The plot of this drama is building rapidly to an obvious crisis

You know what the current, defeated president is watching right now? OAN. We should be concerned. That’s not a news network, it’s a propaganda organ for far-right lies, and they’re feeding his delusions.

We got through the election all right, but I worry about the spectacle that’s going to occur on 20 January. Trump believes and is loudly proclaiming that he won the election, and OAN is stirring up his angry mob. They’re going to show up for Biden’s inauguration, they’re heavily armed, and even if the Secret Service and the cops manage to winkle the wannabe-tyrant out of the oval office without needing to call in the marines, there may be blood in the streets.

We’re watching an irresponsible “news” network feeding the paranoid delusions of a madman. Are there no laws regulating the accuracy of journalism? Not that OAN practices anything remotely like journalism.

The only majority that you guys have is the numbers

Watch this MAGA loon try to argue that mathematically, he wins…without any math.

He also states that We [Republicans] have 40% of the population here, you’ve only got about 60%. I just wanted to slap him and tell him that acreage doesn’t vote, people do, and that 60 is bigger than 40. Math Time for Republicans, you ass.

It’s almost as if we could learn from history!

I had no idea that there was any relevance in ancient and medieval history to current events, but the history of the antipopes is shockingly on point and surprisingly much more complicated than I imagined. I’ll cut to the chase here, but the whole post is fascinating.

So what can we learn from this? History is full of venal, self-interested rich guys who do not take no for an answer, and the thing is a lot of the time they actually get their way. People with weaker claims to the papal throne have in fact won when they managed to get other powerful people on their side. Moreover, “official” titles and lineages are not necessarily proof of moral worth. We should approach pontiffs on a case by case basis when we start making generalisations about Antipopes. The more you know about Urban VI and his election the more you can sympathise with trying for a do-over and fucking back off to Avignon.

In the grand scheme of things, however, whether or not we think of any particular Antipope as, well, an Antipope doesn’t really matter to them. What care do they have for us hundreds of years later and how we feel, when they were able to live out their days in luxury, writing screeds about how they were wronged.

There is a lesson here, as well as a warning. Rich dudes are not good at being told no. That can mean a number of things. It can been an amusing story in a blog six hundred years later, or it can mean a destabalisation process which feeds into military conflict. The difference is largely based on clout, but one should never assume that the powerful and rich who bestow such things do so because of procedure or some sort of nebulous concept of morality. They do so based on what it gives them. It is our job to make our feelings about that clear so that poor decisions are not made and retroactively forgiven. (*cough* Bush v. Gore)

I think I already knew that answer.

You know what else is over? The election.

This is getting ridiculous.

President Trump has abandoned his plan to win reelection by disqualifying enough ballots to reverse President-elect Joe Biden’s wins in key battleground states, pivoting instead to a goal that appears equally unattainable: delaying a final count long enough to cast doubt on Biden’s decisive victory.

On Wednesday, Trump’s campaign wired $3 million to election officials in Wisconsin to start a recount in the state’s two largest counties. His personal lawyer, ­Rudolph W. Giuliani, who has taken over the president’s legal team, asked a federal judge to consider ordering the Republican-controlled legislature to select the state’s electors. And Trump egged on a group of GOP lawmakers in Michigan who are pushing for an audit of the vote there before it is certified.

Giuliani has also told Trump and associates that his ambition is to pressure GOP lawmakers and officials across the political map to stall the vote certification in an effort to have Republican lawmakers pick electors and disrupt the electoral college when it convenes next month — and Trump is encouraging of that plan, according to two senior Republicans who have conferred with Giuliani and spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the matter candidly.

But that outcome appears impossible. It is against the law in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin law gives no role to the legislature in choosing presidential electors, and there is little public will in other states to pursue such a path.

Behind the thin legal gambit is what several Trump advisers say is his real goal: sowing doubt in Biden’s victory with the president’s most ardent supporters and keeping alive his prospects for another presidential run in 2024.

Trump is openly trying to corrupt a democratic election in the United States, and he’s shameless about it, and his Republican cronies are turning a blind eye to the whole degrading process. Is there nothing that can be done? Do we just sit back and watch this boob commit fumbling, bumbling crimes that embarrass the country in the eyes of the world, and do nothing? It’s like standing outside the plate glass window of a bank, watching an idiot pound on the vault with a sledgehammer, while Rudy Giuliani stands at the door speed-talking nonsense at the crowd.

Oh, and almost half the crowd is cheering the crooks on.

Can we please put an end to our ongoing national humiliation and frog-march the whole mob of blithering grifters out of their positions of authority now? Can we at least strip Rudy of his license to practice law? It looks like we’re not even capable of that.

Bargain accepted, Brenden Dilley

All right, Brenden. I’ll wear the mask and accept that I look like a stupid dork, and you can point and laugh all you want.

You can die.

Could you please get it over with quickly, though, before you infect others? The whole point of the mask is to protect others from your pernicious vapors, so it really doesn’t help contain the pandemic for you to ramble about spewing in public.