Election aftermath: Ramping up Chaos

     "I stand here, with all the feelings that I have, disgusted with this lie that Biden has been chosen, as if we all don't know the truth. This is our greatest battle since the Civil War, the battle of righteousness versus Satan. Yes Satan."

       Jon Voight, actor

Joe Biden asked for national unity. There won't be national unity. 

America is split three ways, not two, on who won the election. 

Click: Jon Voight 100 seconds

There is a big universe of people who look at the election results and think, happily or unhappily, that Biden won, and will be declared winner officially when the paperwork is finished. This is a huge group. It includes Democrats generally, plus some disappointed Republicans, plus government leaders around the world, the news media including most conservative outlets, the Pope, and people in the great body of men and women in government and the professions expecting to staff the new Biden administration. This understanding of reality contains a majority, but not a consensus.

There is a second body of people, and it is a small but very significant: Fox News straight-news people and some Republican officeholders. They are the crossover people. The translators. They walk a tightrope. 

They understand and accept the reality of group one, but they have a constituency problem: the people they talk to simply do not want to hear that reality. Federal officeholders have the dilemma that Trump is refusing to cooperate with Biden's transition, including in areas of national security briefings, and they think that is both dangerous for the country, and that it looks petty and unreasonable. 

Fox News' straight news anchors are getting heat. The daytime straight news people are being condemned for reporting the election results. News anchors say, matter of factly, that Biden appears to have won, and report vote totals and Biden's transition actions, all spoken deadpan. They refer now to Biden as "President Elect." They have guests who say that Trump's refusal to allow Biden the resources of the legislated Transition protocol is hurtful to American security. 

Niel Cavuto heard Trump's communication director say “There is only one party in America trying to keep observers out of the count room.  … You take these positions because you are welcoming fraud and you are welcoming illegal voting.”

Cavuto cut from her feed, taking her off the air, saying, “Whoa, whoa, whoa.. . .Unless she has more details to back that up, I can’t in good countenance continue showing you this.”

He meant "good conscience" he can't "countenance" but we get his point.  What she said simply wasn't true and he didn't want it on his program.

No good deed goes unpunished. The net result is that much of the Fox audience is unhappy with the Fox News news anchors, and saying so by changing the channel to alternative right wing news sources. 

Group Three are the intransigent. Wednesday I showed a clip of Michelle Bachman, and I urge readers to scroll back and watch her for one minute. Today, Jon Voight in the clip above says it is a war against Satan himself. Take the minute to watch. If America goes deeper into chaos during this period--the threatened Civil War--it will be because the voices that echo Bachman and Voight are more persuasive than the translators in group two. 

Voight is more of the "outrage porn" the blog discussed yesterday. He is outraged and so are many people will be outraged in opposition. Millions of people have seen this video in the two days it has been up. Donald Trump is giving leadership and oxygen to the Bachman/Voight comments. He is tweeting and re-tweeting multiple times a day, railing against the election and Fox News translators: 

      "@FoxNews daytimes ratings have completely collapsed. Weekend daytime are even WORSE. Very sad to watch this happen but they forgot what made them successful, what got them there. They forgot the Golden Goose."

He is re-tweeting comments that people are disgusted by Fox and moving to Newsmax and One America for news, cheering them on.

Trump is tweeting in ALL CAPS claiming massive election fraud. Twitter is adding warning labels to those tweets.

This does not give Biden much common ground in search of an administration of national unity. Trump leads group three and feeds it what it wants to hear: that Democrats are thieves and socialists and that their leader was robbed. The Republican Party under Trump is less a party of governance than a Party of opposition. This puts Trump and the party in a comfortable space of not holding the presidency, and outraged about it.

It does not surprise me that Trump refuses to admit to a loss. Losing would "break his brand" and Trump is a brand manager by profession. Being cheated out of a win confirms his brand, making him a winner with an enemy: Joe Biden, i.e. Satan. 

This sets Biden up for failure. He will look weak because will be shown unable to do the big thing he promised: unite the country. He will be the suitor who cannot get the girl. He will be Charlie Brown, endlessly hoping Lucy will play fair. The power is in saying no, and Trump, McConnell, and Fox will do so, delighting in making Biden look like the loser he will be.

The Fox translators get back into good graces with their audience when they stop talking about Trump's loss and start talking about how bad Biden is. Fox will be OK.

We are seeing something important going on here, a foreshadowing of a disappointing future, with any mood of national unity blocked by Trump and his supporters, and likely a Republican Senate. Election fraud is already shaping up to be the new "birtherism." Questions can be raised, conspiracies posited, more suspicions voiced. No facts will ever get him to accept defeat and he will never be content, so neither will be the people who listen to him.