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American flag as smoke
You have to be in awe as you watch Ukrainian people from all walks of life sign up to defend their democracy from an autocrat. A country with a small military and very few military aircraft led by a former actor/comedian are holding back a major military power. The Ukrainians know what they have and what they are fighting for, their democratic homeland, and they know the fight is worth it. If they lose, they will fall under the autocratic rule of Putin and will lose their democracy. The Ukrainians know what that means. They had a budding autocratic leader in 2014 who was undermining their democracy, and they ran him out of the country.
While we are watching the heroic Ukrainians put their lives on the line fighting for their young democracy, we are also watching one of our major political parties working to undermine America’s 235-year-old democracy. We have several egregious examples of disloyal or seditious acts by some of our elected officials in Wisconsin and throughout the country. It appears that their goal is to weaken our democratic system to see it replaced with a faux democracy as we see in countries like Hungary, Turkey, Venezuela and, of course, Russia. In these faux democracies, autocrats can be re-elected for life without real checks and balances and with puppet legislative bodies kowtowing to the autocratic leader.
Trump Lost in 2020, But We Didn’t All Live Happier Ever After
In 2020 our country had one of the most carefully monitored and clean elections America has ever seen, and we managed to democratically remove a budding autocrat by seven million votes. Our democratic institutions prevailed. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there, and we all don’t live happily ever after. Instead, we see Mr. Trump continuing to build an army of Un-American subversives or quislings, some heavily armed and prone to violence and some unwittingly thinking that they are being good American patriots.
As we know, democracies are fragile and survive because citizens believe that their democracy is better than the alternatives. It is virtually impossible to mobilize an insurgent army to defeat the military of the United States of America. So, to destroy our country, the quislings need to cause people to lose faith in our democracy and have Americans believe that our elections are rigged and illegitimate especially when they are on the losing side of the vote.
Republican controlled legislatures in over 20 states including Wisconsin are now passing laws that are making voting more difficult for voters in high Democratic areas. Thanks to Gov. Tony Ever’s vetoes, these bills are not becoming law in Wisconsin. A few Republican states are even trying to allow the state legislature to reject the vote and nullify the election if they don’t like the outcome. That would end our democracy as we know it.
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So, What’s Happening in Wisconsin?
In Wisconsin we see this attack on our election integrity and our democracy starting with the “Big Lie” that Trump won the election. After the 2020 election, Speaker Robin Vos freely admitted that Trump lost Wisconsin. Then Trump yanked the leash, and summoned Vos down to Florida. Vos came back a changed man. He immediately hired the discredited former State Supreme Court justice, Michael Gableman, to investigate the 2020 election in Wisconsin. Before even starting his “investigation,” Gableman categorically declared the 2020 election was stolen and Trump won without any evidence to support this claim.
Gableman was given a $680,000 budget for this faux investigation, which included flying around the country meeting with the “Pillow Man” and other conspiracy characters and having a rather pleasant vacation at taxpayer’s expense. After spending the $680,000, Gableman still had no evidence of corruption in our 2020 election. So, what does Vos do? He extends Gableman’s contract and continues to throw away our taxpayer dollars to keep Mr. Trump happy.
At the Congressional level, Wisconsin recently sent two new members to Congress in 2020, Republicans Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald. The first official act by these two newly elected Congressmen occurred on Jan. 6 when they voted to challenge the Electoral College results essentially saying the election count in some states was corrupt.
Their vote was intended to invalidate the votes of tens of millions of citizens in a half dozen states and change the outcome of the election. This bordered on sedition by totally undermining the will of the people. Even Vice President Mike Pence, who is a longtime partisan, refused to go along with the plot since he is also an attorney by training and understands the 12th amendment. He knew that his actions could fundamentally cripple our democracy and end America as we know it.
Why?
So, one must ask the basic question: what were Tiffany and Fitzgerald thinking when they tried to undermine the American election as their first official act as new Congressmen?
Did they understand that Trump lost the election, but they don’t particularly believe in our democracy, and would rather see America led an autocratic strongman? Did they understand that the Wisconsin 2020 election that also put them in office was accurate, but they were afraid to offend Trump and were selfishly putting keeping their own job over protecting their country?
Or did they really believe all this conspiracy stuff and if so, they are as dumb as a post and shouldn’t be in Congress?
In addition to these two Congressmen, we have U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson who admitted on video that Trump lost Wisconsin because 51,000 down-ballet Republicans didn’t vote for him, but still continues to undermine our democracy by promoting the Big Lie.
This is About American Democracy
Any reasonable person has to question what kind of people are we sending to Congress? Is this really the best Wisconsin can do for a Congressional delegation? To be clear, this is not about any issues, even the very emotional wedge issues like abortion or gun rights and how Vos, Tiffany, Fitzgerald or Johnson might vote. Those issues should be debated and voted on by our elected officials. If you are unhappy with the vote of your representative, you try to change your representative on election day and possibly run for office yourself.
This is very different. This is about our democracy, the underpinnings of what makes America the great country it is. If these people have their way and continue to undermine the democratic foundation of America, eventually we will not be able to change representatives on election day.
