I’ve discussed many times my concerns for our upcoming election and specifically for the time between the election and Inauguration Day. I’m hardly alone in thinking it will be the most dangerous time in our country since the Civil War.
Maybe I’ll be pleasantly surprised that the results won’t be seriously contested, and a preponderance of Republicans will tell Trump to accept his defeat as gracefully as possible. As I noted in my last post, I still see Joe Biden winning it handily. Events since then – particularly the recent news that Trump knew of the likely casualty count in the United States from covid-19 in February and openly lied to the American people that it wouldn’t be very lethal – have made winning reelection just that much worse an uphill climb for him.
Polls consistently indicate people have made up their mind about Trump, as evidenced by their serene months long consistency with polling averages showing Biden ahead 7-10 percent nationally. We want him gone. So, if the election is held reasonably fairly, Biden should win handily and bring a Democratic Senate on his coattails too. With so many mail-in votes though, it’s likely we can’t say for certain for a few days after the election.
We know that Trump will dispute the results. He’ll deploy armies of lawyers to swing states to challenge mail-in ballots with little likelihood that he’ll have much success. You will hear from Trump that the election was massively rigged, and it’s invalid, and without a revote that isn’t rigged he can’t accept the results. We’ll hear stuff like because it was rigged, he has a duty to stay in office until a real fair election is conducted, an election of course where he sets the terms for what is fair. He’ll resist the voters’ verdict.
The dangerous part is when he calls on his unhinged supporters to take matters into their own hands to “Save America”, which he will likely tweet in all caps. These caravans of Trump supporters of course are already in the news, showing up at generally peaceful protests to inflame tensions and to sometimes inflict violence. All of the homicides at these events, with one exception, have been carried out by these white nationalist Trump supporters. Trump’s been egging them on and we can expect that he will do much more than that after the election. After all, what does he have to lose but otherwise likely spending the rest of his life in prison? He will try to institute martial law, initially in cities with protests. If it works there, he will try to do it nationwide as much as possible, disproportionately targeting cities that lean Blue and ethnic.
We can expect Barr’s Justice Department will largely turn a blind eye, which means we can’t expect justice from our own Justice Department. At best it will be a milquetoast appeal to law and order which of course in Trump’s mind means screw the law and just institute whatever he considers to be order.
Thus, I fully expect the crazies to come out of the woodwork in much larger numbers. The violence we’ve seen so far will seem in retrospect hardly nothing. With more guns than people in our country, and plenty of them in the hands of wannabee paramilitaries, Trump will likely light the fuse. It won’t be a firecracker going off this time, though.
It will become one fraught acme to our long constitutional crisis. These people already have their hands on the trigger so it becomes something of a guess as to what excuse they will use to start what could amount to the first rumblings of a new civil war. At this time what sane leadership that remains in the government will be key. In particular, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper will need to publicly state that troops may not engage in this civil conflict. It will probably get him fired.
If it goes the way I think it could easily go, we’ll see caravans of heavily armed militias wreaking open havoc in cities and against minorities in particular, with local police department probably staying out of the way. It’s not too hard to figure out that minorities in particular will be targeted. Leaders of color will probably seek refuge, with their lives and houses targeted by these groups. But if it gets bad, we could see variants of the Tulsa massacre in many places in this country. It could be that white people like me are sheltering these people in our homes to try to keep them safe.
It’s hard not to play through these scenarios in my mind. Many governors will resist, of course, and deploy their National Guard to try to keep order. But these state-sponsored militias have limits in their ability to control things too.
President-elect Biden can speak forcefully and I am sure will. He can warn these people that his Justice Department will prosecute these crimes to the maximum extent of the law. He can remind Donald Trump that his behavior could result in criminal prosecutions. Trump of course will try to proactively pardon all these violators, including likely himself.
It’s just going to get crazy after November 3. I don’t know what getting prepared means for something like this. What will prove more pragmatic than buying a gun will be buying lots of masks and protest signs because we’re likely to be in the streets a lot. Maybe through our overwhelming presence and the mass concurrence of most of our elective leaders, we can turn this nightmare around before it gets too bad.
Occam's Razor 