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“And Perhaps” …. An Exercise in Positive Wishful Thinking

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Dateline, November 6, 2014

I did not support Mr. Trump’s aspirations to return to the house from which he was evicted four years ago, perhaps improperly so, we’re not likely to ever know.  But I certainly did not support the continuation of the tyranny under which so many in the United States and abroad have been forced to live during the past four years.  I am and have been a political independent for many decades although I have supported third party candidates, including candidates from political parties with very differing philosophies, political parties like the Libertarian Party and the Green Party and various socialist movements.  In truth, like Albert Einstein and Noam Chomsky and Nelson Mandela, etc., I consider myself a democratic socialist philosophically.  Thus on the day after the presidential electoral victory of Donald J. Trump, I watch public reactions with interest and, I confess, a bit of ambivalence.  I especially note with a bit of sardonic humor how, furious, president-elect Trump’s Deep State critics in the media and the Democratic Party seek to sow panic and more discord, whining that he will now seek revenge for all of the trauma they sought to cause him and many other opponents through abuse of the legal and penal systems during the past four years.  Hell, during the past eight years. 

Their fear is understandable, a rapist fears angry parents, angry siblings, angry spouses and police and prosecutors too.  And that fear is well earned.  And perhaps it’s justified if not justifiable.  Perhaps those who have abused the justice and penal system so flagrantly during the past four years are in for a taste of their own medicine.  But perhaps not.  During his first term in office Mr. Trump, after all, did not seek to prosecute the Clintons or their allies, even after the Steele Dossier affair.

There are other possibilities. 

Having been the victim of tyranny in action and abuse of power by the Biden administration, not only against him but against thousands and thousands of ordinary citizens, against Jill Stein, Cornell West and Robert F. Kennedy, against thousands of patriotic Americans who protested on January 6, 2021 in a manner much less flagrant than did American “heroes” in Boston Harbor centuries ago or opponents of police brutality against African Americans just five years ago, perhaps his attitude will surprise even those quacking in their boots in fear of chickens coming home to roost. 

Perhaps his administration will focus on critical issues such as sane electoral safeguards, safeguards like easy to obtain voter identification with photographs, fingerprints and other verifiable forms of minimizing fraud while concurrently seeking to assure that participation in electoral processes by all eligible voters is facilitated.  And perhaps he will recommend legislation to Congress outlawing censorship and other means of threatening the exercise of freedom of opinion and freedom of expression, whether by public authorities or by the monopolistic private entities that have gained control over the infrastructure most of us now use to communicate.  And perhaps he will propose additional legislation to Congress and state legislatures that will outlaw and severely penalize the abuse of the penal and judicial systems for partisan political purposes, eliminating related immunity which leads to impunity.  And perhaps his solicitor general can convince the Supreme Court to overturn the egregious decision in Sullivan v NY Times which has facilitated the death of objective journalism in the United States and facilitated the character assassination of so many, including Mr. Trump.  And perhaps Mr. Trump will propose a constitutional amendment that will outlaw legalized bribery through political contributions and generous fringe benefits such as free travel, etc., and seriously regulate the utterly corrupt lobbying industry.

Perhaps Mr. Trump will avoid the meddling in the affairs of other countries, including the imposition and maintenance of ludicrous punitive economic sanctions and economic blockades that destroy their economies and create a crescendo of illegal immigration seeking solace in the land that made them all kinds of promises if they’d only turn against their brethren, and, then, perhaps he and his political allies will support meaningful and fair immigration reform that will encourage compliance with applicable laws, not only by depriving violators of all related benefits and building walls, but by providing for prompt, fair and equitable procedures for immigration by foreigners who have a legitimate basis to seek permanent residency and then citizenship the way the ancestors of most current citizens of the United States once obtained it.

