In a November 14, 2019 column, “Republicans Can’t Abandon Trump Now Because They’re All Guilty,” freelance journalist Joel Mathis warned: “Trump’s abuses of power mirror those of the GOP as a whole. Republicans can’t turn on him, because doing so would be to indict their party’s entire approach to politics.”

For example:

• At the state level, GOP legislatures have passed numerous voter ID laws over the last decade. Officially, the reason has been to prevent non-citizens from voting. In reality, the motive is to depress turnout among Democratic constituencies.
• When Democrats have won elections, Republicans have tried to block them from carrying out their policies. In Utah, voters approved Medicaid expansion at the ballot box—but Republicans nullified this.
• In North Carolina, Republican legislators prevented voters from choosing their representatives. Instead, Republican representatives chose voters through partisan sorting. In September, 2019, the state’s Supreme Court ruled the legislative gerrymandered district map unconstitutional.

The upshot of all this: “The president and his party are united in the belief that their entitlement to power allows them to manipulate and undermine the country’s democratic processes….The president and today’s GOP share the same sins. It will be difficult for them to abandon each other.”

On November 3, 2020, 81,255,933 Democratic voters outvoted 74,196,153 Republican voters to elect former Vice President Joseph Biden as the 46th President of the United States.

In the Electoral College—where Presidential elections are actually decided—Biden won by a margin of 306 to 232 votes for Trump. 

Trump refused to accept that verdict. For the first time in American history, a President demanded a halt to the counting of votes while the outcome of an election hung in doubt.

States ignored his demand and kept counting.

Next, Trump ordered his attorneys to file lawsuits to overturn the election results, charging electoral fraud. Specifically:

• Illegal aliens had been allowed to vote.
• Trump ballots had been systematically destroyed.
• Tampered voting machines had turned Trump votes into Biden ones.

Throughout November and December, cases were filed in Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Michigan, Minnesota and Georgia challenging the election results. None were supported by evidence of fraud—as even Trump’s lawyers admitted when questioned by judges.

And, one by one, more than 30 cases were withdrawn by Trump’s attorneys or dismissed by Federal judges—some of them appointed by Trump himself.

Losing in the courts, Trump invited two Republican legislative leaders from Michigan to the White House to persuade them to stop the state from certifying the vote.

The Michigan legislators said they would follow the law.

On December 5, Trump called Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and asked him to call a special legislative session and convince state legislators to select their own electors that would support him, thus overturning Biden’s win.

Kemp refused, saying he lacked the authority to do so. 

On December 8, the Supreme Court refused to hear Trump’s bid to reverse Pennsylvania’s certification of Biden’s victory. Representative Mike Kelly (R-PA), a Trump ally, argued that the state’s 2.5 million mail-in were unconstitutional.

The Court’s order read, “The application for injunctive relief presented to Justice [Samuel] Alito and by him referred to the Court is denied.” Although Trump had appointed three of the Court’s Justices, not one of them dissented.

Legal scholars almost unanimously agreed the Court’s action quashed Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election results through the courts.

The Supreme Court

On December 8, Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and Missouri United States Senator Roy Blunt joined House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy in blocking a resolution asserting that Biden is the President-elect of the United States. 

Still, Trump pressed on. On December 9, he asked the Supreme Court to block millions of Biden votes from Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

The request came in a filing with the court in a lawsuit brought by Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton.  

* * * * *

The United States has indeed become a polarized country. But it’s not the polarization between Republicans and Democrats, or between conservatives and liberals.

It’s the polarization between Right-wing fanatics intent on enslaving everyone who doesn’t subscribe to their Fascistic beliefs and agenda—and those who resist being enslaved.

Those who hoped that Republicans would choose patriotism over partisanship got their answer on February 5. That was when the Republican-dominated Senate—ignoring the overwhelming evidence against him—acquitted Donald Trump on both impeachment articles.

It’s natural to regret that the United States has become a sharply divided nation. CNN has taken the lead in hand-wringing with a weepy-voiced PSA:

“Our trust has been broken—in our leaders, in our institutions and even some of our friends. And we are hurting, Now more than ever we need each other to listen, to learn from one another, and to rebuild those bonds. Because trust shows we believe in the good in each other. It’s what makes us human. And when we can trust one another, that is when we can truly achieve great things.”

But those who insist on the truth should realize there is only one choice: 

Either non-Fascist Americans will destroy the Republican party and its voters that threaten to enslave them—or they will be enslaved by Republicans and their voters who believe they are entitled to manipulate and destroy the country’s democratic processes.

There is no middle ground.