Modern American Mythology

The ancient Greeks produced a very creative and imaginative world that existed only in the mind.  Human problems and issues were magnified to extremes and common fears were resolved by the unlimited scope of imagination of the human mind.  While mythology was a very real part of their life, as much as any religion can be part of anyone's life, the narratives were fictional and reality turned out to be a much different proposition.  At least, from our perspective of looking at it more than two thousand years into its future, it is at the very least entertaining.  

The mythology that has developed in this country in recent years is not nearly as entertaining, though there are times that the things it causes people to say, with a straight face into a television camera with millions of people watching, cause people to, as the modern text communication expresses, ROFL!  Unfortunately, misleading and deceptive are much more descriptive adjectives, especially when the myths roll off the twitter feed of a public official or show up in a televised debate where the presence of a fly was the highlight of the Vice President's presentation.  

The modern American mythmakers are not nearly as imaginative and creative as the ancient Greeks, who blended their mythology with a theatrical flair and wrote scripts for plays they presented in the theater to help bring myths to live in the only way possible.  Today's mythmakers, people like Rush Limbaugh, Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity,  Laura Ingraham and the Tweeter-in-Chief are lacking that theatrical flair.  Their presentation is pretty dull, the misinformation is predictable and the myths are dangerous, especially with instant and immediate communication.  Facts are their enemy, so let's put a few out there and watch the mythological bubbles pop.  

Mail-in voting will create the opportunity for massive voter fraud and give the Democrats the opportunity to steal the election 

Mail-in voting has proven, by all evidence and measurements, to be the safest way to deliver ballots in an election.  It is safer and more secure than machine voting, makes it easy to track exactly where the ballots came from and actually prevents fraud because once the mail-in ballot is requested, the voter's name is recorded, the ballot is in the custody of the postal service once it is sent and using the voter's residence address allows the registration to be cross-checked in order to make sure it is coming from the person who sent it.  Several states have been using mail-in balloting for more than a decade and there isn't a single shred of evidence of any "massive fraud."  Trump himself has voted by mail-in ballot more than once.  

Given the Trump campaign's own record of attempts to use outside influences to steal an election, if there's a risk that the Democrats would use mail-in balloting to steal the election there is at least an equal, if not greater risk that the Republicans would also try it.  And the pure fact of the matter is that a percentage of Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians and Independents will all vote by mail in this election.  

The attacks on the integrity of the election process by Trump, and now by Pence, are unconscionable, especially since there is absolutely no evidence to support those claims.  Voting is sacred in this country, and no patriotic American would ever refuse to accept the results of an election and submit to the peaceful transition of power, which is one of the major strengths of our democracy.  So we're seeing Trump's true colors here.  

Nothing demonstrates to the voters the fact that Trump knows he is going to lose this election more than his whining about the trustworthiness of the electoral process.  

America is not a Democracy, it is a Republic

A Republic is one of several forms of indirect Democracy.  Yes, America's form of government is a Republic, but a Democracy is not a form of government, it is a principle of government based on the idea that political power is derived from the will of the people.  

The American Republic has always had difficulties keeping itself democratic and avoiding autocracy or even authoritarian practices because no government is perfect and there are cultural influences dragging it the other way.  When the Constitution was ratified, the phrase "all men are created equal" did not apply to all women, Native Americans, African Americans or those who earned wages by working for others instead of owning their own land.  Over time, through some extremely difficult circumstances, the American Republic has moved closer to the Democratic principles it claims are the foundation of its existence, but inequality still prevails and there are those who see that being more democratic may disadvantage the privileges they have because they are still among those who use their perceive elite status to gain benefits for themselves at the expense of others. 

Those people are recognizable in government because they are the ones who favor policies and actions which suppress the voter turnout, place restrictions on participation in government, gerrymander the drawing of congressional districts.  That runs counter to the idealistic interpretation of "all men are created equal" which does not recognize gender, racial, social, economic or educational differences.  If you want to see which political party and politicians are advancing that idealism, take a look at the racial, ethnic, economic, gender, social, religious and educational diversity of the two major political parties and tell me what you see. 

America is a Democracy.  It has a Republic for its form of government. 

The polls were wrong in 2016 so they're going to get this one wrong, too.  

Polls and pollsters do not make predictions.  They gather data, run models and calculate the odds.  Most of the major polling organizations in the US, including those used by the major news networks, were within one or two percentage points of the actual outcome of the election in 2016 from the top to the bottom of the ticket.  

Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by three million votes.  That is a "moderately" close margin, but even with the variances that fall within the polling data, all of them were within the margin of error and most of them were within a fraction of a percentage point of predicting the actual percentage of the vote that each candidate would get.  In the three states where the electoral votes put Trump over the top--Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania--the difference in the percentage of the vote between Clinton and Trump was a fraction of a percent, in Michigan and Wisconsin, a microscopically small difference which would not have shown up in any poll's data.  

