Are You Really Surprised by George Santos?

For the second time in about a month, HLN Channel is showing reruns of "The West Wing" series. Kind of fun to watch in retrospect, they harken to a time when politics still felt rife with possibility.

But warts still emerged. Do you remember that the President Bartlet had multiple sclerosis, that very few people were in on it (but his wife, a physician, gave him shots to deal with it under the table), and that he was eventually censored by a concurrent resolution of Congress (requiring no signature by the president)? 

That was kind of a Big Lie, too, surprising as it was because Jed Bartlet seemed like the kind of straight-up guy who brooked no nonsense. Nice literary license there, dodging impeachment, which a Democrat would almost certainly have faced in a Republican-controlled Congress.

The Republicans held the prerequisite hearings. The chair was succinct and direct: "Did people lie? Were people told to lie? Are people lying now?"

Such is stuff of fiction, illuminating possibilities out of a decorous past. Living through the era of the Big Lie, as we are still, with dozens of Republican candidates mouthing it endlessly, even though they may not at heart believe it themselves but smacks of effective politics in gerrymandered districts, gamed by seiners of power that may last generations. 

Did people lie? Openly. Were people told to lie? Unquestionably. Are people lying now? Endlessly.

So can we really gasp when a Congressional candidate runs on a resume' of nearly pure fiction? When he makes an end run around an unsuspecting public, and media to boot? With the very recent turgid examples of ex- and his unabashed, unshameable nonsense and outright lies on top of lies on top of lies?

C'mon now. You can't possibly be surprised.

You can't be surprised that a Congressional candidate, George Santos, got away with a trashcan full of lies about his background and history. And that the media, perhaps stretched beyond decent coverage possibilities, perhaps once again covered instead by naïveté, never caught it. In New York. On Long Island. In Queens. 

They aren't like totally isolated areas or anything. People have televisions there. They can read. You can look it up.

Being naive is a delight, a refreshing skip through life, until you have to pay for it. Thousands, now, must do exactly that. They now have a Member of Congress who got there by concocting a complete fable. 

You can't possibly be surprised, either, by the Republican Congressional leadership, led (as it were) by an ultimate obfuscator himself (not the ultimate obfuscator; you know who that is), running again and hiding from this obvious ethical torpedo--as if it could. Messing with this could remove one of the crucial votes Kevin McCarthy needs to become House Speaker, if in fact he can promise very unethical clowns to be standup idiots, instead of mere idiots, for the next two years.

In the history of Congressional races, there has been plenty of lying. And maybe, just maybe, someone somewhere in our esteemed 236-year history, did the same thing: Made up stuff that he didn't have to answer for, the overwhelming percentage of the scenario from which he built an entirely false image.

Such is the price our system exacts. The Republicans will be in charge now, having gamed things very nicely over time and several states, and they won't lift a finger to investigate or even question Santos' veracity, which hovers just about ground zero right now. Can you image Nancy Pelosi's reaction? She arranged to have Majorie Taylor Greene removed from all Congressional committees for her egregious comments about, well, damn near everything. What about this guy?

She would wring the slime out of her hands, get the right Democrat to the mic, and start the process of first, investigation, and second, removal and a new election. Each house of Congress has the power to set rules about who sits in their chambers, it says in the Constitution, and running on a platform of pure deception might just be one of those firewalls. It says here that George Santos' credentials would have been DOA with a decent, ethical, clear-thinking Speaker.

Kevin McCarthy isn't that and never will be that. His intent is power, all of that and only that. His silence about a number of things is revelant of being not even regrettably complicit.

I'm quite sure he's got it in his head that he can promise a number of people a number of things that will never come to pass anyhow, just so he can have 218 votes to become Speaker. Then he'll turn Jim Jordan loose to make up a revanche committee to smear the January 6 committee--which will take some doing--and create enough bother to shift attention to someone they'll have to make up more stories about (Hunter Biden, anyone?).

Today, the New York Times announced that investigations will take place surrounding Santos' 'embellishments,' as he calls his lies, perhaps to soften the effect even unto himself. The whole business smacks of the kind of clean-up that takes place after a natural disaster: Necessary, but fundamentally reparable only with a great deal of time and attention.

