Why Are We Just Waiting For Democracy to Fail?

As Trump and others attempt to chip away at our democracy, we collectively seem to be holding our breath and watching but even the strongest pillars will give way under relentless attacks.

This is ridiculous. There are some common-sense actions that can be taken to protect the Constitution.

And action must be taken to protect our government against the relentless assault of unfound, unproven claims. Here are some ideas:

States need to announce that ANY PERSON and ALL PEOPLE regardless of position and status who have or who work to undermine the electoral process in their state will be prosecuted to the fullest text of the law. And, yes, they need to investigate and prosecute where laws were broken to send a message that these actions will not be tolerated.

Courts need to do two things.

(1) They need to sanction any party coming to court with documents that are inaccurate and misleading. This is a court of law and evidence submitted under oath should be carefully prepared and vetted. At this point, we have examples in which numerous times documents have been submitted to demonstrate fraud, and the only fraud was the representation that the documents were accurate when with just little checking they were shown to be inaccurate. Since this has happened numerous times, the sanctions should be severe. (I understand mistakes happen but after one mistake, the attorneys are on notice that sources may not be accurate and they should be making efforts to ensure accuracy.)

(2) Courts need to issue gag orders. Right now Trump’s attorneys are making representations outside the courthouses about representations that are very different than those being made inside the courtrooms. This needs to stop immediately. If Trump wants to take the issues to court, then they can not talk about any claims until the court has heard the case and it has been resolved. This duplicity is intentionally misleading and deceptive. The courts should stop this and not be complicit in allowing it to continue.

Republicans need to actively and vocally support those who are holding up the laws of their states whether they are other politicians or judges. Those at the national level still unwilling to support the vote should be shamed.

The owners and major talent of right-wing propaganda networks like OAN, Newsmax, and Fox News need to be called before the House of Representatives. (This slightly different but somewhat related.) They need to be called out for the coverage of the pandemic and peddling of false narratives. The owners need to be questioned about their companies and how they are run. They should be investigated for motives and other interests. The damage they are doing to this country with their unhinged, not-fact-based narratives can not be understated. They have sometimes enabled and sometimes led Trump’s mismanagement of this entire crisis. This needs to be addressed and they need to be held accountable. THIS SHOULD BE DONE NOW because we are at a critical point in the epidemic with deaths increasing and the vaccines rolling out. This is about responsible reporting. (Holding them accountable may also pull them back from the unhinged narratives they are spewing relating to the election so it is only linked in that case.)

For those promoting the suspension of the Constitution, a knock on the door is a minimum with an investigation to verify that and …. foreign influences and not connected to groups like the group planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan.

What we can not do is sit around and just wait for the cracks to emerge. There needs to be some cost to the reckless claims they are making so that they might, just may be, think and act more responsibly.

To be clear, actual fraud should be investigated and prosecuted — whether that fraud is election fraud or the fraud of distorting election fraud claims to perpetuate another kind of fraud on the American people.