This has led to confrontations, of course. Any reasonable voter would feel that a group of people videotaping them at a ballot box, sometimes in action playtime militia outfits, was meant to be intimidating. And anyone doing the ballot-box stakeouts is, by definition, not “reasonable” by any stretch of the imagination. The sole reason any of these Arizona Trumpites are holding evening stakeouts of the local ballot box scene is that they were convinced by far-right conspiracy theorists that “mules” were secretly dumping a bajillion illegal votes into the boxes when nobody was looking.
There are already surveillance cameras at Arizona ballot drop boxes, however, and those security videos are available online via the Maricopa County Elections Department itself. You can watch them while sitting on your couch!
Uncovering an evil ballot-stuffing scheme by sitting your human ass down just outside the perimeter where it would be illegal is, therefore, only useful if you think the “mules” stuffing ballot boxes won’t show up on video cameras. Are these mules supposed to be vampires? We’ll run with that if that’s what it takes, but if you think you’re going to catch the secret liberal vampire mules by showing up and, uh, taking pictures of them with your own camera instead of the one the county’s using, I don’t know what to tell you.
Then there are the people showing up with guns in order to confront the supernatural mule vampires. That’s some serious hubris, there. That’s just asking to be sucked.
What we have here, in the end analysis, is a group of Arizonans who have absolutely no lives. No common sense. No knowledge of how to defeat vampires, how to defeat mules, or how to defeat mules that are vampires or vampires that are mules. No other useful hobbies. And that is a damn shame, because Maricopa County, Arizona, is a bustling metropolis with a great many things to do, so long as your definition of “things to do” relies on the accouterments of an unending suburban hellscape hot enough to light your dog on fire if you leave them in the sun too long.
I would like to help these people. It could be argued that it is our civic duty to help these people, who are trapped in their decaying lives, their minds a humid fog of conspiracy theories, their family lives stagnant and merciless. When other communities find themselves facing groups of night-roaming disaffected malcontents, we say things like “What about midnight basketball?” or “This is why Trump should never have been allowed to open a casino here.” But what of these Americans, who have been exposed to Dinesh D’Souza at near-lethal doses?
How can we reform them? Or even comfort them?
Here’s a thought: What about knitting? It doesn’t have to be normal knitting, it can be outdoor competitive midnight knitting. It can be tactical knitting. It can be a drinking contest: You can drink as many beers as you can knit beer cozies for; the competition ends at sunrise or whenever the first knitting injury happens.
You can put laser sights on the knitting needles. It will make a satisfying military glow, as you dazzle your drinking buddies with your tactical needle-clicking.
No? Hmm. A book club? A midnight book club. Everyone can sit around a portable propane heater—if it’s too hot, switch it off, but sitting around something is sort of vital for long-term nighttime activities—and read aloud from one of Donald Trump’s own scriptures, er, books. Discuss the contents. Imagine yourselves talking to the man himself, as he tells his ghostwriter how to punch up each made-up anecdote about his personal brilliance. Does it give you the shivers? No?
Would putting laser sights on the book help?
I’m going to be honest here: I don’t have a good grasp on what people who trust Dinesh D’Souza might do in their free time if it’s not watching ballot boxes or putting laser sights on things. This isn’t in my wheelhouse. Perhaps somebody else can suggest some appropriate hobbies, but sitting around in the Arizona evening waiting for camera-invisible vampire mules to arrive and thwart conservatism’s dreams of one-party glory really sounds so tedious that I can’t imagine anything that wouldn’t be a better use of somebody’s conspiracy-addled time.
Quick, I think I saw JFK at the grocery store across the street. He was putting tactical laser sights on all the bread loaves. Go find him and help.
On The Brief podcast, we speak with Way To Win’s co-founder and vice president, Jenifer Fernandez Ancona. Ancona comes in to discuss how grassroots progressive groups are spending money in the hopes of getting as many voters as possible out for the midterm elections. She also talks about which campaign advertisements are effective and which are not. One thing is for sure, though: We are living in historic times, and what that means for these midterms cannot be easily predicted—so Get Out The Vote!
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