The press dropped the ball here. But we also shouldn't ignore the basic, now baked-in corruption of Republicans, who will do anything and now say anything to get their way, and who cannot even face votes against them lest they admit they may not have had the best ideas. So they make them up without the slightest desire of accountability. If you have power, of course, you don't need any.

"The West Wing" features a telling confrontation between the counsel for the majority (read: Republican) and a Senator who also, in a scorched earth approach, wants to bring in Chief of Staff Leo McGarry's alcohol and drug addiction, from which he became clean, into the hearings. The counsel, showing some ethics, says to the Senator: "This is why good people don't like us."

A prescient comment, that. But too many good people still hold their noses and vote Republican anyhow. Only when those numbers diminish can we get this country back on track, and have conversations that need not be existential. Maybe the 2022 mid-terms represented a high-water mark for the liars. Maybe, with George Santos leading the way, the tsunami is about to envelop us all. We won't have long to wait.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Just A Tree? Or Bigger Than Even That?

I'm quite sure it was supposed to be a heartwarming story. Maybe, for some, it was.

A few days ago, Channel 12, the ABC affiliate in Milwaukee, ran a story about the fellow who decided to donate the 33-foot tree that completely dominated his front yard to the city, which of course needed a Christmas tree to display in what is now known as the Deer District. He had planted it way back when, a seedling about a foot high, he said.

Trees measure time and growth. They are unrelenting when they stand tall and majestic, as this one did for decades. They are reminders that nature will outlast us, will survive us.

Not when they're cut down, though. As this one had to apparently be, to satisfy the spirit of the season. Jolly? Is that right? Humans are, and can be very unrelenting, too. Get out the saws, baby. Low hanging fruit.

One month from now, where will it be? You know where: fed to machines, which will produce mountains of mulch. Whoopee.

It felt like a waste. What will be the value of this guy's property now? Won't it take a huge nose dive?

Not that it mattered much to him. He's 93. He lost his wife, dearly beloved, three years ago. "It's time," he said. I have no idea, but I'm guessing the city paid him off. Transactional, right? All good?

I'm sorry, but I object. That report saddened me. Even if that tree was donated out of good will, it shouldn't have been done. Yes, he had the right to do with his property what he wanted. The city shouldn't have approached him, though.

The City of Milwaukee didn't need that tree, that beautiful, long-lasting fir that's towered above us. It had seen its share of triumph and tragedy and endured storms galore. Kind of like the Natives once upon a time, it just got in the way and not nearly enough people considered its long-term value.

I suppose there's some kind of rule out there that demands that the tree must come from within the city or something, as an expression of urban pride. That would be a really stupid rule. I'm not a scrooge about Christmas. Such a display is better than none, and it's pretty tough to find an artificial tree that's 30 feet tall, much less store the damn thing.

But nobody's going to know where the tree came from, once it's been decorated with lights and displayed where people can easily see it. They'll be just as filled with whatever good feelings that this season can bring. What if, instead, it had come from somewhere else in Wisconsin, somewhere in which trees like this stand among hundreds, maybe thousands of others?

Such a tree could have been imported, albeit with some cost, from another county (Forest? Wood? Bad puns, I know. But far more likely to breed big pines.). Would that have bothered the budget curmudgeons all that much?

Wouldn't that be better than ruining a whole property, indeed a neighborhood (to which the tree belonged, too, in a way), because someone had to scratch an itch?

We claim to be oh, so caring about the environment we can't help ourselves to destroy. Really? What about this part of it? No, it isn't a whole hillside full of pines. No, it isn't smearing plastic along the bottom of oceans. No, it isn't a major river that''s drying up. But someone thought of it as a temporary palliative to an annual need to celebrate something that we know didn't come with much fanfare at all.

What the hell. It's just a tree.

Or is it even bigger than how tall it stands, for the few days it has left? Does it symbolize more, though not very comfortably?