The composite pollsters, like 538, RealClearPolitics or 270 to Win, did not make "predictions," they used the polling data and the other data they roll in to gauge the potential outcome of an election and they provide "odds of winning."  Just prior to election day, Clinton's odds of winning came in between 53% and 56% to Trump's 47% and 44% respectively.  They weren't wrong.  In fact, a difference of under ten percent between the two candidates would reflect a vote margin of less than 4 million votes in any national election.  And Clinton did wind up getting 3 million more votes than Trump.  The odds in each of those three states that Clinton would win were much, much closer, less than 1% in Michigan and Wisconsin and 2% in Pennsylvania, which are well within any margin of error.  

"The polls got it wrong" can easily be translated "It's looking more and more like my guy is going to lose this election."  Trump continuously points this out, more than 300 tweets from him over the past week are critiques and lies about the polling data that rolls out pretty much by the hour these days.  As Biden's lead grows to 13% nationally, and his lead in several swing states is big enough to take them out of the "swing state" category, his odds of winning not only the popular vote, but the electoral college, have grown considerably larger than Clinton's were in 2016.  There's not any way to compare the two elections, they are totally different. 

If you elect a Democrat, America will erupt in social unrest and will turn toward Marxism

America has been erupting in social unrest, which is a sign of a sharp divisions in the perception of the direction the country is heading and a sign of a government which is lacking in responsiveness and competence when it comes to getting at the root of problems and fulfilling its constitutional obligations and expectations.  Those scenes of burned-out neighborhoods in Minneapolis, boarded up stores and shops in multiple cities and violence occurring all over the country are scenes from Donald Trump's America, not Joe Biden's.  Pointing to something that is a current reality and blaming it on the person who is campaigning to take your job is an indication of a lack of respect for the intelligence of your own supporters.  

"Law and order" requires far more than just sending in military armed to the teeth and shooting people who are exercising their first amendment rights.  The fact that this President thinks his solution to the problem, the use of brute force, will resolve anything is more than enough reason to make sure he does not get re-elected.  If you're for "law and order," then you subject yourself to that law, you don't use your power to live above it.  You also don't selectively pardon criminals just because they are your friends and they commit their crimes while working for you.  

All the "socialist" and "marxist" talk is billionaire blabber.  The only move in this country toward "socialism" is a proposed takeover of a health care system that is a disaster.  

The Federal Bureau of Investigation is incompetent and not impartial. 

I find is somewhat fascinating that the exact same FBI under the exact same director was praised and lauded for its thoroughness and effectiveness in its investigation of Hillary Clinton's potential breach of internet security policy (not law) of the state department, but was criticized as being politically one-sided, corrupt and ineffective in its investigation of Trump's potential collusion with the Russian government, and subsequently in its investigation of the attempted bribery of the Ukraine, especially after they turned up evidence resulting in plea deals and convictions of Trump officials and obstruction of justice by the President.  

Trump's tweets through all of that remind me more of a verse from the book of James than they do of anything from Greek mythology.  Can fresh water and salt water come from the same spring?  Even after being called on it on multiple occasions, Trump has still not come up with the promised evidence of the FBI's "corruption."  And the director he fired, James Comey, has gone from relative obscurity to celebrity status.  

To date, in spite of hundreds of tweets, dozens of accusations and false statements to the press, no evidence, not one shred, not even something that hints at something else, has turned up which supports Trump's claim that President Obama was "spying" on his campaign, waiting for him to do something wrong.  The FBI remained, as it has always been, independent and its director just did his job.  It was Trump's own associates--people he hired and appointed to work in his own administration--who handed the FBI the information they needed to complete their investigation and which eventually led to an evidence supported, legitimate impeachment.  

Covid-19 is a hoax. 

As more than 20 White House and Trump Administration staffers have come down with Covid-19 in the past couple of weeks, including the President and First Lady, this one can just kind of sit there. It will go down in history along with his statement, "I'm not taking any responsibility for that" when he confirmed that he wasn't going to lift a finger to take any action to protect American lives or help handle the threat of the pandemic.  

Covid-19 is not a hoax, but the President's leadership sure is.  He can rail about this being the "Chinese virus" all he wants, but the fact of the matter is that his incomprehensible, unconscionable failure to demonstrate any kind of leadership is a fact that will, more than any of the rest of his corruption, moral failure and incompetence, be responsible for the fact that Americans have become the country in the world that has suffered the most and been affected the most by this viral pandemic.  His legacy will always be his failure to lead and COVID-19 will be the most vivid reminder of that indisputable fact.