"Strategy requires thought, tactics require observation." —Max Euwe

The hit series The Queen's Gambit, now streaming on Netflix, is compelling, worth the binge-watching to which so many of us have committed.  The story is fictional, based on a book by the same title written by Walter Tevis in 1983, just a year before the hit musical Chess was produced in the U.K.  Both works have characters loosely based on the American world chess champion Bobby Fischer. 

Poster via IMDB.

The new series tells the tale of a young girl, orphaned at eight, who is sent to a home for parentless girls in Kentucky.  While purported to be a Christian institution, it daily doses the resident girls with tranquilizers.  It is at this asylum of a sort that Beth Harmon, the heroine, discovers her inner brilliance at the game of chess.  There is much more to her story.  It is very much worth watching.

The story could be a metaphor for Donald Trump's gambit, his run for the presidency, his 2016 victory, his many achievements these past four years that so aggravate the left and NeverTrump right.  These facts of the Trump candidacy and administration have had a major impact on the United States, as surely as Washington and Lincoln forever made their marks on this country. 

Just as Beth Harmon, the chess champion of the series, made a huge (fictional) impact on world championship chess as the first female chess champion (Bobby Fisher was the first American world chess champion), Trump has changed the GOP forever, much to the chagrin of the establishment RINOs among them.  It is a sad fact that so many Republicans have never truly supported this president.  Competitive chess-players are much kinder. 

As Beth defeats her opponents in tournament after tournament, they unite to support her, to coach her toward her next win.  If only members of Congress and the media were as unified toward a single goal, especially more Republicans.  If only all those who have spent the last four years trying to destroy President Trump shared the same gracious impulse.  How different the last four years would have been.

Instead, Trump, a reasonable facsimile of a chess grandmaster if there ever were one, was regularly and viciously mocked by nearly everyone once he threw his hat in the ring.  Not one Democrat/media/celebrity talking head thought he had a chance.  If they had, they would have more effectively rigged that election, too.

Then Trump won to the joy and enthusiasm of the 63M Americans who voted for him.  Once in office, to the shock of nearly every member of the left that assumed that Hillary was going to win in a landslide, he set about actually doing what he had promised throughout his campaign, the business of the American people, not the swamp.

In short order, his enemies' hatred of the man morphed into a full-scale operation to sabotage him and his administration.  The HRC-commissioned "dossier" was phonied up to get the ball rolling.  Without a shred of evidence, the Democrat/media/academic complex began foaming at the mouth, calling for his demise, one way or another.  If only these unscrupulous thugs had the grace of defeated chess masters.  But like the grandmaster of gamesmanship he is, Trump prevailed.

Trump accomplished much of what the NeverTrump Republicans had claimed they supported for decades — immigration reform, prison reform, energy independence, bringing China to heel, getting NATO nations to pay their bills, achieving the lowest unemployment for all groups, particularly minorities, since those data were being recorded, building the wall that has reduced illegal immigration by 92%, etc.  He fulfilled nearly every promise he made — which made the establishment hate him all the more.

But with the determined help of Facebook, Twitter, Google, et al., leftists were certain they could and would prevent his re-election with ease.  For four years, the most devious and most malevolent among the radical left set out to quietly change the voting laws and rules in very particular Democrat machine states and counties. 

Using over two hundred lawsuits, they did exactly that.  With COVID, the idea that mail-in ballots could be mandated was their ace in the hole; they used and abused it to maximum effect.  They rigged the election that Trump won handily for the oblivious Joe Biden, a man no more qualified to lead this nation than Mr. Ed.  It is like letting Biden win at chess by playing checkers.

The most powerful weapon in chess is to have the next move.

While the election results are being challenged, Biden is busy designating as appointees as many losers and criminals from previous Democrat regimes as possible.  That any American should have to see John Kerry on his TV screen ever again is a punishment.  The man is as clueless as he is arrogant, which is often the case with elitists like Kerry. 

Since Joe is cognitively out of the loop, everyone should realize that it is the Obama crowd making these decisions, of that we can be sure. Rejoin the Paris Climate Accord! Give Iran everything they want! Open the borders immediately (Mexican and Central American migrants are already gathering at the border). Biden is vowing to give some 20m illegals who are here illegally amnesty in his first 100 days. He is promising to take away legally owned guns so only criminals will have them. 

The threats to make this country a socialist/communist nation are all too clear and these leftists mean what they say. Destroy the middle class by destroying their small businesses; make them dependent on the government. Use COVID restrictions to get the population to obey whatever orders our overlords dictate. These COVID dictates have allowed all of us with our eyes wide open to see their totalitarian impulses at work. Their game is not remotely democratic. They eschew competition as beneath them. They don't play chess, they play dirty. They cheat.

There is no doubt in the minds of the probably 80m people who voted for Trump that the Democrats stole the election. They planned it, carefully and in advance by years. But they've been caught red-handed. They've massively cheated in the most corrupt Democrat-run cities and counties in the nation. It remains to be seen if the state legislatures will use the power they have to acknowledge the fraud and correct it.

Which states among them will step up and do the right thing? If they don't, no American will ever trust our electoral process again, for good and obvious reasons. 

That persons in charge of state elections can be bought and appear to have been bought makes us a third world nation. There is no shortage of unscrupulous companies willing to sell their cheating wares to the highest bidders and they are only too willing to pay election officials to purchase their machines and manipulable software.

It should come as no surprise to anyone that there is cheating in professional chess from time to time. As in politics all over the world, competition breeds cheating. And of course, there is cheating by technology; big tech has emboldened self-righteous cheaters around the world. Those who have perpetrated the massive fraud that has infected the 2020 election are no different from the cyber hackers who steal identities, credit card numbers and online lives. They are no different from the kids whose parents' pay to have smart kids take their own kids' SAT tests their own kids could not master so they can get into some benighted Ivy League university.

Cheating, for the left, is second nature; it's what they do. This time they may have gone too far, cheated far too obviously. They vastly underestimated Trump's popularity; their algorithms failed to keep the cheating under the radar. Trump won and deserves his second term. Let us pray the state legislatures and SCOTUS do the right thing and put a stop to election cheating once and for all. Voter IDs must be required, voter machines must be banished. Elections must be run as carefully and tightly as world chess championships are. To paraphrase a chess master, "I may be done with chess, but chess is not done with me." The left may be done with Donald Trump, but he is not done with them.