Nearly Degenerating Into Tyranny

ON JANUARY SIXTH, 2021, the United States came perilously close, closer than most people can imagine, to degenerating from a democratic republic into a fascist dictatorship. Vice President Pence, before finally acceding to reality, tried everything in his power to reverse the election results to make Trump the winner. Recent research indicates that Pence consulted dozens of constitutional legal experts and former V.P. Dan Quayle, and that all of them assured him that there was no way to accomplish that objective. Until now, only a handful of people were aware of Pence's desperate last ditch effort to steal the election for Trump, who of course was himself trying to steal it, by telling his big lie that it had been stolen from him, and by filing frivoloous lawsuits in many different courts, among other more desperate means. On election night, in the swing states in which Trump took an early lead in the vote count, Biden was closing the gap as the mail in votes were counted last, most of which were from Democrats. The handwriting was on the wall: Biden was going to catch up, pass Trump, and win crucial states. In many places in these states mobs of angry Trump supporters gathered outside pollling places and tried to stop the count, but in every instance the vote counters held firm, and bravely refused to capitulate. Thus they saved democracy. Trump's famous phone call to the Georgia Attorney General in which the would-be-dictator tried to bully the A.G. into stealing the Georgia election for Trump, is well known; millions have heard the tape recording the A.G. made of the surreal conversation. Once again, electoral democracy was saved from Trump and his lawless, violent supporters. Had Trump succeeded in intimating the Attorney General in Georga into stealing the state election for Tmump, who knows what might have happened in other states where Republican controlled state legislatures, bouyed by the Georgia example, might have followed suit? What other successful acts of tyranny might Trump have successfully engineered? Them most alarming example was of course Janaury sixth, when a large energetic rally Trump had planned well in advance was held near the White House, a campaign style rally for a man with only two weeks left in office. This gathering had no other possible purpose for Trump than to try to violently keep him in office for a second term, and that was Trump's intent when he ordered the angry mob , after getting them emotionally fired up with words, to go to the capitol and "fight", which is exaxcly what they did. The violent insurrection was preplanned by Trump, but it failed, whereas Trump had intended it to succeed in forcing Congress to reverse the results of the electoral college. For the first time in American history, an American president tried to overthrow the American government. The failure of the coup was the final, most dramatic democracy saving event in the whole sordid sequence of events, in the aftermath of the 2020 election. Trump's election loss and the subsequent events surrounding his false claim of victory are the subject of a new assiduously researched book by Wall Street Journal White House reporter Michael Charles Bender, which recounts the nightmarish scenarios, and convinces any reader than indeed Trump and his supporters nearly ended American democracy, an attempt at which to this day they regret having failed . The surrealism continues to this day, as Trump supporters prefer to ignore the insurrection, or to pretend that it was a harmless event, or, as Trump recently said: "A loving group". That most of Trump's supportes still support him and still regret that their attempted coup failed is the most frightening aspect of all, and will be, as long as these traitors are active among us.