Hi XXXXXXX,
Before anything else ... be clear, I know you to be an honorable man. That is not in question at all. And in fact, I am sure that it is your sense of honor that is motivating you at this time. Again, all good. Where we have our differences is in our perceptions of the facts that are at play. And in this regard, it is also important to distinguish between facts and theories/perceptions/interpretations of events. The same set of facts can always be interpreted in a variety of ways. But as more facts are added to the mix, some of those interpretations become non-functional. (If you've ever played Sudoku puzzles it is the same concept. More information helps rule out certain possibilities.)
As an honorable and patriotic American, if I believed that an election had been stolen, I would absolutely consider that to be a call to action. The stability of our society and our quality of life is directly dependent on our freedom to choose our political leadership without undue influence of ANYONE, whether they be private or public. Free and fair elections are truly the cornerstone of our system of government. My father and uncles fought in WWII to defend this freedom and ensure it's continuity for you and I to enjoy. And it is now incumbent on us to do the same for future generations.
The 2004 Election
Back in 2004 I was in a similar position as you. I was convinced that Ken Blackwell had stolen Ohio for George W. Bush. I had gone to bed on election night confident that John Kerry had prevailed. And when I got up in the morning, Bush was the winner. I was stunned. It took literally weeks to fully accept that it was over. I was angry, frustrated, worried for the future of our country, and convinced that we had been robbed. I had invested long hours in supporting Kerry’s run and was emotionally crushed when he lost. I considered Dick Cheney to be an evil warmonger and hated that he would remain in power.
Back then there were still quite a few states which used Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machines with no paper receipts. These were impossible to audit or verify the voter's intent once they registered their vote. It disappeared into the “ether-sphere” as bits in a computer. There was literally no way to confirm that the vote was accurately recorded. This was at the core of the questions regarding election integrity back then.
That is largely no longer the case. In the intervening 16 years most states have replaced these with equipment that provides an auditable trail. The only states that still have counties with paperless DRE machines are Texas, Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, and New Jersey. You will note that of these, only New Jersey went for Biden. If votes were being magically switched inside DRE machines, these were where that could happen. Everywhere else has paper ballots or receipts. They also have automatic random audits in place which are there to help confirm that there has been no machine fraud. This involves human beings physically counting paper ballots.
[And in this regard I have a bit of insight that most people lack given that my mother for years was a member of the Baltimore County elections office. From her discussions I learned just how much attention was paid to avoiding partisan advantage so as to guarantee fair elections. Every election related activity involved R-D teams. And despite their political differences, some of the Republicans in her office were long time family friends - because that is how things were in the 1970's. Politics was serious, but not a blood sport. That has changed.]
So, what about corrupt people?
For there to have been ANY significant corruption in the conduction of the election and vote counting it would have required the cooperation of several individuals in any particular city, county, or state. And to further complicate things, voting in the US is not controlled at all on the federal level, as federalism requires that the states have individual sovereignty in conducting their elections. And on the state level it is further complicated because each county has its own voting structure and elections board. This is necessary due to the local jurisdictions and their specific elections. And so now we're talking about needing to corrupt things on a county-by-county basis to be able to make a SIGNIFICANT change to a state's vote count. This means more people who would need to be in on the steal.
OK, you might say, but how about motivated partisans who bribe their party opponents? They could change it, right? And in theory you would be correct, they could. But now this brings us back to the Dan Patrick fraud challenge. If there were all of these people across the country involved in stealing votes for Biden in several contested states, they sure aren't very greedy. Not a one has come forward to collect their million dollars. Just how much bribe money would need to be available to cancel out that million dollars when you have thousands of conspirators who could blow the whistle and cash in?
(Actually, I realized after I wrote this that it is inaccurate. ONE person has come forward with provable accusations of election fraud which have resulted in charges being filed. Pennsylvania Lt. Gov. Fetterman has reported two different incidents to Dan Patrick which have been prosecuted n PA. In both cases, elderly Republican voters tried to vote twice for President Trump by voting for their dead mother. Dan Patrick refuses to pay up even though these meet his stated criteria. He forgot to mention that he was only interested in DEMOCRATIC voter fraud.)
