Much Ado About Nothing? So Why Complain?

Where, or where, could the right get the idea
about 3 million illegal votes?  I wonder...

Honestly, I’ve been trying to move on from politics.  I had a post ready to go about how I finally blocked, unfollowed, and unfriended some people during the Thanksgiving weekend.  Long story short on that is that I already have plenty of trolls in my life – I don’t need almost-total-strangers calling me names and putting forth non-truths that mask as opinions.  But I let that go – if I claimed to have better things to do (as I did in that post that never made it), then I should actually go do them.  So I did.

Sure, Trump supporters are STILL making claims that his victory was a mandate and a landslide, the latest from Allen B. West where he confuses land with people (because Trump won 3084 of 3141 counties, so it’s a landslide – who cares if no one but a handful of people and some jackrabbits inhabit some of those counties).  One acre, one vote – yeah, that’s the way I learned it.  Much of the Thanksgiving dumpathon was about stuff like that. 

I mean, OK, you’re guy won, but he didn’t win the popular vote OH YES HE DID and GEORGE SOROS IS PAYING THE PROTESTERS and MILLIONS OF ILLEGALS and HE IS ALMOST A GOD and SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP.

For those of you keeping score at home, Clinton’s overall popular vote margin is around 2.5 million votes.  And rising.

And I had no intentions on commenting on the current Presidential recount situation.  I (SADLY) don’t believe that the eventual outcome will change.  It’s certainly Jill Stein’s right to challenge the results, and I am much concerned that we’re just starting to see the “fruits” of efforts led by Republicans to disallow voting to many individuals (most of them, as the GOP well knows, who vote Democratic).  I am hopeful that Stein’s efforts bring some of that to light (for a wonderful recap, please see Greg Palast at Truth-Out here).

But still, I had no intentions on commenting on the Presidential recount – until the President-Elect did.  And now, all my original assumptions are put aside.

I mean, I’m no conspiracy theorist, but I often take the position that if someone makes a mistake once, it’s a mistake; but if someone makes the same mistake over and over, the same way, and it benefits the same party – perhaps that’s no mistake at all.  Was the election hacked, or rigged in some way?  I do recall someone saying it was rigged – loud and long.  And in just one of several ironies, it was the President-Elect who said it.

The system is rigged – he just never said by who.

So Stein raised some money, put forth the applications to start the recount in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Michigan (the three states where Trump won narrowly), and eventually the Clinton camp said they’d join in the efforts – and then the shitstorm erupted – from the victors.

Let me stop right here and say this – how much would it have taken for Trump and his supporters be gracious about this?  That is, to say something like, “Hey, we won the Electoral College – that’s all that matters.  Go ahead with your recount – it’s the American way.  For all the good it will do you.  We’ll still win.” 

Yeah, I know.

First, Trump called Stein’s efforts a scam.  Then his surrogates, led by Kellyanne Conway, suggested that Trump has been "gracious" by not prosecuting Clinton while the recount was underway.  Say what?

Then Trump tweeted,

“The results of this election should be respected instead of being challenged and abused…”

Then he tweeted,

"In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally."

 Then he tweeted,

 “Serious voter fraud in Virginia, New Hampshire, and California – so why isn’t the media reporting on this? Serious bias – big problem!”

Then he retweeted four tweets challenging a CNN reporter (Jeff Zeleny) to “disprove” that there wasn’t illegal voting that harmed Trump, including

“[Jeff Zeleny] what PROOF do u have that Donald Trump did not suffer from millions of FRAUD votes? Journalist? Do your job!”

 “[Jeff Zeleny] Pathetic- you have no sufficient evidence that Donald Trump did not suffer from voter fraud, shame! Bad reporter.”

In other words, instead of proving that there WAS illegal voting, he expects someone else to prove that his claims (currently lacking any evidence) are wrong.  That’s bass-ackwards, of course.

Finally, let it be noted that either he or the Republican Party has now sued in all three recount states to stop the recount.

He is hardly gracious in winning.  But my question is this (and I am not the only one asking it):

IF THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH DOING A RECOUNT, WHY THE FUSS?

DO YOU WANT TO EXPOSE ILLEGAL VOTING, or just BITCH ABOUT IT?

And most importantly,

IS THIS ANOTHER CON-JOB TO IMPLEMENT MORE VOTING RESTRICTIONS so that EVEN MORE AMERICANS ARE DENIED THEIR RIGHT TO VOTE?

Sadly, I think I know the answer to only the last one.