America is a family. Albeit a very dysfunctional family.
In a healthy family, you are not stifled but allowed to speak your mind.
Towards a more perfect, healthy union, it’s essential that Americans be allowed this right. It is, in fact, enshrined in The First Amendment of the Bill of Rights, adopted 230 years ago today, which sets forth that:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Without the freedom to express oneself, the pent-up emotions that injustices foster, only build, creating tensions that would otherwise be diffused and directed toward more productive ends like building healthy communities.
The picture today is far different...
One injustice, a festering wound in our national life, surrounds the 2020 presidential election and the monstrous “irregularities” across the fruited plain. No expression is allowed, which is, of course, preposterous, and makes patently obvious that those who are intent on suppressing such expression want to hide uncomfortable truths.
In which regard, Arizona has been on my mind for quite a while…
The narrowest margin of victory in the 2020 presidential election was tabulated in reliably red Arizona where Joe Biden allegedly won by a mere 10,457 votes.
Harry Truman was the last Democrat to win Maricopa County, where he drew massive crowds in contrast to Biden’s paltry “crowd” 72 years later. But, election night, with Maricopa County’s 25% of the vote not yet reporting, inexplicably, Fox and AP called Arizona for Biden.
Arizona Republicans were having none of it and last January 13, the Arizona Senate issued subpoenas, promptly ignored, but upheld some six weeks later by Superior Court Judge Timothy Thomason who ordered Maricopa County to hand over some 2.1 million ballots along with voting machines from the November 3rd election.
Arizona Democrats then deployed legions of lawyers to try and stop the audit, which, on March 18, Arizona Senate President Karen Fann (R-Dist. 1) announced would include a full hand recount. Arizona State Senate Democrats responded by saying, in the words of Maricopa County Supervisor Steve Gallardo (D-Dist. 5), that Republicans should “deal with it.” With no sense of irony, Gallardo said, “You keep saying you have evidence. I’m waiting to see it.” Rep. Tim Dunn, (R-Dist. 13) argued the need for the audit. “(Voters) have not seen anything yet, and that’s why we’re going to continue to have the audits,” Rep. Dunn explained. “They’re going to do a deep-dive into the actual machines.”
No “deep dives” were ever allowed because the subpoenas were ignored. Nonetheless, besides finding some 70,000 questionable votes, as reported in Gateway Pundit, the forensic audit established that voting machines were, in fact, connected to the Internet, as Ben Cotton, a digital forensic expert testified to the Arizona Senate on September 24, 2021.
And, now Pima County just held hearings on the 2020 elections, where, Gateway Pundit reported, evidence of tens of thousands of fraudulent votes was presented.
Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich has all the evidence in hand and, God willing, will do the right thing.
Because Democracy does not work if citizens’ votes, and by extension policy choices, are not revered and treated as sacred. Quite simply, watering votes down or canceling them out is a formula for a far less perfect and frankly diseased union, which, more and more, characterizes America the Beautiful as 2021 comes to a close.
But Americans always rise to the occasion.
And, in Arizona, Brnovich is the tip of the spear.
History awaits his handiwork.
Meantime, Arizona’s on my mind… and Georgia, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan, and New Mexico, too…
Mary Claire Kendall is author of Oasis: Conversion Stories of Hollywood Legends, published in Madrid under the title También Dios pasa por Hollywood. She recently finished Oasis II as well as a biography featuring the covert pre-satellite surveillance of the Soviets out of Midway Island. She served as Special Assistant to the Assistant Secretary for Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1989-1993.