Message judo

 Down is up. No is yes. 

Trump is a master at switching the polarity of political messages.  It works, and it is happening right before our eyes.

This is message judo.

Earlier this week political pundits noticed what Michael Pence had done. How dare Democrats insult Republicans!  His actual words, spoken on Hannity's show on Fox were this:

I know the media wants to distract from the Biden administration's failed agenda by focusing on one day in January. They want to use that one day to try and demean the -- the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believe we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020."

Pence took the energy of an opponent's condemnation of Trump's plan of insurrection and replaced Trump with the media and Biden as the new target.  This was done in dead seriousness, but its boldness and audacity have a comedic predecessor in the 1970s movie Animal House. It was the "Otter" gambit, named after the character who used it in the college dean's disciplinary hearing.

Otter:  Ladies and gentlemen, I'll be brief. The issue here is not whether we broke a few rules, or took a few liberties with our female party guests. We did. But you can't hold a whole fraternity responsible for the behavior of a few twisted individuals. For if you do, then should we blame the whole fraternity system? And if the whole fraternity system is guilty, then isn't this  indictment of our educational institutions in general? I put it to you, Greg--isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we are not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America!  

And with that, the fraternity members parade out of the hearing humming the Star Spangled Banner.

In the movie the ploy did not work. Who would fall for that? In real life in America, it works pretty well. Polls show a majority of Republican voters fall for it when Trump does it. The Fox News network employs the technique nearly every hour. Fox says that when Democrats talk about racial justice or income inequality they are badmouthing the United States of America and the opinion host is outraged about it. 

Trump is in the news again, doing the judo substitution trick himself. Trump said that Mike Pence' statement "during his interview with the great Sean Hannity very much destroys and discredits the "Unselect Committee[']s Witch Hunt on the events of January 6th." In a statement from Trump's Save America website, he wrote: 

The Unselect Committee of partisan Democrats, and two very weak and pathetic RNOs, should come to the conclusion after spending many millions of dollars, that the real insurrection happened on November 3rd, the Presidential Election, not on January 6th--which was a day of protesting the Fake Election results.

The power of message judo is that it does not deny the opponent's argument that something big happened and that Americans should be angry about it. It accepts that thrust, and redirects it. The video of battles at the Capitol creates a high hurdle for convincing people nothing happened. People can see something big did happen. Trump said it was a big protest in response to a big event, "the crime of the century." 

Trump's substitution will not satisfy everybody and likely not even a majority of Americans. But it will satisfy a majority of Republicans and Republicans are at the knife-edge of having a governing majority in the Congress, and in 2024 the Presidency. The judo gives Republican partisans a mental fig leaf, a basis for feeling comfortable in their understanding of Trump's effort to overthrow the election. Yes January 6 was violent and ugly, but Trump and good old-fashioned Americans are the good guys righting a wrong. The real insurrection was the election.

Trump runs a risk of looking mono-maniacal, the Captain Ahab of politics. He keeps saying it; the Arizona audit did not discourage him. A lot of Republicans wish he would keep quiet and go away, but he has a crazy insistence. If a few more Republican officeholders spoke out and told Trump to "cut it out, you lost, so quit claiming you won." Then the Trump spell on the Republican electorate might be broken. So far, though, nearly all Republican officeholders are keeping mum. Trump demands it; otherwise, one is a RINO. Republican voters believe Trump, or at least they think he is maybe right or partly right, and that, certainly, there are questions raised. Besides, Democrats are terrible. Who cares about process when the alternative is a Democrat? Republican voters don't need to pretend they didn't see January 6. Now they get to interpret what they saw as rough justice being done. The people scaling the walls are the good guys.

 

Good bye, Facebook.

Theoretically Facebook gets us out of our bubble.

 
In reality, Facebook reaffirms our bubble.

Facebook is like alcohol. Addictive. Subject to abuse. Dangerous for some people and a threat to public safety.

