Today in Florida Early Voting Ended for 8/23 Primary Election

Today marked the final day of early voting for Florida's August 23rd primary...that Election Day is next Tuesday.  On a number of occasions during the last few days, I've found myself driving down NW 43rd Street here in Gainesville, past the Millhopper Branch public library where they held early voting.  The grass along the street and sidewalk was covered in campaign signs and various volunteers...and a few candidates as well...lined the road waving at the passing cars as if they were riding a float in a parade.  I wonder whether anyone ever made a voting decision on a candidate because of all this hullabaloo...probably a lot, sad to say.  I think it's pretty sad that nowadays one of our major political parties seems to have adopted the notion that an election is only valid if their side wins, after the previous president in that party displayed his reprehensible childish sore loser behavior (and still does) in denying his 2020 loss.  I have called "fascist" those politicians in Congress who voted to overturn final results from that election, including my own representative and one of my state's senators.  But this self-inflicted brainwashing in favor of authoritarian rule is not just a symptom of Republicans and the political right, although far too many of them have voluntarily succumbed to cult personality worship.  To a lesser degree, many Democrats decided to reject wholesale Hillary Clinton's 2016 presidential campaign in favor of their own idol, Bernie Sanders...to the point where enough of them either sat out that election in protest or voted for the Green Party candidate instead: the result was an extremely narrow Trump victory that year.  And in the late 1970s a populist left-wing, strongly political religious cult, the People's Temple, led by narcissist/psychopath Jim Jones, attracted an adoring, widespread following in northern California...who knows how far it would have gone had social media and the Internet existed back then, beyond the horrendous mass homicide/suicide event that occurred in Guyana in 1978.  So, when I say that I think certain Republicans are fascists, don't get me wrong: this is a human, not politically partisan problem and any group can fall victim to it.  The representative I referred to earlier, Kat Cammack, cast one of her first votes after being sworn in to overturn the Pennsylvania presential election result that went for Biden in spite of the fact that the challenges that went to court had already been investigated and were dismissed.  Yet she calls liberals in her TV ad "dumb clucks".  Well, if she can do those things, I think I'm warranted in calling her "fascist", but in truth I think instead, after giving it due reflection, that she is nothing more than your run-of-the-mill demagogue pandering to the clucks within her own political base.  But hey, vote for her if you want, that's your business.  I just happen to belong to the school of thought that while it's understandable for a politician to play to the groups within their constituency that will faithfully win them elections, their elected role puts them in a position of responsibility for everyone they represent, even those who didn't vote for them. I'm totally cool with a politician I didn't vote for winning an election, but tragically for our future I'm afraid that too many of us are incapable of accepting defeat, and this number is rapidly growing...