Election Assurance
Now to ensure accuracy, the next step is looking at the hand recounts and audits. There have been no reported cases of significant differences between audit results and initial counts. They DID find lost ballots on a memory card in Georgia which added some votes for Trump, but not a large number, and not due to any deliberate fraud. In Georgia they did a hand recount of every ballot in the state. They agreed with the machine counts. This makes the kind of cheating alleged in the "Italygate" claims impossible. The same is true with the random audits. If the Kraken theories had any validity then there would be discrepancies showing up between audit results and election night results. If you can find ANY, please let me know. (Note - affidavits are a dime a dozen and prove nothing. Everything that has been looked at by a judge has been determined to be the result of confusion and misunderstanding of the law, not wrongdoing.)
I would also point out here that every state that Trump is contending has provisions in their election laws that require these audits be performed. In fact, they do a better job of protecting their election integrity than YOUR state which does no form of auditing or quality assurance.
Procedural Complaints
The other claims, such as Hawley's complaint with Pennsylvania, have to do with changes to election laws, whether they were made legally, and whether they comply with the PA constitution. The change in mail-in voting in PA was ironically done prior to Covid, and was implemented by the Republican legislature. The bill included a provision requiring any constitutional challenges to be made within a specified time frame. This, again, was put in by the Republican legislature. And the time frame specified in the bill passed without challenge. And as a result, the voters of Pennsylvania made their votes in accordance with the law as they were told it to be. NOW Hawley is trying to take away those millions of votes on a technicality, not because there was fraud involved. Those PA voters really did prefer Biden, and voted their preferance. How is it in any way fair to take away their vote when they voted in exactly the way that the Republicans TOLD them to vote? The ONLY reason this is being challenged is because of WHO they voted for, not how they did it. In fact, the Trump campaign sent out absentee ballot request forms to every single Republican voter in Pennsylvania prior to the election. And as you can see here, their state web page also promotes absentee voting.
And since the PA Supreme Court is the appropriate venue to determine whether the PA constitution is being followed, theirs is the final say. This is how the United States works. Trying to take away their franchise is extremely unAmerican. And for another state like Texas to try to tell PA how to do their voting is the height of arrogance, ignorance regarding the nature of the US constitution, and anti-federalism. Ted Cruz only did what he did because he was desperate to counter Hawley. They BOTH are going for your vote in 2024 and want to be the Trumpiest candidate in the land. Both Cruz and Hawley are constitutional scholars. They both know that their challenges to the electors had no legitimacy. This was purely political theater for them, including Josh's fist pump.
"In October 2019, the Republican-led Pennsylvania General Assembly passed an election law, Act 77, that added no-excuse voting by mail, a provision pushed by Democrats. The act says that any qualified elector who is not eligible to be an absentee elector can get a mail-in ballot. Republicans got one of their priorities included too: elimination of straight-ticket voting. The bill drew supporters from both parties, but it had more support from Republicans.
"It was always touted as a bipartisan effort to get ready for 2020, pre-pandemic, bring Pennsylvania in line with Florida and Ohio and a bunch of states that had the no excuse system," said Edward B. Foley, an Ohio State University constitutional law professor who specializes in elections."
link
To address the substance of the constitutional challenge, the PA constitution specifies that certain classes of voters SHALL be provided with a means of voting by mail. There is nothing that LIMITS mail voting to those classes, they are the minimum population covered by this right. And as such, Hawley is wrong with his assertion - as noted in the linked article.
Suitcases of ballots, etc.
For several of the other election fraud claims I would recommend that you watch the video that Republican elections official and Trump voter Gabriel Sterling of Georgia recorded after Trump's infamous phone call asking Raffensperger to "find" 11,780 votes. In this video he addresses every single claim that Trump made in his phone call, showing how they were simply wrong. Many of the claims have been debunked for weeks. Trump only continues to repeat them because he refuses to accept facts that don't support his position.
This is something he always does, in case you hadn't noticed. This is much like in Florida in 2000 when George Bush's spokesperson, Karen Hughes would go on a cable show with her talking points and have them disproved. THEN she would go to the next cable news show and make the exact same claims that had just been proven false an hour before. It was not about truth, it was about getting their message out regardless of what the truth was.
