In my last post, I wrote about how the current Republican presidential candidate relies on a childish strategy to deflect and redirect attention from his own misdeeds. The “I didn’t do it! You did it!” strategy has served him well.
There’s another infantile tactic that he regularly employs, and that’s the claim of “No fair!”. You know this maneuver. You grew up with it, and chances are, if you ever used it, you grew out of it.
Remember playing childhood games in the neighborhood as a kid, and there was someone who yelled “NO FAIR!” at every loss? Usually there was at least one child who absolutely couldn’t abide losing. Not at High-Ho Cheerio, or Candy Land, or Freeze Tag, or Kickball. Not even Tic Tac Toe. No game was too trivial not to be contested. I recall gently asking one such wailing young acquaintance, “Do you really think it’s only fair if you win every single time? It wouldn’t be fair, see, if I won every single time, would it? ” My reasoning fell on deaf ears. The kid continued howling NO FAIR through the tears. Apparently the concept of fairness was created only for him; it did not extend to others.
The former president clearly continues to see the world this way. Things are only fair if he wins. When he lost the election in 2020, he cried NO FAIR.
He appealed to his followers. He repeated the claim, loudly and forcefully. Various media outlets amplified it. His base wanted to believe the lie, so they were hoodwinked. On January 6, 2021, they assembled at our Capitol in order to undo an election they had been told was illegitimate. Because Trump declared NO FAIR, some brought weapons, zip ties, and wore body armor. They broke through barricades, windows and doors. Most of them had been strident supporters of “law and order,” yet they viciously attacked the police who were there to defend our democratic systems. They roamed the hallways of the Capitol, chanting violent threats against duly elected representatives of both parties. They did it because their leader, their hero, had told them, and continued to tell them, over and over, that it was NO FAIR. They threatened to hang Mike Pence, their candidate’s own Vice President. What terrible vengeance would have taken place if our lawmakers had not been whisked to safety, with only a very few moments to spare?
Trump has never ceased claiming NO FAIR. His “unfair” election loss in 2020 has now morphed into his predicted “unfairness” of the 2024 election. In recent rallies, he’s heavily seeding the ground, telling his followers that if he doesn’t win by a landslide, it’s because of rampant “cheating” by Democrats. Yet again, the election is likely to be stolen from him, he maintains. And yet again, ominously, he’s suggesting that bad things may happen if he doesn’t win.
Why vote for an elderly version of that whiny kid who can’t stand to lose? Ironically a vote for that candidate is a vote for unfairness.
I urge you: vote for fairness for all. Vote for Kamala Harris.
*The Trump campaign filed over sixty lawsuits claiming election fraud in the 2020 election. According to the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan legal organization founded by a Republican former Commissioner of the Federal Election Commission, “The various claims of evidence alleging a stolen 2020 election have been exhaustively investigated and litigated. Judges heard claims of illegal voting and found they were without merit.”
