If you are a patriot.

If you are a patriot, you will accept the results of the elections today.

You might be happy, or you might be unhappy. I suspect I will carry a strong sadness with me after today, in seeing the type of candidates and policies so many seem to support.

But I will accept the results. As so many candidates have done for so many years in this great country. Up until 2020. That’s when things changed. And I don’t mean the integrity of elections drastically changing. I mean the response by a Presidential candidate upon losing, and the metastasizing influence it is had in emboldening others to reject reality and claim victory, a priori.

It makes me think of the brazen shoplifters we’ve seen (and heard of many, many times). The ones who load up shopping carts and then walk out the front entrance without paying, implicitly daring somebody to stop them. This is wrong. I’m not defending that. What many candidates (on one side) are (ironically, on ostensible ironclad ‘law and order’ platforms) trying to do with elections is a little similar: you brazenly make the most outlandish proclamations, predictions, and assertions possible, and make it clear that the only way it can be substantially proven that the election results are fair is if…you win, regardless of whether it’s right ethically or legally.. Brazen in the extreme. You take whatever you can possibly take, and waltz out, daring people to stop you.

Also brings to mind the Salem Witch Trials:

We think that woman is a witch!

How do we find out!?

We throw her in the water. The water of baptism will reject servants of the devil like her.

What do you mean?

Well, we throw her in, all tied up. If she floats to the surface, then the water has rejected her and it proves she’s guilty, so we’ll execute her.

And if she sinks?

Well, then we’ll know that she’s innocent.

But…won’t she be dead?

Maybe. Probably.

What we call a lose-lose scenario. That’s what election deniers have done. Except they prefer to identify themselves as fighters for election integrity.

Patriots and election integrity

If you are a patriot, you support election integrity. Right now, you can show your support for election integrity by rejecting voter intimidation and suppression. That’s what patriots do: they reject attacks on democracy. Voter intimidation and voter suppression is not election integrity. It’s sore losers trying to change the rules. We could have a long chat about the history of gerrymandering, something both sides have played hardball at for decades. But this is not that.

How to win, how to lose

If you are a patriot, you don’t whine and squawk and cry foul when you don’t win.

If you are a patriot, you show grace and respect and a dignity for the process by conceding and accepting when things don’t go your way.

If you are a patriot, you own up to values of personal responsibility, of respect, of strength through humility and ownership of your mistakes and losses.

If you are a patriot, you own up to reality, you examine what you could have done better, and you move on from there. You don’t keep reliving the past again and again, crying that you were robbed.

If you are a patriot, you are pro-enforcement of just laws and fair elections. And through our form of representation and government, we have check-and-balance systems in place to ensure elections are free and fair. If you are a patriot, you believe this, and you have the intelligence to discern that perhaps those who only point fingers at the system when they lose are perhaps not reliable indicators or examples of integrity and non-partisanship.

Again, those who only point fingers at the system when they lose are perhaps not reliable indicators or examples of integrity, fair play and non-partisanship.

If you are a patriot, you do not dismiss members of your own party who have been considered lucid, discerning, valid, relevant, and worth listening to…up until the point they crossed into no man’s land: the line that says your political allegiance is either first to country or first to a former President who lost a second term.

If you are a patriot, you win with grace and humility, or you lose with dignity and acceptance of reality.

That is when we truly start to see the character of these candidates.

2022 races I’m PAYING SPECIAL ATTENTION TO

Senate

Arizona
Mark Kelly (D) vs Blake Masters (R)

Georgia
Raphael Warnock (D) vs Herschel Walker (R)

Pennsylvania
John Fetterman (D) vs Mehmet Oz (R)

Wisconsin
Mandela Barnes (D) vs Ron Johnson (R)

Governor

Arizona
Katie Hobbs (D) vs Kari Lake (R)

Florida
Charlie Crist (D) vs Ron DeSantis (R)

Michigan
Gretchen Whitmer (D) vs Tudor Dixon (R)

Pennsylvania
Josh Shapiro (D) vs Doug Mastriano (R)

Washington
Patty Murray (D) vs Tiffany Smiley (R)

Wisconsin
Tony Evers (D) vs Tim Michels (R)

House

Washington - 3rd
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez (D) vs Joe Kent (R)

Clark County

County Auditor
Greg Kimsey (R) vs Brett Simpson (R)
No, that’s not a mistake. They are both Republican. Kimsey has been a reliable, competent, largely non-controversial auditor for 24 years. You know, doing his job quietly. Simpson saw his chance to jump on the bandwagon of “election integrity,” and ran with it. Saw his shot and leaped hard. Same situation as Jaime Herrera Beutler: Republican and conservative for years, but failed the current Trump Repub litmus test: you must choose Trump over country, party over principle, and election intimidation and suppression over election integrity.

My Evaluation of the litmus test you must pass if you want to be part of the current republican party

I became interested in politics in 1989, around the age of 13. Since then, I have voted (legally and after turning 18) and supported - and observed with amusement - both major parties. Until 2016. I have never been anti-Republican or pro-Democrat.

What I care about

I have been in favor of asking good questions in good faith and in supporting those who support Rule of Law, a general spirit of empathy, and exhibit leadership qualities that include competence, integrity, self-reflection, and thoughtful evaluation of difficult decisions. I don’t care about either party, per se. I care about some form of balance that involves rational civic discourse, civility, honesty, and good faith dialogue. There is much on the further Left on the Democrat side that I don’t align with and with which I have concerns, primarily dealing with First Amendment and free speech issues.

