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A thing that has been on my mind lately, as I read up on the latest krakenesque legal filings: the tagline from the Chernobyl miniseries, "What is the cost of lies?"
As legal twitter pointed out pretty roundly yesterday, Gohmert's lawsuit is just straight up lying to the court. It asserts as facts things that didn't happen, and offers no evidence of them (which it can't, because they didn't happen).
Gohmert is not just lying to the court, of course. He's lying to the public, to Trump's base and to QAnon and to everybody else who is desperate to believe that Trump has a winning hand.
Sidney Powell and L. Lin Wood have been lying, needless to say Trump has been lying, Project Veritas has been lying... and while these lies offer the liars no path towards legal victory, I am afraid of the bill that will come due for these lies.
A lot of the latest lies star Mike Pence, imputing unto him almost literally magical powers by virtue of him being the vice president, an office that is famously powerless and useless. https://blog.simplejustice.us/2020/12/29/mike-pence-minister-of-magic/
But for those who believe that Pence has a Pence Card to play, whether it's on some arbitrary Wednesday in December or on the 6th of January or the eleventeenth of Octember... the cost of believing that is they must label Mike Pence a traitor and enemy when he doesn't play it.
I do not mourn for Mike Pence having his reputation tarnished with the conspiracy fringe, nor do I mind the far right extremist camps fighting with each other.
My point is that the cost of these lies is trust in anybody and every thing.
My point is that the cost of these lies is trust in anybody and every thing.
Gohmert's lawsuit, as I understand, wants the court to declare that Mike Pence has sole authority to determine which electoral votes count in an election, allowing him to throw out real ones and substitute fake ones.
And also that he MUST use this sole authority to crown Trump.
And also that he MUST use this sole authority to crown Trump.
Now, you can see right away the problem. Even if there was a basis for the court to do either of those things, it can't possibly have a basis for both of them. If Mike Pence is free to substitute his own judgment for the law, the law can't tell him what to do with it.
There is not a universe in which this lawsuit succeeds. But if you have believed the lies of the people who tell you it's right and proper and necessary, that means the court that hears it -- any court that hears it -- is corrupt and in on it.
The final cost of Trumpism is... not even final yet. We'll likely still be finding new charges for the rest of our lives. But part of it is creating a mob of people who are more civically engaged than ever and yet completely unmoored from civic reality.
I can't imagine the actual process of Congress opening and counting the votes has ever in our lifetimes received this much scrutiny. The election is over. The results are known. What is left is a formality. A civic ceremony.
But to those who cannot imagine Trump losing -- even after he's lost -- it has become a battlefield, and when Trump loses on this field as well... well, Trump can't ever fail, he can only be failed.
