Being Basically Decent

WHEN AN ELECTION is over, the politicians shake hands and congratulate each other, if they were raised right and remain decent people. Its like shaking hands after a football game with both teams on the field, good gaming the other team. If instead you claim the election was stolen from you and refuse to concede, refuse to shake hands and congratulate the winner, you must identify who stole it, and show proof, or at least strong evidence. Accusations of criminal activity must always be accompanied by identifying the criminal, and providing evidence or proof of the crime. These basic principles of civilized behavior are still being ignored by Trump and his supporters. President Trump phoned the Attorney General of Georgia, and tried to bully him into stealing the election for Trump. Trump tried to commit the exact crime he and his supporters accused some mysterious unidentified party of committing. In Georgia, Republican paranoia, and their delusional desperation belief that the election had been stolen from Trump caused there to be three seperate vote recounts - Biden won every time. In the other crucial swing states, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Arizona, investigations and recounts have already been completed or are still underway, with no changes in the election outcome. The Arizona Republicans hand picked a firm to recount the votes, and the the firm of Trump supporters sadly reported the other day that a recount showed that Biden actually won by a few hundred more votes than in the original vote count. On election night in these states mobs of MAGA mad trump supporters, noticing that Biden was gaining on Trump in the count becaue of mail in votes, mostly Democratic, being counted last, tried to stop the voting, but intrepid election workers in every case refused to accede to the angry mobs, and like the Georgia Attorney General, helped save Democracy. Now the disappointed Trump supporters are claiming that recounts are not about reversing the election results, but only about ensuring future vote integrity, which, of course is a lie, and a pathetic, hilarious attempt to save face and dignity in the face of continued defeat and failure. Trump supporters know full well that elections in America are essentially free of fraud, that the presidential election of twenty twenty was fair and honest, and that Trump lost. But because they have taken on the personailtiy traits of Trump, Trump's supporters are behaving like him, embracing a malicious lie and refusing to do the honorable thing, and congratulate Biden. Trump supporters are deeply ashamed of themselves, ashamed of their own behavior, ashamed to have embraced Trump's election lie, ashamed of their childish response to their election loss. They should be ashamed, ashamed of what and who they have allowed themselves to become. Their shame is still hidden from themselves, but it comes out in their anger and violent behavior. In their attempt to destroy American democracy in the pursuit of illegal power for Trump they have forfeited whatever moral decency they may once have had. Trump, meanwhile, has completed his fall from power, but not his fall from grace. The plethora of ongoing investigations into his behavior and consequent lawsuits are only just beginning, and will eventually reveal his criminal activity, and brand him a criminal for life, and for posterity. When the smoke clears and the dust settles his remaining followers will have to decide whether to cling to him until the bitter end, or renounce him for the sake of their personal dignity and self respect, the same sort of choice Richard Nixon's supporters faced a half century ago. Trump supporters are in a moral trap, and only they can extricate themselves from it.