Alan Zendell, August 16, 2023

This morning, Heather Richardson’s Letter to America began with Donald Trump’s announcement on his Truth Social platform that next Monday, he will present “A Large, Complex, Detailed but Irrefutable REPORT on the Presidential Election Fraud which took place in Georgia, … [and] based on the results of this CONCLUSIVE Report, all charges should be dropped against me & others—There will be a complete EXONERATION!” The appearance of this statement, the absurd capitalization, makes it look like it was written to appeal to children. I should probably apologize to all the children I know for implying that any of them might be fooled.

In response came this tweet from Georgia Governor Brian Kemp: “The 2020 election in Georgia was not stolen. For nearly three years now, anyone with evidence of fraud has failed to come forward – under oath – and prove anything in a court of law. Our elections in Georgia are secure, accessible, and fair and will continue to be as long as I am governor.” I should note, for context, that Kemp himself has been accused by Democrats of stealing his own election from Stacy Abrams by manipulating the voter rolls. Whether or not that’s true, he’s certainly not part of a Biden conspiracy to interfere with Trump’s 2024 election campaign.

As for Trump’s promised report, we’ll have to wait and see, but after more than sixty losses in courts all over the country, which mostly dismissed Trump’s claims of election fraud for lack of evidence, it’s doubtful that we’ll see anything beyond the usual lies and distortions. When 150 million votes are cast in more than 175,000 precincts, there are bound to be some errors. But based on post-election audits in every key state, the incidence of errors was so low as to defy statistical expectations. That’s because elections officials understand the importance of what they do, and knowing how much scrutiny the 2020 election would receive, they doubled down on their usually competent efforts to assure that votes were counted accurately.

Nationwide, the number of votes brought into question numbered in the tens and hundreds. If they totaled 10,000 (they didn’t) they would still be less than a hundredth of one percent of the votes cast. Carefully watched audits found no evidence of significant fraud or cheating. This is old news, which makes it all the more confounding that so many Trump supporters seem unable to accept it. By way of explanation, former IL representative Adam Kinzinger noted that in order to admit Trump is lying, his supporters would first have to admit that they’d been suckered into believing his lies and contributing money for his defense for six years. Those years have been a fascinating study in mob psychology.

Professor Richardson addressed that today, describing Trump’s tactics as “political technology.” This benign-sounding phrase was explained by Opendemocracy.net in 2011 as “a term largely unfamiliar in the West – is the euphemism commonly used in the former Soviet states for what is by now a highly developed industry of political manipulation.” Much has been written about Trump modeling his political strategy on the methods used by autocrats to remain in power, but here, we have a clear correlation that no objective reader can refute. In short, just about everything in Georgia’s RICO indictment of Trump for attempting to reverse his election loss is a component of Russia’s political technology.

Some of Trump’s supporters get the connection and love it. There’s no accounting for what some people are willing to do for power and influence. But I’ve been an American long enough to believe that most of us, honestly faced with the reality of autocratic politics, would reject it. The problem, given our fractured, unregulated media, is how to effectively communicate truth. The only solution I can think of is a change in our national mind set from blindly believing whatever we’re told by snake-oil salesman and thinking for ourselves.

I have enough faith in the intelligence and integrity of most Americans to believe that once they are aware of how they’ve been manipulated, of how people skilled in the art of persuasion and misdirection get paid millions of dollars to influence their minds, they will reject that. They’ll realize that if all a candidate has to offer is reasons why you should hate your darker skinned or wealthier or immigrant neighbors, they have no interest in defending the Constitution or helping all of us prosper. If, other than outrageous bragging and lying, a candidate’s main appeal is that he’s being persecuted unfairly because he’s facing criminal indictments from two states and the Department of Justice, maybe all that smoke is hiding a fire hot enough to destroy us if we let it continue to burn.

The reality is that he who yells loudest that everyone else is threatening our freedom is himself its worst enemy.