Ain’t Democracy Grand

I was just asked about the US electoral process and I started to explain federalism, the primary-caucus-convention pre-electoral process and the distortionist Electoral College when I realized that while that might be accurate from a legal perspective, it was very deceptive in real life. So now, I wonder if at a media event sponsored by the State Department tonight I’ll have the courage to explain it accurately.

First and foremost, the winner is determined behind closed doors. The spoils pre-divided with an additional five-hundred percent promised to naïve borderline promise-them-anything “supporters” who still believe elections are real, then suborn the mass media and the politicized judiciary which is introduced on either flank. An army of social media trolls is recruited, trained and set to work based on scripts carefully crafted by behaviorists psychologists designed to utterly distort reality, avoid all meaningful issues and accuse the adversary of anything the winner-in-waiting is guilty of.

That script is shared with the mass media amidst a flurry of subtle and not so subtle winks and the primary process begins, a war against any real candidates unaware of the rules of the game. Ballot stuffing and vote flipping arrangements are made just in case they become necessary and party posts responsible for supervision of the purportedly neutral process are carefully filled.

If the foregoing is not successful, not to worry, the media in pocket, positive results will be preannounced and then self-fulfilling prophecies fulfilled. Then on to the main show, pretty much a duplicate of the previous “rehearsal”, all kinks ironed out and now, the new opposition thoroughly destroyed, demonized, pulverized and taught they ought not to mess with their betters. Truth in this milieu has by now become so flexible that it seems to evaporate, as if it had never been a threat.

Finally, the electorate is skillfully set at each other’s throats so that by Election Day they will be so exhausted by internecine posturing and battles that once again, they’ll accept any results. The results, of course, have been artfully crafted and the related stories written since almost before the beginning.

Ain’t democracy grand?
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2016; all rights reserved