Is that why no major network is picking up "A Charlie Brown Christmas" anymore, and it has been relegated to Apple TV+, for someone else to make a little money, show it briefly and tokenly to satisfy the soft-hearted of us, and then dispense with it? Hmmm?

Merry Christmas.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

"Go Shopping" Isn't the Solution to Our National Disconnectedness

Remember the watch-phrase that got sent past us after 9/11? "Go shopping," we were told.

That's to ensure that people didn't become so paranoid of terrorist attacks that the economy didn't go into the tank. That would prove, I would guess, that America could bounce back strong and undaunted.

As far as that went, it worked for a while. But the economy did go into the tank under the same president that encouraged us to keep shopping, and it took the better part of the next decade to pull us out.

Spending money demonstrates that you aren't afraid to go to the store. Maybe. Shopping online increased, and many go-to department stores went under. The ease with which we can now do pretty much everything electronically instead of stepping outside our homes has saved us, and condemned us at the same time.

Certainly, millions are now alive who could easily be dead by now because they could get things delivered during the height of the pandemic, that time during 2020 when the deadly virus was being spread willy-nilly without arrest. Many even got their groceries delivered, hankering back to a time when that was done within neighborhoods and accepted as such.

After having read that 48 hours was required to make a delivery sufficiently safe to handle, I always left something sent to me out in the lobby of my apartment building to make sure of that. If it was dropped at my door anyhow, I brought it in with the end of a broom and left it somewhere other than an area in which I normally walked inside my apartment. I had to be very careful since I was only two years past open heart surgery and in that age group where Covid killed far more easily.

I made it. I'm still around. But it's not the same as before. Not close.

There is an inertia about us that won't be easily dissolved. There is also a lingering distrust implanted, partially, by ex- and his rantings. But that mistrust was, in a sense, already there. He just accelerated it.

Many of us preferred to be alone before Covid, not lonely because we were in control over when we would and wouldn't interact with others. Then we went into self-created home monasteries because we were forced into it. Nobody was used to that. The restriction, once voluntary, was felt deeply. Add to that the maddening, mystifying inclination of some to continue to resist vaccination--who has died from it, please show me--and one cannot easily trust anyone else to care enough about us to foster normal, human care.

A world in which all are out for themselves eventually deteriorates and deep inside, we all know that. So we cannot be totally free again to go outside, risking the discomfort if not the devastation of Covid. The next person may still be crazy enough to reject what just about everyone should have sought two years ago. You can live, as I do, in a part of a big city in which it is likely that everyone, or nearly everyone, has wised up enough to exert enough control over their lives to have had their shots, but nearly everyone is not everyone, and chance has a way of hovering over us all.

I've had all five shots now. I rarely wear a mask. But I still do where I'm not familiar with the clientele. When I see people with masks, I assume that, ridiculously, they haven't had their shots yet. And I keep one, at least, in my outer clothing just in case I think that problem may suddenly emerge.

I've no doubt that others feel the same way. Going shopping, then, doesn't solve the problem of loneliness. Loneliness is the handmaiden of distrust. If I'm not sure about you, I must pull back from getting to know you, even having the lightest conversation because I'm not sure that you won't spray the virus all over me (even though we've been told that 15 minutes is the likely length of time we need to be proximate to someone for it to attach to us, and the culturally locked-in six feet, which I find hard to believe, too). I cannot form a friendship, cannot plan to have coffee some time, cannot even have but the briefest of conversations. 

My world cannot expand. I need to care more for your politics than I want to, too. I know that the 'other side' is inclined, for some unfathomable reason, not to trust vaccination. Knowing that creates a wall that must remain as impenetrable as possible, even after all this time and the angst it has caused. 

Remember: Those who have caught the virus can still spread it. Even I can spread it even though I've been maximally vaccinated, though the odds are quite low. I cannot enjoy those people, were it ever possible. I cannot laugh with them. I cannot look forward to another random interaction with someone. We all lose when that happens, and we lose every day.

The best gift we can give ourselves for Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanza this year is the assurance that we have had our shots. We can gather with confidence. We can renew faith in each other. This can be done not only with family, but with friends. I had a long conversation with someone not long ago, and one of the first things we did was to reassure each other than we've had the five shots that constitute the maximum protection. Beyond that, nobody still knows anything about this insidious invader, but it's easier to hedge your bets at least.

