You might get from my critics that I'm close to incoherent when it comes to stating my views. That's hardly the case.
When it comes to recent domestic politics, I stood up for General Flynn at first, on the principle that new administrations need a long leash. Let them bark up the wrong trees at first. Don't undermine a president too early or you risk making a mockery of the office, from which legitimacy extends.
So yes, I thought the FBI was playing a risky game, and as it came out the game was mainly against Trump himself, it became increasingly a story of a deep state against an elected president, a descent into Banana Republic status. No, I was never a Trump fan. I'd voted for Hillary, and Obama before that. I was attracted to Tulsi for her good American Samoan sense, her Hindu leanings not a problem, but I had no illusions that she could ever be enough of a scoundrel to occupy the post constitutional oval office.
Through the unraveling of Russiagate, three things became clear (a) the UK was still Meddler in Chief when it came to pulling strings in DC and (b) there would be no recovery from Banana Republic status (the presidency had pretty much died as an office) and (c) the insanity of the "rigged voting machines" crowd, which included the former president and his waylaid general.
Going forward: (c) interests me most, all insanity aside, as voting machines continue to be susceptible, just probably not in ways invented by amateurish storytellers with no real street smarts or savvy. I think the Trump camp's rush to concoct fables regarding these particular voting machines was ill-fated from the get go, though they had little choice but to go with the hand they were dealt.
The beleaguered voters were trying especially hard to get it right in a pandemic. Yes, certainly last minute measures were taken to let mailed-in ballots pile up. Those would run through the counters after the votes cast on election day, and would outnumber in-person voting (again, because pandemic).
Because voters were trying so hard to have integrity, as a way of clinging to remaining sanity in hard times (they knew their critics were harsh and vigilant), the accusation of widespread hanky panky with the voting machines was just too much of an attack on the heart of the country's pride.
The implication that Venezuelan malware had outwitted and subverted hard-working college-educated IT bureaucrats, or that vote counting had been outsourced to foreign agents in league with globalists, just seemed too great of an insult to ever forgive in some cubicles.
Our president was saying we can't or don't have free and fair elections no matter how hard we try, and wanted to substitute his own judgement in such chaotic circumstances, to impose fairness by other means, never before attempted in United States history. Talk about a Mad Cow disorder.
People were not up for this circus. The coup attempt collapsed because it relied on the slippery lie-for-money strategies of the so-called intelligence community ("my cousin overheard Hugo Chavez brag at a party that..."), as unqualified to define intelligence as Mensa.
Yes, beyond these foreground stories, of the District losing its grip, comes a longer backstory in which journalism managed to stop updating people on a lot of the intellectual happenings. YouTube and such media came to the rescue on that front, and education acceleration with automation is getting us back on track to some degree.
