Fighting Words

Anyone who ever hoisted a warming draft in a plastic cup at the Bottle & Cork in Dewey Beach, Delaware will tell you there are few places more hedonistically raunchy. Although it has always branded itself as a “ premier concert venue,” and in fact does book a steady slate of noteworthy acts, on sultry August Saturday evenings I could get up on stage and belt out my worst with few taking too much notice. What brings summer crowds to “the Cork” is the hope of romance, however brief and transient. The Cork cauldron includes just several ingredients… males and females, testosterone and way too many Jaigermeister shooters. One doesn’t need a degree in sociology to accurately predict that stew will serve up conflict… plenty of it. Rare is the weekend Cork outing that doesn’t include box seats to drunken melees that quickly spill into the parking lot once bouncers intervene.

In the early ‘90s I was hard to miss. Six and a half feet tall and 225 reasonably well sculpted pounds made me easy to spot in most any crowd, and a target perhaps for malcontents with something to prove. One Saturday night at the Cork long ago, just such a provocateur decided to confront me. It wasn’t my first rodeo, and I was braced by a couple hours worth of beer consumption, so an otherwise sensible inclination to avoid escalation was less compelling. What appeared to me as cutoffs held up by a belt, a host of body ink and a wallet secured by a chain advertised both the very lax Cork dress requirements and that my boy was not in Dewey for the surf. He was greasy and shorter than I was, younger and even drunker as well. Although he had several friends backing his guff, I had a number of affiliates I could trust to at least ponder having my back in the general vicinity, so my blood pressure remained in check.

He claimed I had bumped into him and spilled his beer. I answered that, if I had, it was an accident and I meant no harm. Momentarily disarmed by my sane response, he moved on to accusing me of “looking hard” at him. I assured him he was the last person I would extend a glance to. I stepped on his foot and dissed him was the next complaint. And why did I act like I was better than he was? Finally, my patience exhausted and temper on the rise, I moved closer so only he could hear me. I asked him why he felt it necessary to come up with a list of excuses to justify calling me out. If he wanted to go why not just say so? Was he hoping I’d talk him out of it? Why was it important that he come up with reasons to get busy? Just man up about the whole thing; stop being a whiny bitch. Let’s do this!

I must have looked more intense than I thought because two bouncers asked us if we wanted the boot, and if not to chill out ASAP. By the time I had assuaged their concerns and reaffirmed my good standing, my nemesis and posse had vanished. And that was that, another senseless fight headed off at the pass, the night’s festivities allowed to continue unabated.

The millions of us who sweated out an excruciating “red mirage” scenario created by the impossibly reckless efforts of a nihilist President to politicize the public safety requirements a deadly pandemic necessitates, now face our own instigators looking to start something with excuses they know are baseless. Nobody believes Trump has any avenue anywhere to win an election he decisively lost, certainly no elected official. But that isn’t stopping them from hissing aggrievement to justify flouting more than 250 years of American democratic sensibilities and pretend their loser was robbed.

That we’ve always known this showdown was inevitable – as in 2016, Trump promised incessantly at his superspreader rallies leading up to the election that he would be the world’s ugliest loser – doesn’t make it any less disturbing or stressful now that it’s upon us. Fascists are always bullies and can only get their way if the other side backs down. Ask Neville Chamberlain. And so we get ridiculous guff about irregularities and fraud, ballot dumps and postal workers in on the take… blah, blah, blah. You made us spill our beer!!

Here are the facts. Biden now leads in the national popular count by more than five million votes, a total that will only grow as the final ballots are tallied. In the four most contested states that sealed his Electoral College majority, Biden leads by more than 100K votes, a lead that continues to steadily grow. In Georgia and Arizona, the two most contested states in that group, Biden leads by at least 12.5K votes. Trump beat Clinton in Wisconsin by less than 10K votes. In Pennsylvania his lead is now more than 50K, a margin that exceeds Trump’s entitlement to a recount. Biden’s 145K margin in Michigan alone doubles Trump’s 2016 advantage in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania combined. His total “Blue Wall” margin of victory now approaches a quarter million votes.

In other words, this is no more a “disputed election” than 2012, or 1996, or 1952, and certainly, and most relevantly, 2016. In fact, by most every credible account, America can be proud as it’s ever been of how our electoral apparatus serviced a record number of voters, during a rampaging pandemic no less. Trump has no more valid argument to contest this election than Adlai Stevenson had after Eisenhower spanked him for the second time back in 1956. So why do so many have the drizzles about “legal challenges” or “audits” by individual states?! You stepped on my foot!

That Fox/AM is capable of convincing millions of Trump’s wretched core what they already knew they would be certain about should their grievance empath lose is no more surprising than Mitch McConnell’s refusal to validate an election he just accepted his own re-election from. Orwell anyone? This is what MAGA does! This is the GOP we are now burdened with. Nobody thought it would be otherwise and it isn’t.

What’s most important at this minute is clarity. Of course, after four years and the 25,000 lies that form the basis of the Trump Presidency, as well the GOP’s full servility to it, that’s easier said than done. Yet and still, without it we needlessly extend our pain while permitting Trump, at the very moment his chickens should all be coming home to roost, at the exact time we should be celebrating our system for surviving the greatest threat it’s ever faced, to further damage what he’s always despised, for no other aim than to rebrand yet another of his unqualified failures.

History will show his legacy to be nothing but incompetence, corruption, dishonesty and treachery. Right now he’s simply doing what he’s always done, picking a fight while claiming it’s a righteous response to the wrongs we dealt him. This kabukifest of “pursuing all legal remedies” only clarifies a still cowered nation that somehow can’t find the resolve to do anything but humor its bully’s rabid whims. That needs to change yesterday. Call a crook a crook, and a two-bit coup attempt a two-bit coup attempt, and slap him silly on the way out the door. Then make his continued existence difficult. As for his wretched core; it starts with each of us. Call them what they relentlessly confirm they are… ignorant fascists with little tolerance for election results they disdain. You want to foist nihilist autocracy, that’s up to you. But we’re going to label you the plague you are. They want to rumble? Fine, let’s go. But, wherever it leads, make sure there is certainty what the fight is about. BC