Trump in Transition (v48)

Watching people argue on Twitter about which presidential candidate won more counties - not more votes, more counties - is both comical and disheartening.

The self-proclaimed "proud supporters of the Constitution" seem to believe that counties vote...? And, without irony, they also believe that counties - particularly counties in red states - cheat, make up ballots, and round up dead people to vote against Trump.

The same people believe that wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt when observing ballot-counting is both a crime against humanity and indicative of cheating, while wearing a MAGA hat is indicative of patriotism and truthfulness, which is itself untruthful, if the judges who've reviewed the 'evidence' from said 'red heads' are correct.

And, it would seem, many of them apparently think that a mythological Scandinavian sea monster is going to save the Trump presidency. That would appear to be a completely un-American approach, don't you think? An illegal immigrant from a country governed by a monarch swimming in to save the American republic? Stop it.

Donald Trump feeds off the people who idolize him and can't imagine that someone wouldn't; it's impossible for him to believe he is unlikeable. Even in the face of evidence that people dislike him, he denies the possibility.

To sit where he sits - he acts like he's in a booth in the back in the corner in the dark, except he's in the White House, and we can see him - and repeatedly tell us and the world that he won, that he got more votes than Obama!! and more votes than any sitting president ever!!!, and that there's no way anyone could have gotten more votes than him since he got more than anyone before him!!!!! is insane. It's delusional. It's narcissistic.

And, sadly, it's completely consistent with what we have been forced to put up with throughout his presidency. He has not transitioned an inch, not even a hair. He is now who he was then, who he has been and will be forever, except that he was elected president. Once.

He denies my existence, and the existence of millions of people like me, over 81 million of us, who did not vote for him. He denies the existence of people who had the audacity to like someone better, or to dislike his opponent less than they dislike him.

The millions who showed our displeasure, our distaste, our dislike, he cannot or will not comprehend. Our exhaustion, he cannot comprehend. How annoyed we are, how sick we are of his constant self-promoting, the embarrassing tweets, the grifting, the cast of characters by whom he is surrounded, that he foists upon us, that he honors and celebrates, he cannot comprehend.

Equally incomprehensible is that, as he pretends all of this isn't happening, didn't happen, isn't true, he continues to roil the waters in which his devout supporters swim, working them into a frenzy of martial-law supporting, havoc-wreaking, our-country-has-been-stolen fanatics. They are insisting he will be president, he will have his second-term inauguration come January 20th, and they don't care what it takes to make that happen.

• Let's send separate slates of Trump electors. Let's have a nationwide recount - in the states he lost this time that he won last time, because that is the nation, that handful of states. That is the height of the resistance against him, and against which devout rage must be directed.

• Let's have a separate inauguration for him, at noon on January 20, 2021, an online inauguration. It'll be the biggest crowd for any online inauguration in history, it surely will - the zoomiest Zoom call EVER! We'll bring Sean Spicer back, grab him from the studios of Newsmax and have him count all the little faces on the screens to validate the count! Obama never had a zoom inauguration this big - we'll show him, that Muslim race-baiting worst president ever- we'll SHOW HIM!

• Let's fight the acceptance of the Electoral College vote! Let's dispute it on the floor during the Joint Session, and make the Vice President deal with that! (Insert Howard Dean scream here.)

And Trump sits in our house, huddling with the China-loving fraudster Steve Bannon; with the indescribable Sidney Powell, the lawyer who's not his lawyer, but who spends an awful lot of time at the White House lately; with Rudy Giuliani, the lawyer who IS his lawyer but who spends a lot of time telling people that Sidney Powell is nuts; with twice-confessed lying pardoned disgraced General Michael Flynn, and his other usual suspects - RINOS one and all - because these folks are not representative of the majority of Republicans. They cannot be.

Trump and his followers would have you believe that Republicans in charge of elections in red states are RINOS for not declaring him the winner, but they are actually Republicans, sharing their disappointment at the outcome of the election (however misplaced that disappointment is, in my opinion) and at the same time supporting the rule of law and the processes that are in place.

They are being turned on (no, not like that), the Republicans are, by the man they chose, the one they said was a lunatic, unstable, a racist, not like them, not good for the country, a con man, and more. He is turning on them, not just privately, but pitting one against the other, pitting the many against the one, whoever the one is that is drawing Trump's ire at any particular moment.

The majority of Republicans don't have the cojones to put themselves in the Stevie-Rudy-Sidney-Mikey crowd, right? They prefer to cower in the face of these folks. Complicitly, most of them silently, but still cowering, instead of using their precious microphone and camera time talking about what their constituents need, regardless of what Trump wants, or heaven forbid, talking about what the country needs.

And they surely don't have the cojones to stand up to Trump, unless it's on their way out of office. That seems to be the time when courage, and cojones, are found aplenty. (Well, a couple, maybe; not really aplenty. I mean, they're not hanging like ornaments on a tree or anything.)

All of this - the ignorance, the insistence, the convincing, the convicted, the complicit, the true believers, the treasonous - all of this creates a giant, flaming bullseye showing us exactly where we are, and how far we need to go.

We don't need a cult leader, raking in money hand over fist from the faithful. We don't need a grifter, enriching his businesses and his family off the taxpayers. We don't need a liar, a tweeter, a shouter, a screamer, a cranky two-year-old having a temper tantrum.

We surely don't need more people coming to the White House wearing their criminal convictions on their sleeves; we need people who have the courage of their convictions, their principles, their ethics, their love of country.

We don't need a person, we need a plan, for the entire country.

The 'real' transition cannot happen soon enough.