Endgame

Remember the Sixth

Christopher Silverstein

Observer of politics, culture and the world we create

One year ago, Congress was attacked by supporters of former President Donald Trump. It was one of the darkest days in American history, but to some, it was little more than a riot, an expression of displeasure with a corrupt system, and those who invaded the Capitol were heroic in their singular goal to install Donald Trump as the last President of the United States.

Under normal circumstances, anyone associated with such an assault on liberal democracy would retreat into darkness after their failure to overthrow the government, but in modern America, the newscasters, vloggers and politicians who incited that action still undermine our democracy daily but to what end?

I don't think enough people comprehend how often we have elections in the United States. While presidential elections get nearly all of the media attention, many Americans were probably surprised to see election coverage in the middle of presidential terms. I clearly remember myself as a teenager seeing those familiar red, white, and blue graphics on all the major news networks, and wonder to myself, "what year is it?". Then that map of the United States would appear, but some states would be greyed out. It was at that point that I remembered the mid-term elections.

Those elections, that elicit an eyebrow raise of recognition from most people, are some of the most important elections we have. These elections reform Congress and shape the future of a president's remaining term in office. Often, they are used as a protest against the sitting president resulting in the election of a Congress that is opposed, in some form, to that administration. It happened to Clinton in '94, Bush (II) in '06, Obama in '10 and '14 and Trump in '18.

As I've written before, the US legislature is unique because it allows competing political parties the ability to govern. The presidency and the legislature have to work together to get policies passed, but the final power to pass legislation sits with Congress, not the President, with their ability to override a presidential veto. This key part of the US Constitution means that we should care far more about who's in Congress as opposed to who's in the White House. 

2022 is an election year, and for all intents and purposes, the most important one since the Civil War. The reason why is clear to me, but it may not be clear to millions of Americans just trying to make their way through the day. The Republican Party, in its current form, cannot be trusted to gain control of Congress. This surpasses every policy argument they may have, or if you even like your local Republican politician because, since January 6th, they have loudly and proudly said, to our faces, that they intend to gain control of Congress and the White House, and once they have that power, they will ensure that they can never lose another election again.

This isn't conjectured from some liberal website. This is found in the actions of conservatives in American states and the words of their leaders. 

Since 2021, Republican-led state legislatures have put forward and passed legislation to make it harder for people of color to vote, and while that in itself is anti-democratic, they have also passed or attempted to pass, legislation that allows the statehouse to override the votes of the people and command electors to nominate their preferred choice for president.

In the American electoral system, there are several steps to becoming president, the first of which, is winning votes. Those votes are then translated to electors for the Electoral College, as we have learned over the past few years, the popular vote is meaningless if you can't win the electors. Should the States have the power to override the popular vote and assign a candidate to the electoral college, the American voter has just lost their primacy in American democracy.

As I said, there are several steps to becoming the President but the last steps are found in Congress. Cast your mind back to that cloudy January day and try to remember what Trump's original protest was about. Republicans wanted the legislators in Congress to override the votes of the people and install Trump as President. Now, that's not legally possible, but that didn't stop them from putting that argument forward to their legions of armed supporters. Trump appointee, Peter Navarro, recently explained their plan on television.

Imagine, hearing that phrase in any other country. Imagine hearing a government appointee of any country explaining how they were going to ignore the outcome of a legal election and install their candidate as the Head of State. That is a coup.

As we enter 2022, we know, conclusively, that NO election fraud affected the outcome of the 2020 election. What little fraud that was detected was overwhelmingly found from conservative actors, but the false idea of a stolen election is still being repeated by conservatives across America as they hope we all forget about what they did and what they want to do. 

So, why call this post Endgame?

Because this is it.

Because all of the pieces are on the table and the last moves are coming. Here, Republican secretary of state candidate Jim Merchant explains that he's got a cohort of candidates ready to install whomever they want if they win their seats this year.

In swing states across the country, Republicans who backed the Big Lie are running and winning seats in races like Judge of Elections and Secretary of State. These positions are the first checkpoint in certifying elections and it seems as if they have problems when anyone other than a Republican wins a political race.

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To be honest, I think these people thought they had it in the bag before the 2020 election. With the appointment of perceived Trump lackeys like Amy Coney Barrett on the Supreme Court and Republican-appointed judges in federal courts, I'm sure that many thought that the election would be given to Trump, not through the vote but by the gavel. When that failed, they went back to, what I can only assume, is plan B.

We are now living in a country where the Republican party is not a party of democracy but a party of autocracy. 

Should the Republicans gain control of either House of Congress this year, their singular goal will be to install a Republican president in 2024, because they cannot accept an outcome other than Republican victory. As you can see from this tweet from Senator Rand Paul, he perceives people voting Democrat as antithetical to democracy.

His problem seems to be that Democrat voters would be allowed to fill out absentee ballots in an election. This practice is also known as voting.

The outcome of the popular vote will not matter because the components will be in place to change the outcome of the vote to the conservative's preferred candidate. Maybe that will be Trump, perhaps someone else, either way, you will not have had a say in the outcome of the election. 

Don't believe me? Click the links and watch the videos. They show the actions that are coming out of conservative controlled states, not conjecture, not wild stories from six-month-old websites backed by dark money, but tabled and passed legislation that will alter the outcome of the 2024 election if these candidates win in 2022.

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So, if you've made it this far, you probably will already be doing what I am about to suggest, but if not, you can't vote conservative. Not until this group of authoritarians has been purged from American politics. I don't know if that will happen, but these people are not messing around. They are very serious about retaking and maintaining political and social power. 

<- Here's a sitting Congress member making a very clear point that they will use their political power to attack companies that do not adhere to their preferred political goals.

Here, a candidate for the US House of Representatives in Nevada calls for a US General to be executed on C-SPAN for lack of loyalty to Trump. 

Here, Representative Madison Cawthorn speaks of "kinetic solutions" to dealing with "stolen elections". 

THIS IS NOT NORMAL!

It has been a long time since I felt like things were normal in America. I don't mean fair, America has never been fair, I mean it has been a long time since I could say that America will, more or less, be the same in ten years. I don't know what will happen over the next decade in America, but it is this year that will set the tone; you and I will set the tone. This is why it is so important that you vote this year.

Democracy isn't easy. It requires people to pay attention to the world outside of our front doors and make the right decisions. We have to do this on top of everything else in our lives. We all have day jobs, we all have something that drains us of our energy and prevents us from caring about all of these important issues, and that's what they're counting on. American conservatives are hoping that we are too tired and so dulled to the constant stream of madness that we'll just reflexively vote for them because "that's what you do in the mid-terms". So, I'll keep posting these, and you save just that little bit of energy to go and vote in November, and with hope, we'll never have another January 6th again.

 #RememberTheSixth

Christopher Silverstein

Observer of politics, culture and the world we create

January 06, 2022

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