Facebook "Cover" image

I enjoy seeing bits and pieces of the lives of people I went to Roosevelt Elementary school with. I see photographs of my nieces and nephews that I probably wouldn't see, were it were not for Facebook. I like this part of Facebook.

 American politics would be more healthy if people got outside their bubble more often. I see people blinded by their silos. (I realize some people will think the same of me.) I get this feeling most acutely when I get another email sent in broad distribution by someone from the conspiratorial right wing. The emails tell me that vaccines are a plot to poison Americans, that Democrats plan to go door to door confiscating Bibles, and that Trump won in a huge landslide. That last one particularly frustrates me and makes me want to hit reply-all to the chain letter. I want to write: Hey, idiots, Trump got a lot of votes, but Biden got more of them. Trump is a provocateur. Can't you see he has opponents?

Very possibly not, if one is in a bubble. As this blog noted a week ago, in some neighborhoods the vote was over 75% for Trump, and amid some subsets of people, say White, male, non-college Evangelicals, the number might be 95% or more. 

There are Democratic bubbles, too. During the 2020 primary election season Facebook groups of Bernie Sanders' supporters were so confident Sanders would win, notwithstanding polls showing him tied with Buttigieg, that group members thought fraud can be the only explanation for Sanders failing to win in a landslide. Moreover, Buttigieg must have conspired with Hillary Clinton to arrange that the software tabulating the Iowa caucus vote be designed to fail. That conspiracy faded away. Leadership mattered. Sanders did not join in support of the conspiracy.

Sometimes a comment in one of the political blogs I read has a useful observation. Here is an anonymous one in Matthew Yglasias' SlowBoring:

Because of the way we're all segregated, a lot of left people I known genuinely don't believe anyone could be disagreeing with them in good faith – there must be some nefarious underlying reason. So they think 'well if everyone agrees with me, how can we be losing elections?' Mobilization – 'we're just not enthusiastic enough' – is a way less threatening answer than 'actually people don't agree with me.' It's similar to how my grandmother didn't believe in atheists. People might SAY they don't believe in God to be rebellious, or contrarian, or evil, but the idea that the belief was sincerely held seemed literally incomprehensible to her.

As we are learning, Facebook is designed to drive engagement. It seeks cheering or outrage, and in both cases it confirms and hardens a Facebook visitor's opinions. If I saw something I liked on Facebook, I clicked thumbs up or down. Sometimes I commented. I become the advertiser's dream customer: Facebook knows where I am and what I am reading, and what I like. Facebook knows a lot about me. I told them. 

 I don't mind having one of my silos be of people born about 1949 who grew up in Medford, Oregon. I do recognize the danger of a feed that hardens the walls of a political silo.

Why did I get Bernie Sanders Facebook chatter if I disagree with some of it? Because I intentionally sought it out, becoming a member of various Sanders' groups. But my frustration with some of what I read was a valuable to Facebook as if I had loved it. I was engaged, and clicking thumbs up and down hardened my opinions.  

I put all this in the past tense. I have largely abandoned political Facebook. I decided it was dangerous to my mental health. I will try scrubbing my Facebook page of everything except family, friends, and old classmates. I won't be clicking thumbs.

Shutkin

A college classmate, John Shutkin, wrote me saying he was deleting Facebook altogether, and I have heard that more and more people are doing it. Possibly this will become widespread. John dashed off this:

My reasons are pretty succinct and maybe more visceral than logical. I have always been ambivalent about FB: it is insidious and avaricious, Zuck is an asshole, it is a great time sucker and, oh yeah, if it doesn't actively encourage and spread misinformation, then, at the least, it does little to quash it, lest it somehow cut into its massive profits. So the whistleblower on Sunday was simply the straw that broke this particular camel's back. And, even there, once I finally found and navigated FB's deletion procedure, it had me confirm that decision twice and then told me via an email that I had 30 days to change my mind and only then would it begin to delete my info. It is relentless!"