We need to do this. Our world is becoming unreachably isolated. The knowledge of even the slightest support for our common humanity is what propels us to join groups and feel a sense of belonging to them. It is more than fun. It is vital.

The next time you go shopping, whether in observance of the holiday season or not, glance at the faces of those others in the store. They don't smile much. They go shopping, which supports the economy, but they aren't happy about it. They want to get it over with and get back home, where they're safe. That is not a good world to live in, a world without joy.

I go for walks if the weather cooperates. I remind myself to smile if I pass someone going in the other direction. Knowing someone else can smile is its own little gift.

It may not sound like much, but something shared can be inspiring. I went to the Shorewood Public Library yesterday for a talk on books people might like to give someone else for Christmas. The place was packed. Most people didn't wear masks, and were fairly close to my age. Everyone smiled. We are hungering for contact, for fellow feeling, for joy. We want to know that connections aren't that remote anymore.

Yes, some of us bought books, so "going shopping" was part of the point. But gifting was the main point, gifting and sharing and talking about books and expanding the mind. 20% of what we spent went to charitable causes, so there was that, too. That is a deeper expression of our humanity.

I felt better all day, renewed, refreshed. Here's hoping there will be more throughout the Christmas season, and especially beyond.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

The World Cup? No Thanks. Not Interested After Qatar's Massive Abuses

The World Cup has to be the most corrupt sporting event ever created. Qatar has to be the pinnacle of it. So far.

Qatar, a very small country on the Arabian Peninsula, has an incredible amount of oil and natural gas resources and the money to show for it. It would be natural, then, for it to host the world's biggest showcase, the World Cup of football (we call it soccer). There were all kinds of intrastructure issues, but the Federation of International Football Associations (FIFA) was assured that they would be overcome, given enough time to get prepared.

Work began in 2012. Qatar didn't have nearly the number of workers to build the necessary structures--a freeway and eight separate stadiums, for instance--so it had to import them from other lands, usually in South Asia, from places like Nepal, itself very poor. So they were. But the treatment they had to endure--and endure is the only word that can be used--mirrors the kind of slave labor that we forced captives to undergo in the years before the Civil War, perhaps even worse.

I learned this by watching an excerpt from the HBO show "Real Sports," still the pinnacle of sports journalism in this country. It completely disgusted me.

Besides the incredibly stifling heat, equalling anything Death Valley could offer--the summer temperatures getting regularly to 120 degrees--the workers were forced to live in conditions that soon became ridiculously squalid and filthy, without showers and few toilets. The men washed themselves with the water from the toilets. They may still be doing so.

They are prevented from going home, too. They can't quit. That's the definition of slavery. In was pointed out in the "Real Sports" report that they were paid, so technically, it's not slavery. Not true: In antebellum America, in our own slave times, a few of the slaves did earn some money. They tried to save it to buy their freedom. So no, the horrible wages the men earn does not excuse Qatar from imposing slavery upon them, not if they lack the freedom to spend whatever small amount of free time (they usually work 12 hours a day) they have.

Knowing that, I can't watch this display of taking advantage of thousands of others. If there was ever a reason to form labor unions, that's one right there. But who's going to have any energy to do so, working 12 hours a day for wages no better than the dirt they've overturned? Who's going to attempt to enter what seems to be a slickly-run society, but is in fact horribly repressive?

It's on now. The field has been trimmed to 16, including the U.S. All the news is about its advance, and the athletes, and the competition. Nobody else is reporting on the price paid by thousands to put this on. Qatar has done its best rope-a-dope in taking shots from inquiring media and dispensing them amidst the other outrages we have to put up with. No one will be prosecuted for any of these abuses. No one will absorb any responsibility.

To me, Qatar may be trying to blend into the vestiges of Western hospitality, but it's really all about displaying its decadence and massive neglect, which you can do when you have more money than you know what to do with. It's not worth it. I won't watch the world's greatest sporting event. I don't care.

