I Told You He Was A Dictator

 It has been thirty-seven days since Joe Biden was elected as the next President of the United States of America. I was watching MSNBC when the NBC election desk called the election for Biden. I was in a hotel room, enjoying a well deserved micro-vacation. I said these words out loud, "Please let it be real".

Though I was very tired, I stayed up to watch the speeches that Biden and Kamala Harris gave that night. I was on cloud nine, as the expression goes, at seeing how many people came out to attend in person and how jubilant they were. 

I was jubilant that night, but I'm not anymore.

Because, over the last thirty-seven days, Donald Trump has refused to concede defeat. He has, rather, pulled every single dirty political stunt and trick that he and his minions can think of. As they have suffered defeat after defeat in the courts (what is it now, forty of them?), they have grown increasingly desperate.

They have cast their proverbial net ever wider, embracing nutcases and fringe lunatics who, in a saner and more decent society, would be limited in their scope of influence to perhaps a few thousand people. Their rantings and ravings would be restricted, for the most part, to newsletters and mailing lists.

And now, in what can only be called an attempted coup, the Republicans have gone nuclear on us.

The Texas State Attorney General, Ken Paxton, has filed a lawsuit seeking to have the United States Supreme Court overturn the election results in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania.

This effort, if successful, would allow the state legislatures in those four states to appoint a slate of electors for Donald Trump and Mike Pence. 

Seventeen state Attorneys General have filed an amicus brief supporting the lawsuit. They are from these states:

Missouri

Arkansas

South Dakota

Florida 

Indiana

Kansas

Louisiana

Mississippi

Montana

Nebraska

North Dakota

Oklahoma

South Carolina 

Utah

West Virginia

Tennessee

Alabama

Also, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has filed formally a separate brief  "respecting" the Texas suit.

So, there you have it, dear reader. Government officials in eighteen states that have gone on the record as supporting an attempted coup here in our country.

I'd love to be able to say that I feel 100% confident that this lawsuit will fail. But, with Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett all seated on the Supreme Court bench, anything is possible.

We are dangerously close to being totally f***ed.