Legal Issues
I would also point out that the Trump legal teams have not made a single accusation of fraud IN COURT. They have only made these claims in the media. This is because there is a price to pay for lawyers who lie in court, the only price for lying to you and me from Four Seasons Total Landscaping was being mocked for being at Four Seasons Total Landscaping. Meanwhile, Sydney the Kraken lady is now being sued by Dominion Election Systems for $1.3 BILLION. She is also at risk of losing her law license due to the baseless lawsuits she filed based on conspiracy theories for which she had ZERO proof. And really, Hugo Chavez? why not just claim that Karl Marx himself reprogrammed the machines.
Where’s The Fraud?
Given these facts, there is no plausible possibility that massive fraud on the scale required to change the election results happened. If you still believe there is, then please enlighten me as to how.
It is MY position that there was no significant fraud. That being the case, the justifications for what happened last week disappear. The president continues to make these claims for what appear to be many reasons, but they are not true. So now we get into the next part of things. What exactly DID happen Wednesday? I have spent most of my time since then collecting information and integrating it into a picture of what transpired.
This was a serious coup attempt
There is ample evidence which suggests that the events Wednesday were a highly planned and coordinated attempt to overthrow the government of the United States and replace it with a Trump-led dictatorship. I do not write this with any glee, nor do I consider YOU to be personally guilty of sedition on the basis of what I know of you. But there are many involved in this situation who I DO believe to be guilty of that charge.
On December 19th the president Tweeted for his supporters to show up in DC on the 6th for a "Wild Ride"
"Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election," he tweeted. "Big protest in D.C. on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"
(Note, this is not true by a long shot. “statistically impossible” is an interpretation, not a fact, and nowhere near accurate. In fact, many of his claims in this regard are based on incorrect premises. For example, for all of his complaining about Detroit, he actually did better there than he did in 2016. Where he lost votes in Michigan was in the suburbs with all of those soccer moms who were put off by his attacks on the people in DC for his Bible stunt, and other aspects of his response to the George Floyd killing. He also claimed that Biden did better than Hillary in a number of places where the numbers actually show the opposite — not that you can convince Trump of that.)
January 6, 2021 — The Second Longest Day
Prior to the rally, Louie Gohmert, after losing his last-ditch court case declared that
The bottom line is the court is saying, 'We're not going to touch this. You have no remedy,'" Gohmert told Newsmax.
"Essentially, the ruling would be 'You have to go to the streets and be as violent as antifa, BLM,'" he added.
At the rally Rudy Giuliani told the crowd that what was needed was "trial by combat." Then President Trump told the crowd "We are going to march to the Capitol." This, even though he had no plans to accompany them - but it sounded good, and made it appear that he was leading the charge.
Meanwhile, even though there had been social media activity for weeks discussing plans for violence, the DC National Guard was prohibited from doing more than traffic control that day.
Business Insider
The Pentagon placed major restrictions on the DC National Guard leading up to Wednesday's insurrection, The Washington Post reported Thursday.
Officials curtailed the ability of DC guardsmen to deploy troops, receive ammo and riot gear, engage with protesters, share equipment with local police, and use surveillance without explicit approval from President Trump's acting defense secretary, Christopher Miller, according to The Post.
Guardsmen didn't arrive to support US Capitol Police — who were ill-prepared and quickly overrun — until more than two hours after its chief called for them, according to the Post.
During the siege, Pence and various members of Congress were burning up the phone lines trying to get the National Guard there to save them. Their requests were denied for hours by Trump and his newly appointed acting head of the Defense Department, Christopher Miller. THIS WAS A REAL STAND DOWN ORDER. Not like the phone claims from Benghazi.
The terrorists who invaded the Capitol had a lot of clowns involved, like the guy with the painted face and horns. But they also had a number of trained military and police with tactical gear and zip tie cuffs. They were after Pence especially because he was seen as betraying Trump. Lin Wood called for his execution,
“They let them in
"Get the firing squads ready. Pence goes FIRST."
House Whip Clyburn noted that they knew where to find his private, unlabeled office that is in an obscure location. He wasn't there, so they terrorized his staff. This is because they had inside information including maps of the building and of the tunnel system under the Capitol complex leading to other buildings.
These were not idle threats. Yes, the gallows they erected on the lawn was likely not fully functional, more for symbolism. But there was at least one organized team with military training, gear, and discipline who were part of this invasion.
