By Sushil Kutty
January 5, 2021, is the Georgia senate runoffs and if the Republicans lose “we’ll change America” is what Democratic senate minority leader Chuck Schumer promised a couple of months ago, soon after Joe Biden was declared winner by television networks on November 4. Since then, the Republicans are petrified, their “American way of life”, which is essentially the “Christian way of life”, will go for a toss, forever transformed.
Globalism will take over and Congress will part with American dollars to pay for gender equality in Pakistan and democracy in China and for sundry other goals in places elsewhere. The two Democratic Senate candidates Jon Ossoff and Raphael Wornock are according to the Republicans, dangerous leftist radicals with Ossoff dangerously close to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). If he makes it to the Senate, you can kiss goodbye to “everything American in America.”
President Donald J Trump was the other night in Dalton, Georgia, hours before polling for the runoffs was to begin, and he struck a positive note while insisting and urging Republican Georgians to “get up and go vote if that’s the last thing you do.” Trump, who is himself refusing to concede the November 3 Presidential election to Democrat ‘President-elect’ Joe Biden, said at the Dalton rally that “very big things are going to happen in the next two weeks.” Trump, after losing many court appeals to rescind the elections in five states, including a couple in the US Supreme Court to “probe the widespread election fraud”, which the apex court summarily refused to hear, is making a last ditch effort to “set things correct” by asking Republican Congress members and Republican Senators to “object” to Biden’s electoral votes and deny the Democratic President-elect his day in the White House.
The certification and counting of the electoral votes will be taken up on January 6 at Capitol Hill, the day of the Georgia Senate runoffs, and it’ll be a tumultuous affair. At least 12 Republican Senators and over a 100 Republican Congress members are all set to object. When they do that, it will kick in two-hour debates in both houses and then there will be voting. If somehow Biden doesn’t get the required 270 electoral votes, Donald Trump will prevail and remain President.
Of course, it’s dicey and the Democrats are a mite nervous, that’s for sure. Trump’s unpredictability makes them and everybody else nervous and a little jittery. There’s been talk of Trump “declaring martial law” and “invoking the Insurrection Act.” In fact, the day after his “election defeat”, Trump fired his Defence Secretary Mark Esper and appointed Christopher Miller Acting Defence Secretary. Since then there is always been this feeling of something hush-hush. So much so, the other day, 10 former Defence secretaries wrote a “piece” in the Washington Post warning Trump not to “use the army” to settle political scores, and attempt to “overturn the Presidential election.”
At that time Trump was on another trip, busy on a telephone call with the Secretary of State of Georgia asking why the hell was he not looking at the “overwhelming evidence of voter fraud” in Georgia and not ordering an inquiry into it, including a forensic signature audit. “Hundreds of thousands of illegal votes were cast, all I need is 11,780 to win in Georgia,” he told Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, not knowing that the audio of the call was in the public domain and everybody from Tom, Dick and Harry to Jane, June and Nikki Haley were dropping in on it.
Later, hours after the “personal phone call,” Brad Raffensperger admitted that he was the one who made arrangements to “leak” the audio of the call to Washington Post. By then, Trump had sued Brad under the Secrets Services’ Act. Now there’s talk of impeaching Trump all over again. Some people are even calling for his arrest. Notably one gentleman by the name of Carl Bernstein, who was one of two journalists whose reportage led to Nixon’s impeachment in the Watergate scandal. Bernstein labelled Trump’s call a criminal act and called for his immediate arrest.
But Trump is as if without a care in the world. He’s behaving like he will be in the White House well after January 20, 2021, which is the ordained date for the “peaceful transfer of power” and for President-elect Joe Biden’s inauguration. All the evangelicals and born-again Christians and everyday Christians (all of whom are automatic Republicans and therefore Trumplicans!) are waiting for “God” to set things right on January 6, confident that God will deliver. They packed churches on Sunday, January 3, “praying for Trump” and “our beloved America,” telling each other on multitudes of online forums not to fret and fume as “God is Great” and will “never fail His Children.”
It’s all kind of surreal and to Hindus who go around funning and punning about their multitudes of gods and goddesses, it’s all a big joke. Now, why would Jesus drop in to settle a United States Presidential election, when he never even bothered to “even things electoral” in Italy, which is right next to Vatican, or Israel, which is where the Son of God was born 2020 years ago!
Anyway, the fact of the matter is, the youngest democracy of the world, which also claims to be the most powerful country/nation in the history of the world, is mostly in two minds these days. Along with the coronavirus, the virus that is democracy has eaten into America’s vitals and now there’s been so much experimentation on democracy in the crucible of democracy that everybody in the democratic melting pot that is the United States of America is confused.
Millions are worried about their future and the future of the United States of America. At the back of the mind is the dreaded dragon – China, and the long shadow China’s casting across the Pacific. “Beware the CCP” is the Republican war-cry even as everybody, from Donald Trump to Trump’s wife Melania Trump, are accusing Joe Biden of being “compromised” because Joe’s son Hunter Biden has business ties with CCP honchos in Xi Jinping’s pocket borough China. Joe smiles away these allegations saying Hunter Biden is the “smartest man” he’s ever seen and not to worry! There’s something of Dhritarashtra in Joe Biden, but then who doesn’t at Joe Biden’s age?
To round off, crazy things are happening in America. An Indian journalist who got a green card and went to the States in January 2020 returned for a short visit in December 2020 and he was no longer the Modi-bhakt that he had been before he left. Now, after his sojourn in New Jersey, he was a Biden-bhakt! Yep, that kind of struck in the solar plexus. But then a bhakt here will be a bhakt there, too! The thing to worry was how to refer to him? Oops, “him” and “he” and “she” and “her”; “mother” and “father”; even “first cousin”, all mention of “gender” are banned in Capitol Hill.
That is the latest. In fact, if anybody says “Amen,” that “person” has to add “Wo-Amen” to be gender-correct, according to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi. And, Oh yes, Jesus is out the Capitol Hill window. In fact, the “pastor” who said the prayer the other day in the House, who added “Wo-Amen” to “Amen”, took the name of the “monotheistic God Brahma,” much to the astonishment of the evangelicals and born-again Christians of Trump’s “Maga Party.” God save the Americans, and America! (IPA Service)