From time to time there is a real disaster with the name Arizona attached. In the last century the battleship Arizona was tragically bombed at Pearl Harbor and in this century Arizona is the site of the ludicrous QAnon-sponsored pseudo audit at the Madhouse On MacDowell; UV lights, rumors of watermarks, bamboo and the lot of it. It would be sheer comedy but for the fact that the audit is being used to undermine faith in free and fair elections by attempting to prove massive fraud in the last one.

Donald Trump is megaphoning the efforts in Arizona, to the best of his ability now that he’s down to only his toy blog to make an occasional announcement on. By the way, the toy blog is evidently experiencing technical difficulties because it is not on the internet right now and hasn’t been since noon PDT. Maybe Trump couldn’t handle the mockery any more.

Be that as it may, Trump wanted everybody to read this linked to letter from the Arizona State Senate and there will be a hearing at the Arizona State Capitol on May 18 at 1:00 p.m. to discuss the contents of the letter. It sounds for all the world like the batshittery that Rudy Giuliani was bandying about when he was in Arizona for a hearing at the Hyatt Regency Hotel with Jenna Ellis, of Strikeforce Rudy. You may recall Giuliani claiming he was meeting “with the Arizona legislature.” No, the legislature was not in session at that time. Rudy was meeting with anybody from the legislature who wanted to show up, at the Hyatt. This was in the stage of Rudy’s litigious efforts, when the closest he could get to a court was Courtyard by Marriott. Hotels figured largely back in the day and you recall the Four Seasons Landscaping eff up. That was ridiculed worldwide.

But undaunted, the Cyber Ninjas and their employers go on. The letter from the state senate asks for “digital images of routers” and “passwords to access vote tabulation devices” and you can read the entire thing linked to above. It puts one in mind of the Sovereign Citizen lawsuits, which are a mish mash of legalese and which are generally dismissed as frivolous and legally defective. That will probably be the net result in Arizona as well, but the effect of this lingering attempt to discredit the 2020 election results are pernicious and corrosive, to say the very least. And so of course it’s ripe material for Steve Bannon to exploit. He’s jumped right on board.

As Russian chess master Garry Kasparov said, “You crush the lie or the lie crushes you.” This is the central battle in American culture and politics right now, whether to believe the Big Lie or not. 70% of Republicans do. And why shouldn’t they? Their leaders are up there on Fox News and any other platform they can access, telling it and retelling it.

Maybe this week in Arizona will provide some kind of an ending place. It is devoutly to be wished.

 

 

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4 COMMENTS

  1. This isn’t the ending place of The Big Lie. This is the beginning of The Big Lie as a device to be referenced and believed in and used as a back-drop, a symbol, like the Confederate flag, or a swastika.

    But although that might just be beginning, one thing is ending, the republican party as a genuine, legitimate force representing roughly half the electorate.

    This is the beginning of the end of the GOP.

  2. The 70% of Republicans believing The Big Lie is the second worse polling number I’ve ever seen.

    The worst is from Richard Evans trilogy of the Third Reich, in 1952 Germans polled (presumably in West Germany) that 25% of the people thought Hitler did a good job.

    Maybe we will have to wait another 6 years before we only have 25% of the Republicans believing.

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