[Note: to subscribe to the blog and get it delivered by email every day, go to: petersage.substack.com  The blog is free and always will be.]

Whitewashing an attempted coup d'état

"Other than that one incident, how was the play, Mrs. Lincoln?"

The imagined question of Abraham Lincoln's wife is a classic cliche/joke intended to make a simple point. Some incidents define an event, and it is ridiculous to try to change the focus away from it. 

This blog received a comment two days ago that is increasingly becoming part of the Trump-oriented GOP's message. It redefines the January 6 attack on the Capitol. A commenter who uses the name "Low Dudgeon" wrote:

The “coup” story took off with the abject lie that was the murder of Capitol Police officer Brian Sicknick via a fire extinguisher—he died of natural causes—and has steadily diminished ever since.

A group of Trump louts committed trespass and criminal mischief in a shocking and reprehensible location….and to date that’s the full extent of the connected criminal convictions. It’s a soufflé.

What’s most amusing about the conceit that Republicans have gone crazy Right is that in 2021 the elder statesman and lead negotiator for the Democrats is ersatz communist loon Bernie Sanders.

Unless something odd occurs in the next several months, Democrats will soon lose 40 seats in the House and likely Senate control as well. Most Americans are not ingrates nor moralizing pharisees.

The comment calls the Capital insurrection "mischief" and says what was "reprehensible" was the location, not its broader purpose of intimidating members of Congress and the Vice President into overturning the presidential election. The comment includes the justification for minimizing a coup d'état: The media is untrustworthy and we didn't really see violence there; that the alternative to Trump is socialist Bernie Sanders so extraordinary efforts are reasonable; that the left moralizes irritating and offensive woke ideas; and that Democrats are unpopular and going to be voted out anyway. Biden's unpopularity means that Trump staying in office, however done, is a reflection of the public will, not an attack on democracy. 

Michael Pence made the same points on Fox last night. He said the media is untrustworthy and Biden is a socialist. The January 6 incident was unfortunate, but he is looking forward, and not fixated on the reality that Trump demanded that he discard electoral votes for Biden. Ignore that. In 2022, Pence said, the GOP will retake the House and Senate and in 2024 "we will take our country back."  January 6 was an isolated incident and Democrats are being offensive. Pence said, 

They want to use that one day to try and demean the character and intentions of 74 million Americans who believed we could be strong again and prosperous again and supported our administration in 2016 and 2020.

It does not take extraordinary investigative reporting nor the revelation of some "smoking gun" on secret tape recordings to describe Trump's efforts as an attempt to reverse an election to stay in power. Trump claims it, proudly. He predicted it before the election. He did it on election night. He publicly urged legislatures and governors to do it in the weeks after the election. He begged his Justice Department to do it. He publicly urged the Supreme Court to do it because they owed him for appointing them. He does it in rallies currently. The simple reality is that the January 6 was not an isolated incident nor an aberration, nor Halloween "mischief." It was citizens doing what Trump urged them to do, to go to the Capitol and "be strong" and to persuade Republican officeholders to overturn the election. It was part of the Trump's plan, a plan acceptable to tens of millions of Americans today, and therefore a plan officeholders cannot openly condemn if they hope to stay in good Republican graces.

Thoughtful people who write comments here, and officeholders who go on television trying to make sense of January 6 have a messaging problem. The reality is that Trump openly advocated overthrowing the election, a coup d'état. The message they are comfortable projecting is that Trump and his supporters are loyal, upstanding Americans. 

Distraction flares.

They resolve their contradiction with denial and distraction. Don't believe your eyes, don't believe the media, and ignore the repeated plain words of Trump. Nothing much happened on January 6. President Trump didn't stir up anybody and the people at the Capitol were tourists taking selfies. They were rowdy in the way of football fans who get carried away and rush onto the field after a game. It was trivial. It was a souffle'. Besides, look at how terrible Biden is. Socialism! Woke scolders! Critical Race Theory!

