The End is Near

It's not particularly difficult to imagine yourself into an "end-times" scenario these days because there's no end to the apocalyptic rhetoric. Trump does it constantly, makes claims that if the Democrats win anything, we're unimaginably close to Stalinist Russia. What's worse, we're being overrun by hordes of dark-skinned people from a--hole countries. The end is near he says, time and time again, to fanatic crowds who simply believe him.

Those who oppose him are just as sure of horror just down the road, but their slant moves in an opposite direction. Arizona's highly hyped vote recount, accomplished by Trump money and Trump people, finally released its long-awaited findings and determined last weekend that the original vote was mostly right--with a few extra Biden votes thrown in. 

Then, His Dishonor goes to Georgia last weekend and dons his typical swaggering arrogance and tells a couple thousand of his disciples that what the Arizona recount determined was that he'd won in a landslide, just as he's been maintaining. "We won on the forensic Arizona recount yesterday at a level you wouldn't believe." 

He. Said. That.

More tan once, he said that. Nobody could make this stuff up. Well, except the Liar King.

Here's what makes the lefties see "end times." The thousands who came out to greet him in Georgia probably get their news from sources that may well have said what he did. They don't know any different. If he says a turtle is a greyhound, then they put their money on turtles. That's the way it is. Gospel, according to Trump.

Lefties say the end is near because millions of otherwise Republicans simply fall in line with Trump's lies and are, as we speak, changing voting laws in as many states as will let them so as to insure a Trump victory next time around, rewriting statutes at the same time to allow some kind of intercessory committee to determine vote counts without counting votes. Neat trick.

"Our constitutional crisis is already here," screamed Robert Kagan's weekend essay in the Washington Post. Kagan, who is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institute, hardly a leftie bunch, and has, himself, impeccable conservative credentials, makes clear in that long essay that forces are already operating to erode democracy, because of "the Big Lie" and its creator.

Kagan says the balance of power right now, the people who can balance the ship of state is Republicans who hold fast to their conservative principles but come out of the closet and oppose Trump publicly, which few of them, right now, are willing to do. If they don't do that, he says, democracy is in grave danger--no, we already are because we're much farther down that road right now than most of us think.

End-times stuff. It's really tiring, but if Kagan is right--and I certainly believe he is--then the country in which we live and the way of life we've maintained since parting from King George is not only in peril but there already. 

Scary stuff. But thousands genuflect when he lies. Thousands. Millions.