We are now about ten days from the November 8th Midterm elections. And Republican messaging is getting more shrill.

If you’re on Twitter you may notice your stream filling up with copy and paste statements from various Republican accounts trying to paint the picture that they have already won.

For the past few weeks the bent has been to scream about how Biden’s “energy policies” and “attacks on energy” have been the cause of high gas prices. Of course they’ve been ignoring the more than minor facts that high gas prices are a direct result of oil companies—Republican donors all—price gouging us at the pump and laughing about it in shareholder meetings.

While still keeping up that stream of propaganda the messaging is now rolling out that “polls show” Republicans winning by a wide margin. Other messages claim that all Republican candidates won all their debates and “destroyed” their opponents. And below the bottom end of the humanity scale, Steve Bannon and Alex Jones spout threats in every direction. Of course, it is all pure male bovine excrement. The idea being to make the opposition want to give up, stay home and not vote, because what’s the point.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Seeing as how Republicans generally hate history lessons, their propaganda outlets have a foggy view at best of what can happen when you start broadcasting “we already won” messages along with “if we lose, they cheated.” The special elections of Raphael Warnock and John Ossoff are cases in point. One of the reasons Warnock and Ossoff won was because Trump’s continuous lies about election fraud caused some of his “true believers” to stay home, because what’s the point.

The other thing to keep in mind about these Twitter missives is that they are generally viewed by their own people or people who like posting clever or snarky responses—guilty. So really their propaganda is all about keeping the regular consumers at their hog trough satiated. But again, the apathy that outlets like FOX, OAN, Newsmax and the GOP itself are trying to create is more likely to take hold of their own constituents.

Political calculus is a funny thing. The human factor will always screw up the equations. Predicting what is going to happen on November 8th is not a binary problem. It has more to do with facts than Republicans care to confront or admit. Deep down they know this and their streams of invective, lies and propaganda on Twitter and other outlets are actually a testimony to their fear of this knowledge.

While part of the long-term Republican messaging is focused on branding liberal as communist, nothing could be further from the truth—and again, Republicans know and fear this. The Republican Party is not now drifting to the far right, it has become the far right, adopting fully fascist principles. In their world things are binary. If the authority says something is a certain way, it is—reality be damned. Somehow this idiotic method of thinking is viewed as a strength. Conversely, the liberal tendency to examine nuance, argue and modify ideas to take into account factual realities is viewed as a weakness.

The shift to the far right has been going on much longer than Trump has been on the scene—he became a tool to accelerate it. Critical thinking, as practiced by those of the liberal political bent, has been under attack for a long time.

Conclusions?

The reality the Republican Party faces is they are the dog that caught the car it was chasing, and it now has no real idea of what to do with the bumper caught in its teeth. For the first time in decades, Republican manipulations have removed a constitutionally protected right from the roster of rights—a woman’s right—in this country. There should be a high political for this. Voters in Kansas a few months ago gave us hope that this cost would be levied.

Pundits and predictors are forecasting a route of Republican candidates and issues in the midterms. Republicans of course are doing what they do. How will it actually turn out? We won’t actually know for another eleven or twelve days. And then there will be the recounts and de rigueur claims by you know who of cheating, scandal and dirty dealing—of which you know who will later to be found to have engaged in.

The real bottom line is that the most important thing you can and must do is VOTE November 8th, if you have not done so already. And of the “all is lost already” messaging of the Republicans—realize they are talking to themselves.

Your vote is both desired and feared. Use that.