Fools and Errands

By Calvin Hill

Why didn’t Donald Trump declare martial law? Pardoned from guilty pleas to criminal felonies, retired Gen. Michael Flynn recommended that then Pres. Trump declare martial law to overturn the results of the 2020 Presidential election to remain in power. Why didn’t he? What was he afraid of?

Why did he blame the sitting Governor and Secretary of State after he lost Georgia? Why did he blame the Arizona Governor and Secretary of State after he lost that state? Why did Trump demand that state officials subvert the will of the people to do what was suggested he do to keep himself in power? Thousands of American citizens marched on the US Capitol and hundreds are now under arrest after storming the legislature in search of the necks of the Vice President of the United States and the Speaker of the House. And on that fateful day, Jan. 6, 2021, another date that will forever live in American infamy, over 100 members of the Congressional Republican Party gathered, allegedly to perform their sacred duty, and voted to second the insurrection.

Donald Trump has a habit of sending innocent people to do his dirty, illegal work. He offered pardons to border patrol officials when he wanted them to break the law. He wanted White House Counsel, Don McGahn, to fire Special Counsel Bob Mueller. Outside of hosting THE APPRENTICE, Donald Trump has not had the guts to fire any administration officials to their face. For all of the media sycophants at Fox News, One America News (OAN), and Newsmax, who believed and managed to convince others that Donald Trump is a strong leader, that he cared about them, and he cared about this country, you’ve been had. Sean Hannity, the integrity challenged Lonesome Rhodes at Fox News Channel, suckered you into risking your life and freedom to be led by the unscrupulous and duplicitous Mr. Trump. But, as for The Donald and the characteristic of leadership, all signs on all roads lead to cowardice.

For Roger Stone, Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, their criminality, convicted and alleged, were the fortunate beneficiaries of Presidential pardons. For all of those presently under the administration of the criminal justice system, courtesy of Donald Trump’s fraud, and those on video awaiting the FBI knock on their door, including Republican members of Congress under the spell of Trump’s loquacious yet cowardly ignorance, they may not be as fortuitous. As Trump sat and watched the failed coup attempt and revelled in the rioters’ foolish belief in his assurance that, “I’ll be there with you,” their only hope may be the 2024 election of an insurrectionist approving Republican President. Until then, once the moniker of felon has been attached, they will not be able to vote, except via fraud. What irony.

Donald Trump was so grateful for their misguided loyalty, he left those insurrectionists dangling on the rope they erected for Mike Pence. Trump fell into his cowardly and gutless nature by failing to issue a blanket pardon for all the cop battering, property destroying, life threatening, and trespassing insurrectionists. In contrast, Jimmy Carter stared down the southern white Baptists. He also faced down the establishment and told the anti Viet Nam War evaders to come back home. Under fierce opposition, Pres. Carter negotiated the return of the Panama Canal back to that country. Jimmy Carter had guts. Donald Trump is no Jimmy Carter.

Trump tends to excuse the violence of his MAGA, white supremacist and QAnon supporters by alleging “people are angry,” as though his rally attacks against the media, the Mexicans, the Muslims and the Democrats had nothing to do with the violent attacks on the media, Mexicans, Muslims and seditious plots against Democrats. And in all of this, the bad faith Mc Brothers, McCarthy and McConnell, have acquiesced to the lies, delusions and subversive directions of the former President out of fear of unemployment – primary challenges being Trump’s preferred method of political blackmail.

All it takes is for Trump to be “disappointed” for any and all manner of Republicans to step forward and fall in line. When disappointment of his message, via Fox News, became a ratings disaster for “Murdoch Inc.,” and a boon to Newsmax and OAN, Fox News bid a hasty retreat to support Trump’s message of lies, divisiveness and Russian disinformation. More than 6 months after Flynn revved up the Trumpniks with their enthusiastic belief that Trump would remain in power through martial law, none of his favored media personalities have had the guts to ask Trump why he did not declare martial law. Why did he depend on Governors, Secretaries of State and election board officials to shoplift the Democratic votes?

When those who certified the election of Biden/Harris, they also legitimized the elections of numerous Republicans, new and incumbent. Yet those Republicans who did not vote to certify, inadvertently, continue to taint their own victories with unproven allegations of fraud for the sake of Donald Trump as he insists that in 3 recounts of zero to 11,779, the zero represents a landslide victory. And after ignoring Trump’s indifference to Americans dying by the thousands on a daily basis and massive food lines, Republicans and Trump’s servile media cannot bring themselves to tell their viewers, listeners and impressionable schoolchildren that facts aren’t fake, that science is based on data, reality and results, that 81 million is higher than 74 million, and that 232 is not a landslide higher than 306. To profess anything different is to suborn stupidity.

Advocating for the lies and ignorance of Donald Trump, under the guise that it is a noble exercise in democracy, is a fool’s errand. As the fools promote the assassination of the right to vote, the fair counting of votes, the degradation of free speech, and the very Constitution they are supposed to cherish, they fail to realize the damage it could also do to them and their loved ones. And they have chosen to do so for a weak man, they were told, would keep himself in power.

Protecting the subornation of such stupidity and lack of courage are a team of Congressional Trumpniks who are determined to know the name of the heroic police officer who shot and killed Ashli Babbitt as she illegally led a brigade of insurrectionists who were on a bloodthirsty mission to “Hang Mike Pence!” However, their total lack of integrity keeps them wholly indifferent to the knowledge of who it was that dispatched the lynch mob.