Could we witness something unprecedented which derails November’s vote?
The 2024 Presidential elections are days away. Early voting has already started in many states. On Sunday night, GOP nominee and former US President Donald J. Trump spoke to a full house of over 20,000 in Madison Square Garden, with thousands more wearing Make America Great Again gear spilling onto the surrounding streets of New York City. The next morning, I walk into a Starbucks in midtown Manhattan only to hear the handful of young baristas loudly and unreservedly bashing Trump as a fascist and “worse than Hitler,” and disparaging the event and its attendees in the darkest possible terms. I know this crew, and they have served me kindly and well for years. I’m surprised by the hostility and anger I encounter. I ask, given the strength of their views, will they still sell a coffee to someone who is committed to voting for Trump and to supporting his policies? Silence ensues. Nonetheless, my order (a tall Americano) is placed and filled as usual.
I have no problem with opposing views. Free speech and open debate are healthy and essential in our democracy. My main question is, where does this dangerous rhetoric, and specifically the incitement to violence against Trump and MAGA supporters, come from?
I have grown increasingly concerned in recent weeks that those in power who are strongly opposed to a second Trump presidency are growing desperate, and running out of options to stop what they consider an “existential threat to democracy.” They see this as a life-or-death struggle, and are prepared to go to any extreme to stop Trump from taking back the White House.
This begs the question: Will we even make it to Election Day? They’ve tried everything:
- Years of media and political propaganda—including the incitement to violence;
- RussiaGate: a/k/a the Russian Collusion Hoax, which went on for years and is still believed by some despite investigation after investigation proving that there was no collusion but rather a coordinated setup by the Deep State designed to render the Trump administration impotent;
- Massive election interference, evidence of which exists in spades but has been either buried, destroyed, or simply ignored;
- Two failed congressional impeachment attempts;
- State-sponsored lawfare, including multiple indictments, including the Southern District of NY conviction on 34 felony counts. Trump awaits sentencing and the appeal process, while other cases have either been dismissed or are still ongoing;
- Threatening the base: Unequal application of justice in dealing with peaceful if foolish J6 participants compared with the premeditated violence of the Antifa/BLM riots;
- FBI raids and judicial harassments of key supporters and administration officials, some of whom still languish in jail because they refuse to compromise or sell-out;
- Flooding the southern border and forcibly placing illegal immigrants in key battleground districts in an attempt to register them to vote and thus shift the outcome;
- Two amateur assassination attempts, and we still don’t really know what happened and why. God forbid that someone professionally trained in the dark arts of assassination would try;
- Trump = Hitler: Vice President and Democratic Party nominee Kamala Harris calls Trump a fascist and worse than Hitler. The mainstream media runs with it.
- MSNBC interposes Nazi images with the Trump rally, comparing the Trump event with a pro-Nazi rally held at MSG in 1939.
With this comes a clear incitement to violence and to stop Trump at all costs.
What could we imagine might happen between now and Election Day? It is possible that we could see something completely unprecedented which derails the elections. What exactly would this be? I don’t know. But it would have to be something that allows the Federal government to declare a national emergency and instill a form of martial law. COVID-19 served as a trial run for how to do it, testing what does and doesn’t work.
But Pandemic II-styled lockdowns are unlikely to work. Americans have grown too smart to be fooled again. We’re already at war around the world, so the threat of conflict won’t work unless the attack is on US soil, and much larger in scale than even 9/11.
To me the most likely “derailment” would be a comms failure, e.g., telecoms systems disruptions, the internet does down, a systemic IT failure such as we witnessed with CrowdStrike this past summer, mass blackouts, etc.
I hope I’m wrong and that we have ordinary course elections, and a peaceful transition of power thereafter, without derailment or interference. Even if Election Day (November 5) goes off without a hitch, we’re still in a most dangerous situation. The country is so divided, and the feelings running so hot in the face of ongoing rhetoric and attacks, that a peaceful transition seems challenging. We could see violence similar to or worse than the post-election chaos 2016 and the summer of 2020 combined.
Let us pray for peace and calm over the next few weeks, and that justice and righteousness, and specifically the will of We the People, prevails.