How Fucked Are We?

 Just over a month after an election which, objectively, went pretty well and was decided numerically, pretty quickly, we are seeing something that has never happened in America before: one party, an entire party, essentially, millions and millions of people, breaking away from the idea of an orderly transition of power and, instead, believing (or partially believing) the election was stolen.

Let's take a look at how this is unprecedented first.

Dominion vs. Muh Russia

An obvious--but incorrect--initial comparison is the "Russia Hoax" (on the left) vs. the Dominion-Steal (or suitcases full of ballots or whatever) on the right. There are some problems with this.

1.  The President vs. Not-The-President. Obama, explicitly, didn't come out and say Russia was interfering with the election because Mitch McConnell wouldn't go along with him and he felt that saying it would seem prejudicial against Trump. In this case, the President has been shouting whatever conspiracy theory comes across his Twitter feed from the rooftop.
2. Actual Smoke.  The Russia Hoax is either the belief that Russian Hackers Changed Votes (something no reputable news org or Democratic house organ has proposed with any strength or continuity) or that Trump had a secret meeting collaboration with Russia to help him win. It appears that Trump did not--and Trump's guys (Don Jr., Manafort, Stone, etc.) Wellllll--sure, maybe did--to some extent--but not the smoke-filled room "You give me the White House, I'll give you Ukraine" type deal. As Chris Christie noted, those guys were so disorganized they'd have a hard time colluding with anyone. However, what is NOT false is that (a) Russia helped Trump (from the primaries on), (b) Russia hacked / released damaging info to help Trump--possibly influencing the election strongly by releasing hacked emails to shift the discussion from the Pussy Tape to Podesta at the right time, etc. (c) Trump's guys certainly collaborated with Russian operatives/agents (Stone and Wikileaks, Manafort and his Ukraine guy) and Team Trump had some idea about this and approved, (d) Trump was / is certainly happy to have Russia's help to win (Don Jr. Tower meeting, open statements, etc.). So the meat of the belief that Russia was all in for Trump is NOT a hoax. It was proven out by the Mueller Report and the bipartisan Senate Intelligence Report. In the case of Dominion changing votes or whatever? No.
3. Nearly Complete Support.  The Senate and House Democrats certainly did their fair share of accusing Trump of being, more or less, a Russian asset (which, from some meanings of the word, he is)--but one thing they did NOT do was promulgate the worst of the unproven conspiracy theories. For example, they did not talk about how disgusting Trump was because of the Pee Tape--claiming, for example, they'd seen it or had a copy (but could not release it) or whatever. Conversely, the Stolen Election narrative has nearly complete support from elected Republicans. 

These are important distinctions because for a person who is not sucked in to the human centipede of right-wing conspiracy theory the distinctions are NOT clear in the right direction (the actual court filings not only don't provide evidence of fraud (Fire) but don't even allege fraud (smoke)--but who knows that? And are extremely clear in the WRONG direction: every top GOP official and almost all of the trusted media are saying that it's CLEAR Trump was cheated.

For an observer, this is going to put all the chips on the cheated side of the scale. How can it not?

So--How Fucked Are We?

The Omnivore has been consuming right-wing streaming media (as well as message boards) trying to get a feel for what the end-game when Biden is sworn in looks like. Here's the thing that most concerns The Omnivore--it's a narrative that goes like this (and this repeats itself in multiple places).

Right Wing Host: "So, Election Expert, what happens when Trump is sworn in--assuming that happens?"

Election Expert: "Well, you know what happens--the leftist are already burning their cities and rioting. We're going to see a LOT more of that. It'll be bad! Buckle up."

Right Wing Host: "And if Biden is sworn in somehow?"

Election Expert: "Well, that won't happen because we have a constitutional supreme court. You know we don't act violently like The Left. That's their thing. We are peaceful! Remember how THEY claimed the 20-16 Election was stolen too? Did we riot then? No. These guys do projection. Whatever they accuse us of is what THEY'RE doing.

The underlined parts are important because projection, in the sense used here (as opposed to the actual psychological meaning) is a relevant thing: the people talking about the violence of The Left and the pious peacefulness of The Right aren't condemning the Left's past behavior. They're justifying their future behavior.

Being peaceful--until you are pushed too far(TM) is entirely cool. It's respectable. You get to do it. So they have to set that up.

Does this mean The Right will be violent?

The Omnivore isn't sure, to be honest--there won't be wide-scale riots on the part of the right: they might storm a state house--but they won't just conduct violence against police or businesses. There might be semi-organized assassination or asymmetric warfare from the militias  (they are equipped for that). 

But otherwise the problem is the "this justifies ANYTHING" philosophy that the Right currently flirts with anyway. Gerrymandering? "Well, The Left buys black / minority votes so we gotta G to stay even." Voter suppression? "Well, the LEFT has illegals vote so we should suppress as hard as we can! If some legit voters get nailed in the process? Too fucking bad. Cry moar, lib."

And so on.

This will go from the realm of policy to the realm of, well, everything. That isn't going to be good for the country.

The Omnivore thinks: We're pretty fucked.