Tag Archives: elections

Reflections from the Edge of a Seemingly Bottomless Pit

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November 5, 2024 is purportedly federal election day in the United States of America but the concept of an “election day” has become meaningless.  And that may not be a negative although how that has come about is troubling given that the main goal of that evolutive process seems to have become, not the implementation of more effective democracy but rather, the facilitation of more efficient electoral fraud and manipulation.

How so?

Well, in its least malign aspect, the evolving trend towards a voting season rather than an electoral day looks to “lock-in” voters prior to the availability of information necessary to make adequately informed voting decisions, thus making electoral manipulation more feasible.  That, of course, is tied into the manipulation of essential information by the corporate media through not only the publication and dissemination of distortions and outright lies as facts, but by the obfuscation of important relevant information, the Hunter Biden laptop from Hell being a prime, albeit far from the most important, example.  At least as nefarious are the range of voting procedures crafted by those who seek to minimize electoral safeguards through a longer, less organized and poorly monitored voting cycle, one where, for example, the State of California has criminalized required identity verification prior to voting and indeed, where most states controlled by the Democratic Party have taken steps to permit the casting of votes by people who provide no proof of who they are nor of their right to do so. 

The mass mailing of unsolicited ballots coupled with the ability to “harvest” and return such ballots is obviously designed, in its most benign aspect, to create a “market” for the purchase and sale of votes, and for the theft and unauthorized casting of ballots in its most nefarious form.  And that is where we find ourselves as the electoral season draws to a close “on or about” this November 5.  I use the phrase “on or about” because there is no longer a “hard date” by which votes must be cast given that judges and electoral officials in Democratic Party controlled states, and even in Democratic Party controlled counties and electoral districts have taken to insisting that the absence of postmarks or the receipt of ballots with postmarks beyond the date fixed for their return should be ignored in the interests of what they claim is a more ample form of democracy, something that seems akin to the old political slogan of “vote early and vote often”.

I have long avocated for an electoral period rather than an election day in order to make participation in the electoral process more convenient.  Decades ago I proposed that elections should take place over a series of set dates, perhaps as long as three or four, with results published daily to motivate the lazy to cast their votes when it became obvious that their participation would be essential in order for candidates they preferred to emerge victorious. But I understood that as important as participation in the electoral process was, safeguarding of the electoral process was at least as important, and that real democracy required limiting participation to eligible voters through strictly enforced safeguards, safeguards in fact effectively imposed in the poorest and least technologically advanced countries, safeguards such as photo identification cards, signatures and fingerprints.  In the Republic of Colombia where I currently reside such procedures are uniformly applied and though not perfect (electoral fraud still exists), at least efforts are made to minimize electoral fraud rather than to promote it.

In the United States, democracy is not thriving, it never has.  At the best of times the country has been ruled through a patchwork two-party dictatorship at the local, state, regional and federal levels, the “duopoly” at it is referred to by its critics, among them many smaller political parties, independent candidates and concerned voters.  But today’s Democratic Party seeks to eliminate even the duopoly.  During the past four years it has utterly corrupted the penal and judicial systems in order to minimize the ability of opponents to run against its pre-selected candidates, and I do not refer specifically to Donald Trump.  He at least is powerful enough to fight back.  But rather, to the most decent among alternative options, people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., the son of the assassinated senator and former attorney general, Robert Francis Kennedy and the nephew of the assassinated president, John Fitzgerald Kennedy; people like the eminent and brilliant Afro-American philosopher, academic and civic leader, Cornell West; people like eminent physician and civic leader, Jill Stein; people like former Democratic Party congressman and peace activist Dennis Kucinich.  Perhaps even worse, in an effort to retain permanent dictatorial power for the ill-named Democratic Party, the Biden administration has done everything possible to curtail opposing viewpoints through criminalization of the right to hold and express opposing opinions and in that effort has recruited the major news media and the major internet platforms.

Not that the GOP, the Grand Old Party, otherwise known as the Republicans are all that much better although, except when it comes to blind allegiance to Zionists imperil ambitions, it is significantly less inclined to engage in military adventures abroad or to censorship and lawfare at home.  Still, its candidate in this election is one of the world’s least pleasant persons, an egotistical, self-promoting demagogue.  How far have we sunk as a polity when he seems far more trustworthy than the slick loophole specialists who oppose him, the Clintons and the Obamas if not quite the Bidens, those who offer us as a choice the chameleonic Kamala Harris, lawyers all, lawyers beloved of the quasi-cultural Hollywood and New York elites and, of course, of the Deep State moles who believe they’ve found the “one ring to rule us all and in the darkness bind us”.