There were many mentions on social media of bringing zip tie cuffs, and at least two have already been arrested who had them in their possession in the Capitol. It has been reported by one member of Congress that some of his colleagues decided to vote for the challenges simply because they feared for themselves and their families due to the threats from the insurrectionists.
Rep. Meijer claims that some Republican lawmakers voted to throw out the ballots from Arizona and Pennsylvania not because they truly believed Trump's claims, but were concerned for "the safety of their families."
While Pence and others were burning up the phone lines trying to get saved from the mob, Rudy was burning up the phones lines trying to line up Republican senators to help delay the proceedings. He called Senator Tuberville with a long appeal, saying that they were trying to get some states to provide new electors who favored Trump. Unfortunately for the plot, he called Senator Bob Lee of Utah by mistake and left his appeal as a voicemail.
Rudy Giuliani: (00:01)
Senator Tuberville or I should say, Coach Tuberville, this is Rudy Giuliani, the president’s lawyer. I’m calling in because I want to discuss with you how they’re trying to rush this hearing and how we need you, our Republican friends, to try to just slow it down so we can get these legislators to get more information to you. And I know they’re reconvening at eight tonight, but the only strategy we can follow is to object to numerous states and raise issues so that we get ourselves into tomorrow ideally until the end of tomorrow.
Rudy Giuliani: (00:47)
I know McConnell is doing everything he can to rush it, which is kind of a kick in the head because it’s one thing to oppose us. It’s another thing not to give us a fair opportunity to contest it. And he wants to try to get it down to only three states that we contest, whether there are 10 states that we could test, not three. So, if you could object to every state and, along with the congressmen, get a hearing for every state, I know we would delay you a lot, but it would give us the opportunity to get the legislators who are very, very close to pulling their vote, especially after what McConnell did today. It angered them because they have written letters asking that you guys adjourn and send them back the questionable ones and they’ll fix them up. So, this phone number I’m available on all night, and it would be an honor to talk to you. Thank you.
[Relative to this, why does what Mitch McConnell did have ANYTHING to do with the legitimacy of votes in Arizona, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Nevada, Georgia, or Wisconsin? They have had two months and over 60 court cases to “fix them up” and failed in every court and legislature where they tried. What could he possibly mean here that is actually legal and appropriate?]
This is why Senator Lee went from supporting the challenges to saying "Hell No!" when they reconvened. His support of the challenge was based on his assumption that it was merely a symbolic exercise to please the president and his supporters. He knew that the legal results of the election were that Biden was legitimate. This was just politics ... until he realized that they were seriously trying to overturn the election with this gambit. He chose America over Trump.
Military Involvement
During his speech at the rally, Trump called on law enforcement and military to join them. Given that there was no way for them to join him on stage, it was clear that he wanted them to join him in marching on the Capitol. Some did. There were not only retired military and law enforcement, but also active, off-duty members as well. Many of them were presenting their credentials to the Capitol Police in a plea for professional courtesy - be nice to us, we are one of you. This included the phalanx of geared-up soldiers making their way through the crowd in the above Tweet. This was no spontaneous uprising, this was a planned violent insurrection.
Off-duty police officers among rioters one Capitol Officer says
This week, a Washington D.C police officer has come forward to make some stunning allegations about off-duty police officers and even some members of the military being among the rioters who took part in Wednesday’s siege.
According to Politico, the officers in question covertly flashed their badges and identification cards at on-duty officers as they joined in on the attempt to overrun the US Capitol.
I understand that it is soul-crushing to come to terms with having been deceived so enormously. But this in not on you at all, it is on the propagandists who are trying to use The Big Lie to take over the United States. The Big Lie's effectiveness lives in its audacity. It is hard to conceive of how they could possibly be lying about such important things. And by repeating it over and over and treating it as though it is not only true, but self-evident and unmistakable, the masses are convinced that it must be true. MANY of those involved in this are fully aware of the fact that it is all based on lies. They don’t care - If it supports their agenda then they are for it regardless of truth or reality.