It's another example of the vacuum of any kind of ethics that takes place when the show becomes of higher value than the effort it took to put it on. Qatar, to me, joins Saudi Arabia (in its subterfuge of the PGA Tour by massively financing the LIV Tour) in its enormous deception of hooking up with Western culture. It's trying to gain acceptance, leading to some form of tolerance for its brutal justice system which, by now and if it really meant to get "western," should be obsolete. Maybe it will by others, but not with me.

I spent last weekend binge-watching "The West Wing" reruns, propelling myself back into a world I thought was also once possible. Got a lot more out of it.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Randi Weingarten? Most Dangerous Person in the World? There's A New One

Who is the most dangerous person in the world? Vladimir Putin comes to mind for not only the vicious evil he's doing to Ukraine right now, but what he could do if he got really carried away.

Kim Jong Il? North Korea has just tested an intercontinental ballistic missile. Nobody who's interested in that can be labeled as anything other than deeply dangerous.

Mohammad Bin Salmon? His control of fossil fuels in Saudi Arabia, plus his ruthlessness in muscling up his power, demonstrated several times now, makes him a prime candidate for that title.

Xi Jinping? The military forces he controls, including a decent number of nuclear weapons, and tensions rising in Taiwan, might give him the edge.

Ex-? Well, not anymore. Not now, anyway. But he's running for president again, and should he regain power, nobody can possibly know the hijinks he can commit.

But Mike Pompeo, obviously testing the waters to see if enough members of the Republican Party can get behind a presidential run, has named someone else. In his deep, delusional analysis, the most dangerous person in the world is: Randi Weingarten.

Huh? The world? More dangerous than the abovementioned five individuals? He was perfectly serious. The president of the American Federation of Teachers, he said, was more dangerous than any of them.

Really? She can inflict more damage on our country than any of those other guys? How does that work?

He's put together a scenario that rivals anything I've seen for nonsense since QAnon. I wonder, in fact, if his comments aren't made directly toward them to gain a base for him. Crazy? Yes, they are. Yes, that would be. And yes, Majorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert were re-elected to their House seats.

But it follows a familiar pattern: Get out there ahead of everyone else, make outrageous statements that can't be disproven, and stand by while everyone (you hope) discusses it and drills down to no avail, one way or another. Then you come back with something else, other claims that you can't ignore. 

That's how you build attention. At least, that's how ex- did. How did that work for him?

But where did he get Weingarten's name from? How did he bestow upon her such gravitas?

I really have no idea. But as bombastically ridiculous as this is, I don't think it's too hard to speculate.

Consider what he added to this claim: "It's not a close call. If you ask, 'Who's the most likely to take this republic down?' it would be the teachers' unions, and the filth that they're teaching our kids, and the fact that they don't know math and reading or writing."

Pray tell, Mike, what is this "filth" of which you speak? Is it pornographic? Sexist? Misogynist?

He didn't say, but I'm betting that once again, it's a reference to that which has never been practiced: Critical race theory. Filth? Dirty? Disgusting? Or truths that would just as soon not be faced--ever?

Once again: Critical race theory is a phrase that, in 30 years of teaching history, never once crossed my desk or entered the conversation of any colleague or department meeting. Never. Critical race theory is not some conspiratorial, sneakily entered concept that somehow poisons the minds of young people. It's the idea that, if you're going to discuss the effects of race on our society--it's there whether you like it or not--it does you far more good to drill deep to totally "get it." 

The deeper you go, of course, the more insidious it becomes. Lots of white people don't like that, of course. They'd just as soon look past it. But filth? Disgusting? Au contraire--it's disgusting to refer to it as filth, when it's a serious, purposeful study in the terrible effects racism has had in seeping its way into so many things we routinely do and say on a daily basis.

Does that make America a bad place? It depends who you are. If you're Mike Pompeo, striving to be chief blusterer and exaggerator for a tragically misguided political party, then it's best to point out and cherry-pick circumstances where someone has said something disparaging toward America in some classroom. But additional insults, actually, aren't needed. We enslaved human beings for 250 years and let go of it only in our worst war in which more than half a million of our countrymen died. Then we manipulated our legal and cultural systems so that those who were enslaved continued to get the worst of it. It's all there in whatever textbook you want to choose. 

