I’m sure that January 6, 2021, will forever be considered a controversial day in America. As people might want to change history, I’ll capture it here.
The world is watching…
Today is a historical and dark day in the United States of America. Today marks the end of the State of Georgia run-off election, shifting control of the senate to the Democratic party. Also, today is when the ceremonial reading of the Electoral College votes gets counted in Congress… and I mean ceremoniously because the Electoral College have already casted those votes in favor of President Elect Biden, making the incumbent President Trump chance for reelection unattainable – despite the debate on each chamber.
The Electoral College is a whole other rant, pretty unique to USA. But if you’re of the school of thought that the popular vote should take primacy as the will of the people, also Joe Biden led by several million votes in the popular vote. Lawsuits have been filed and dismissed (seriously, look at the actual court records, I ain’t making this up, these are public records if you choose to do the research and have the patience to read them all). Be it as it may, those election fraud arguments were unable to turn the election results in favor of the incumbent or demonstrate sufficient evidence of malpractice in every contended court – if the campaign had actual overwhelming evidence, the results would speak for themselves, they didn’t.
If you are a Trump voter, you might or might not be able to accept that a President you did not pick will be sworn in. The same upsetting feeling was in the other side of the aisle when Donald Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in 2016. People were mad, but America continued with a peaceful transfer of power – that is what really makes us great. I don’t recall anybody physically and violently storming Congress though. Because it didn’t happen in 2006… nor in the last two centuries… Today’s violent scene with Trump-regalia “protesters” created an unprecedently dark day in America.
Coming together as a nation
I am not implying in any way to anyone change their political affiliation. Personally, I do not lean left or right – I am loyal to the facts, not to a particular party or to a ‘dear leader’ – because the latter two have a lot of sway on how good or bad they can get. Facts are impervious to emotion; it is what it is. Facts can be mathematically and scientifically proven. And as mathematics, an equation may have different x, y, z factors with ‘unknown values’ – but the values become real and evident when resolving the equation. I won’t express it in a mathematical equation over here (because it is a pain in the butt typing that on this system), but – here – let me show you in a very simplified manner the major factors that were in play in this election.
JAN 6, 2021, gallows erected at Capitol Hill
Factors contributing to this rather contentious election:
People who voted for Trump Yeah, they love the guy, his policies, his train of thought, his rhetoric, whatever is it that they find appealing about him, they just do. Perhaps no one on this green Earth can change their appeal towards him. Some who really, really love Trump will get snappy if someone dares pointing flaws to his character, rhetoric or whatever that puts him in a bad light… and might lose their collective $#!^ if you argue with them about dissenting politics. Hey, if that makes THEM better people, so be it. Everyone has a right to like who they like. They just cannot expect everyone to share the same point of view. And that also means, they (Trump voters) are also required to be accountable to the same rules and regulations as the rest of the US (needed to emphasize this after the siege of the Capitol this afternoon).
Most (and I mean the overwhelming majority) of people in this group voted IN PERSON – Why? Well, Trump himself told them to do so in every speech, rally, tweet and whatever way him or his clout broadcasted to his base… a lot of them, indeed showed up to rallies – and most to vote in person. They followed their leader’s request. I mean, what else could we expect?
If you are a hard-core Trump supporter, did you vote in person or by mail? Why, or why not? All the hard-core Trump supporters I’ve met (and there is a bunch of them) brought their happy @$$ to the polls in person… and thought the mail-in ballots were a big no-no. I’m seriously curious. Please leave me a comment below.
People who voted Republican, but not for Trump. Some of them might or might like Trump – some Republicans hate Trump’s guts but love the party. Some were Trump voters in 2016 and for whatever reason stop liking the guy. Hey, people change. Did you ever have a “boo” who was “the one” that you loved, and wrote love poems through the night into sunrise… and now you hate his/her guts? Yeah, that $#!^ happens in politics too.
Some of them voted in person, and some voted by mail. They love the Grand Old Party (GOP) but cannot in good conscience support somebody who have fallen from grace in their eyes. Hey, their vote, their decision, right? By the way, that’s why the GOP actually gained seats in congress, although they lost the Senate majority after the Georgia run-off election. Yes, that happened today too!
People who voted for Biden. Spoiler alert, some of them don’t actually like him… and didn’t vote for him – per say, but they sure as hell voted AGAINST Trump. Sorry, that’s the fact, a lot of more left leaning democrats don’t agree with Joe Biden very much… Biden is very much to right of the left… that’s why during the primary Biden had a gigantic bullseye on his back. Seriously, the other Democratic candidates in the primary threw some really sharp barbs at him in every debate. He prevailed though. And yes, a lot of voters really love this guy, and were happy to cast a vote for him.
Most of Biden voters voted by mail. Why? Because of the pandemic… most democrats wear masks and would rather stay home than get shoulder to shoulder with a chanting crowd screaming support for their candidate in the middle of a world-wide pandemic. Trump supporters tend to hang out close to each other during rallies, and many of them would consider a mask an optional item in a crowd during COVID times. Hence the “political” divide on masks. Biden urged his voters to practice social distance, therefore held spaced-up rallies – normally of the drive-in variety, and of course that means fewer people in attendance, because they stayed in their own bubble away from others, and cars do take a lot of space.
Yes, mathematically you can fit a lot fewer people in a drive in-rally, because cars are several times larger than people. That’s why parking lots take so much room. Hope that clears the rally size debacle. However, The Biden campaign decided to spread their message online, on tv shows democrats fancy, or via advertising – everywhere democrats and undecided voters hang out. The Biden’s campaign knew they won’t be able to change Trump’s voters base mind, so they didn’t focus and ultimate waste their efforts on those grounds. So, if you didn’t see much if any advertising for Joe Biden in Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, OAN, Rush Limbaugh or any right-leaning outlet. That’s because those are news outlets left-leaning voters do not consume.
