Friday, November 20, 2020

Says Who?

For the white people? What about the Asian-Americans, blacks, and Hispanics/Latinx who voted for Biden? What about the 80 million Americans who voted for Biden? Does the minority have to understand the majority?

There is a serious issue in this country of minority rule. It is perceived by some whites to be the "dangerous" claim of non-whites to a measure of power. It is a serious issue of the demographic reality that this is, or soon will be, a "minority-majority" nation, which already puts the notion of "minority" in the category, again, of "non-white." The British colonial system was built on the idea that the minority did not have to "understand" the majority, just rule it. And they didn't expect the majority to "understand" the minority, either; just respect their power and right to rule.  That claim is still being made, but now it's being made in this country.

The idea that there is widespread fraud in the American electoral system because a majority of voters defeated a minority of voters at the polls is a pernicious undermining of democraticy governance. We, the majority, don't have to treat the minority the way the South was treated during Reconstruction (nor is such an historical offense in the offing), but neither do we have to consider their delicate feelings, or their insane rantings. Despite cries of "fraud" before microphones, every time a suit is brought claiming electoral misconduct, the claims of fraud (a legal term, by the way, not a generic one, at least where matters of governance are concerned) are never even asserted. What guiding principle is this? Lies and demagoguery and misrepresentation and false allegations with no basis in fact at all, are not "guiding principles" which must be respected and considered and given any validity.  Beliefs that have no basis in reality, claims that dead heads of state are corrupting "mysterious" computers in conjunction with philanthrophists and foreign powers and American citizens, do not need to be treated as "guiding principles."  They are based in delusion.  I don't have to condemn people like this:

A distraught supporter of President Donald Trump on Friday told right-wing talk radio show host Rush Limbaugh that he was willing to “die” for the president.

 The caller began by saying he would “try to hold myself together and not get emotional” before choking up and spilling his guts about how upset he was about the Republican Georgia secretary of state admitting that President-elect Joe Biden had won his state.

“Trump and you are all we have left, Rush!” he said. “We’ve spent our lives voting for these people because they’re not [Democrats]. And we just can’t do it anymore! We’re tired of being stabbed in the back!”
But neither do I have to understand them. Because I literally don't understand them.  Rick Wilson is typically hyperbolic in his criticism (and he's speaking of the Giuliani press conference), but he more lucidly and accurately describes people like the man who called Limbaugh:  “like a cabal of mad priests of a dead religion worshipping their fallen god."  How else do you explain a wish to "die" for a President?  What madness is this? I have sympathy for the mad; but I don't have to find some sanity in them.  I can find some humanity; but I don't have to find a place for them at the table of governance, or consider their madness a "principle."

Journalists should do their job to report news.  They already, all too often, reflect obeisance to the powers that be.  Trump has been a liar since day one of his administration.  The Washington Post kept track of his lies until they became too many to count.  Only since November 4 will the press now call Trump's lies "unfounded" and "without evidence" on a regular basis, because he lost the election.  He's a lame duck, a wounded animal, there's blood in the water, and now the buzzards aren't afraid to circle.  Did any journalist try to "understand" the majority of the people who, for four years, found Trump unfit for office, who consistently disapproved of his job performance?  Or did they just relentlessly bend the knee because trying to understand "their beliefs, their guiding principles," was not part of the narrative.

And now it is?  Says who?  And now our journalists must act as priests, as pastors, and shepherd the national flock?  Who the hell do they think they are?

1 comment:

  1. The only ones we need to care about are the ones who might flip, the hopeless ones, that's all you need to understand about them.

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