Mike Pompeo can't change that. It's extremely disturbing that he even wants to.

But not only that. He's dragged along by media, which prefers to rely on Randi Weingarten for cogent comments on educators and education, when in fact she leads a labor union with less than one-third the size of the largest in the nation. That's right--the AFT has something like 900,000 members. While that's fairly impressive, the largest teachers' union, the National Education Association, has more than three million. Three million.

The president of that group is Becky Pringle. I've known her for more than twenty years. While I haven't read anything she's said about critical race theory, it's probably tangential to what Weingarten said in response to Pompeo's empty attacks: "So Mike, let me make it easy for you. We fight for freedom, democracy and an economy that works for all. We fight for what kids and communities need. Strong public schools that are safe and welcoming, where kids learn how to think and work with others. That's the American Dream!"

This is the greatest threat to the world? This threatens whom? It only threatens those who choose to smear, like Mike Pompeo. It only threatens the clueless, like Mike Pompeo. But it also means that while ex- looks to be losing his personal influence, it doesn't mean that other Republicans won't keep trying to characterize unions and educators who choose to stand up for themselves as, somehow, threats to our society and culture.

It was that way when I traveled amongst union people at all levels, when I kept pointing out that that's what they had in mind from the start. It had to be enough of threat to the Cedarburg School District that they more or less forced into retirement when I tried to return after my stint on the NEA Executive Committee and try (as I would have) to give the kids an idea on what life in Washington, DC was really like. It's no different now.

That we dodged a huge bullet on November 8 and managed to retain a semblance of our democracy doesn't mean it still isn't being threatened. Keep your eyes on Mike Pompeo and see what kind of influence he'll have. It won't be pretty.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Not Delving Into Ex- Any Longer

There are a couple of books recently out that you might be interested in if you haven't read enough about ex-'s corruption, utter stupidity, bullying, and lies.

One is called Confidence Man, which has already gained notoriety because its author, Maggie Haberman, withheld some might-have-been important information before and during the 2020 presidential campaign, when it might have, but didn't, made some difference in the outcome. The other is called The Divider, by Peter Baker and Susan Glasser, which dives into detail about ex-'s blunders while actually president.

You are welcome to read them. I won't be doing so. Oh, I'm not trying to withdraw from his utter ridiculousness, because I'm not sure who can. It's just that I know enough now. I've read five works that does plenty enough to tell me to wonder, really wonder, just how we could have selected such a horrible person to lead us.

After all, I read the news daily, and I already know just about all the awfulness ex- has been associated with. Refusing to read compilations of so much stuff that you simply can't keep up with it won't change my mind about how I regard him, much less whether, if I get another chance, I would vote for him. Those questions were settled in 2015.

The issue is, and remains, how and why Republicans find it difficult, if not impossible, to simply dismiss and ignore him and move on to someone with whom I'm probably strongly opposed, but who might have something of a clue how to actually govern in a way that doesn't reflect his endless need to get rich beyond nearly everyone's imaginings. Who accepts that this is a big country filled with people who need help. Who won't spend time assuming that disagreements on policy are personal affronts. Who actually understands and accepts the fundamental understandings under which our government must function.

You know, that kind of stuff. If we get four more years of ex-, we get revenge visited upon all those who would stand in his way of doing, well, damn near anything he wants, seeing as how the perfectly acceptable solution of impeachment and removal have already been tried twice, once even after he has left office, but both have been rendered useless. 

And, of course, Elon Musk, in his infinite wisdom, self-delusional and pretentious, has taken control of Twitter and put ex- back on. Ex- says he's not interested, but we will see. I'm on Twitter, but I think the better road is not to quit it but to take the higher one--to let ex- rant on about his blithering and do what people for some reason find it impossible to do--ignore him. Silence is the ultimate weapon for such a knucklehead: the silence of not caring, the silence of declaring whatever he's saying so unimportant that it doesn't deserve comment.