And yes, that strategy helped him reach a lot more people than a rally ever could – with the added benefit that prospective voters didn’t have to start sitting in line for hours before the event. For example, did you know you there are a lot more Super-Bowl viewers on TV than in the stadium? Yeah, no $#!^ right? Generally, people who voted for Biden, already decided about voting for him or against Trump long before the ballot showed up in their mailbox. Just like Trump voters already had made their mind. The difference is that this time people actually took the time to vote… mostly by mail.
People who voted Democrat, but not for Biden. Not many of those actually… a lot of those who voted for Biden went down the line and voted for the entire Democratic ticket on their respective balloting area. As I previously said, a big portion of people who voted for Biden in actuality voted AGAINST Trump. Seriously, a pretty sizable number of those Biden voters would have voted for a three-ring circus monkey before giving Trump a second term. And yes, a lot of this voters group also voted by mail.
Biden and the democrats’ messages were… “VOTE, preferably by mail, register early. If you can’t vote by mail but want to make your voice heard – and are willing to take your chances with the pandemic, go in person… just go and vote – any legal way you can.” Remember, Democrats got their @$$ handed to them in 2016 and lost seats to the Republicans. And a lot of the people who could have voted for Hillary, decided to stay home… for whatever reason… Hence Trump got elected in 2016.
Hell, the ENTIRE government was Republican after the election in 2016… The Executive power, both chambers of Congress and a Supreme Court Conservative majority. Democrat voters in this group realized that if they want to mitigate that reality again, they needed to come out of their comfort zone and vote. And they did, by the millions, mainly by mail. This voter’s segment gave the country a taste of that “awakening” during in the mid-term elections when the House of Representatives flipped from Republican to Democrat. So, this trend was not necessarily unexpected… unless you were not really paying attention in the last few years.
Capitol Hill 06JAN20201 -image credit NBC YouTube channel.
America’s adversaries love seeing us citizens fight each other
How can and adversary destroy a country without declaring war or firing a single shot? Answer: Pin citizens against each other and enable them to destroy themselves. Have you asked yourself, who wins when we fight each other in our binary political system? Sure as hell were not the mob-protesters in Capitol Hill this afternoon, I’m sure a lot of them will be prosecuted because of the violence ensued- if not by the Trump administration, for sure they will be prosecuted by the Biden administration. They embarrassed our country, and it is the most anti-American thing they could ever do – even if they don’t understand why. This mob have been condemned by both parties in Congress, even Trump supporters debating against the vote counting in both chambers. The violent protesters who trampled Capitol hill might not realize what they did was wrong, and THAT is what I find most troubling of all. I am not going to talk about President Trump in this article, because unfortunately that is a very divisive topic onto itself. So, I’ll get back in topic.
Seriously, some people who go far into their political ideology – does not matter if they lean right or left – might have a noble intention in their own minds. But they tend to be confused and are easily manipulated by their divisive leaders. The Left and Right political spectrum is not a linear dynamic, it’s more like a horseshoe. The lower they go to the edges of the horseshoe, the worst they get – on one extreme side of the horseshoe is totalitarian Communism, and the other extreme is totalitarian Fascisms. They are nemesis mirror images of each other…. the higher the political leaning go (trending towards the center), the more we they can work together. At some other point I’ll delve into this topic (separate rant), so we can go back on to the topic at hand. Here, let me quickly illustrate.
Incorrect perception of the political spectrum:
Left _____ Center _____ Right
(extreme) (extreme)
Correct Reality of the political spectrum:
__________Center__________
(Moderate) <– Ω –> (Moderate)
Left Right
(extreme) (extreme)
Ok, I hope you liked my little illustration above… but going back into our topic, America’s adversaries will utilize our shortcomings as propaganda in an attempt to portray our Western First World Government system as “the wrong governing way” – and to further use it as a bargaining chip to justify the totalitarian control over their people. Unfortunately, a lot of people that cling to their political views in an echo chamber don’t understand the intricacies of global political influences and governance. That’s a different rant, but my point is that those topics regarding adversarial nations have enough intricacies that could be misunderstood… and worse, pin us against each other… especially if a person lacks a clear understanding of foreign policy, history and geography.
Adversaries will attempt to exploit our emotions, put us in an echo chamber, destroy our critical thinking; while making us think we are the smartest person in the room. That’s why intellectual honesty is so important. We all have the capacity to learn something new, especially when confronted with dissenting points of view. We have to become our own devil advocates and see if our argument holds water… objectively – we might discover if we have been manipulated. Manipulators thrive on willful ignorance and will make people believe they are the smartest person around and will discourage the “smart person” conducting any further digging into the facts, but they will let them go wild spreading unsubstantiated opinions. Conversely, facts are logical, measurable and demonstrable.
Let’s come together as a nation
The electoral process has taken its course. A new incumbent will be sworn in in a few days, despite the chaos and insurrection. I just hope that 2021 will be a year where the peaceful transfer of power is enacted as it is tradition in this country. Before I came to live in USA, I grew up in a country where the political divide and corruption was rampant. Today’s shameful violent scenario and divisive rhetoric is nothing new in the world at large, but it has no place in America. We, the people have the power to work together and make a better future for us all.
Yes, you I and, and all of us Americans are the future of this country. We can build it together, even if our political views dissent – there is always a lot more than makes us similar and bring us together than what divides us. As I am watching different networks and outlets reporting life coverages. I will be on the edge of my seat tonight. In fact, the cover picture is a screen capture from an NBC live YouTube broadcast. I can only hope that we’ll wake up to a better 07 JAN 2021. HLC