The polls before today’s election are baffling to me. Why are so many people voting for fascism?

People don’t say they are voting for fascism. But when they vote for candidates falsely denying the results of the last election, only accepting this election if they win, and supporting the Jan. 6 insurrection, what do they think is going to happen?

Do they think politicians (like Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake) are going to run fair elections in the future? Do they think anyone who will not accept an election they don’t win will give up their own power? Do they think these candidates would stop a future coup?

What are the chances that Blake Masters or Dr. Oz or Ron Johnson or JD Vance would not support a set of fake electors in 2024?

I’m leaving Herschel Walker off this list, because who knows what might come out of that addled brain.

What are the odds Mark Finchem (secretary of state candidate in Arizona) from the Oath Keepers is going to run a fair election in 2024? He was the one walking around the national Capitol in his cowboy hat on Jan. 6 stirring up the mob. Once he’s in office, he will be the one calling the police to defend whatever his ilk want to impose on the rest of us.

How else would you change a potential election loss into maintaining political power? If the police won’t do it (and they almost always do the bidding of whoever is giving the orders — following the law) then the violent mob (Oath Keepers, Proud Boys…) will.

We can only hope the pollsters are wrong. That fascism is not this popular, and that Americans do understand the importance of democracy.

But hope is not a plan.

What do we do when a majority vote for fascists?

You may think we can “change” the result in 2024. But that’s how democracy dies. People think they can fix it in the next election, but the next election never comes. Or it’s just a sham to reaffirm those in power stay in power.

That’s what happened all over Europe in the 1930’s and again in Eastern Europe in the late 20th century, and again in the past decade. Ask the Venezuelans, or the Turks or the Hungarians.

We all know the stories of Italy and Germany falling into fascism, but in some sense, 2022 in America is worse. Hitler and Mussolini never earned a majority at the polls.

What do we do when the fascists were duly elected and then later refuse to leave? Or actually rig the next election or rig the count, or throw out ballots they don’t like, so it looks like they continue to win?

Right wingers may say that’s what they are fighting against from 2020. But as Bill Barr would say, “that’s bullshit.” We still had fair elections in 2020. If they had evidence, they could have won in court. But they don’t. They didn’t win, the lawyers got disbarred and there was no evidence.

But based on the likely results from today (2022), we may not be able to say that in 2024. We may have elected the election deniers, who won’t run a transparent, free and fair elections in the future.

The courts may be our only hope.

First, we have to rely on the justice system to imprison their ring leader, Donald J. Trump. Follow the Jan. 6 committee evidence, prosecute and convict the head of the cult for his seditious and treasonous acts in 2021.

At this point there is no guarantee even a successful prosecution will save our democracy. His minions and impersonators have already crawled out of the gutters and are getting elected. But we can hope they won’t be able to keep his coalition together. That without the head liar, the right-wing factions will fight each other and spiral out of control.

We can continue to sue and pursue truth to do what we can to limit the fascists from changing election laws or setting themselves up for permanent power (like the Wisconsin candidate for governor Tim Michaels, who said if he wins Republicans will always win elections in Wisconsin.)

In many states, we can hold referendums and change election laws without having to rely on elected politicians, and we can hope the courts will enforce those rules (doesn’t always happen look at district maps in Ohio).

But in the end, if our democracy goes down in flames, we will only have ourselves to blame. We may have voted the bastards in…

UPDATE – December, 2022

I waited until long after this election to think about the results. The biggest fascists mostly lost. But it was close — too fucking close. Hundreds of election deniers/semi-fascists were elected to Congress, to state legislatures and to positions of power all over the country.

Sure the worst of the worst in the most publicized races lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Arizona. Thank God I can walk around with my head up for my home state of AZ. But believe me every vote counted to keep the crazies out.

There’s still a lot of work to do to prosecute the offenders, defend our institutions and keep our elections free and fair for as long as we can. Reading (or writing) this kind of bullshit is the least we have to do.