I'm not interested in arguing the details. All I know is that several swing states stopped counting votes around midnight on Election Night, and when they resumed, Joe Biden enjoyed a remarkable surge of votes.
I also know that in some precincts, huge numbers of ballots were delivered in the middle of the night, during the vote-counting hiatus, that had no races filled out except the presidency – 100% for Joe Biden. This happened in Philadelphia and possibly other places.
Do I think the election was stolen? Yes, I do.
Biden left his house only (approximately) one out of every three days, attended "events" that consisted of a handful of media people listening to him read off a Teleprompter (very badly), and yet somehow managed to defeat an incumbent president with a huge base of support, a president who attracted more support and more votes, including minority support, than he did in 2016?
I don't buy it.
Perhaps this is just personal bias on my part.
Nevertheless, I will never buy it. And that's that.
Readers are free to argue about it, if they wish. For the record, here is what I think:
The election was rigged. Moreover, it is likely that all future elections will be rigged. Your vote doesn't matter. The outcome has already been decided. This election was a sham, as it has been in Venezuela and other dictatorships. We have become an oligarchy of rule-by-billionaires. Yes, Trump is a billionaire (or at least he says he is) – but he is a rebel. The other billionaires, such as the software billionaires who are be running things at this point, have no populist instincts and are interested only in squashing the will of the people in order to enforce their own agenda at any cost. We have seen this in the attempts by Facebook, Twitter, and other social media platforms to silence any criticism of the status quo.
The United States of America has entered a post-representative period in its history. In our case, Caesar was able to cross the Rubicon without anyone particularly noticing, thanks in large part to a willfully compliant national media, which certainly includes the highly overrated Fox News. From this point forward, elections will be entirely meaningless. The results will be determined in advance by the powers that be. Voting is no more than a ritualistic act intended to reassure the hoc polloi that their "voice" still counts. It does not.
I do not recommend voting in any future election whatsoever, except possibly local elections, which may (possibly) not be rigged.
Basically, I would opt out of the political system at this point. This is what I intend to do. I'm no longer interested in politics, nor do I plan to engage in political controversies. I recognize that my opinion and my persuasive efforts are completely useless. We do not live in a country where the individual's opinion counts.
I'm not saying this merely because Trump lost. There were many negatives about the Trump presidency, not least his narcissistic and obsessive use of Twitter. But I think it should be obvious to any reasonable observer that Trump, whatever his (many) defects, was infinitely more popular than Biden, a dementia-addled candidate who was unable to hit the campaign trail two-thirds of the time.
Where we are now, I think, is in the Augustinian phase of Roman history. Augustus, as you may know, took over the leadership of Rome after the Republic collapsed. He permitted a fairly wide latitude in freedom of speech, and he continued the old forms of the Senate and consuls, but in fact he devised a new and quite practical method of leadership from the top down. He was a genius, which distinguishes him from the idiots who profess to know how to handle our political system going forward. The system authored by Augustus lasted for more than 400 years. I very much doubt that the system authored by Kamala Harris and AOC will last for even one-quarter of that time.
The $64,000 question is whether the 70 or 80 million people (who knows how many there really were?) who voted for Trump will accept this "new normal" or will eventually rebel. They are showing no signs of rebellion so far. I admit that this surprises me. I thought that under the circumstances, civil unrest would be much more widespread. I anticipated the kind of violence from the right that we have seen from the left (Antifa, Black Lives Matter) over the past eight months. Then again, I thought civil unrest would be ignited by the ridiculous demands to shut down businesses and wear masks in the face of a "pandemic" that is no more serious than the Asian flu or the Hong Kong flu. I was wrong about that; so apparently the American public, in general, is willing to conform to any level of authoritarian demands, no matter how unsupportable and absurd. And the same goes for our vaunted law enforcement officers, who have disgraced themselves by enforcing these ridiculous regulations, and who no longer deserve our support, even as Antifa and BLM target them for destruction. Let them be defunded and destroyed.
To be completely honest, I now support Antifa. Their objective is to "burn down "America. I don't see a problem with this. I would rather see us die quickly than in a long, drawn-out, pointless death. There is dignity in national suicide. There is no dignity in the path we're on now.
In any event, the worrisome complacency of Trump supporters may change as the new reality dawns on them that their votes are of no value. Right now, many of them continue to believe, naïvely, that they can still influence the outcome of elections by voting for the candidate they prefer. This faith will be tested and eventually broken in subsequent elections, probably starting with the two Georgia runoff elections for U.S. Senate. Then the question will be: How will the Trump supporters (i.e., the populist American right) react? Will they accept the road to serfdom, or will they rise up in blind, inchoate rebellion?
On this pivot point turns the future of our erstwhile "democracy." The alternatives seem to be a) willful acquiescence in a "soft" dictatorship of the tech elites or b) an effort at secession that may or may not succeed.
As far as the second option is concerned, I recommend the book American Secession by FH Buckley. This surprisingly levelheaded book presents a number of arguments for secession before ultimately (spoiler alert!) deciding against it. Buckley is a Canadian professor with a longtime interest in American history. His opinions are intelligent, well reasoned, and supported by copious historical evidence and contemporary data. Personally, I think he makes such a good case for secession that his last-minute conversion to a "unionist" standpoint is less than persuasive.
