Rant #2,671: Shake Me, Wake Me (When It's Over)

It is difficult to be an independent voter.
 
Evidently, in today’s world, if you don’t have your foot firmly in place in either one camp or another—Democrat or Republican—you are dead meat to people.
 
And it is the same way on both sides of the equation.
 
I witnessed this first hand over the last couple of days on the more conservative side of the ledger, when I responded to a Facebook post asking this simple question: “Will Trump Be Reinstated?”
 
I replied “No,” and I told those on this particular site why, and little did I know that my reply would cause a firestorm of replies that I haven’t seen since Trump won the presidency in 2016.
 
It is just almost funny how the replies I received to my reply so clearly matched the replies that I received when I said four years ago that I voted for Trump and supported him during his presidency.
 
Strange bedfellows indeed …
 
But I am jumping ahead of myself. Let me tell you what I initially said about Trump, and then I will tell you about the replies I received.
 
The problem is that I cannot reproduce them word for word because they have been removed by the moderator of this particular site, which is his right to do.
 
Anyway, what I said in a nutshell is that I voted for Trump twice. I supported him through his presidency, even though I did not agree with everything he did.
 
Further, I think he was a good president, enacted some measures that I support in full, and when he ended up losing, I was sad to see him go.
 
But of course, that was all tempered by his last few months in office, which I found to be reprehensible.
 
Not only did he bellyache incessantly about a stolen election, but if he felt it was truly stolen from him, then he should have worked during those final months to make sure that no presidential election would ever be tainted by the nonsense—nothing illegal, mind you—that may have thrown the 2020 election to the other side.
 
I do believe that the write-in voting got completely and totally out of hand—it is a way to vote that was only used by the indigent and those who could not possibly get to the polls, but in the last election, every Tom, Dick and Harry yelled “coronavirus” and voted that way in massive numbers, not illegally, but kind of in an underhanded way—and Trump should have used his final months and weeks in office to enact legislation to stop that from ever happening again.
 
What he did instead was whine, whine and whine some more, to the point that few with brains in their heads could listen to him anymore … but you did have people who seemingly listened to every word he said and took it to be true.
 
If that wasn’t bad enough, the storming of the Capitol happened on January 6, and while I do not believe that Trump had any direct impact on that riot, I do believe that he did nothing to quell it when it happened.
 
I have it on good word from people who actually were there that Trump supporters did not storm the Capitol, it was anarchists who did all the damage, and I do believe that to be true. It is so easy to paint them as Trump supporters, but those supporters marched peacefully that day, even though I did not share their concerns or their cause of the election being stolen.
 
And then the president did the unthinkable, actually “thanking” those who stormed the Capitol, calling them “patriots,” and pretty much basking in the events of that day.
 
To me, it kind of tarnished what I thought were a good four years, and I vowed never to vote for him again,
 
There are people in this country who feel, for whatever reason, that he will somehow ascend back into the commander in chief’s chair come August, and on this site, I explained to these brain-dead people that it isn’t going to happen.
 
I was met by one conspiracy theory after another, theories so out of whack that I had visions of dealing with people in 2016 when Trump beat Clinton, and all the conspiracy theorists that posted their views and dumped on me for having the nerve to support Trump for president.
 
Same thing this time, I’m afraid.
 
I refuted what these crazy people said this time around, and told them that rather then literally bathe yourself in conspiracy theories, how about coming up with a plan to unseat President Biden the old fashioned way, by doing it at the polls in 2024?
 
I was called every name in the book, and I do mean every name that you can think of.
 
One woman said that I lied about my voting, never voted for Trump and got the coronavirus inoculation… and was really a liberal to boot and had voted for Biden.
 
(Well, she got one thing right.)
 
Another guy, who put up supposed documents showing one conspiracy theory after another related to Mexico’s involvement in this past election, called me pretty much what you would think somebody who actually believed in this hooey would call me.
 
Finally, after several days of this nonsense, the moderator removed my posts, save for the first one I made, which simply said “No.”
 
And yes, I saw plenty of posts stating, “Biden is not my president,” and the like, which was about the same thing as what I witnessed in 2016, when people posted, “Trump is not my president,” and later un-friended me because of my admission that I voted for Trump.
 
And that got nasty too. I was also called every name in the book for supporting Trump … and now I get if from the other side because I don’t support his ascendency to president.
 
Remember, earlier on, I said “strange bedfellows?”
 
I also said that there is absolutely no difference from these ultra-pro-Trump foots and the ultra-pro-Clinton supporters of yore, and no, people did not take too kindly to that.
 
But I was treated the same way by both sides, so there is something to what I said.
 
It is tough being an independent voter, not being led like so many are by the rings in their hoses that are pulled by one side or another.
 
But I have never been a member of one party or another since I signed up as a registered voter all those years ago, and I won’t change my ways.
 
I remember that because of my stance, I lost some jobs in my town, which was heavily Republican—including a job on the town newspaper—so this nonsense has gone on way before there was the Internet and Facebook.
 
But it has certainly gotten worse in recent times, but you know what? I am very proud to be an independent voter, a “thinking” voter, and if people don’t like it, that is their problem, not mine.
 
The supporters of Trump and Clinton in one basket … who would have ever thought it was possible?