Absolute power seems to be the goal and, as the old adage claims, “absolute power corrupts absolutely”.  Today, the descendants of those who believed they were fighting against such tyranny instead find themselves actively involved in promoting genocide, ethnic cleansing and apartheid on the one hand as they court nuclear holocaust on the other, all in order to enrich the tiny minority of billionaires reliant for their political and economic power on perpetual war and oppression.  And on our own cowardice, cupidity and stupidity.

It is, in all probability, too late to defeat the forces of darkness arrayed against us, but we can still, at least, back our own versions of Tolkien’s Frodo: I allude to people like Jill Stein and Cornell West who are still options, and in other elections, we can decide to vote for any candidate unaligned with the duopoly.  As always, if enough of us took that road less travelled, we might somehow find ourselves glimpsing a light at the end of that deep dark tunnel into which we’ve been forced to descend, assured that the wreak of filth and death we smell is really milk and honey.

As the purportedly Wicked Witch of the West exclaimed in the 1930’s movie version of “The Wonderful Wizard of Oz”, … “what a world, what a world”!  But perhaps hers is not the last word.

In 1875 poet William Ernest Henley, perhaps channeling the “darker days referenced by Sigmund Freud, wrote a poem he entitled “Invictus”, one I share as I close, albeit set in prose:

Out of the night that covers me, black as the Pit from pole to pole, I thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.  Under the bludgeonings of chance my head is bloody, but unbowed.

Beyond this place of wrath and tears looms but the horror of the shade, and yet, the menace of the years finds and shall find, me unafraid.

It matters not how strait the gate, how charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate: I am the captain of my soul.

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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/.

The Law of Unintended Consequences and the First United States Presidential Debate of 2024

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United States president Joseph Robinette Biden was a disaster in his initial 2024 presidential debate against Donald Trump, the truncated affair orchestrated by CNN which, at the demand of the Biden administration, excluded presidential candidates Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornell West, PhD, each of whom would also have trounced the inept Mr. Biden. Mr. Trump performed well, to an extent curbing his impulsive nature and was the clear winner. However, the fear of accountability should Donald Trump return to the Whitehouse will increase rather than decrease abuse of the corporate media and the legal system by the Deep State, possibly leading it to panic and take ever more drastic actions to prevent the American electorate from exercising its political rights.

So, what to expect?

Well, the potential for an assassination of Mr. Trump orchestrated by the Deep State is higher than ever. The potential for adverse judgments against Mr. Trump in the pending wave of “lawfare against him orchestrated by the Deep State, the Biden administration and their supporters at the state level, including private citizens, will increase. And the Supreme Court will experience massive pressure from mortified traditional Republicans, especially on the Chief Justice, to rule in favor of Mr. Trump’s opponents. It seems clear that the law of unanticipated if not unintended consequences is merrily at work.

If Mr. Trump nonetheless survives and prevails, assuming massive electoral fraud is unsuccessful, no sure thing, Deep State moles will once again seek to obstruct not so much Mr. Trump’s policies as his ability to govern. There is really very little difference in the policies of the modern Democratic Party and the GOP, other than with respect to abortion and the Second Amendment.
If Mr. Trump is artfully defeated and the electoral fraud is more obvious this time than it was in 2020, then ever increasing civil strife is possible, although the Deep State is so well armed that a civil war would probably prove futile. At any rate, regardless of the results, the electorate, already utterly polarized may fragment from bipolar to multipolar which would be the only positive thing.

The one sure thing seems to be that whoever eventually wins:

• The ensuing administration will continue to support genocide in the Middle East, probably expanded from just the Palestinians to the Lebanese and the Syrians as Nazis in Hell smile and say, we told you so and welcome aboard to their former non-Soviet adversaries in World War II.

• In Europe, confusion may reign. A Trump victory should surely generate much needed introspection and a settlement of the Deep State orchestrated Ukrainian quagmire may result. But it’s also possible that a creeping advance to a third world war, initially conventional but eventually nuclear, will continue. Still, the corruption of the ideal of European unity by NATO may finally be perceived by the electorates in France and Germany and in the flotsam that echoes the posture of those two subservient polities throughout Europe.

• The de facto Sino-Russian alliance is likely to strengthen, as is the growing closeness of Iran, North Korea and Syria with that group, but that would be true regardless of the results of the United States’ election and Global North hegemony will continue its decline as the Global South continues to evolve politically and economically. The demise of the United States dollar will continue as faith in its ability to function as a neutral reserve currency has already been shattered by the abusive United States international economic sanctions regime.

It is unfortunate that with three decent alternative candidates, the Deep State and its corporate media will exclude them from consideration by voters this November but that has been the case since the unexpected Republican victory in 1860, 164 years ago. The echoes of Cassandric warnings are loud and clear but the three monkeys that represent the so-called Western World continue to plug their ears, shut their eyes and cover their mouths.

