If we claim to be responsible citizens, family members, businesspeople, parents, Christians, in any way spiritual or just functional adult human beings, we owe it to ask ourselves a very simple question:
What would we do if our brother, sister, adult child, employee, fellow worker, or friend did the following:
Repeatedly made-up stories/lied to us to our faces.
Was civilly convicted of sexually molesting someone.
Repeatedly bragged that they could and had sexually groped and otherwise assaulted numerous women.
Created scam businesses which defrauded literally thousands of people.
Declared bankruptcy after bankruptcy over the years which have left literally thousands of his former employees and creditors destitute.
Repeatedly, gushingly praised an array of violent and despicable dictators.
Repeatedly excused and even praised white nationalists/racists.
Has repeatedly cursed, berated and made fun of: the handicapped, his employees, his supposed political partners, prisoners of war, those who serve in the military, women in general, Hispanics, Muslims, the news media, or at some point, pretty much anyone who has ever interacted with him.
Took literally a tractor trailer load of someone else’s very private property (ours) and when we (through our legal representatives) repeatedly asked that he return it, lied and said he didn’t have it, then, repeatedly tried to hide it. Then topped even that by claiming he’d miraculously transformed it from ours to his by a wave of his arms.
Laughed and bragged that he had our very confidential property (property he very clearly wasn’t supposed to have), as he waved it around in front of his employees while he berated and disparaged the head of our military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, the general who had briefed him on the document in his former position.
Called the leader of another nation which had been attacked by a neighboring dictator and which we, through Congress had agreed to supply with much needed military supplies to defend themselves, and openly and brazenly threatened to withhold those supplies unless that leader made up a story that would do harm to his political opponent and make it easier for him to keep his job.
Has been charged with paying off his former elicit “girlfriend” and then covering up and lying about the payoff.
Called out our nation’s and our people’s armed forces, our fellow citizens who’ve stepped forward to serve and protect us, to attack and overrun legal demonstrators so he could march around in front of a random church waving an upside-down Bible and berating his fellow citizens.
Despite an ocean of evidence that he’d lost and despite sending political flunkies to 60 courts around the country in a futile effort to get them to believe his lies that the election was stolen, he called a number of officials in the seven states he came closest to winning in and cajoled, threatened and literally demanded that they “come up with” the number of votes that it would take for him to declare himself the winner.
Wrap your head around this for a minute. Imagine owning a business where you submitted a bid for supplying equipment or a service and found your bid was not the lowest, … and then went back to your customer and demanded that they take your bid over your competitors. You not only would not be in business long, but would almost certainly be brought up on charges & almost certainly sued by your competitors.
And, of course, the topper: when literally all his closest advisors patiently and repeatedly told him that his shenanigans were to no avail, he and a handful of laughably inept but enthusiastically “lap dog” flunkies concocted a duplicitous four pronged scheme attempting to take advantage of the hoary and antiquated “Electoral College” which our founding fathers had devised to “protect” wealthy state property owners from the “untrustworthy” populace (us). The scheme:
Gather up a handful of political operatives in the seven key states & lie to them to the end that they believe they had the right to name themselves “alternate electors” and submit false documents to that effect to Congress.
Cajole, threaten and lie to his vice president whose sole job in the Electoral College process was to sign off on the results, telling him that he not only had the right to not “certify” the results, but the obligation not to, to adequately express his “loyalty” to his Boss.
Culminated what had been a months’ long and increasingly bizarre drum beat of lies to his fellow citizens that the election had been somehow stolen from him by orchestrating the staging of a huge rally on the mall across from the White House the morning of the certification, using his own campaign funds to pay for bussing in thousands upon thousands of his poor deluded supporters, among whom were cadres of the most virulent and potentially violent right wing thugs he and his flunkies could motivate to be there, motivated by three additional lies:
His Vice President had the right, and duty to not certify the election results.
His Vice President had, to all extent and purposes, agreed to not do so.
All these “true believers” would have to do is go to the Capitol and do “whatever it takes to take back what is ours”, pick one: their country, some mythic past of universal prosperity, an actual past of white privilege and mastery.
And, after spewing more vitriol and lies to gird his mob that momentous morning, he returned to “our residence”, our White House to sit back and watch on TV as “his people” stormed our Capitol, beating and killing its defenders, threatening our representatives and defecating in its hallways. His only actions of note over two and a half hours of leisure, were phone conversations with his party’s minority House leader, who pleaded for him to send troops and his Vice President who he once again tried to get to defy the law. And, his culminating effort, to send out a “tweet” to “his people” to the effect that the Vice President was too much a coward to “do the right thing”.
d. And, of course; if the Vice President could be kept from his rightful and ceremonial duty by whatever means, and the electoral process circumvented, then submit his “alternate electors” to Congress with the expectation that his “allies” in the House would vote to accept them.
What would/should we do with and to such a person? What would/should we do with and to anyone willing to lie for him and support him? What should we do? Look in the mirror, look at our children, look at our neighbors and friends, our families, our fellow human beings. I think we know.
Jim Martin
Perryville
