My Backstabbing Conservative Cousin who Fabricated a Claim of Voter Fraud

Yes, I’m picking a fight by posting this

I have an idiot Trump supporting cousin who cast his lot with the white supremacists even knowing that I have bi-racial children.

He used to think it was funny to call me up when he got drunk and that’s how he accidentally let the information slip. Of course, when he sobered up, he was completely shocked that I’d decided to cut him out of my life.

As tough as Republicans like to act, they sure do squeal when you hold them accountable for their words and deeds.

“But I love your kids,” he insisted.

“Then you shouldn’t have used your vote to support a president who used the platform of his office to call for violence against them,” I replied.

“But I don’t stand for that!”

“You don’t get to pick and choose, that’s what you voted for, own it you backstabbing idiot!”

To this day as I drive around my rural town I see Trump signs up on people’s yards. If I saw a swastika on the bumper sticker of a pickup truck, I’d want to pull the driver from the cab and beat his face in with a pipe wrench. I won’t do that because I’m civilized, but I want to. I get the same feeling when I see Trump signs.

The last election showed that there are 75 million people in this country who want my children dead.

Before my cousin let slip who he voted for, he went off on a tirade about voter suppression.

To be clear, Republicans never experience voter suppression. Republicans are whiny little monsters who always get whatever they want.

But Trump the loser had flooded the airwaves with so much talk about “cheating” that every little repugnant little weasel with a confederate flag in their pocket had to conjure up a story about how somehow they were the oppressed party.

Their tactics are as diabolical as they are evil. Before you know it we’ll be seeing stories insisting that plantation owners were the real victims of slavery. I swear to god they’ll try to say this with a straight face. They’ll even have lunatics reading statements to that effect into microphones at Congressional hearings.

So, anyway, my cousin was convinced that there was voter suppression against Republicans in his rural community that went for Trump because they handed him an ink pen rather than a felt pen to mark his ballot.

“In every other election, they’d handed me a felt pen, why was this one different?” he said with an accusing, conspiratorial tone.

This was about three minutes before he revealed he voted for Trump, so I was still trying to be courteous. I hadn’t yet seen proof that he was willing to gouge out my children’s eyes and send their corpses floating down a river.

“It’s not different, an ink pen is an acceptable way of filling in a ballot.”

Why do rational people try so hard to be reasonable with the criminally deranged? I’d spent the months leading up to the election trying to convince this guy not to vote for a monster who constantly blew a dog whistle to incite white supremacists into acts of violence against my wife and children.

My wife gets pulled over for no reason. Why don’t the people in my own family care about that?

I don’t know, I guess, back then, I still had faith that reason could prevail. I guess reason did prevail, but not within my family. What a waste of my time and effort. I’m not just talking about the election, I’m talking about every second of my whole existence that I ever spent interacting with the kind of human trash that could ignore the transgressions of Trump and cast their vote in his favor.

“An ink pen is a totally acceptable way of filling out a ballot,” I repeated. “I’ve verified this, I called up the Wisconsin Elections Commission and confirmed it!”

I’d voted mail-in absentee and I wanted to make sure I marked my ballot correctly. So, rather than flinging myself at the first deranged conspiracy that I stumbled upon, I contacted the office and they assured me that any pen was fine.

I CALLED them to verify the information. You know, like an ADULT would do.

The commission told me they preferred black or blue, but they said my vote would count even if I filled it in with red ink.

That my idiot, republican, backstabbing cousin was handed an ink pen instead of a felt pen was a non-issue. It was a non-starter. All he had to do was call up the Wisconsin Elections Commission to find that out.

But this wasn’t ever about truth. It was about him throwing a temper tantrum.

Instead of acting with maturity, he decided to fabricate a conspiracy.

“I wrote in to the White House to tell them,” he said.

“What?”

“Yeah, I wanted them to know that there was something suspicious going on!”

“But there wasn’t! All you had to do was verify that an ink pen is a completely acceptable form of filling out a ballot!”

“But why was this election different?” He persisted, letting the question hang in the air as if it constituted some form of proof. I realized this was the kind of thing the idiots he normally associated with took as validation.

