In its recent history, the USA suffered the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor (1941) and the aggression of the terrorist group Wahhabi Al-Qaeda on 9/11 at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in NY and the Pentagon in WDC (2001).
Now he faces two attacks of a different nature: the Sars-CoV-2 pandemic with more than 300 thousand deaths, the highest mortality in the world in the richest, most powerful and scientifically advanced country on the planet.
The other is an onslaught of its democracy and electoral system orchestrated by its own president, Donald Trump. When the triumph of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris was made public on November 7, he launched a ruthless political offensive by inventing a conspiracy that maintains that the November 3 election was fraudulent and rigged in favor of Biden, especially in the “states. columpio ”(swing states) of Pennsylvania, Georgia, Michigan and Wisconsin. The objective is to reverse the electoral result so that Trump is re-elected.
“A lie repeated a thousand times becomes the truth,” Goebbels said. Trump repeats the conspiracy ad nauseam to justify to the public opinion the attack on the institutions, as Hitler did in Germany. Its main operator Rudy Giuliani filed more than 50 lawsuits about non-existent fraud, all dismissed by the judges for lack of evidence.
The legal escalation reached the Supreme Court of Justice by the Texas prosecutor, Ken Paxton (investigated by the FBI), and fueled by Trump himself, added 18 states of the Union and 126 GOP congressmen, to ignore millions of Pro-Biden voters in the swing states, and give Trump the victory. The Court denied entry to the claim, despite its conservative composition (6-3) with 3 Trump appointments.
Trump’s legal and political strategy so far has failed. The first is because the US legal system upholds the doctrine of “clean hands”, according to which, whoever creates an illegal situation, cannot claim justice by declaring himself a victim, which Trump does with his conspiracy theory.
The second, because the federalized electoral system remains resilient to its attacks on both local electoral servers and pressure on legislators to reverse the electoral result in their favor. Suffice it to recall Gabriel Sterling, an electoral official from Georgia, when he demanded that Trump stop inspiring violence because “this has to stop” at the risk of aggression, injury or death.
Chris Krebs, director of the Cyber Security Agency, and Attorney General William Barr were fired for declaring that there was no fraud in the election. On the other hand, Michael Flynn, former National Security Councilor, guilty of perjury, obtained Trump’s “pardon” and now advises him to impose Martial Law to replace civilian authorities with military, ignore the electoral result and call new elections, which is equivalent to a coup.
However, General Mark Milley, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff stated: “We do not take the oath to a king, queen, tyrant or dictator. We do not take an oath to an individual. We do not take an oath to a country, a tribe or a religion. We swear to the Constitution and each soldier, each sailor or each coast guard, protests to defend that document at any cost ”(Museum of the Navy –Nov 11).
The Electoral College, already declared Biden the winner with 306 votes against 232 for Trump, 74 voters and more than 7 million popular votes, it is a huge difference.
With his conspiracy, Trump demonstrates the true meaning and scope of populism. When thousands of Americans succumb to the pandemic, he only takes care of himself, forgetting to do “America Great.” This is how Abraham Lincoln’s dictum of “the government of the people, by the people and for the people” is upset, by that of the Trump government, by Trump and for Trump, that is, power at any price.
Teacher / researcher at UNAM.
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