The reason they are lower on my priority list right now is this: how can we stand by and let one party, at an institutional, mainstream level, attack, with aggression and growing violence, facts, the good faith pursuit of truth, and the very foundations of our free and fair elections that lay the groundwork for peaceful transfers of power? That is why I write this about one party and not the other right now. Not because I love the other.

How come you don’t say anything about the Democrats? All this stuff you’re saying sounds like the same old liberal bias…

Well, I’ve been a sort of curious, smirking, question-asking, journalistic-minded, contrarian observer with politics from the late 80s through the mid-2010s. I’m an a la carte figure; because you know my positions in a handful of areas doesn’t mean you can extrapolate the rest of my positions from that. I’ve long thought of myself as a fairly boring centrist, with some strong conservative principles and positions coupled with what might be categorized as more liberal or progressive ones on the other. Boring old center, with a special affinity for First Amendment issues. I long identified with the different ways to frame, interpret, and come to a position on many disparate issues - and I understand that often there were honorable, compassionate, intelligent people who landed on opposite sides of an issue.

But it wasn’t until several years ago that the far right began fiddling with the facts themselves; gaslighting society itself to believe that what was real was not real, and if those people said it was real, even if they had been trustworthy before, that new information had come forth and they were actually not. Were not reliable. Were not honest. Were not trustworthy. No matter how clear the facts were or the evidence was, it was suspect if it came from them. Them being a catch-22, similar to the voting situation described above:

So you’re saying I should believe Alternate Facts A, B, and C?
Yes.
How do I know if they’re true? They seem to contradict everything I’ve seen from people who are trustworthy.
Those people are not trustworthy.
Then who is?
Citizen X.
How do I know Citizen X is trustworthy?
Because they believe in Alternate Facts A, B, and C.
So, I should believe Alternate Facts A, B, and C because they come from Citizen X, and Alternate Facts A, B, and C are valid because they come from Citizen X. Isn’t that circular reasoning?
No. It’s not. You’re clearly a Marxist, Antifa, or Democrat. Your reasoning and logic is fake.
It is? Why?
Because Citizen X said so. And Citizen X is trustworthy.

Why am I only writing about one party right now? It is not because I am beholden to the other. It is not because I hate the GOP historically. In fact, I’ve voted for a fair number of Republicans at various levels over the years. I’m a classic split-ticketer, a nostalgic relic; I’m the fax machine of voters. But I cannot do so now. Because there is almost no place left for the kind of centrist, thoughtful, conservative and principled discourse, thinking, or positions that used to hold some type of diversity under its tent.

One party is enabling and encouraging a growing trend toward autocracy, authoritarianism, and the suppression of democratic ideals. I oppose the rise of those who support these ideas - they may not support those concepts in name, but they do through actions, legislation, and dog-whistling. See: below.

If there’s a conflict or question about anything, you must choose Trump’s side over the country’s - which means trusting his words over the words of those who have previously been considered reliable, competent, and knowledgeable in their field.
If there is a conflict, hypocrisy, or cognitive dissonance between what you say you value, and what you actually value (for example: being absolutely against abortion, but supporting a candidate who has allegedly paid for abortions when it was personal), then you will choose the words over the actions, and you will throw around words like fake news, liberal media, or possibly, repentance. In other words, you will choose party over principle when there’s a conflict.
You must choose election intimidation and suppression over election actual integrity. That means you question the results when you or the candidate you support loses. The best way to do this is by using the tried-and-true variation of “…there’s something that just feels not right…I’m just asking the question…isn’t it worth looking into?” The important part is to make this sound rational. But then you have to double down, and if further investigations show that there is not merit to widespread fraud, then you have to widen your Deep State conspiracy net to include those doing the audits, and those auditing the auditors. But quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Orwell would have a field day with the way “election integrity” is used, and what it implies versus what it actually signals and means.
You must dismiss, denigrate, and reject any of your own who speaks against the first. This is bedrock. Because the party serves a man, not a country, first and foremost, you have to trust that the messianic man who says he loves America actually loves America, and therefore anything he says and does is in service to America, and therefore, if anyone speaks out against him, they are speaking out against America. So weed out the weeds, toss out your own, and let allegiances be public and loud. Make it a fealty competition.
You must accept that we are not talking about discourse or disagreement or differences of opinion. We are talking about Good and Evil. If you love Trump, God, and America (in that order), then you are Good. If you don’t, then you are not. And anything Bad that happens to you is deserved. And if something Bad doesn’t happen to you, then…something just doesn’t feel right…must be a conspiracy. Let’s just do away with elections. We need a leader who will make us great again. Lead us, O Leader, lead us.

Ongoing thoughts on Election Day

03.51pm
For being so against ‘government waste and spending,’ it is astounding the number of lawsuits the GOP has already filed in the name of ‘election integrity.’ The amount of resources, energy, time, and expenditure they will soak up is impossible to calculate right now. Look, a squirrel! This is what election integrity means to them: make it harder, keep throwing distractions, maybe something will stick. Doesn’t matter how many times something has been discredited these days: these things still distract, and they take energy, money, and time to deal with and fight off. These are not about election ‘integrity.’ Full stop.