For me personally, I will say that I think some form of secession is the only hope left for preserving any form of freedom on the North American continent. But it is unlikely. We will simply march like lemmings into our 1984-style future. Or is it Brave New World?
I am, by the way, fully aware that by expressing such highly charged political opinions on this blog I will alienate people who don't share those opinions. However, I did not start this blog twenty years ago, when I was a mere lad of forty, in order to cultivate popularity. In fact, it never occurred to me that anybody would be interested in my nattering opinions. So whatever happens, happens.
I am a loudmouthed asshole, and I intend to continue being a loudmouth asshole, the matter what it costs me. Take it or leave it.
Michael- the facts don't bear out your claim it would obviously have gone to SCOTUS. There have been 155 instances of faithless electors in the past, and clearly these didn't all end up in the Supreme Court. The link shows that it is possible in certain restricted circumstances, not that it is all but inevitable.
Posted by: Mandy Stapleton | January 16, 2021 at 03:41 PM
I don’t think any of the 155 faithless electors of the past changed the election result.
In the hypothetical case of a presidential election being reversed by faithless electors, I can see no way to avoid a SCOTUS ruling. They might rule that the electors acted within their rights, or they might not. But they would have to rule. (I mean "have to" in a political sense. The court could not duck the issue; public opinion would demand a hearing.)
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 16, 2021 at 09:42 PM
I wouldn’t be too hopeless. I suspect the Dems will overplay their hand and lose congress in the 2022 midterms, and lose the presidency to Tucker Carlson in 2024.
Posted by: Roger Knights | January 17, 2021 at 11:46 PM
Possibly, Roger. But after amnesty, there will be 11 million new Democratic voters. There may be a couple of new states. And I suspect that opposition to the Biden administration will be largely driven underground, as is already happening with the deplatforming of conservatives on social media and even in mainstream media.
So I’m not optimistic. I think we are in the oligarchic phase of our history — rule by a technocratic elite. Oligarchies are usually unstable; this one may not last long. But what will replace it will probably be worse.
Posted by: Michael Prescott | January 18, 2021 at 02:23 AM
"Oligarchies are usually unstable; this one may not last long. But what will replace it will probably be worse."
Napoleon said that he found the Republic lying in the gutter and picked it up with the tip of his sword.
After the Left has worked over the country for the next four years, I suspect a Napolean will happen along. All of the new citizens from the third world will accept that because that is what they are used to. The new Napolean, unlike the ninnies' fears of their straw Trump, will actually be a real dictator and the Left will not be able to defeat him with name calling and lies because he will just kill them. The Right will initially go along to get along because, at least, he won't be a lefty, but they too will be screwed at the end of the day.
All because the elites seem incapable of believing that history repeats itself because people will always be the same and we are never headed to a social justice utopia. America circa 2019 was as close to utopia as humans are capable of achieving given all of their character flaws and the imperfections of life on earth in general
Posted by: Eric Newhill | January 19, 2021 at 05:10 PM
I will be opening a bottle of Dom Perignon 2008 in less than 2 hours from now. I really thought what we witnessed over the last couple of months would be the end of American democracy. Today I'm again being hopeful about the future.
Posted by: sbu | January 20, 2021 at 10:08 AM
Life is like pendulum, it swings back and forth. The one thing that you can count on in this life is duality and separation, lots and lots of it, and you don't have to go looking for it, it will find you all on its own. Eventually the pendulum will swing back the other way, you can count on it.
Posted by: Art | January 20, 2021 at 11:25 AM
Hasn't the Apocalypse always been just around the corner?
The more left-leaning people I know also seem to think that we're approaching the end, that Big Tech is run by Neo-Nazis, that the corporate fat cats are going to drain America dry like a rabid vampire then retire to their underground fortresses, etc.
Yet everyone I know who isn't really connected to the online "chattering classes" seems to be much less pessimistic?
Posted by: Saj Patel | January 20, 2021 at 02:21 PM
Mandy Stapleton wrote: “the Supreme Court can only judicate in matters of state law where the state law in question is unconstitutional.”
On the contrary:
“Historically, interstate boundary disputes are the paradigm subject matter for original jurisdiction cases. From the 1790s until 1900 all of the State v. State cases producing Supreme Court opinions on the merits (thirteen in all) arose out of boundary disputes. At the start of the twentieth century, the Court entertained cases in four additional categories of subject matter: (1) water rights; 4 (2) inter-state pollution abatement; (3) enforcement of a contract between states; and (4) state regulation. As of 1939, the Court began to accept yet another category of State v. State suits, those involving interstate tax disputes…. Since 1961, the only clearly new category of State v. State cases that the Court has entertained has involved interstate disputes over the escheat of uncashed checks or other unclaimed property.”
—Vincent L. McKusick, “Discretionary Gatekeeping: The US Supreme Court's Management of Its Original Jurisdiction Docket Since 1961,” 45 Me. L. Rev. 185 (2018).
Available at: https://digitalcommons.mainelaw.maine.edu/mlr/vol45/iss2/2
Posted by: Roger Knights | January 21, 2021 at 02:37 PM