By Stephen Macaulay

So there was the absolute thugishness.

• Arizona House Speaker Russell Bowers getting threats, including his family members, for not breaking the law on Donald Trump’s behalf.
• Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger’s wife being harassed and his widowed daughter-in-law’s house being broken into, again because Raffensperger wasn’t going to violate his oath to “find” votes for Trump.
• Shaye Freeman Moss and her mother Ruby Freeman, both former Georgia election workers, were called out by Trump and Rudy Giuliani for unsubstantiated fouls in the counting of ballots.
• Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson testified that she had protestors outside of her house which led her to think “Are they coming with guns, are they going to attack my house? I’m in here with my kid.”

Really?

This is what Donald Trump and his supporters caused because he lost the election.

The issue of election fraud is not an issue.

Team Trump has presented no evidence. Donald Trump — even before his loss —claimed that it would be a crooked election. Had he won, presumably those claims would have disappeared, just like he said COVID would.

What is going on? Trump had a job. He was fired. But he didn’t want to go. And he has a posse of sycophants who didn’t want to give up their access so they support the fictious “Stop the Steal.”

A consequence of this is that those who find it easier to chant than to think claim that they are “defending democracy” by supporting Trump, even though the fundamental definition of democracy has it that the ones in charge are determined by the majority, not by the loudest.

In the political sphere the term “putting country ahead of party” is often heard. Well, it used to be heard with some frequency.

We are presently in a situation where people are putting a person ahead of everything that they claim to be in favor of: Democracy, rule of law—things that make America great.

What I wonder about is this: where are the Republicans of pre-2016, Republicans who are still, in many cases, still in office? Do they stand for person over country?

Or are they simply worried about keeping their jobs long enough to get the sweet retirement benefits?

These men and women should be ashamed of themselves.

That’s something we don’t hear about anymore either. Shame.