Brooks Bros? Dockers? You decide, we retort.
The 2016 election began on December 12, 2000, when the Supreme Court of the United States ordered the State of Florida to stop counting the votes of its citizens, and awarded the state’s electoral votes to George W. Bush.
When the Supreme Court decided (on a one-time basis, it declared) that certifying the result of the election was more important than counting all the votes, America took a step away from its own history. Voters had long held the illusion that they choose a President themselves. In 2000, for the first time since the election of Rutherford B. Hayes, that choice was taken out of their hands.
Old rules, said the court, no longer apply.
Bush v. Gore was a green light to those on the winning side. If you want to send squads of forceful young men wearing Brooks Brothers shirts to stop the legal counting of votes, the court said, we won’t stop you. Since the old rules aren’t giving your side the result you desire, the court said, go ahead and make new rules. We’ve got your back.
So, in 2016, when a candidate decided he could win by breaking all the rules – discarding the unwritten requirement that a person running for President behave with a certain decorum, seriousness, and intelligence, that he or she owes the country a reasonable facsimile of a democratic leader, and lip service, at least, to values of inclusiveness and fairness – Trump could be sure that the right wing would step up to help him.
The election of 2016 was, indeed, rigged. About this, Trump spoke the truth. Ronald Reagan started the rigging in 1987 when he abolished the Fairness Doctrine, allowing a thousand Foxes and Breitbarts to bloom. The Supreme Court gave a hard tug on the ropes with their decision to stop counting votes in 2000. Congressional Republicans added a few strings with their 2008 declaration that their only job was to make sure that Obama – and, by extension, the nation – failed.
Obama didn’t fail. He succeeded, in spite of the tireless obstruction of the right. That a black President could succeed against their opposition drove the right nearly insane.
The most vivid way they could find to express this emotion was to elect Trump, a man who openly mocked most of the principles conservatives had long claimed to cherish.
They were assisted in this effort, according to intelligence agencies of the U.S., by the government of Russia. If proven, these acts constitute treason. But how can it ever be proven when the alleged traitors are being handed the keys to the government? Who’s going to prove it? James Comey?
A house divided cannot stand.
This election cannot stand.