[This blog entry has been updated to correct the spelling of Low Dudgeon, and to correct the identification of the airplane shooting anti-missile defense flares.]

Note: Readers wishing to receive this blog by home delivery, i.e. email, should go to this address to sign up. The blog is free and always will be: petersage.substack.com

 

Night Watch, in cannabis

The cannabis plants aren't quite ready to harvest, but they are mature enough to steal.

Thieves are casing the farm with drones. 

It is the wild west. It is 2:00 a.m. and I am guarding my crop. If I encounter trouble I think I will be OK. I am armed with a flashlight and cell phone.

The melon crop is easy by comparison. The midsummer hailstorm flattened the plants. Hailstones the size of ping pong balls made the plants look as if they had been crushed by car tires. Yet some of the plants bounced back, so I had a small crop, just enough to give a few away, cantaloupes, Santa Claus melons, and watermelons. There is no money in melons. The farmer gets nearly the same price today as I got when I was in high school 55 years ago selling melons to Blunt's Ranch Market on old Highway 99 and to Sherm's Thunderbird Market on West Main Street.

Melons were a business for me; I made tuition money. Now it is a hobby. I grow them to give away. A very good vine ripe melon is as complex and nuanced a flavor experience as is a fine wine, but harder to experience. Melons are seasonal, perishable and they have the extra dimension of texture to get exactly right. I am a melon snob, and I wish melon snobbery caught on, but it has not. People who are fussy about their wines eat bad melons and don't know any better. 

I also show farm visitors how a watermelon sounds when it crunches to the ground and what it is like to eat the heart of a dropped melon. Melons are fun.  I like having farm guests

Crunch

. 

I don't like having farm thieves. They are out there, right now. Three times in the past four days workers have heard a buzzing in the air. They are employees of registered growers who have leased land from me. Each drone was different, presumably owned by different people. The drones  hovered over the cannabis crop. They went up and down the rows, low to the ground, out of reach but close enough to the plants that their cameras could see exactly how far along the plants are. When hovering higher up, they could scope out the farm roads, the various ways into the property, the closed (and locked) gates. They could count the number of workers. 

The operators of the first drone stood at a vacant parking lot of a nearby country church, the old Table Rock School. A neighbor who saw the drone got into his car and caught up to them as they stuffed the drone into a black Silverado. The drone operators had removed the front and back license plates from their truck. The truck sped off. The neighbor followed them two miles until they stopped at the parking lot of the Lower Table Rock trailhead. They got out and in a menacing way approached the neighbor, who took photos of them from the presumed safety of his car. but left without confronting them. 

This needs to be said: No guns were displayed or brandished. There wasn't a shootout.

Cannabis regulation by the Oregon and federal authorities is extraordinarily complex. There is plenty of law enforcement as regards registering cannabis grows and collecting taxes, but there is grossly inadequate law enforcement as regards theft. A cannabis grow-site a few feet from my property was robbed last year. The thieves got a vehicle stuck in a ditch and had to abandon it at the scene of the crime--a slam dunk place to start a criminal investigation, one would think. The county sheriff's department examined the stuck vehicle, said the car's owner lived eight miles away, but that they do not investigate cannabis thefts. We were on our own. "But we are taxpayers and property owners. The crop is registered, has permits. Don't we get the protection of the law?" The deputy sheriff said no, that as they saw it, all he had was an abandoned vehicle case.

So here I am, at the farm, a night watchman, guarding the eight plants that I grow. These eight are not "Medical Marijuana." They are grown under a different set of complex rules regarding personal use allowed for owners and residents of Exclusive Farm Use zoned parcels. The drones hovered over my parcels, too. I am physically close to the plants, awake, frequently going out to observe the plants and check for people, lights, and sounds. All quiet so far. My farmhouse is lit up. I am trying to communicate that someone is here, on the job, alert.

