Dateline: October 3, 2024

Faith in electoral processes all over the world seems to be at all-time lows, largely because, for so long, elections in most places have been manipulated, either through distortion of information presenting false scenarios and expectations or, because of threats of economic or military castigation should voters fail to follow electoral scripts designed by their self-perceived “betters”.  As last resorts, until fairly recently, orchestrated coups d’état and even direct military intervention from abroad were popular; however, new technologies, especially with respect to communications and hackable electronic voting have reintroduced a strain of subtlety.  The British and the French were the past masters of such manipulation but for a century at least, it has been the United States that has taken over that function, initially through the State Department but now through intelligence agencies; and intelligence agencies acting more and more on their own.  Power, of course, is the ultimate prize, economic power derived through theft of natural resources but more and more, through organized war profiteering of the kind Ike warned against as he left office. 

Until recently, the foregoing did not bother United States citizens very much, even when it involved domestic electoral fraud.  We were aware that domestic electoral fraud was not unusual.  Bribery was a tradition as was vote buying and, when all else failed, destruction of ballots with replacements stuffed into ballot boxes.  Nor unusual were the super patriotic voting dead.  In any case, electoral promises were always illusory, few felt they would be kept and fewer seemed to care that they’d been deceived.  Elections were a sort of game, like baseball perhaps, but of the Black Sox variant.  Now, however, chickens seem to have come home to roost.  Of a sudden, the United States electorate really seems to care about the results, albeit futilely so. 

One cannot tell if the United States federal elections of 2020 (both presidential and for the Senate, i.e., in Georgia) were “stolen”, something a substantial portion of the United States electorate believes.  We will probably never find out.  But groundwork for electoral fraud in 2020 was facilitated by the orchestrated response to the Covid 19 pandemic, with electoral safeguards demolished both bureaucratically and judicially, purportedly in the name of democracy.  During the past decade electoral safeguards have been minimized in the United States in a manner not seen anywhere else in the world.  Almost everywhere else, at least the illusion of ballot security is maintained with voters required to establish who they are through picture identification, signatures and finger prints before being permitted to exercise their so-called “sacred franchise”.  Additionally, ballots are strictly restricted to voting booths, with their collection strictly controlled.  Those are the norms except in a number of states in the purportedly United States. 

Electoral manipulation in the United States would seem difficult on a national scale given the nature of federalism, with important electoral functions vested at the county level, but in a society so polarized, electoral fraud need not be widespread but rather, concentrated at the points most equally divided in the states with the most electoral votes, and with efforts coordinated at the national level through sources of logistical and legal support. 

Electoral orchestration has evolved from an art form to a science.  Of course, implementing the groundwork for successful electoral manipulation is not enough, it must at least be flavored with plausible deniability.  Thus, the same bureaucracy and judiciary that facilitates electoral creativity shields electoral fraud from being proven by refusing to seriously investigate allegations of electoral improprieties, usually dismissing most such allegations on technicalities after which, the corporate media that supported the electoral misconduct in the first place, loudly proclaims that the allegations were bogus and that those alleging the existence of electoral fraud are evil, seditious “election deniers”.  That is the world in which the citizenry of the United States now lives, the same world the United States has forced on so many other countries whenever it suited the interests of those who controlled it.

Democracy, in the sense of majority rule, does not exist anywhere and never has, even absent electoral shenanigans.  It doesn’t exist because most people are not interested enough in electoral participation, either because it bores them or because they believe it is futile, thus, because of inadequate participation, majorities are rarely possible.  Instead, the majoritarian concept is replaced by mere plurality, i.e., were usually more votes are collectively cast against a specific candidate or proposal, or not at all, than in favor.  However, for some strange psychosocial reason, both the victims and the victimizers of political fraud feel that a semblance of popular government is essential, something we perhaps inherited from the Greeks and the Romans.

