The Cyber Ninjas are even more incompetent than we thought. They possessed every shabby opportunity to discredit Joe Biden's Arizona victory, which was the entire point of their slapdash exercise in election chicanery. And what do they come up with? An even stronger Biden win, and fewer votes for Trump.
"No substantial differences" exist between the Ninjas' findings and Maricopa County's official results, already twice audited. So says their draft report, although a possibly conflicting, full report is scheduled for release later today. Perhaps the Ninjas can then redeem themselves.
In fact they took a stab at it in the draft, referencing popular conspiracy theories as valid concerns and, through sheer ignorance, misrepresenting routine election procedures as possible dark doings. All of which, they said, resulted in findings "very close to the margin of error for the election."
I suppose some credit should be given to these idiots for denying, essentially, that unfettered fraud had poisoned Arizona's presidential election of late. That, however, will have no material effect on the state's Republican pols, the right's hyperventilating media twits and, of course, Trump.
Together they'll seize on the Ninjas' subtextual references to bustling conspiracies and uncomprehended election processes and be the first to rebrand the re-re-re-audit as a shocking exposé (although, as noted, the Ninjas might beat them to it in the final and "full" report). Indeed one Republican state senator moved quickly last night to defuse any danger of honesty, tweeting that the early report was "simply a draft," only "partial." She then triumphantly declared, "Tomorrow we make history."
Next up, Arizona's Republican state legislature will use the Ninjas' … whatever … as unassailable evidence of an urgent need for election thievery, otherwise known as election subversion. This scarcely needs emphasis, and it's even less of a revelation; it's been the unconcealed play all along.
Republican state-engineered election theft is also scarcely confined to Arizona. It's already law in Georgia, and Trump is agitating for the same in Michigan and Pennsylvania, wherever his partisan toadies can exterminate American democracy.
Texas, another battleground state under autocracy's spell, opted yesterday for a four-county, Arizona-like audit of 2020. Only its tardiness surprises. At any rate, just a few hours passed betwixt Trump's agitation and a straight-armed Sieg Heil! from the state's election officials, which is to say, governor. "Texans know voting fraud occurred in some of their counties," wrote Trump to Reichmarschall Greg Abbott. "Let's get to the bottom of the 2020 Presidential Election Scam!" And to the bottom they're going.
Before 2024 more battleground states under Republican Party control will have washed clean any regulatory impediments to victorious Trumpocracy — though merely one state's Electoral votes could well suffice to overturn a legitimate presidential election.
The United States is under a fierce, concerted assault not unlike the ghastly events of 1860-61. The contemporary forces of political brutality believe that in this nation-gutting go-around, the majority opposition will quietly countenance what amounts to authoritarian fait accomplis.
I find the brutalizers' confidence convincing. Though anti-Trumpian, the electorate at large is more engrossed by disappearing fiancés than by its vanishing democracy.
In short, our democratic spirit is either cripplingly wounded or already dead. Disinterest in politics has reached off-the-chart levels just as political engagement has become more vital than ever.
I have also come to doubt the potency of federal laws prohibiting the Trump Party's foul intentions, should congressional Democrats ever pause from squabbling about maybe taxing Jeff Bezos — a challenging question indeed — to pass them. This is a party brazenly unconcerned with the rule of law. It's stoked on depraved self-entitlement, and it has a Trump-loaded Supreme Court as an indecent ally. Who's to stop the Trump Party in the corridors of institutional power?
I pray that I've never been more wrong in my life. The logic of democracy's demise at the torturing hands of Trumpian authoritarians, however, is, from where I sit, incontestable.