It has long been clear – to anyone bothering to pay attention, to anyone not benumbed by the relentless assaults on American democracy – that, in the aftermath of the ’16 election, Trump and his minions plotted a fascist coup. And now, in case you may think that the word fascist is too hyperbolic, I offer the latest revelation: A Power Point presentation that has surfaced from within the conspiracy.
Trump chief of staff and conspirator Mark Meadows has turned over a slew of documents to the Jan. 6 committee on Capitol Hill, most notably incontrovertible evidence that the coup crew was bent on ending free and fair elections in America. We don’t yet know the identity of the person or persons who crafted the Power Point presentation one day prior to the violent insurrection, and we of course can marvel at the sick stupidity of actually putting such thoughts in writing, but the bottom line is that it’s all there in black and white, with all the stink of a smoking gun.
For instance: “Declare electronic voting in all states invalid.”
For instance: “Declare National Security Emergency.”
Well now. If you were to decree that all electronic voting was invalid, you’d kill off democratic elections. And the purported basis for the “national security emergency” was that “the Chinese systematically gained control over our election system.” Gee. The last I’d heard, some members of the coup crew had said that Italy had done that dirty deed, while others had pinned the fake blame on Venezuela…oh wait, the Power Point says on page 36 that the “key issue” was a conspiracy between China and Venezuela. And that those two nations had ruined the voting in “28 states.” And that even though (as we know) repeated hand counts in crucial states had confirmed that Joe Biden’s victory was real, the Power Point suggested telling the public that the “hand counts reported by the media are not really hand counts and easily subverted.”
The crackpot Power Point is just one more piece of evidence that we who revere democracy came frighteningly close last winter to losing this nation. In the words of a federal appeals court judge – who ruled yesterday that Trump’s insurrection communications should be released – “The events of January 6, 2021 marked the most significant assault on the Capitol since the War of 1812…The events of January 6th exposed the fragility of those democratic institutions and traditions that we had perhaps come to take for granted.”
These words are etched in stone at the National Archives building: “What Is Past Is Prologue.” Never has that credo been more relevant and urgent. The coup crew and its fellow travelers are still re-fighting the last presidential election – Georgia gubernatorial candidate David Perdue said this week that, if he’d been governor last year, he would’ve refused to certify Biden’s statewide win – with the goal of laying the groundwork for stealing the next presidential election if the vote goes against them.
As a seminal must-read article in The Atlantic makes abundantly clear, the MAGA termites are already gnawing the democratic woodwork on a state by state basis – largely under the public’s radar – by working to empower Republican-controlled legislatures to nullify unacceptable election results. Barton Gellman, a veteran Washington journalist and intelligence community specialist, writes: “The prospect of this democratic collapse is not remote. People with the motive to make it happen are manufacturing the means. Given the opportunity, they will act. They are acting already.”
And Gellman told NPR yesterday: “A healthy democracy needs fair referees and counts on the idea that fundamentals of things like counting votes can be done reliably by nonpartisan officials. That’s the tradition. That’s what distinguishes elections in a place like the United States or in Western Europe from elections in countries where, you know, the results are fixed. And that’s changing right now in front of our eyes. And because these seem like small, tactical, bureaucratic changes, they’re not arousing the interests of the public. And they’re not rousing protectors of democracy to regard this as an urgent problem. And this is, I believe, a democratic emergency, and that without very strong and systematic pushback from protectors of democracy, we’re going to lose something that we can’t afford to lose about the way we run elections.”
So we can laugh at that Power Point presentation – but only at our own risk. The malevolent intention is basically hiding in plain sight. The fascistwho crayoned Mein Kampf did the same.