Trump’s Big Lie — The Election Was Stolen From You
It is no wonder that there are so many questions about the election's integrity - Trump and his allies have been telling you since the election that it was stolen. But just because they claim this doesn't make it so - even if they do it 10,000 times. But that DOES allow them to say that there are an unprecedented number of ALLEGATIONS of wrongdoing. (This was Josh Hawley's justification for his challeneges, even though he had admitted multiple times to confidants that he knew Biden was the legitimate winner. He was only pursuing the challenges, he said, to represent his constituents because of THEIR concerns. He will be among those who pay the biggest price for this coup attempt. As his hometown paper stated a few days ago, he has blood on his hands.) And for proof they have things like Louisiana’s Clay Higgins who stated:
We have a preponderance of evidence that election crimes may have been committed in six of the sovereign states, especially four of the sovereign states
Well there you go! Sheesh, again it has been two months. If they have evidence of crimes then they should have produced it, and should have also scored their Patrick Prize. Instead the BEST he comes up with is weasel words and meaningless modifiers — OOOH! A PREPONDERANCE of evidence that crimes MAY HAVE BEEN committed. This is another way of saying they have bupkis. WHERE’S THE FRAUD?
Social Media and Societal Responsibility
I promised you I would address this. I apologize for saving it for last in this very TL;DR-ish piece. I hope you slogged your way through it anyway :-)
You asked,
B. T. W. Do you think that banning free speech on parlor, facebook, twitter & amazon servers is American?
First let’s look at the premise of your question. The definition of free speech in regards to America and the First Amendment is directly tied to actions taken BY THE GOVERNMENT TO LIMIT SPEECH. In the case of social media companies this is simply not applicable because they are private entities not under government control and can pretty much do whatever they want in the arena of limiting speech. Most social media companies have Terms of Use which prohibit a wide array of things such as personal attacks, pornography and more. That is their right under the US Constitution. And in fact, one of President Trump’s biggest complaints has been with Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act which actually PROMOTES free speech by not holding web sites legally accountable for things that independent users post. He is right that this gives them protection, but without that protection his accounts would have been taken down long ago due to legal exposure.
At the same time, Facebook and Twitter have become so ubiquitous that they are quasi-public utilities. As such, removing speech from these platforms DOES have a censorship effect. But here is your problem. Do you support the government nationalizing private businesses? That sounds extremely like communism. Do you support the government being able to directly control what these platforms may or may not include? That sounds like excessive government regulation — another conservative no-no. The only “solutions” to your problem with these companies violate other principles that conservatives claim to hold dear.
On the Nature of Good and Evil
OK, now we can finally address you initial question, and the premises to which it was attached …
I won't try to explain other than its a choice between good & evil.To quote from a book I occasionally read, "Let those with ears, hear, and to those with eyes, see. For the truth between good & evil, cannot hide.Are you willing to walk into the light of good & shun the dark of evil with me?
To start, given the material presented above, what I believe to be TRUTH is far different from the beliefs you brought to this situation and the election “fraud.” I am certain beyond any doubt that the president and his team have been lying constantly about the election results. I also am of the opinion that when people are lying, that is evil — EVEN IF THEY BELIEVE THEY ARE LYING FOR A GOOD CAUSE. If the cause is so damn good, then an honest argument about the true facts should win the day. If you can’t support your position with honest arguments, then maybe your position is the problem.
While you apparently believe differently from this, I consider Trump to be an evil man. I won’t bother to go into the myriad reasons for this judgement, and I acknowledge that it is a judgement, an opinion, not fact. For this is the very nature of the question of good versus evil — it is a judgement, an opinion, a belief. It is not a concept that lives as fact, but rather theory. It is also heavily dependent on context and background. Did you ever see the South Park episode about Imagination Land and the Woodland Critters?
In a sick Cartman Christmas story, these adorable animals appealed to Kyle and begged him for his help. One of the animals was pregnant with their Savior, but this evil mountain lion kept killing off the mother of their Savior. Kyle agrees and helps them by killing the mountain lion, believing he has done a good thing. But then when the baby is born the critters all start worshiping Satan’s rebirth and Kyle finally understands that he has been manipulated by evil creatures to kill the good mountain lion which had been preventing Satan from being reborn.
Another take on this is an old Chinese story that I heard related by Joseph Campbell.
A terrible storm rips through the countryside. The next day a farmer is evaluating the storm’s damage when a neighbor happens by and asks how he made out. The farmer tells him that his corral broke open and his horses escaped. The neighbor commiserates with him over his loss, saying “Oh, what terrible fortune!”
