Friday, June 4, 2021

In retreat, they are salting the earth behind them

German “railroad plough” used to destroy tracks while retreating on the Eastern front, 1944.
If you can’t beat ‘em, destroy everything they can use to beat you.

In several comments here in the past several weeks, I have tried to make the case that the rush to mount so-called “audits” of the 2020 election results has nothing to do with an attempt to flip seats. Rather, it is entirely for show, designed to ground down confidence in the American electoral process.

There may be a bunch of useful idiots on the ground in Maricopa County who genuinely believe that they are doing god’s Trump’s work to overturn Democrat (and only Democrat) wins, but the motivation behind this fresh horror on our political landscape is about the long game.

And it’s sure good to see the Press treating it for what it truly is.

Experts call it a ‘clown show’ but Arizona ‘audit’ is a disinformation blueprint

To Matt Masterson, the review of 2020 ballots from Maricopa County, Ariz., that's currently underway is "performance art" or "a clown show," and definitely "a waste of taxpayer money."

But it's not an audit.

"It's an audit in name only," says Masterson, a former Department of Homeland Security official who helped lead the federal government's election security preparations leading up to November's election. "It's a threat to the overall confidence of democracy, all in pursuit of continuing a narrative that we know to be a lie."

This was not something dreamed up by a cabal of deranged yokels. Rather, it is a political operation run at the heart of a Republican machine confronting a bleak future. Its goal is to so damage elections in the United States that Democrats are forever hobbled by a disbelieving public.

I’ve been arguing that the stupid is the point. The ratfuckers who’ve schemed this up have cynically counted on the current epidemic of delusion that the country is suffering from to create an ever-worsening circus of despair and outrage. The stupid is the point.

The stupider the better, because it keeps the focus on the dumpster-fire dumbasses. What crazy shit will they come up with next? Who knows? There’s a Q Believer grifter who’s claiming that she can time travel, ffs. (Spoiler: The tyrant Democrat house of cards will soon collapse!) There’s no limit to the crazy anymore when one party is, collectively, utterly shameless and the supply of ever-credulous fuckwits can be counted in the tens of millions.

And they’re getting away with it.

"The incentive structure that has been created is one in which so far we've seen zero accountability for lying and pushing these narratives," Masterson, the former DHS official, said. "We don't see anyone really, truly being held accountable."

The Republicans understand well that the demographics are against them. That is precisely why they’ve made gerrymandering an art form, after all. It’s why they’ve put so much into local elections — far more than the Democrats have. But, in the wake of the shit-show that they’ve recently allowed us all to suffer through, they know that they must double, and re-double, their efforts to keep Democrats on the back foot at all costs. They are ensuring that civic authority is forevermore hampered by a dipshit fealty to conspiracy and rage. In retreat, they are salting the earth behind them.
Now that the Republican Party no longer bothers with a platform, maybe their next convention will look like this.  All white.  All male.  All goober.

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