I have placed tracking devices in all eight plants. Thieves who would take an hour to disassemble each cannabis plant for a careful harvest would eventually notice and disable the devices, but the reality of a theft of cannabis here at the farm would most likely be a "smash and grab." They would steal the whole plant and stick it into a big van, truck, or trailer, dealing with it the way one would deal with a large, thick Christmas tree. Get in, get out. As soon as the plant and GPS tracking device move, I will be alerted and the tracking device will follow the thieves. The Jackson County sheriff department may not investigate the theft of cannabis, but maybe they would be willing to investigate the theft of my tracking device. Will law enforcement in fact investigate?  I don't know, but presumably the thieves would not know either, or would prefer not to risk that they would.

My hope is that the professionally-made signs alerting thieves of the presence of GPS trackers will discourage them. I am presuming thieves would not want to be tracked. People in a rural Oregon cannabis environment tend to be armed. The thieves don't know whether I am one of them or have friends who are. My wife asked me what I planned to do if I stepped outside the farm house and saw a caravan of people robbing me. I said I planned to turn the car headlights onto high beam, to point a very bright portable spotlight onto them, to hit the "panic" button on my car keys that starts loud honking, and to photograph them with my cell phone camera. I said I hoped that would chase them off. They would presume with all that racket that I would have called 911 and that police or fire people or someone would be showing up. I promised her I would not engage them in a gunfight. 

It is 4:00 a.m., the time I normally get up.

NOTE: If you would prefer to get this blog sent daily to your in-box, go to https://petersage.substack.com   Enter your email. The blog is free and always will be.

Simple: Elect more liberals

Reporter: "What do you say to people who think you and Senator Sinema are holding this whole thing up?"

Senator Manchin: "I'm not--we only have 50 votes. . .. All they need to do is we have to elect more--I guess for them to get theirs--elect more liberals."

Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia is a point of frustration and anger for many Democrats. He is standing in the way of a larger bill that would provide more social services and more support for green energy. Manchin explained himself to reporters:

I've never been a liberal in any way, shape or form. There's no one that's ever thought I was. I've been governor, I've been secretary of state, I've been in the state legislature, I've been a U.S. senator, and, I hope, voted pretty consistently all my whole life.

I don't fault any of them who believe that they're much more progressive and much more liberal, God bless them. And all they need to do is, we have to elect more liberals.

Manchin frustrates Democrats because he is telling them the simple, unwelcome truth. It is a 50-50 senate, and he got elected in West Virginia by being exactly who he is. Manchin is not the opponent of Democrats. He is the bellwether. He tells Democrats the balance point of American politics. 

Democrats who wish that Biden could be another FDR should be careful what they wish for. The New Deal was possible because the Solid South Democrats openly favored racist policies that maintained segregation and White supremacy.  FDR tolerated it as the price of keeping their support. The Solid South supported White working people. Democrats sometimes forget that.

Democrats also forget that the popular New Deal suite of programs created earned benefits and work programs, not free food. The WPA and CCC put unemployed people to work. Social Security was a benefit, based on quarters of taxed earned income. The GI Bill was a reward for wartime service. FDR understood that even in the Depression, with a quarter of the workforce out of work, people were skeptical of spending tax money to support idleness. Manchin understands it too:

My top line has not been — my top line has been $1.5 [trillion] because I believe in my heart that what we can do and what the needs we have right now, and what we can afford to do without basically changing our whole society to an entitlement mentality.

Manchin gave Democrats a challenge, put up or shut up. You think you understand where the votes are in America, then prove it. Try selling entitlements:

Take that on the campaign trail next year, and I'm sure that you'll get many more liberal, progressive Democrats with what they say they want.

Manchin thinks they will fail at that. Republicans will call it socialistic, fiscal conservatives will think it is too expensive, and rank and file voters will suspect that it is giving money away to the undeserving, the lazy, the improvident, and to people of other races and ethnicities. Reagan's "welfare queen" was Black and drove a Cadillac.

