As cries of controversy continue to reverberate and the shock waves from an unexpected election result discombobulate us all and the tremors keep us on ever trembling and the twin senses of fear and anticipation only grow and grow and grow, and as the atmosphere becomes increasingly toxic and the situation threatens to take a nuclear turn, things have already descended into mad violence because they’ve only gone and shot the Wisconsin vote.
Concern is already beginning to mount over Donald Trump’s cabinet appointments, with the racist Jeff Sessions up for attorney general and the hawkish Mike Pompeo nominated to direct the CIA. But Trump has also taken the time this week to turn his fleeting attention back to Hillary Clinton, in an effort to smother the barely audible last whimpers from her dismal failure of a campaign.
Marc Elias, the Clinton campaign’s general counsel, has confirmed that despite an absence of evidence, the campaign feels obliged to support the ongoing recount of votes in Wisconsin, a process initiated by Green Party candidate Jill Stein. Citing ‘statistical anomalies’, Stein is pushing for recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.
Stein’s appeal posits flaws in the United States election system, citing outdated scanning equipment and the potential disenfranchisement of voters of colour. But the idea of an irregular election plays into the mindset of some Democrats, who remain adamant that Trump owes all of his victory to the conniving tech whizzes of old Mother Rus.
With Stein closing in on her goal of $7 million in donations to help fund the proposed recounts – the largest fundraising drive for a third party in US history – Trump has accused her of scamming the public, in an unseemly attempt to ‘fill her coffers with money’. But he saved his fullest thoughts on the Wisconsin recount for Hillary Clinton, his erstwhile foe.
Across six tweets, Trump condemned Clinton directly, despite her relative quiet in the period since her stunning loss. He sought to highlight her hypocrisy, recalling her horror in the run-up to the election when he suggested that he would refuse to respect the results. Clinton had said that for 240 years in the United States, ‘We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them, and that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a during a general election’.
That Trump, in his ham-fisted endeavour to call out Clinton’s hypocrisy, was in fact also highlighting his own, as usual didn’t seem to trouble the man himself or his fervently myopic support. And he later devastated his point entirely when – once again via Twitter – he mimicked Stein by alleging a corrupted vote. Without foundation, he claimed ‘In addition to winning the electoral college in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally’, thereby blurring the narrative once again.
But now The Shimmering Ostrich is hearing shock reports that stretch well beyond claims of ageing equipment and the itchy fingers and sore bottoms of those who would hack in some scarcely pronounceable Slavic name. For could it be that Trump and his overseas counterparts conspired to have prospective voters in Wisconsin shot? While every use of a gun can be construed as a vindication of the Second Amendment, the murder of citizens on the cusp of the polling booth would surely be a matter for the courts.
Trump is partnered in the Philippines with the developer Jose E. B. Antonio, who in October was named a special envoy to the United States by his country’s murderous president Rodrigo Duterte. Meanwhile throughout his presidential campaign, Trump engaged in the persistent if one-sided courtship of Russia’s Vladimir Putin. And some Washington insiders, echoing the mutterings of intelligence agents who spoke only on the condition of strict anonymity, have sputtered something about this dastardly trio and deeds done by gun.
There is no sense of how much of the Wisconsin voting pool was eradicated, and the wildly facetious claim is being made utterly without any corroborating support. Yet for all that, it seems to ring a metaphorical bell, and the ‘fact’ that it stirs powerful emotions is hardly in dispute. At the end of the day, it is such universally felt things as emotions which will determine the fate of the United States of America.
Again, for the sake of rare clarity, The Shimmering Ostrich has no evidence that Trump colluded to murder a soul. But The Shimmering Ostrich, beside itself over the recent course of events, merely took a few agitated seconds before spitting out the first incendiary thing which came to mind. Reaching out to the Clinton team for comment – while the woman herself could only be heard through the clinking of prosthetics and distant self-pitying whines – senior aides said that for the sake of democracy, these latest allegations could not be ruled out.