© 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/.

The 2024 Presidential Elections as Seen During the End of January from a Sort of Neutral, Albeit Pacifist, Perspective

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As an independent academic, researcher, political analyst and commentator, I have several observations concerning candidates for the 2024 presidential nomination.

First, as to the GOP, albeit only two of the four mentioned remain, I would rank candidates as follows on the basis of danger to humanity and world peace:  most dangerous, Nicky Haley (a Biden clone and Deep State shill); then, Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and Vivek Ramaswamy.   Ramaswamy seemed the most interesting, notwithstanding his Hindu inspired Islamophobia and reminded me of Tulsi Gabbard in some respects, but, as in the case of DeSantis, he has acknowledged the inevitable and dropped out.  There were other GOP candidates but they really had nothing to offer, indeed, as in the case of Haley, most were sponsored and paid for by pro-Biden, Deep State loyal Democratic Party related donors.  Of course, ranked on the basis of lousy personality, pomposity, apparent ego and childishness, no one can touch “the” Donald.  Haley refuses to abandon her quest but that may be a preplanned Deep State strategy to cause Mr. Trump to expend resources ahead of the real contest in November.  Ms. Haley and the Deep State are as friendly as is Mr. Biden and the Deep State.  Cozier than that one cannot get.

On the Democratic Party side, well, there is no side although two candidates Dean Phillips, a Biden clone who feels Biden is just too old and infirm, and Marianne Williamson, a talanted and interesting non-politician, are running.  However, the ill named Democratic Party has refused to organize debates and the corporate media is doing all it can to cooperate by rendering everyone but Mr. Biden invisible.  Still, Ms. Williamson bears consideration.  On the worst to best basis therefore, Ms. Williamson seems best, followed by Mr. Phillips (as neutral, or neutered, as one can get), and then, in last place, the worst candidate from any party, movement, etc., perhaps ever, the eternal warmonger and merchant of personal greed and corruption, “Genocide Joe”, aka, Mr. Joseph Robinette Biden. 

Independents and third party candidates are very interesting and provide the most intelligent, competent and honest candidates so, of course, they are carefully facing assassination by silence.  For the record, and in their case, in no particular order given that they are all pretty good, I would rank the top three as follows: Cornel West, an Afro-American philosopher, academic, civil rights leader, political activist and pacifist as the best, although his campaign seems terminally hokey; then, his former running mate (she was at the top of the ticket, he was in the second spot), perpetual Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, who shares most of Mr. West’s political perspectives but is a Jewish woman, rather than an Afro-American male; and, perhaps most interesting but with a fatal flaw, the most recognized candidate among the independents (largely because of his family name), Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.  He is, of course, the son of the late senator, attorney general and assassinated presidential candidate whose name he bears, and the nephew of the late, assassinated president, John F. Kennedy.  Mr. Kennedy shares many of Dr. West’s and Ms. Stein’s progressive perspectives but is apparently owned, lock, stock and barrel, by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), not unexpected given the reality that his father was assassinated by a Palestinian, but still, his tolerance for Israeli genocide and ethnic cleansing pretty much neutralizes his many positive qualities for most people who might otherwise have been inclined to support him. 

The real question is, of course, given realities associated with the United States electoral system as impacted by lax voting standards and requirements; interference by the legal and penal system as well as the intelligence agencies; interference by most of the owners of major Internet platforms; and, the utter lack of objectivity by the corporate press (most in favor of Democrats, no matter what, but one in favor of Republicans on the same basis), what difference do candidates make, or the will of the electorate for that matter??? 

Of course, as in 2016, all of us but especially the Deep State may be surprised.  But I doubt it.  They’ve learned their lesson.  The one sure thing is that the best person running, the most ethical, most experienced, with the best judgment, hasn’t a chance.

Good (and bad news) from another source concerning this year’s federal election, the person who would have been the best presidential candidate (he once was, but was trounced), Dennis Kucinich, is running for the House of Representatives again, albeit this time, wisely, as an independent.  Goooo Dennis!!!  Gooo independents!!!!  The bad news is that he is not running for president.  The corporate press, of course, is doing all it can (again) to make him invisible so any help readers can provide to overcome that tactic would, I’m sure, be greatly appreciated.  He was Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s campaign manager but resigned when Mr. Kennedy’s anti-Palestinian bias led him to support Israeli atrocities.  Good for him (Dennis, not Robert), his integrity, unlike that of most politicians, is neither for sale nor for lease.
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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.  He is currently the publisher of the Inannite Review, available at Substack.com, a commentator on Radio Guasca FM, and an occasional contributor to the regional magazine, el Observador.  He has academic degrees in political science (the Citadel), law (St. John’s University), international legal studies (New York University) and translation and linguistic studies (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 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/.