Reuters published an unsurprising, deeply uninspiring short article with the headline “Biden ‘not confident’ of peaceful power transition if Trump loses the election.” All I can say is: Uh, yeah! Duh!!
For anyone who has been paying even the slightest attention to the American political scene over the past four years, it’s crystal clear that Trump and his MAGA cult followers will NOT accept any result except Trump winning outright.
Hell, Trump and his MAGA ‘election deniers’ never even accepted the heavily verified — and re-verified ad infinitum — results of the last election, when he lost to Biden by over seven million votes.
And now we’re approaching a new presidential election, and Trump’s election denialism continues undeterred. He still insists the 2020 election was fraudulent and ‘stolen,’ plus he’s been quite clear about his 2024 intentions — via his strategic hemming and hawing about ‘accepting election results.’
As in: he’ll accept the results IF they’re ‘fair’ and ‘legitimate,’ and IF it’s all ‘above board’, and IF there’s no fraud (Democrat-led fraud, that is).
But we don’t have to read between the lines here; we already know exactly what Trump is (sneakily) communicating.
Since he’s been mouthing off about the likelihood of election fraud for months, already, and has repeated numerous times that the only acceptable, legitimate outcome will be him winning… he’s already made it crystal clear that if he’s losing, or appears to be losing, he will start screaming ‘fraud,’ he will claim the election was rigged — and his followers WILL erupt in defiant rage (with his blessing) and ‘defend him’ so they can ‘save America.’ And it will all be totally ‘justified’ because… well, FRAUD!
This ugly and dangerous scenario is not quite set in stone yet — but it’s almost assured, nonetheless, given the way Trump and his MAGA toadies have deliberately set it up.
And all the ways they’ve deliberately set US up.
Our terrible ‘free speech’ quandary
The U.S. has been ‘stuck’ in a terrible quandary with Trump for over nine years, now. The quandary is this: he lies constantly, incites people constantly, and often undermines our nation, our voting procedures, and our laws — yet all of this is ‘protected speech’ under our too-lax free speech laws.
Trump, and now many of his MAGA followers, exhibits a profound disregard or even contempt for our political traditions, laws, rules, and societal agreements — such as, our former agreement that frequent public lying is bad and not to be tolerated — and both he and they often insist “It’s my way, or the highway!” To them, compromise is a dirty word — and the only word that’s even ‘dirtier’ than compromise is *losing.*
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Trump , of course, is infamous for his hatred of ever losing — at anything — and he constantly pushes a macho image of himself as a strongman and incomparable ‘winner.’ When Pres. Biden withdrew from the 2024 race, Trump was furious — livid — and I’ll bet the main reason was that he desperately desired to beat Biden in the upcoming election, get his revenge, and put to rest any lingering doubts about his status as a ‘forever winner.’
Trump was on edge for days after Biden’s announcement — and he kept talking and talking (endlessly) about how ‘unfair’ it all was, and how terrible it was for his campaign — because now they had to completely revise his campaign strategy and ‘start all over again.’
Poor widdle Trumpy — now he and his campaign have to (gasp!) adjust to new circumstances, deal with Kamala Harris, and give up on his fever dream of ‘sweet revenge’ against Biden.
What a friggin’ sore loser and whiny baby — this supposed ‘strongman’! What a sick, ridiculous joke!
The approaching danger is extreme
Or, it would be a joke — if the stakes weren’t so high, and this election wasn’t so consequential. As it stands, though, Trump’s lies, election denial, and desperate need for revenge all point to extreme danger for the U.S. if he should lose, or if it even appears that he might lose. (And also if he wins, of course — but that’s a subject for another article.)
Unfortunately, and very dangerously for the U.S., Trump has massive support on three fronts: the GOP, MAGA, and Fox ‘News’ and other right-wing media. His dark, obsessive quest for vengeance and ‘retribution’ has become an accepted fact of life for all these supporters and groups, and it seems no one on the right is willing to challenge him or his priorities anymore.
Thus, we are facing not only a super-conflictual election, but also the likelihood of an ongoing, nationwide uprising and rebellion if Trump loses. Even if just 1% of the voting population are die-hard Trump loyalists, that’s still well over a million violence-prone Trump fanatics ready and willing to ‘go to war’ for him.
It’s not for nothing that there’s so much chatter in far-right circles about an imminent ‘civil war’ in the U.S. These folks are deadly serious about this, and they fully expect it to break out — probably in the aftermath of the election.
So, when Biden says he is ‘not confident’ in the peaceful transition of power — that sounds like the understatement of the century.
Or, it sounds like a near-criminal minimization of the threat we’re facing.
Poor, frustrated Biden — in what almost seems like a forlorn plea — said Americans need to take him (Trump) at his word. “He means what he says. We don’t take him seriously. He means it. All this stuff about, if we lose, there’d be a bloodbath.”
But hey, are we all SO out of touch and ‘stuck’ in denial that we need Biden to tell us this!?
Apparently — we are, and we do.
We’re about to reap the whirlwind
Biden’s absolutely right — we don’t take Trump seriously enough, and we never have. As a nation, we’ve indulged him, coddled him, and enabled him — and we’re about to reap the awful results of what we’ve so stupidly sown.
As things are going now, the ‘peaceful transition of presidential power’ in January may be the least of our worries. We may be lucky if we still have a semi-functional nation come December and January; the way it’s looking, if there aren’t mass uprisings and violence post-election (if Trump is losing, that is), we’ll all be beyond fortunate.
It would, in truth, be an unbelievable stroke of pure, undeserved good luck.
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But here’s the more likely scenario: If Trump loses, there WILL be mass uprisings, persistent right-wing terrorism, and multiple concerted attempts to overturn the election.
However, I don’t think Trump and the MAG-idiots will win, ultimately — because the forces of true ‘law and order’ and the larger will of the law-abiding American people will eventually combine to crush any ongoing right-wing insurgency and rebellion.
The big problem, as I see it, is what happens in the meantime. Until such a rebellion and insurgency is soundly defeated, and the nation is set back on a relatively even keel, these Trump cultists and his avid supporters in the GOP can, and very likely WILL, make life totally miserable for the rest of us well into 2025, and perhaps far longer.
The die, as they say, is already cast.
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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From The Good Men Project on Medium
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