It's like having someone in the other room who you don't want to listen to. Just don't go there. Render him irrelevant. It's happening now, anyhow. Candidates influenced by him are starting to lose in significant numbers. I'm waiting for someone of enough significance to start calling him what he is and always has been: Loser. The one word he can't stand is exactly what he's embodied for this entire, awful span that we have allowed him to dominate.

Of course, commenting on why I would rather not comment on someone is its own comment, and feeds the onus behind it. So I'm done. I'd done unless he's nominated again, but that's a long way off. He doesn't deserve it. But then, he never has.

I feel better already. I've stopped caring, stopped spending money on those concerns. Maybe I'll stop thinking about him. That would be a new decoration of independence. Want to join me?

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark

Election Deniers? Not This Time So Much

So many of the election deniers got beat Tuesday. That's a win for democracy that shouldn't be ignored.

But here's the other shoe dropping: Most of them didn't deny their own defeats. They conceded. They accepted.

Wouldn't they continue to object, especially if they lost? Wouldn't they see conspiracies anew? Shouldn't they?

Would seem to make no sense. Ah, but it does, if one understands that in politics, half is what's being said and half isn't. That oftentimes, one hides one's real motivation. Or, what may more be the truth, motivation is subject to speculation, anyhow.

Let's consider why those who so strenuously insisted that elections should be questioned, didn't question the count that defeated them:

• Political campaign posturing--It was the popular thing to say. Lining up with the rhetoric of election deniers, or at least election questioners, didn't take a lot of research. There were about three or four pet phrases that needed to be utilized. You spend just a minute on a campaign speech spewing them, and you're good to go.
• The lie repeated becomes the truth--There's nothing new about this. If circumstances dictate repetition, it becomes one's mindset. You look for corruption where there is none, and to say you're looking at it is all you need to convince some voters.
• They'll now say that it was true in 2020, but not in 2022, claiming credit for changes--I'm waiting for this one. They'll give their own party credit for 'cleaning up' the elections, especially after a Republican-controlled legislature passed measures suppressing minority voting.
• They desperately needed ex-'s endorsement--Or at least they thought they did. That, as it turned out, is starting to attach badly. Ask Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, and Tim Michels in this state. Or Paul Ryan, who went out of his way to say what many should have begun saying long ago--that ex- is starting to become a "drag" on the Republican ticket. The Republicans expected to clobber the Democrats Tuesday. They did not. Enter Ron DeSantis?

And finally--

• The elections in question should never have been questioned in the first place because nobody tried anything edgy or illegal, and those that did got caught at the door, including ex- --and down deep inside, they knew it. It's not as if elections haven't been tinkered with in the past--both parties are guilty there--so bringing that up echoed a familiar refrain that takes time to decipher and by then, the cynicism has turned to genuine belief. (Plus ex- set us up for his victimization way back in 2016, if you recall.) Nobody remembers this, but there was a Senate investigation of illegal and improper activities in the federal elections of 1996. You can also study, say, what happened in 1876 and 1960. The 2020 election, as marred as it was by ex-'s attempts to sew chaos through the postal service and the rampant confusion of the pandemic, was one of the least corrupt, if not the least corrupt, in American history. As previously written here, the shadiness of the 2000 presidential results in Florida had its ripple effects in other states which did not feel like being as embarrassed as that state was--so they cleaned up their processes pro-actively.

We can only hope that that posturing will now fade away and become part of the past's rhetoric. It would serve to eliminate useless, reckless investigations that go nowhere--Michael Gableman, anyone?--and restore, to a certain degree, confidence that democracy really does work. No, it doesn't work perfectly, as various campaigns have displayed and continue to do so, But there is and will be, I predict, greater faith that one's vote really is opened when it should be and counted the same as everyone else's. That basic equality is one that modern technology helps us strive for and, one day, achieve. Beyond the maddening insistence upon that basic lie--one which ex- will repeat, of course, when he runs again; we will see how it now attaches--forces are still at work that will stop lies like the one we've had perpetuated before our very eyes. We all win then.

Be well. Be careful. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.

Mister Mark