At that point I understood that this is how civil wars break out. I realized that the idiot had been telling this story again and again and again to anyone who would listen. He was shuffling around his city, half drunk, berating the government for trying to suppress his right to vote as a registered Republican.

All false.

In his mind, his experience equated with John Lewis getting his head bashed in at Selma as he fought for equal rights.

To my backstabbing cousin’s deranged thinking, he’d just endured a psychological skull fracture and he deserved compensation.

In my backstabbing cousin’s mind, he had been forced to endure the equivalent of people being forced to wait twelve hours in blistering heat with no water in order to vote.

It was the equivalent of white supremacists turning people away, or tearing up their ballot right in front of them.

“You need to stop telling this story.”

“Why?”

I snapped a little and I’m glad I did.

“Are you so ignorant about what’s going on? Our country is on the verge of civil war. People are bleating about how they’re going to take up weapons and march on the Capitol. You’re throwing gas on the fire with this unsubstantiated claim of voter suppression. If you suspect something you don’t send an email to the White House and scream and yell at everyone around you. No! Instead, you act like an adult and call up the Elections Commission and verify proper procedure.”

“But why was this election different?” he insisted.

“IT DOESN’T MATTER!”

And then, because he’s a drunk, backstabbing idiot who doesn’t care if white supremacists are drawn out of the weeds to harass my wife and kids at the urging of Donald Trump, he launched into the story again.

“They gave me an ink pen, I think it was to invalidate my ballot, and even though my county went to Trump, I sent a message to the White House.”

“Every time you tell that story, you’re stabbing my kids in the back again and again and again!”

These crybaby Republicans love to paint themselves as the victim. They paint themselves as the victims even as they berate other people for telling their stories, people who truly are victims.

My drunk, idiot, backstabbing cousin saw the story that Trump and his mouth-breathing Republican buddies were pushing, and he just had to get in on that action.

“Hey! That also happened to ME! I was a victim TOO!”

So he fabricated some completely nonsensical transgression to add fuel to the fire of civil unrest.

“I’m part of this oppressed class! Let’s get our guns! We’re not going to stand for this!”

And it’s all based on a boldfaced, malicious lie. It’s based on a lie you could disprove in five minutes if you had even an ounce of decency or ethical character.

“They tried to cancel my vote!”

“NO THEY DIDN’T YOU LIAR! YOU’RE NOT THE VICTIM YOU’RE THE OPPRESSOR!”

“Why are you yelling at me? What’s the matter with you? You have to hold yourself to a higher standard!”

Right after that he admitted to voting for Trump, and even though he was drunk, I heard it in his voice that he realized he’d screwed up.

But then he offered me a glimpse into his psychology as he launched into the argument he’d used in the voting booth to justify voting for that white supremacist piece of trash.

I didn’t scream at him. I didn’t bash his face in with a pipe wrench. I just found an excuse to get off the phone and I hung up.

This was back in December. I haven’t been on Facebook since then, but maybe I’ll go on there and post this article. Maybe I’ll send it as a Christmas letter.

I want those backstabbing idiots in my family who voted for Trump to know that I hold them in contempt.

It’s been three months since I’ve had any contact with those awful people. I should have broken away from those anchors decades ago. They’re all worthless without a single redeeming quality that I can think of.

Of course, when they read this, they’ll find a way to view themselves as a “victim” once again. But it’s not my problem anymore.

Last call for the Medium course!

Again, anyone who is interested in learning how to harness the full power of Medium, please consider signing up for the 5 day course I’ll be teaching with Kristina God. Medium is particularly interested in personal narratives, and if you have a story about racism or oppression I can help you get some eyes on it.

The program is $87, and you can sign up here!

I’ve done a variety of other training sessions but nothing like this, so I’ll be excited to tell you how it works out. Please let me know in the comments if you would prefer more options like this, or just more silly stories.

Speaking of that, I’ve been overwhelming you all a bit with emails this month. Everything’s going to go back to normal when I get back to the US. I didn’t get to do Zebra Unicorn this week, but I’ll get back to it next week.

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