Writing: 4.0; Theme: 5.0; Content: 5.0; Language: 5.0; Overall: 4.5

If one cares about election integrity and the future of our Republic he/she should read Mollie Hemingway's "Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections." She shares data detailing, as the title of her book denotes, how the mainstream media, Big Tech, and the Democratic Party have utilized falsehood and lies in order to defeat their opponents through cheating and fraud by silencing opposing voices and the truth. The 2020 election was the most unreliable and fraudulent election in our nation's history. We have seen the results in the last three years of what happens when someone is "installed" as office holder by any means necessary. Highly recommend.

***October 31, 2023*** ( )

I just finished Rigged: How the Media, Big Tech, and the Democrats Seized Our Elections by Mollie Ziegler Hemingway. The book is worth reading; to a point. I forget who recommended it. It illustrates the dictum in intro to Practicing History: Selected Essays by Barbara W. Tuchman, that it is hard to write good history close to the occurrence of events. It certainly was, and is.

I need to start out by saying that I voted for Trump in 2020 but not 2016. The book is about the bitterness of the Biden-Trump election of 2020. I agree with the fundamental premise that the political process and the election were poisoned by the savage attacks on Trump, both in the press and on the streets and ultimately in the health establishment, starting immediately after his startling victory in 2016. Trump did not play by the rules, or play nicely. In general that was a good thing. Trump did not need, in the process, to gratuitously insult so many people. Firings of personnel over Twitter are not in the Dale Carnegie school of How to Win Friends and Influence People. When you choose a leader, however, you are not choosing a drinking buddy. Also, to make an omelet you need to break some eggs. Challenging the shibboleths of the Establishment was worthwhile. Recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, stepping out of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action with Iran and exiting the Paris Accords upset the Establishment greatly

Where I believe that the author gets things wrong is by not laying the blame for at least some of the divisiveness on Trump. In my view and based on the content, if not the conclusions of the book is that he created the atmosphere where defeating him at any cost was an imperative. That effort started immediately with the effort to delegitimize his election and his Presidency. It moved on through the various investigations, to impeachment. Most seriously, it morphed into the weaponization of the Covid-19 pandemic. Put simply, enough officials throughout Federal, State and local bureaucracies hated him that they were willing to tank the gregarious, happy society we once knew before February 2020. I only hope we can get it back. ( )

Whether or not you believe that there were issues with the 2020 election, Rigged is a must read examination of how one political party pulled out all the stops to defeat a sitting President. They utilized corrupt and unconstitutional changes to state election laws, used dark money to get these changes done (by the same party that decries such money), and were able to get big tech and the mainstream media to suppress stories that damaged Biden, and censored conservative thought on social media. The book is well documented. Anyone on either side should be truly disturbed by what happened, and need to be concerned over the potential for something even worse to happen to our elections in the future. ( )

The rules were changed for this election, ostensibly due to COVID, Zuckbucks flooded the system, liberal/progressive groups did government-funded get out the vote efforts, the counting was full of chicanery in places were voting has often been corrupt (Philadelphia, Madison, etc.), and the media and social media were not only blatantly anti-Trump to the point of lying, they purposefully hid any anti-Biden news (e.g., Hunter Biden's laptop, etc.). This book will be used to correct the historical record in fifty years, if we're still here. ( )

Hemingway lays out all the ways election rules were changed and media practices were changed to favor the election of Biden. Plus she lays out the utter hypocrisy of those who did not accept the elections of 2000, 2004 and 2016, including resorting to violence, but were the first to decry the outrage over the rule changes and media practices and downright falsehoods spread to elect Biden. ( )