“Here it comes, here it comes, it’s just your nineteenth nervous breakdown.” — Rolling Stones

Political theater has always been with us. But the 2022 election is shaping up to be more of a political blockbuster cartoon show, just based on the characters in it. We have a slate of MAGA freaks on the GOP ballot, all hoping to gain control of the House and further pollute the Senate, not to mention the governors’ races, not to mention the state assemblies, etc.

And we have quite a supporting cast for this epic. Yes, we do. In Pennsylvania alone we have one Toni Shuppe, and she is an ally of Doug Mastriano, it goes without saying. Shuppe has created a set of MAGA marching orders for next Tuesday. Shuppe’s keen grasp of all things political recently led her to publish the final installment of her five-part “Plan for Victory in November” that she says is designed to “stop the steal of 2022,” according to the Philadelphia Inquirer:

By almost any metric, the plan is chock-full of bad ideas.

Shuppe, for example, is urging voters to cast their ballots “as late in the day as possible” on Election Day to deliberately “overwhelm the system.” The reason for this is based on her theory that voting machines — which she calls “cheat machines” — are connected to the internet (they are not) and being manipulated by a hacker.

“Make him think he’s got the cheat in the bag and nobody will notice,” Shuppe wrote on Substack, referring to an unnamed hacker, “then overwhelm him during the last hour with a turnout he can’t keep up with.”

Shuppe — who has stated herself or shared others’ posts claiming that Pizzagate is “absolutely real,” 9/11 was “a false flag,” and the Flight 93 crash was faked — has also encouraged supporters to record video of voters going to ballot drop boxes during the midterms. She floated the idea of approaching already-overworked elections clerks in Pennsylvania “with an offer they can’t refuse,” by using public records requests as a threat to force them to hand-count paper ballots.

This is the kind of fruit fly intellect that abounds in Trump’s MAGA world. This is what is trying to topple democracy. And yes, it would be comical, I quite agree, if it wasn’t so pernicious. Are you ready for this? The article goes on to say, “Shuppe has also triggered some speculation in political circles that Mastriano has selected her for the position of secretary of state if he is elected governor.” Kakistocracy in action, right here, the blindly corrupt leading the blindly corrupt.

“I could decertify every [voting] machine in the state with the stroke of a pen via my secretary of state,” Mastriano said in a March radio interview. “I already have the secretary of state picked out.”

THIS is why it’s not funny. This is why as ridiculous as it is, I can’t laugh. And the night Mastriano won the GOP primary, when he turned to a crony and smirked, “twenty electoral votes,” that was not funny, either. Twenty electoral votes for Trump, was the full sentence. This is the hardcore MAGA crowd that wants to take over the country, and eliminate democracy as we know it. Anybody who thinks that anything less is going on with these people is simply not paying attention.

“It’s crazy. It’s just crazy. Complete fantasy,” David Landau, a longtime political operative and former chair of the Democratic Party in Delaware County, said of Shuppe’s allegations about “deep state” election conspiracies across the commonwealth.

“It’s like her saying the Martians are here among us and they have hypnotized people with their energy beams to rig elections,” Landau said. “It undermines the trust and the results. People can say any result other than Donald Trump getting elected must be illegitimate.”

And what has been the result of all this madness? Gone are the days when election workers worked diligently in peace. This is what the scene has become.

The toxic political environment has led counties to take precautions that just a few years ago would have been unheard of. Philadelphia’s new elections warehouse, where votes are counted, has magnetometers and bulletproof glass. When someone mailed Bucks County an unidentified crushed material this summer, they briefly evacuated the elections office.

Our democracy has become a war zone. This is the legacy of Trump and the Big Lie. He couldn’t bow out gracefully, he had to toxify the entire election process and attempt to take democracy down with him. And he’s still not done. He’s still not done.

 

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4 COMMENTS

  1. These MAGAts are publicly spouting increasingly crazier plans. It’s like they’ve reached the “Oh yeah? That’s all YOU’VE got? Check THIS out” stage and are trying to outdo each other. There’s no end in sight to this madness.

    11
    • This is what happens to a worried mind when it has no idea what to do. Longshots and rescue fantasies get ever more unhinged. So I take this as a good sign.

  2. I wonder if Oprah regrets promoting Oz to fame? Of course, we live in a nation where we elevate celebrities as if they suddenly have gravitas in all matters. Idiots get media time all the time. We get the government we deserve. It’s the children who don’t get what they deserve. Vote.
    You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Bob Dylan
    You don’t need a celebrity either.

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