No Possible Plan
Georgia gubernatorial candidate and former Sen. David Perdue (R) said on Wednesday that he would not have certified Georgia’s 2020 presidential election results.
“Not with the information that was available at the time and not with the information that has come out now. They had plenty of time to investigate this. And I wouldn’t have signed it until those things had been investigated and that’s all we were asking for,” Perdue told Axios.
He added if he had been governor at the time, he would have called for a special session of the state legislature to “protect and fix what was wrong for the January election” rather than to change the election’s results, Axios reported.
There has been no evidence of widespread fraud impacting Georgia’s election results, which were counted three times, including once by hand, Axios added.
Earlier this week, former President Trump, who has claimed without substantiation that practices like mail-in ballots contribute to widespread voter fraud, issued a statement saying, “David Perdue has my Complete and Total Endorsement. He will not let you down!”
https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/584949-georgia-governor-candidate-perdue-says-he-wouldnt-have-certified-2020
12/8/2021 – The Hill
A man can accept that he does not need a woman or a nice house and coffee breaks.
But what if he cannot stop the evil?
What if he watches the evil gathering and stupidly cavorting in public places to the applaud of many?
What if he watches the evil coming from a little ways off; and the evil is wearing nothing but silly flimsy obvious lies; and yet for all that obviousness, the evil grows and spreads and builds itself fortresses and cannons?
Now he must live alone and without any particular personal achievement while the world falls apart around him for no good reason, for no reason, just some bitterness and meanness, some idiocy and willful self-confusions.
You are evil David Perdue. You are harming a system that protects not just hundreds of millions of US citizens, but that also serves as a bulwark against much worse types of regimes.
What can I say?
Who will stop you?
What wisdom will fill and guide the citizenry so that your attacks on our shared government — only shareable so long as democracy survives — will meet with defeat?
How do you do it, Perdue? What strange pairings of purposefully-fuzzy ideas with patriotic, heroic, and bereaved feelings do you employ, David Perdue? How do you convince yourself that you are doing good while you do evil?
Echoing Trump, David Perdue Sues Over Baseless Election Claims
The legal action by Mr. Perdue, a Republican candidate for governor of Georgia, was the latest sign that 2020 election falsehoods will be a main focus of his bid.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/12/10/us/politics/david-perdue-georgia-election.html
NY Times 12/10/2021
This is the stuff that destroys not just a nation, but a people; not just prosperity, but security; not just comfort, but decency. The more corrupt the state, the more is evil rewarded and goodness punished.
Is this what you want, David Perdue?
Deep inside?
Do you squirm towards the evil? Does it tickle you and pull you in? Do you imagine yourself a don in a mafia movie? Would you like to lick Donald Trump’s ring? Does that grab you deep inside?
I cannot stop you. The people who can stop you are not registered Democrats living in New York City, wandering the crowded streets discussing incidentals with their lonesomes.
If a person cannot stop the evil, but must instead watch it stroll merrily through the crisp December air towards power and prestige — what is that for a life?
There’s no plan possible if the evil can’t be stopped.
But what gives the evil a chance? What is the force that would allow people to abandon a shared reality inside a relatively wonderful time and place, and instead take up with fantasies about terrible wrongs enacted upon their persons? When were these terrible wrongs enacted? Sometime while they were on the sofa, eating potato chips and watching television. What were the terrible wrongs? Donald Trump lost a fair election and was not able to continue deconstructing US American Democracy from the inside.
Why? Why, America?
Why are you such a bunch of babies?
You want to know what it is like to live in a tyranny?
Keep abusing democracy and you will find out.
No, there’s nothing I can do.
I lack the wisdom.
And I anyway feel myself turning into dust from the inside out.
Who will stop the evil?
No hero, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their violence.
No saint, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their certainty.
No genius, because they always get too jacked up on themselves and the glory of their insight.
No leader, no artist, no regular guy or gal — no one is able to see beyond themselves enough to actually help.
But what about wisdom?
Insofar as wisdom is real, wisdom is human beings feeling, thinking and acting aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, and joyfully together. Wisdom is an organization of feelings, thoughts, and actions around the kind gentle light within and shining through every conscious moment — the light that is aware, clear, honest, competent, kind, joyfully generous, and oh so very gentle, so very careful.
Goodness is careful with human beings and the interconnected systems wherein they live. That’s the mark of Goodness. The mark of evil is carelessness with human beings and the places — including systems of government — within which they live and upon which they are (generally way more than they realize) dependent.
How will we stop the evil unless we all together somehow shake ourselves out of these our private realities and gather together around the table.
But how would that happen?
Collectively growing in wisdom is not a scene in an action movie, nor in a detective thriller, nor in a rom com, nor even in an oscar-worthy drama, nor in any movie at all.
So how are we going to believe in it enough to share it?
You can debate, USA, how best to govern the nation.
But once you begin using the tricks of dictators — when you, for this most recent example, decry fair open and publicly verifiable elections as bogus while working to disenfranchise voters and replace their decisions with those of powers of your own choosing — then you are just plain evil, and you just plain need to stop. So please stop. I cannot stop you, but maybe you can stop yourselves. Look at the good things you’ve got! Isn’t it nice to live in a nation where you don’t have to be king in order to be able to keep your family safe? Isn’t it good to live in a place where you can get and maintain power without having to throw dissenters into prison, turn the press into your propagandize machine, and otherwise prioritize thuggery and self-preservation over honest, open, competent governing?
Blind cynicism is just as corrosive a lie as blind followerism.
And the two are generally two sides of the same attack: blindly you decry the terrible unfairness of the other side; blindly you praise the incredible wisdom of your side.
The truth is we can make democracy better.
Not by disparaging fairly contested and publicly verified election results while manipulating local election laws to one’s own advantage.
But, rather, by working together to make elections more secure and more transparent. And by working together to help educate the nation about our system of government, in critical thinking, and on how to consume media critically. And by working together to get the nation to the polls.
We can make democracy stronger by spending more classroom time on government, critical thinking, and media analysis; and by declaring election days national holidays, making voting mandatory, and investing in elections to make sure the results are secure.
A functioning democracy is the foundation upon which this nation rises or falls.
So: Yes: We should prioritize democracy.
So let’s actually do that.
Instead of blowing smoke in everyone’s eyes and trying to steal their country while they blink and cough in pained confusion and consternation.
What am I to do with you, David Perdue?
Are you evil?
Do I know this because I am Good?
Or could we just say that here you are wrong and must be stopped and we all together know this because we all together know that the way to make US American democracy stronger is not what you are up to; it is, rather, the kinds of reforms we’ve just outlined. The kind of obvious, bipartisan, simple reforms that increase the franchise while simultaneously improving our shared interest in and ability to assess information, think critically, and together guide our shared nation towards the gentle, and the good.
There may yet be time to heal democracy and head off the disasters that loom so mushroom cloud and silent spring upon our shared horizon.
Author: BW
Editor: AW
Copyright: AMW