Perhaps Mr. Trump and other members of his administration and others who have been victims of the autocracy and tyranny rampant during the Biden administration, instead of seeking revenge and becoming mirror images of their adversaries, will do the foregoing, not in a mean spirited manner but in a manner that will heal wounds, minimize polarization and really “Make America Great Again”, but internally, not in an adversarial manner against the world.  That may not be likely but Mr. Trump is rarely predictable, and he is not always wrong.  And only someone who has been made to suffer what Mr. Trump was made to suffer during the past eight years can really understand why the foregoing changes are so essential for America’s quest to someday attain the promises laid out in the Declaration of Independence, hypocritical though they were, and the premises set forth in the Preamble to the Constitution. 

Like many Americans, I have lost faith in both major political parties and in the institutions of government, at least at the federal level, but if Mr. Trump would follow the path described above (unlikely, I know), he would earn a place on Mount Rushmore even higher than that occupied by the four deeply flawed former presidents enshrined there, all men who, notwithstanding their shortcomings, nevertheless seem to have made a positive lasting impression.

Perhaps an exercise in wishful thinking but “if our reach does not exceed our grasp, then what’s a heaven for”?
_____

© 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/.

Reflections and Prognostications with respect to a First Tuesday Following a First Monday in November

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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.
_____

© 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/.

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.

_____

© 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/.

Tangled Political Realities as November 2024 Approaches

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In terms of political organizations, the concepts of “conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “left”, right” and “center” no longer have any real meaning. Their meaning and context have been vacuumed, distorted and destroyed by those in charge of perpetrating and perpetuating lies and disinformation, the corporate media, faux historians, controlled academia and those who control the Internet (including both social media and search engines where algorithms rule). Such terms are now merely tools to polarize us, to divide us and to make us easier to control.

Two relevant opposing concepts do however exist: state-ism and populism.

Statists include an ironic amalgam of those who honestly believe that current governments are beneficent and the answer to all our social, economic and political problems with cynical deep state operatives who see the state as the ideal tool to control us and through such control, to extract ever increasing profits for the billionaire class. The latter is comprised of moles buried throughout the bureaucracy, the judiciary and the media who assure that government works to perpetuate the worst among us in power while keeping the bulk of us safely divided.

Populists are an amalgam from diverse, frequently opposing sociopolitical perspectives who share a belief that the institutions of government have been perverted and thus oppose them. In general, they share beliefs in real democracy and real liberty but acknowledge that such concepts do not currently exist.  Populists comprise the vast majority but have permitted statist to maintain them divided into opposing camps based on the fake labels listed above, i.e.: “conservative”, “liberal”, “progressive”, “left”, right” and “center”, which populists take seriously. The labels are institutionally fake but contextually relevant. The differences exist for populists but the reality is that far more unites each sector of the populist political spectrum than that which divides them. Something that statists seek to obfuscate at all costs because, should populists attain their common interests and often complimentary goals, the statist empire could be destroyed and the dreams of equity, relative equality, justice and peaceful coexistence might become realities.

Statists use divisive emotions to maintain dictatorial control: what were once known as “wedge issues” which keep populists at each others’ throats. Issues like abortion and gun control and immigration, and they distort sociocultural divisions like gender, sexual orientation, race, nationality and religion keeping real problems festering because as long as they remain unresolved, populists can be kept from uniting. And, of course, the most cynical and thus most effective statists in the United States are today found in the Democratic Party and among the traditionalist wing of the Republican Party, and in the United Kingdom, in the once populist Labour Party and in the Conservative Party, in each case, merely virtually identical two-headed-Hydrae.

In the meantime, Hillary Clinton and her groupies try to re-seize control of the Democratic Party from a dazed and confused Joe Biden so that she can have one more chance to be the first female president while the Obama camp keeps pulling tangled strings behind the scenes to deflect her aspirations but is itself confused as to whether Michele or “AG” (his real name is Eric but he can’t let us forget he was once the Attorney General) Holder should replace their inept current figurehead, and Donald Trump keeps smirking and holding massive rallies while we ignore that three decent people are seeking to lead us out of the Deep State wilderness: Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., Jill Stein and Cornell West, PhD.

