It isn't that I'm surprised that 45's people still wanted to throw out the votes of just Milwaukee and Dane Counties, comprising over 200,000 of them, including my own, during the past presidential election. Note that no other election was questioned, in no other county: Not Lincoln, not LaCrosse, not Brown, not Ashland, none of them. Just those two.
No, by this time, I'm not surprised that they'll try anything like that. To 45, trying to go to court to get something reversed is par for his course (he cheats at golf, too). To him, it's all the same. Denying the effects of democracy doesn't matter to him because it's all about him and nothing else. The effects of whatever he does on anybody or anything else don't matter to him because he's supposed to be more important than anything or anyone else.
The fact that that attitude was clear and obvious and probably lent itself to his defeat in the first place won't occur to him ever, at all. But that's neither here nor there. He lost. The counting in the states he wanted recounts reproved that fact. The numbers don't lie. They really don't.
No, I'm not surprised. But I do want to know why three of Wisconsin's seven Supreme Court justices agreed. I want to read whatever they have to say that would justify, in their minds, the cancelling of my vote.
All I wanted to do was vote. And I did so, in Milwaukee, by mail. Somehow, this unusual method of voting, though verified legally, caused them to reverse its meaning. It caused them to think that I cheated somehow.
Now, how the hell could I have done that? How could I have participated in a fraud? The choices were printed on the ballot, including where the place of my selection could be made. It's just like any other ballot I've ever filled out. It's just that I didn't do it in a place normally reserved for voting.
Did somebody misprint something? Didn't look like it to me. All the names seemed to be spelled right.
Were the names mismatched with the political parties they represented? Nope. Not a one.
I didn't even send my votes through the mail. 45 made his idle threats, so I didn't take any chances.
I got in my car, Covid be damned, and dropped it off in a box specifically designed for that purpose outside of a public library on Milwaukee's south side. I wanted to make sure that as few middle people handled my vote as possible. It was picked up that day.
And now three people wanted to throw it out? Screw them. No, wait: SCREW THEM. All this made me go to extraordinary lengths just to perform the ultimate act of citizenship, and three clowns on the state Supreme Court say it shouldn't count??
Prove it. Prove I'm not worthy. Prove I cheated. Prove someone cheated for me. Like so many millions of fools, you have made up stuff in your own head. They, not me, can't be trusted to think clearly in an unusual situation--the very thing appeals demand you to do. They, not me, can't be trusted to separate yourself from the petty politics of the matter.
Whenever I gave a history test or assignments, there was always the possiblility that kids would cheat. I tried my best to eliminate that, but wasn't always successful. I discovered the more blatant attempts, and threw out the grades, reducing them to zeros. But should I have done that to the entire group? Of course not.
If someone cheated about voting, it couldn't have been widespread. If caught, their votes shouldn't be counted and they should be prosecuted according to the law. But eliminate the whole bunch? You've got to be kidding.
Somebody should buy Brian Hagedorn a beer. He's a conservative on the state Supreme Court, and he voted with the three moderates to deliver my vote and those of 200,000 others to their rightful place. He's a true conservative, rather than those who claim to be so, when in fact their relationship to the laws they're supposed to maintain is remote, at best, and subject to manipulation based on a large group temper tantrum.
Instead, as opposed to the three whose heads are spinning out of control, he decided to support the laws that are already on the books in Wisconsin. He decided to support the votes that everyone in those two counties cast, after they, as in other states, were recounted in those exact counties.
The other three have abused their power, plain and simple. They are as shameless as the president they not-so-subtlely wished to catapult to victory. They voted, too, to interrupt the governor's executive orders to manage the pandemic. We have seen the results.
Drunk with power, having eliminated the governor's Covid executive orders, designed to save lives, they nearly reversed the votes of an entire state. But before the election, another of their ilk was still on the court, ready to turn back logic and science. And so they did. And so Wisconsin became one of the worst states for the virus to be absorbed.
Wisconsin is in the grip of irrationality, Republican style, but those on the other side of it have probably surmised it by now. The legislature is no different. It hasn't met since April. Its leaders must have figured that it has nothing to do, though four thousand of its residents have died due to Covid and thousands more are out of work because of it.
Gerrymandering won't do this state's mentality any good, either. We're stuck for now. But those in the realm of rationality can't walk away, weary though they may be. Stricken with quasi-religious righteousness, these forces do not relent.
We have to keep speaking out against those who twist or deny reality. Vaccines will help us return to a semblance of normal, a little at a time. But the illness of reality denial lives on. No vaccine can change that. That will take an even longer battle.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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