no hope of succeeding. The Supreme Court doesn't even have to hear the case. Having been burned before, I have no confidence, so I wait, holding my breath. Even if the election of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris is upheld, it will take decades to undo what Trump has done...most of which was to undo what Obama had done. See how that works?

Folks, this is the first glimmer of hope that I have had in four years! It's the first time since Donald Trump that I have dared to think that maybe--just maybe--that ballot actually DOES mean something sacred! I hope to God that this is a political last gasp for Donald Trump. I have been notoriously naive about politics, to my detriment. It was just so much easier to deal with life with my head in the sand. Whatever the outcome of the latest attempt to wrest the power of the American vote from the hands of the voters, I will remain cautiously optimistic that this, too, shall pass.