And the rich keep getting richer, the poor, poorer, the economic center keeps shrinking and people keep dying massively in elective and genocidal wars while defense industry dividends soar and the corporate media shouts:

“Nothing here to see!  Move along!!!  Turn the page!!! Or else!!!”

_______

© 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/.

Observations on the Release of Julian Assange from Belmarsh Prison

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At long last Julian Assange has been released by the vile government of the United Kingdom after a guilty plea was extorted by the equally vile Biden administration in the United States.  It is not only way past time, but the imprisonment and indictments of Julian Assange should never have happened nor should the traitorous actions of Lenin Moreno, then president of Ecuador, or the betrayal of all standards of journalism by what passes for journalism throughout the NATO bloc, ever occurred.

The extorted release of Julian Assange by the ill-named United States Department of Justice highlights the putrid nature of what passes for justice in the United States and the United Kingdom, legal systems that punish the innocent and reward the guilty through “plea bargains”, really a system for extorting the innocent by threatening them with draconian punishment if they do not agree to accept often unfounded prosecutorial accusations while conversely rewarding the guilty through sentences (if that) much more lenient than they deserve for their wrongs.  The former is certainly what happened in the case of Julian Assange but it is so obvious that prosecutors just wanted cover for their own crimes of lesse humanidad that it highlights the plight of millions of Americans and others subjected to this ludicrous travesty. Plea bargaining is capitalism imposed on the justice system, a “let’s make a deal or else” concept identical to that used by extortionists in organized crime, an obvious form of state sponsored racketeering. 

I’m thrilled that Julian Assange is free but it’s analogous to a situation where after having murdered millions, the Nazis (or Zionists) let one of their victims survive after torturing him or her into confessing that he or she was a traitor to the master race.  No punishment could be too severe for those responsible, not only for prosecuting the Assange case but all other plea bargains where innocent people are coerced into admitting guilt in order to escape from continuing torture. Had the Biden administration any trace, any semblance of decency it would have released Julian Assange with profound apologies and just compensation for the torture inflicted upon him for having dared to seek and share the truth concerning terrible state sponsored crimes. But that was not the case and the Biden administration needs to be held accountable rather than given credit. 

The governments of the United States and the United Kingdom are not the only villains. The purported profession of journalism finds itself indelibly stained by its conduct throughout the Assange saga, especially media such as the United Kingdom’s Guardian or the United States’ Washington Post, New York Times, CNN, MSNBC and Fox News.  Decent people should boycott every enterprise that supports them through advertising or grants or just plain bribes.

It is unlikely that Julian Assange will ever be able to return to the brave brand of real journalism we all so desperately need.  Well, all but the very worst among us, our political and military leaders.  A decade of torture will have, if not broken him, seriously debilitated him, and worse, set an example for anyone who might otherwise dare to cooperate in exposing inconvenient truths involving the travesties of the NATO bloc of purported libertarian democracies.  And that was the goal of the Biden administration.  As George W. Bush once falsely proclaimed on the deck of a United States aircraft career, “mission accomplished”.  But at least Julian Assange is free and will soon be in the bosom of his wonderful family who will do all they can to make him whole again.

As for us, all we can do is do our best to hold the real villains accountable, those who have totally perverted the concepts of justice, of legality, of ethics and of morality; those for whom perpetual war is the worthiest and most profitable goal and who have politicized and destroyed what pass for legal systems.  And to fearlessly emulate Julian’s quest for truth, a torch he has probably now passed to us.

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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 Civic Ironies that keep us Politically Caged

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On May 10, 2024, Jonathan Cook published an article on Substack entitled “Biden’s war on Gaza is now a war on truth and the right to protest. The media’s role is to draw attention away from what the students are protesting – complicity in genocide – and engineer a moral panic to leave the genocide undisturbed”.  The topic was timely and essential, but for me, it raised another issue, a political reality that is utterly ignored, one that deals with the fact that the relevant political division today is not between right and left, or between liberals and progressives versus conservatives, but between Deep State minions and tools, and the populists who oppose them.  Two definitions are essential in understanding the foregoing, the definition of what we mean when we use the terms “Deep State” and “populists”.

