The Weekend's News Out of Michigan Is a Reminder We're Sitting Atop a Powder Keg
"It's all gone too far," said Gabriel Sterling, a Georgia elections official, last week. His voice quivered with a righteous anger—and with fear. He mentioned one of the president's lawyers had just called for a former Homeland Security cybersecurity expert to be shot. He mentioned that local techs working in the Georgia system are getting death threats as well. "It has to stop," he added. "Mr. President, you have not condemned these actions and this language. Senators you have not condemned these actions or this language. This has to stop." He elaborated on why: "Someone is going to get hurt. Someone is going to get shot. Someone is going to get killed."
Every day that the president pushes his election-fraud bullshit story, this gets more dangerous. He was in Georgia over the weekend for a rally where he continued to feed the resentment and rage: "We're all victims," he told the crowd. "Everybody here, all these thousands of people here tonight, they're all victims. Every one of you." The Republican Party endorses this rejection of reality. The party's official position, as articulated by its congressional leaders, is that the result of the election is at the very least in doubt. Almost no one in the organization will admit publicly the plain truth that Joe Biden won comfortably. Other Republican luminaries have been more aggressive. Lindsey Graham is still banging the drum about "audits" after multiple recounts and certifications. This is not real, none of it is, but the consequences may well be.
In Michigan this weekend, Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson said in a statement that "dozens of armed individuals" came to her house Saturday night chanting delusional slogans about how the election was stolen while she and her four-year-old were getting ready to watch a Christmas movie. She suggested it qualified as attempted intimidation of a public official.
“Dozens of armed individuals” showed up to Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson’s home last night, shouting “Stop The Steal!” pic.twitter.com/rZhPK5hbsv
— philip lewis (@Phil_Lewis_) December 7, 2020
You might remember that it was also in Michigan that a far-right paramilitary group hatched a plot to kidnap—and most likely assassinate—the sitting governor this year. The situation is atop a powder keg despite the fact that, again, Joe Biden won the state decisively. It wasn't close. It's a dangerous situation because the president and his Republican allies are pumping disinformation garbage into the body politic, poisoning the citizens who look to them for clues about the world. What have Republican officeholders said about this weekend's events in Michigan? I'm old enough to remember when they lost their fucking minds over Sarah Huckabee Sanders being politely asked to leave a restaurant. Will Tucker Carlson have something to say about this after he raised the alarm about the protesters who rolled up outside his home in 2018, albeit unarmed?
Don't hold your breath, even as what's left of the president's legal assault on the election results falls apart in spectacular fashion. His crack team of legal eagles have lost all but one of the dozens of cases they've filed across state and federal courts, at times laughed out the door by judges Trump himself appointed. Now they're talking about special sessions of the Georgia legislature, or other states seizing Biden's rightfully awarded electors and giving them to Trump. It's a farce, and it has failed up to this point, but it is stoking forces beneath the surface that were already coiled to strike. It is a highly dangerous time in America.
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