Timeline 2020: Electoral College Meets
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Exactly one year ago on this date members of the Electoral College, selected in accordance with each state’s and the District of Columbia’s certified results from the November 3rd election, cast their votes to formally recognize Joe Biden as the next President of the United States.
It appeared Donald Trump was out of options in his denial of the election loss.
Not so. Just this past week, day to day, revelations from the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol set forth more and more evidence of deep strategy, planning, and intent to keep Trump in power by commandeering - or as happened in the end, disrupting - the final step in confirmation of a victor of a U.S. presidential election, Congress’ official count in joint session of those electoral college ballots.
I do tend to think there is a lot of fear-mongering and clickbait about a Trump comeback and threats to our democracy. It’s as important to resist panic and gloom as it is to confront peril squarely. The Atlantic Monthly has been particularly pessimistic of late, and an article1 of a week ago by Barton Gellman is a case in point: basically, he asserts that last year’s violent and shameless efforts to overturn the election were in effect a trial run. Gellman points to vulnerabilities now for 2024 at key points which held fast in 2020-2021: pertinant to today’s anniversary of the electoral college vote, these weak links are
certification of the vote counts at the state and local level
and each state legislature’s purported legal powers for selecting its slate of electors.
Since the election, voting rights can reasonably be considered the front line in the ongoing fight for protection and improvement of our democratic institutions. Gellman’s concern, though, goes beyond voter suppression and access: he sees a Republican take-over of the election apparatus at every level, with grassroots efforts by True Believers of Trump’s Big Lie to infilitrate the thousands of election administrator posts across the country.
Again, in the days leading up to January 6th, 2021, on the ground, people of integrity safeguarded the election results despite death threats, and in the courts, all sorts of shenanigans were dismissed.
Is such civic virtue as displayed then no longer to be relied upon?
This month, a radicalized rightwing Supreme Court has been unmistakably signaling its willingness to trample women’s reproductive sovereignty and subject our nation to sweeping cultural regression through the reversal of Roe v Wade.
What’s a few alternate slates of electors subverting the will of the people between partisan judges?
Here I am at my desk starting to get tar-stuck in scrutiny of terms, meaning of words (I’m no constitutional scholar); so I’m tense with the urgency of assessing meaningful threats.
Sing mean ninefold threads, rhetoric. Estranged from the poetic, this pained a.m.
“You will follow the book, whose every page is an abyss where the wing shines with the name.” - Edmond Jabès/ translated by Rosmarie Waldrop.
It’s amiss - a mistake - to abstract from the specific peril, to mis-take a credible threat. What glints of the name, or nameless, retain their saving power…
when once again this semester my son’s high school goes on “Secure the Building” status due to a credible shooter threat? (As it did on Friday). The wing shines, though; the wing of the word, with or without feathers. The hewing shyness.
Secure the building status.
Succor the ding ding.
What is the name of the peril: to voting rights, abortion rights, election apparatus security, in systemic racism, white supremacy, dehumanization and criminalization of immigrants, school shooters, irresponsible gun laws, conspiracy theories, militant extremism? - not to mention omnicron variant of covid-19, politics of endless pandemic.
What to face, what to confront? What to Turn towards, externally… in keeping with last week’s essentially internal - Heraclitean - Turning.
Internally, I return frequently to this quote from Martin Buber (translated by Ronald Gregor Smith):
“Nothing remains but what rises above the abyss of today’s monstrous problems, as above the abyss of every time: the wingbeat of the spirit and the creative word.”
Thew wean be dove the spear.
Wing-Beat of Spirit and the Creative Word.
That phrase might as well be the motto for this newsletter project of opening the workings of the work, especially during this current launch period in which I’ve set out to track the timeline of last year’s election: a study in memory and anniversary, a minding and reminding for confrontation with the times - its constraint elicits its own rhythm and variable forms, for
attending to
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Yet, externally, concretely: I’ll turn to you. Now and again. Where to put our force, our defiance, our faith?
What do you think are the current front lines for activism, for activation, in terms of saving our democracy - such as it is? (Appreciating the title of Astra Taylor’s book, Democracy May Not Exist, But We’ll Miss It When It’s Gone).
I plan to address the topic of Art and Activism in future entries, inclusive of the role and duties of the artist and thinker - and any engaged human being - in facing the human condition of inhumanity, oppression. But for right now, is there a dire threat to our democracy? If so, what are the front lines?