I told him that I sided with the opinion that there was strong reason to suggest that the 2020 election may have been stolen, although I did not assert that I had made that conclusion and firmly believed it. "Strongly suspect," and "firmly believe," are very different positions.
"But you support Trump," he said. "That's why you think that way."
I told him that idea could work both ways. "You support Biden, and that's why you think it couldn't have happened."
The reality is that my suspicions do not, in fact, come from my support of Donald Trump. Rather they come from another place entirely. My love of country and my deeply seated patriotism. That's a very hard pill to swallow for most Americans who aren't at all on Trump's side because, of course, the media has portrayed anyone in the MAGA cause as looney toons who are active in a cult-like mentality.
While there is always going to be a fringe faction in any political party or group, it rarely makes up the whole. But it certainly gets the most attention and somehow tends to be the main focus.
Trump supporters are, by and large, simply a group of conservatives who support a leader whose values and ideas align with theirs. It doesn't make them looney. It simply makes them active participants in the political discourse who happen to have an opinion that differs from those on the left.
By their definition, that MAGA is a cult, you could say the same thing about those on the left who support Biden.
I told him, "As an American above all else, I simply want to have faith in our electoral process. I think any American should ask questions and not simply accept things because their side won."
Not only is the thought that because I support Trump, that I deny the 2020 result, it's because I am supposed to be bitter that my guy lost. Except, I have never been bitter before, and usually I can find a good reason to at least understand why my guy lost and have talked about it ad infinitum on here.
John McCain and Mitt Romney, for example, were terrible candidates who ran horrible campaigns. That's why they lost to Obama. Whether or not I agreed that the American people made the right decision, I had no reason to question that the voice of the American people was nonetheless heard.
That, above all else, should have a very big bearing on why I feel the way I do now. In other words, becoming a Trump supporter in no way made me suddenly change my overall viewpoints or how I feel about America.
I have no interest in seeing America compromised just to see a guy in office who happens to be the guy I support. We have a process. The candidates campaign, and the voters decide. It's that simple. And most of the time, it generally works out.
Obama, for example, took us down a wrong path. But was he the worst thing to ever happen to America? I will leave that open for debate, but I think we can mostly agree that the system, at least, seemed to be working and when it came down to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump the right choice was made.
The American people did not want to continue down Obama's path with Hillary Clinton carrying on with his "vision for America" by proxy. Despite all the accusations to suggest otherwise, all of which were proved to be false, he was duly elected and won the election fair and square.
The point of this post is not to rehash all of the reasons why I think the election may have been stolen in 2020. The point is to make it clear that what I strongly suspect has nothing at all to do with my support of Donald Trump and has everything to do with my support of country.
I simply want to know the truth because there are enough valid questions, in my view, that we need to at least be interested in seeking out the answers for. And I think it should be a concern for every American regardless of who won or lost.
Elections matter. They always have. Elections do have consequences, and there are enough examples in history that serve as glaring examples. But the worst consequence is to have someone in office who isn't supposed to be there. To have someone who may have been selected rather than elected.
That's dangerous. It's a serious threat to our democratic republic. If we ever arrive at a point when we truly, as a people, no longer question what our government does just because "our guy" won, that's really the end of America.
We can't trust our government, and we can't trust the media. So, what's left? It's up to We the People. We need to be interested in ensuring that even if the wrong choice is made to lead us, that it was our choice to make the wrong one.
I am not sure if I was able to change the person's mind in our conversation. But if nothing else I was at least able to explain why I feel the way I do, and why I think it is important to be cynical.
It's not about winning elections in so much as it is about preserving this great nation and making sure that our government remains one that is by, for and of the People. When our founding fathers set this country up, that was a core value, that the American people would be the ultimate curator of accountability against it.
We cannot be that if the only word we accept is theirs.
Like the way I write or the things I write about? Follow me on my Facebook page or on X to keep up with the latest writings wherever I may write them.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment