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DEWEY
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TRUMAN |
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UPDATE: Nov.5,
2020
One of the most iconic news photos of the 20th
Century was of a broadly grinning President
Truman, on the morning after his 1948
reelection, holding up the morning edition of
the Chicago Tribune with the mistaken banner
headline:
'Dewey Defeats Truman.'
It was a humongous joke, enjoyed
by the entire nation just a short time after the
end of the most horrible war ever endured.
The editors of the Tribune were red faced with
embarrassment at their error and the Republicans
were mortified at their loss.
But what was amazing in retrospect is that the
election result was clear by the middle of the
night in an era long before the first computer
existed and the news was flashed across the
newswires of the day for the entire nation to
either read about in the morning papers, or hear
about on the radio even in the most remote
regions of the country.
How were the results so quickly
tabulated in that primitive era? Well, we
had big bulky but very reliable mechanical
voting machines. Many like me are old
enough to remember them. You flicked
little levers right next to the names of your
chosen candidates, and when you were done, you
pulled a huge lever that made a loud grinding
noise, sealing in your votes. It was very
satisfying to hear that grinding, assuring you
that your votes were in. After that, at
the end of the day, armies of dutiful election
clerks across the country got some kind of
printout out the back of each machine, had the
results double checked by representatives of
both parties working in full cooperation, and
then each site location called in the results.
Bim bam boom, done like clockwork without
computers, without hackers, just straightforward
accurate work done dutifully and efficiently.
Now, fast forward tp tje present in 2020 when we
have supercomputing networks and high speed
interconnectivity when we can't possibly get the
results even days or weeks later! WTF!
The current president is
claiming impossible conspiracies of massive
voter fraud, involving millions of votes, that
would be impossible to carry out. He is
either a paranoid schizophrenic who belongs
locked in a mental institution for the
criminally insane, OR he knows he is lying and
does not care that he is poisoning the nation
with chaos and violence. Or both. Either
way, the the crime is inflated by the support of
his Republican Party, who know better.
It seems clear at this writing
on Thursday Nov 5th that Biden is on the way to
both popular and Electoral College victory.
In earlier times, there would be a polite public
concession, and we could all move on to an
orderly transition in this most extraordinary
democracy. But, again, the current
psychotic president is intent on creating chaos
with the support of his corrupt Republican
Party.
In comparison, the previous most
recent corrupt president was a gentleman who
intelligently and sanely cared enough for the
nation to graciously concede defeat twice.
In the 1960 election, Vice President Richard
Nixon conceded on the night of the election when
it became clear that Kennedy had won the popular
vote. Nixon might still have been able to
win the Electoral College, but he was gentleman
enough and cared enough for the nation, to
settle the matter as soon as he could. So, on
TV, he conceded to Kennedy. More than a
decade later, President Nixon did not wait to be
impeached for a botched campaign headquarters
robbery that he unfortunately knew about and
tried to hide. To spare that nation the
trauma, he publically resigned, again live on
TV. He famously said, "I am not a crook."
And he has been notoriously regarded as a crook
ever since. But, in retrospect, many
people remember that he was a genuine gentleman
who cared enough for this nation to spare it
further trauma; and so ate his own pride and
stepped aside.
Unfortunately, that is not the
case with the current vulgar self absorbed
ego-maniac traitor carelessly plunging the
nation into chaos with his behavior.
