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In an era of institutional rot, cranks can be hard to tell from heroes.
在一个政府腐败的时代，怪人很难与英雄区分开来。
By Nitsuh Abebe
文/尼苏·阿比比
If you've ever attended an open meeting regarding any function of your local government,
如果你曾经参加过某个地方政府职能的公开会议，
you'll understand how crucial it is to American democracy that ordinary citizens not be expected to represent themselves with the vocabulary of lawyers or the poise of politicians.
你就会明白，普通公民不会用律师的词汇或政客的风度来代表自己，这对美国民主是十分重要的。
Still: Of the many Michiganders the Trump campaign trotted before state legislators early this month to air dubious allegations of electoral fraud,
尽管如此，本月初，在特朗普阵营中的许多密歇根人在州议员面前小跑，对选举舞弊提出可疑的指控，
some worked hard to convey a sense of real gravity and sobriety.
其中的一些人努力表达出他们的严肃与清醒。
The actual content of their testimony may have been, by turns, witless, pointless and bizarre -
他们证词的实际内容可能是愚蠢、毫无意义和离奇的——
for the most part, they failed to understand mundane features of election law and thus considered them suspicious -
大多数情况下，他们不了解选举法的世俗特征，因此认为这些特征是可疑的——
but there was, surprisingly often, a real attempt made to dress nonsense in a presentable suit.
但令人惊讶的是，经常有人试图穿上一套像样的衣服。
The one among them who found real notoriety wasn't the most polished, though, or even the most comical.
不过，他们当中发现其真正臭名昭著的人并不是最光鲜的，甚至不是最滑稽的。
Mellissa Carone, who had worked in I.T. support for Dominion Voting Systems - a company that provided election technology to most Michigan counties -
梅丽莎·卡隆曾在多明尼恩投票系统的IT部门工作，这家公司为密歇根州大多数县提供选举技术支持——
waxed wild and impertinent as soon as lawmakers started asking her questions, flinging claims of every kind of fraud imaginable.
当立法者们开始向她提问时，她就变得狂野无礼，对任何可以想象到的欺诈行为都不屑一顾。
Even when a Republican legislator tried, gently, to steer her toward some sort of evaluable assertion,
甚至当一位共和党议员试图温和地引导她做出某种可以评价的论断时，
she had none of it, shooting darts with her eyebrows and insinuating that he himself might be part of a cover-up.
她根本不买账，挑起眉毛，暗示他可能在掩饰。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
