By Lucius Gantt, The Gantt Report
Americans love truly great magicians. United States residents and people around the world have paid millions of dollars to witness performances by David Copperfield, David Blaine, Penn and Teller and the Great Harry Houdini, and his namesake Hip Hop Houdini!
Illusionists and other musicians seem to be able to make airplanes and elephants disappear and they can saw a woman in half.
In my mind, no magicians are better than the Republican members of the United States Senate and House of Representatives.
Their latest and greatest attempt at fooling the people comes in their attemp to turn the American Democracy into a Donald Trump Autocracy! They want to turn a fair and secure 2020 election into a fraudulent and rigged election. They want to turn new “blue states” back into dirty “red states”.
The GOP wants to use magic wands picked up in the Dollar Store toy section to get rid of the votes cast my millions of voters that voted to rid the country of the evil, despicable and degenerate 45thPresident of the United States!
Government magic is nothing new. The Gantt Report wrote years ago that wicked and deceitful elected officials have often spoke with lying tongues.
Politicians that cared more about themselves than they cared about their constituents never hesitated at opportunities to portray political criminals as victims and political victims of exploitation and oppression as criminals.
In the Georgia Senate runoff election, more money was spent on tricking voters than ever before.
Democratic candidates that owned independent businesses with Chinese clients were painted as employees of a Communist Chinese government and candidates that stood up, spoke out and supported peaceful protests were wrongly labeled as radicals and socialists.
And, GOP Senators that fought against and blocked bills that would assist United States citizens and business for eleven months, proclaimed themselves heroes after casting one vote for a measly $600 stimulus check.
Those acts were akin to someone promising to stick his hand in a magician’s hat to pull out a rabbit but instead pulled out a skunk!
This column was written and distributed on January 3, 2021, two days before the runoff.
So many, or too many, broadcast ads, direct media mailings, outdoor ads and other media was produced and placed in Georgia.
Republicans and Democrats had so much money to spend that they couldn’t spend it all even if a few people of color were employed for the political equivalent of minimum wages.
Some people always leave a good magic show saying, “How did he do that?”
Well, Congressional Conjurers have always been good at lying, tricking, misdirection and distraction.
By the time you read this column the political magic shows will have concluded. I hope you weren’t a victim of the political slight of hand and hocus pocus.
I hope the candidates that you wanted to win did win.
All of the runoff candidates were conjurers to me, but I did early vote for the least evil candidates in the two races.
Lucius is a contributing columnist to NNPA newspapers around the nation, and the author of “Beast Too: Dead Man Writing,” available on Amazon.com and from bookstores everywhere.