Today is the anniversary of 9/11. Twenty-one years ago “terrorists” flew four planes into the World Trade Center, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania (but headed for the Capitol).
To be honest, I had forgotten about it, until I saw my Twitter feed this morning.
Oh yeah, THAT anniversary.
A number of commentators this morning noted the changing definition of a “terrorist” since an unhinged MAGA crowd tried to overthrow the United States government one year, eight months and five days ago.
Back in 2001, the nation rallied behind George W. Bush, a doofus President who had stolen the last election.
That’s right kids, a stolen election.
In the last two decades there have been two stolen elections, but they’ve both been stolen from the Republican side. First, there was 2000, where George W. Bush squeaked out a victory only after the Supreme Court (Bush v. Gore) forced the state of Florida to stop its recount.
People forget how close that sucker was.
Bush ended up with 271 electoral college votes in an election in which he needed 270.
And Bush lost the popular vote by 543,895 (which is peanuts compared to the amounts that Donald Trump has lost the popular vote by).
The second stolen election happened, of course, in 2016, when Hillary Clinton had the election stolen from her by FBI Director James Comey’s last minute decision to reopen his investigation into her emails, and by Russian collaboration with the Trump administration in spreading vast amounts of disinformation.
(Hillary’s emails were, of course, a complete nothingburger, especially compared with Trump’s stolen top secret documents.)
Trump was so sure (along with every other political expert) that he would lose, that he had already set in motion his “stolen election” narrative well before the election actually happened. And indeed, the election was stolen, but not by the Democrats.
In 2016, Hillary won the popular vote by a very healthy 2,868,686, which is way more than Al Gore’s measly half a million voters.
Four years later “sleepy” Joe Biden won the popular vote by an astonishing 7,052,770 tally.
And yet, Trump is still bellyaching about how the election was supposedly stolen from him.
Now, the “terrorists” are not from Saudi Arabia, they are from Oklahoma, and Kansas, and Idaho, and Texas, and Wyoming, among others.
For all those of you who are not impressed by the Republican’s maudlin “patriotism” today, count me among your members. They lost the claim to be the party of patriots over the last five years, but they put the frosting on the cake on January 6th.
