contrapunctus: [catholicmom.com image 263x261]

What I'm about to write I take ZERO pleasure in.  It's depressing beyond belief and it farking sucks that we're living through this at all.

2020 was America's last legitimate presidential election.

To be fair, the door to this horrible reality was slowly opened over the course of several decades.  W's first election was a travesty that should never have happened, but it validated the idea that it's OK for America to have minority rule.

Outside of 2004, you have to go all the way back to farking 1988 to find a Republican president elected by a majority of the American public.  On some level, Republican voters know that they're losing the cultural wars, so they're using every other mechanism to influence our lives.  Their desperation is so severe that they're not above raiding the farking Capitol itself to threaten the lives of lawmakers.

We want so badly to believe that the system itself will somehow engage a self-correcting procedure to keep our downward spiral from accelerating.  It isn't coming.  2024 will see a Republican elevated to the Oval Office, once again, against the wishes of the majority of the public.  The difference, this time, is that the accusations of Democratic fraud are going to be so loud and so frequent that even liberals will start questioning which way is up, and which way is down.

Will things eventually go back to some semblance of 'normal'?  Maybe, but not before a LONG period where our elections are continually rated as 'non-functioning' by international organizations who monitor this sort of thing.

The only way out is through, and we're going to see some fairly horrible stuff, unfortunately.