Citizens' fear from the repercussion of voting isn't a thing I've ever contemplated. I always thought the intimidation and violence of Southern Blacks was historical, like marchers being beaten on the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Alabama during the King Years.
It's cliche at this point to say American politics is ugly and vicious. I know personally from the left's lying, low-down attempts to cancel me, to get me fired ten years ago from my teaching position, that ideological hate drives political polarization. I was physically attacked when I covered the Hamas/International ANSWER demonstrations in Los Angeles. I finally quit reporting them, it got so bad. You get a target on your back.
But I've never been targeted at my home. I've never had to relocate to a safe house for months because of my politics and teaching. Imagine the nightmare that Shaye Moss and her family have been living since November 2020, when President Trump called her out by name during his efforts to overturn the Georgia election results. His words set off mobs of MAGA supporters on campaigns of terror. I want to continue loving President Trump for his time in office before the 2020 election. But everything that happened after that makes me sick.
The more I see of it, of Trump's very own words, on audio and video, broken down and put in context, makes me hope that he's not the GOP nominee in 2024. Right now I favor Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, and pray to God he wins and that the conservative movement can start over and rebuild under new leadership.
There's too much hate in this country. Had not the "Big Lie" taken over Republican politics after the election, and had not January 6th not happened, I'd be the world's biggest supporter for Trump 2024. Now I just can't.
The story's at the New York Times, "‘There Is Nowhere I Feel Safe’: Election Officials Describe Threats Fueled by Trump":
“Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?’’ Ruby Freeman, a Black election worker from Georgia, told the Jan. 6 committee. WASHINGTON — Rusty Bowers, the Republican speaker of Arizona’s House, braced every weekend for hordes of Trump supporters, some with weapons, who swarmed his home and blared videos that called him a pedophile. “We had a daughter who was gravely ill, who was upset by what was happening outside,” he said. She died not long after, in late January 2021. Gabriel Sterling, a top state election official in Georgia, recalled receiving an animated picture of a slowly twisting noose along with a note accusing him of treason. His boss, Georgia’s secretary of state, Brad Raffensperger, recounted that Trump supporters broke into his widowed daughter-in-law’s house and threatened his wife with sexual violence. And Wandrea Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, two Black women who served as election workers during the pandemic in Georgia, suffered an onslaught of racist abuse and were driven into hiding after Rudolph W. Giuliani, President Donald J. Trump’s lawyer, lied that they had rigged the election against Mr. Trump. “I’ve lost my name and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman said, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?” Election official after election official testified to the House Jan. 6 committee on Tuesday in searing, emotional detail how Mr. Trump and his aides unleashed violent threats and vengeance on them for refusing to cave to his pressure to overturn the election in his favor. The testimony showed how Mr. Trump and his aides encouraged his followers to target election officials in key states — even going so far as to post their personal cellphone numbers on Mr. Trump’s social media channels, which the committee cited as a particularly brutal effort by the president to cling to power.... Ms. Moss, who goes by Shaye, and her mother became the targets of Trump supporters after Mr. Giuliani falsely accused them in a Georgia State Senate hearing of passing around USB drives like “vials of heroin or cocaine” to steal the election from Mr. Trump. What her mother actually handed her, Ms. Moss testified on Tuesday, was a ginger mint candy. But Mr. Giuliani’s claim — later elevated by Mr. Trump himself, who referred to Ms. Moss by name more than a dozen times in a call with Mr. Raffensperger — tore across far-right circles of the internet. Soon after, the F.B.I. informed Ms. Freeman that it was no longer safe for her to stay at her house. The urgency of that warning became clear after Trump supporters showed up at the door of Ms. Moss’s grandmother. They forced their way into her home, claiming they were there to make a citizen’s arrest of her granddaughter. “This woman is my everything,” Ms. Moss testified about her grandmother. “I’ve never even heard her or seen her cry ever in my life, and she called me screaming at the top of her lungs.” While in hiding, Ms. Moss and Ms. Freeman continued to face threats explicitly invoking their race, including a comment that Ms. Moss and her mother should “be glad it’s 2020 and not 1920.” “A lot of them were racist,” Ms. Moss said. “A lot of them were just hateful.” Both women testified that nearly two years later, they were still haunted by the threat of violence. Ms. Moss recalled listening to the audio tape of Mr. Trump attacking her and her mother and immediately feeling “like it was all my fault.” “I just felt bad for my mom, and I felt horrible for picking this job,” she testified, growing emotional. “And being the one that always wants to help and always there, never missing not one election. I just felt like it was — it was my fault for putting my family in this situation.” “It wasn’t your fault,” Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California, quietly responded from the dais. Ms. Freeman testified that she no longer went to the grocery store, and felt nervous every time she gave her name — once proudly worn bedazzled on T-shirts — for food orders. “There is nowhere I feel safe,” Ms. Freeman testified. “The president of the United States is supposed to represent every American. Not to target one.”
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