In a few days the people of the United States, both citizens and in all probability a number of non-citizens as well, will again earnestly participate in an electoral charade, a futile exercise by a populace utterly polarized by a corrupt corporate media, a corrupt entertainment industry and a corrupt bureaucracy, all making us relatively easy to manipulate, although we seem to be tottering closer than ever to a breaking point as more and more people have somehow gotten the impression that their votes can make a difference.  Indeed, we may be approaching a possibly violent breaking point such as has not been seen in the United States in over a century and a half, and that, despite the best efforts of the powers-that-be to create the impression that, as the Borg may someday become fond of saying, “resistance is futile”.  During the past four years it has become clear that, under Democratic Party rule, protest will not be tolerated unless it is orchestrated by the right people (e.g., the “woke”), that has been made more than abundantly clear through prosecution and persecution of those who dared to express their refusal to accept what they honestly believed was a stolen election in 2020.  A reality which many, too many, discovered on and after January 6, 2021. It is worth noting how different the attitude towards rejection of electoral results deemed fraudulent is when the protestors are political allies of the United States, as in the recent cases of Venezuela and Georgia (the country, not the state), as opposed to our opponents.  Evidently protest abroad is patriotic when in support of United States puppets but involves terrorism when challenging those the United States places and maintains in power.  At home, it’s even more hypocritical.  Electoral protest in the United States against results orchestrated by those who really rule us is anathema, it is seditious and treasonous, notwithstanding the platitudes redolent in our Declaration of Independence.

As an aside, I wonder what vice president Kamala Harris will do in the unlikely event that her opponent prevails when it comes time for her to exercise her constitutional function and certify the result.  An unlikely situation given my pessimistic analysis of probabilities but, wouldn’t that be interesting?  The Chinese have a curse that sounds a bit like a proverb “may you live in interesting times”.  It certainly seems to apply to us.  To many of us, the results of the proximate elections have already been written and, unlike 2016, that script will, in all likelihood, not be subject to evasion, not even temporarily. And even if it were, as Mr. Trump found out during his term in office, the federal bureaucracy and judiciary are so riddled with moles that governance contrary to the interest of the tiny group of powerful elites who rule us as if they possessed Sauron’s ring of power, is virtually impossible.  The reality is probably that, even if the election were not rigged by misinformation and electoral fraud, our future would remain bleak as we will, in all probability, continue to be led towards the Armageddon too many see as an essential way-stop on the road to paradise.  Tipping points are all but impossible to reverse and we seem to have reached ours as both major presidential campaigns applaud genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid and most of the United States electorate, as German citizens once did, looks the other way; and as antagonizing powers that share our capacity to destroy everything has become a bipartisan ideal.

As a supporter of third party and independent candidates for many decades, no candidate likely to win ever enjoys my support, but that is not as negative as it sounds.  Those of us who find ourselves perpetually outside-looking-in tend to attain a clearer vision of political realities, one free of the emotional price associated with passionate advocacy and of a hope to share in the spoils.  Thus, from the sidelines, what most matters to me and others like me is to share perspectives concerning the greatest threats to whatever remnants of liberty remain, not many as during the past four years censorship and castigation of deviation from opinions deemed acceptable has become the norm, and of course, it is important to those of us with strong civic consciousness to share information concerning how electoral processes are safeguarded in diverse parts of the world, contrasting such safeguards with trends in the ever more autocratic United States, a country whose people, if not its governments, I love profoundly.

From the fringes, the more decent among the political class, a tiny group led by aspirants to political power like Jill Stein, Cornell West and Dennis Kucinech, look on horrified, desperately fighting against the fatal entropy that has us firmly in its grasp, while the universe, disinterested, spins on its merry way.  So, don’t be surprised when this November 6, 2024, at the end of a long evening, the elections of 2020 are once more repeated, their format now become the template with which our subjugation will be made ever more clear.  Perhaps, in the future, rather than bother to deceive us, the charade will end and we’ll just assume the posture and accept the inevitable, hoping for the best, knowing that as has almost always been the case: in our own destiny we have little if any say.

So sayeth the realist (that’s what pessimists always call themselves), as from the Global South, where hope still somehow survives, an expat in exile looks North.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2024; all rights reserved.  Please feel free to share with appropriate attribution.

Guillermo (“Bill”) Calvo Mahé (a sometime poet) is a writer, political commentator and academic currently residing in the Republic of Colombia (although he has primarily lived in the United States of America of which he is also a citizen). Until 2017 he chaired the political science, government and international relations programs at the Universidad Autónoma de Manizales. Previously, he chaired the social studies and foreign language departments at the Eastern Military Academy in Huntington, New York. He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review available at Substack.com; an intermittent commentator on radio and television; and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications. He has academic degrees in political science (BA, The Citadel, The Military College of South Carolina), law (JD, St. John’s University, School of Law), international legal studies (LL.M, the Graduate Division of the New York University School of Law) and translation and linguistic studies (GCTS, the University of Florida’s Center for Latin American Studies). However, he is also fascinated by mythology, religion, physics, astronomy and mathematics, especially with matters related to quanta, cosmology and cosmogony. He can be contacted at guillermo.calvo.mahe@gmail.com and much of his writing is available through his blog at https://guillermocalvo.com/.