Manchin is a reality fix for Democrats. What works in Berkeley and Portland and Brooklyn, and what motivates the progressive activist base of the party, is not broadly popular across heartland America. Who says? The simple fact that Democrats don't have a working majority now and history suggests Democrats will lose votes in the 2022 election. Progressive Democrats see this as a reason to move boldly now, while they still can. Manchin sees it as the reason they must not. They are already out of touch with America, and this bill makes things worse.

Manchin, frustrating as he is, represents the center of gravity in American politics. If that weren't true, Democrats wouldn't need his vote.

Up close: An abortion story

     "A small cat was trying to kill a rabbit. The cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away."

         Jane Collins

Sometimes, at a time of peril, there is rescue and survival.

Across America people are marching today in protest of laws making making abortion inaccessible or impossible. The signs and petitions speak to a right, one affecting every American. It is a wholesale issue. But a woman who becomes pregnant experiences it retail, personally, one woman at a time. Depending on the time, place, and circumstances, it can be a welcome blessing. Or it can be a catastrophe.

Today's Guest Post is by a college classmate. She tells the story of her pregnancy crisis. She calls herself a "semi-retired writer" having written speeches for a Harvard dean and books including For the Love of a Soldier: Interviews with Military Families Taking Action against the Iraq War. She has a blog at: https://alicet4.com

Guest Post by Jane Collins              

It was 1971. I had just graduated from college. My only income came from making and selling paper mâché puppets in Harvard Square. That was enough to pay my expenses, since I shared a house in the country that had no running water, electricity, or telephone. When my housemates and I needed to go to town, we walked two miles and then hitchhiked from the main road. It was a good life: my first taste of freedom. I felt calm and happy, full of possibility.

Jane, with her mother and baby, 1977

Then I found out I was pregnant.

I panicked. To say I was not ready to raise a child is a huge understatement. I had just left a long term but unhappy relationship and had begun to see the love of my life, but we were so different that I wasn’t sure it would work out. And I wasn’t sure which boyfriend was the father.

I’d been using a diaphragm and spermicide. This method of birth control is supposed to be 92 to 96 percent effective. I was among the four to eight percent of women who get pregnant anyway. At this point in my life, pregnancy was an existential horror.

Abortion was illegal in New Hampshire. We had to get to New York, where Planned Parenthood was charging $250 for abortions. We did have that much, but only just. My new boyfriend and future husband owned a functional car. One of his friends loaned us a biofeedback device, which somehow measured your brain activity and beeped to let you know when you were calming down.

We went straight to the clinic. I attached the electrodes of the device in the waiting room. The nurses were fascinated with it and asked me a lot of questions, which I answered by talking about meditation. The procedure didn’t take long and didn’t hurt much. The nurses said I was the only woman they’d seen who smiled all the way through. I wasn’t happy. I was ending a life before it could begin. But it felt completely necessary, and I was at ease with the decision. I still am.

Most of the women in the recovery room, though, were weeping.

Afterwards, I felt weak and shaky, and I was bleeding quite a bit. A friend was letting us stay at their house in Long Island for a couple of days. To get there, we had to cross a bridge with a toll we hadn’t expected. We stopped the car and searched under the seat cushions to scrounge enough coins to pay the fee.

The only thing I remember from that stay in Long Island is watching a small cat try to kill a large rabbit. They were evenly matched. The cat hung on to the back of the rabbit’s neck while it hopped across the street. Then the cat found its footing and dragged the rabbit back across the street. This happened several times. Finally, the cat gave up and the rabbit hopped away. 

Jane and a granddaughter

 A couple of years later, I married the man who drove me to New York. We’ve been together for fifty years, through richer and poorer, in sickness and health. We have three children and three grandchildren, all of whom are way above average, and whom we love with all our hearts. None of our family would be here now if I had let that first pregnancy come to term.