But the farmer simply responds, “Who is to say what is good and what is bad?”
The next day the neighbor checks in on him, only to discover that the horses were found, and that several wild horses had joined them, increasing the farmers herd by 1/3. “Ah, I see what you mean” said the neighbor, “It ended up being a Good thing!”
But the farmer simply responds, “Who is to say what is good and what is bad?”
The next day the neighbor stops by and learns that the farmer’s son has just broken his leg after being thrown by one of the wild horses he was trying to break. “Wow” said the neighbor, so it really WAS a bad thing, I’m starting to see what you mean.”
But the farmer simply responds, “Who is to say what is good and what is bad?”
The next day, the Emperor’s Army came through their village conscripting soldiers for yet another war he had started. But the farmer’s son could not be taken because he had a broken leg.
You may believe that electing Democrats is inherently evil due to the party’s position on abortion. You certainly have a right to that OPINION. But be clear that it is an opinion, a judgement, not a what’s so.
Meanwhile, is that the only criteria by which evil may be judged? In my OPINION it is damned evil to deceive people into believing a self-serving lie. I believe it is evil to then use that lie to manipulate people into committing sedition against their LEGALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT. I believe it is evil to kill people in pursuit of these aims. I believe it is evil to use threat of injury or death to extract political concessions. I believe it is evil to pit Americans against one another in order to gain power.
But Biden, what about him?
I also believe it is evil to tell lies about your opponent in order to cast HIM as evil. Joe Biden is not the head of a crime family. He is not beholden to China, the Ukraine, or anyone else. His son Hunter screwed up, no doubt, with his crack use especially. But the other stuff is mostly manufactured nonsense. The whole laptop story flopped because it is SO ridiculous that it fails most people’s gullibility test The ONLY people who “believed” it did so because Their Team, not because it had any plausibility. I mean, seriously, NOBODY is this stupid, not even a crackhead. We are supposed to believe that number one he kept highly incriminating photos of himself on his computer. He is a public figure himself, and the son of a presidential candidate. Do you REALLY think he would keep these kinds of photos around as keepsakes? Then, assuming he has failed that moron test, knowing those photos are there, would you allow ANYBODY else unmonitored access to that computer? OK, so let’s say he is IMMENSELY STUPID and actually had no problem with this. Why would he get on a plane in Los Angeles where he lives to fly to Delaware to get his computer fixed? And why choose a small repair ship owned by a vocal supporter of his father’s opponent in the presidential race? Come on, Dude, you KNOW this is pure bull. Even FOX News refused to do the original reporting on this because it stunk so bad. And the person who wrote the copy for the NY Post refused to allow their name to used as the byline because they knew it stunk and didn’t want to be associated with it.
And this, too, gets into the censorship question from earlier. It is not censorship when news organizations refuse to run stories that they cannot confirm as truth. The NY Post ran that without any questions at all regarding whether it was actually true. That was WHY Rudy chose them, because they wouldn’t look too closely at the evidence.
Closing
I ask you to take come time and consider the things I have presented here. Please get past the emotional connection with Trump and reconnect your patriotism to the United States. There is a BIG difference. Democracy depends on the losing side accepting their loss and moving on. The Republicans lost the presidency. This is what's so. Ever since the electoral votes were held in safe harbor on December 8th, the ONLY way to overturn the results of the election were by illegal means. In a sane world we would have several high level arrests happening, Don, Rudy, Louie, Lin, they are all guilty of crimes in this coup attempt. And they are just the very tip of the iceberg.
MOST of the people who showed up there Wednesday did so to varying degrees of innocence. They were not the people storming the barricades, they were not the people who entered the Capitol. They were simply there because they believed the lies about the election being stolen and showed up to lend their moral support in numbers. I hold nothing whatsoever against these people in terms of criminality.
Yes, I believe they have been misled, and that some of them may have acted passionately on that belief without crossing the line from advocacy to criminality. And yes, I readily admit that I consider them political opponents. But that is far different from seeing them as a mortal enemy who needs to be destroyed for good to prevail. We are Americans, and we are free to disagree. That doesn’t necessarily make either of us evil for holding the beliefs we hold.
Peace