There are many things in life that are beyond our control. Pregnancy should not be one of them. If you don’t like abortion—and nobody likes abortion—fight for free and easily available contraception. That would keep this sad procedure to a minimum. But women will not stop getting abortions if they need them. Having a baby determines everything for a woman—at least it does for women who are not rich. If you are forced to have a baby when you don’t want to, you are not a free person, and America is not a free country.

 

When is a "Coup" not a "Coup?"

When the election was stolen and you are just stealing it back.

John Eastman, the lawyer who urged Trump and Pence to void the election, explains himself:

If, in fact, the acknowledged illegalities that took place in the several swing states had a sufficient impact to alter the results—and evidence from audits in Arizona and Georgia, among others, points in that direction—then it simply must be acknowledged that the analysis in the memo was designed to prevent an unconstitutional election, not overturn it.

John Eastman is going through a reputation rough patch in the court of public opinion. 

He wrote an article for a conservative website, AmericanGreatness to explain himself. Click   He complains that "America's intellectual elites are bloodhounds" and they sniffed his blood when reporting on his six-point memo outlining a pathway for Pence to claim Trump won the election. Trump and Eastman met with Pence in the Oval Office on January 5 and Trump urged the Eastman plan for Pence to discard electoral votes, starting alphabetically with Arizona and then other swing states. Eastman wrote:

I noted that if all 84 of the contested electoral votes were disregarded on the grounds that they were based on the counting of explicitly illegal ballots, Trump would lead 232 to 222—a majority of the 454 actually “appointed.” 

Eastman predicted that would cause an uproar by Democrats, leading to civil disturbances, which would justify martial law, and that amid the chaos Republican state legislatures might vote to submit alternative slates of electors. A sympathetic Supreme Court might resolve the mess by naming Trump president. Pence refused.

Eastman and his memo look like justification for a "bloodless coup" in which the legal forms of constitutional government appear to be honored, when in fact they are not. Eastman's role was reported by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa in Peril. He comes across as a traitor, a co-conspirator, an enabler of Trump at his very worst. 

Eastman says he wasn't cheating. He wasn't arguing that state legislatures, Congress, and Pence assert power they don't have. There is justification. Claim the election failed. If there was no legitimate election then everything and anything is possible. Republicans don't need to prove it. Just suspect it and claim it. That is what Eastman does, here this week, in American Greatness. 

Eastman cites Georgia and Arizona, with a link to a press release by a Georgia group that in July claimed massive voter fraud, a claim that has been examined and rejected by Georgia election officials. Whatever question and ambiguity about the election results that may have existed in the days after the election have been resolved by local, state and federal election  officials and by courts. In both Georgia and Arizona, the responsible officials are Republicans at nearly every position, people put under enormous pressure by Trump and GOP partisans to bend every rule to "find" votes for Trump or discard Biden votes. Hand count audits and third party audits couldn't find meaningful error. Eastman cited Arizona in the very week that the Cyber Ninja audit results were announced, reaffirming Biden's win. To claim fraud now reveals this is not about doubt. It is a strategy: Never, ever accept an election in which Trump lost.

Political punditry is circulating and reaffirming a meme that America's democracy is in trouble. Trump attempted a coup. The key ingredient is the one Eastman exposes, and it is a weak spot in our republic.  A strong and persuasive leader like Trump can create articles of faith that belie evidence. GOP activist partisans believe Trump, and people who think him foolish or dishonest stay silent out of political necessity. Trump enforces party and belief discipline. Opponents and doubters are called out as heretics, Republicans in Name Only. 

There is one safe haven, and that is to accept Trump's original premise that he is stealing back what is rightfully his. Eastman can hold his head high as an American constitutionalist and not a traitor so long as he claims election fraud, he keeps claiming it, and he claims it notwithstanding any audit or judicial decision to the contrary. An Eastman who believes in fraud may be deluded, but he can tell himself he isn't a traitor. 

NOTE: To get this blog by email every day midmorning Pacific Time go to: petersage.substack.com and subscribe. It is free and always will be.