The Deep State is an informal but profound alliance between the military industrial complex (against which president Dwight David Eisenhower warned us in November of 1960); the intelligence agencies of the United States, the United Kingdom and the State of Israel, plus their counterparts in diverse NATO member states; the traditional mass media in the United States and in US allies; the Democratic Party; and, traditionalist members of the Republican Party such as the Bush Family, the Cheney family, the McCain family and their political allies.  The Deep State has riddled the federal government at all levels with moles, i.e. unelected bureaucrats, especially in the Department of Justice and its state and local level analogues, and throughout the federal judiciary; moles who carry out the orders of their billionaire masters rather than those of the people we elect to run our government, unless, of course, those interests coincide.  Populists, from both the left and the right wings of the political spectrum, are individuals and organizations who believe deeply in democracy and liberty, but believe that the formal governmental institutions responsible for guaranteeing such concepts are inept and corrupt, and thus, they have little faith in the traditional political castes.

The Deep State manages to hold unto dictatorial power (i.e., control of legislative, executive, judicial, police and electoral functions) by keeping the populists divided based on fringe issues, most notably abortion and the right to bear arms, and by focusing attention on polarizing issues such as race, gender, sexual preferences, national origins, religion (and its absence) and the fake war on terror.  Under the Biden administration, the Deep State has criminalized the right to protest, unless, as in the case of the Black Lives Matter rights, the protests serve their domestic political aspirations.

It is obvious that the Deep state profoundly manipulated the 2018 congressional elections and the 2020 presidential elections and that such manipulation had a profound impacts on the results.  It is also at least possible and possibly likely, that the use of mass mail-in ballots without requiring the voters themselves to turn them in facilitated electoral fraud, possibly enough to have impacted the 2020 presidential election.  Many of those who protested those results, whether violently, peacefully or through the legal process have been subjected to the full weight of federal and state penal systems in clear violation of the most fundamental principles of what used to pass for democracy in the United States, and that includes not only Republicans, but independents and members of smaller political parties.  Many people who despised the GOP candidate in that election had no problem with the subversion of the civic rights involved as it helped their “team” to win, despite that such victory proved utterly hollow (where is health care for all, world peace, economic wellbeing, equity, equality, etc.?).  But now, in a sense, the precedents they applauded have come back to haunt at least some of them, actually, the very best among them.  I refer to the current police and legal attacks against students, faculty members and others who dare to protest against Israeli genocide.

As in the case of the Deep State machinations in the 2020 presidential elections, it is clear that the students, faculty members and others protesting against Israeli genocide have an existentially valid point.  Everything they demand involves what the Nuremburg trials following the second war to end all wars prohibited and sought to punish by invoking the death penalty against the leaders involved and forever outlawing their political movements, outlawing them everywhere, but that has not proved to be the case as neo-Nazis rule the Ukraine, with full Deep State support, as well as Israel.  And those who dare to point that out, to protest against it either violently, peacefully or through legal actions, find themselves persecuted, both civically and legally, with their futures placed in serious jeopardy, as is the case in the series of trials against protesters and critics of the results of the 2020 presidentai election.

It is profoundly ironic that the issues involved in both cases are so similar, while those involved feel that the two principle issues are completely different, and that the members of each group have nothing in common, when in reality, they are, in fact, so similar.  Each group is comprised of deeply committed individuals who profoundly believe in truth, justice and equity, and who are willing to risk their “lives, property and sacred honor”, a phrase once attributed to United States founding father Patrick Henry”, to see justice done.  They have a common enemy, the Deep State which adroitly manipulates them and uses each of the groups against the other in order to maintain the dictatorial power that permits it to abuse police at all levels and the penal laws such police and departments of justice are sworn to uphold, in order to continue the very profitable state of perpetual war, to continue to overthrow governments and to keep the truth under wraps, as it does, for example, though the imprisonment of one of the world’s only real journalist, Julian Assange.  All actions which maximize the profits and minimize the risks of the wealthiest and least honorable among us.

How ironic that Trump supporters, to whom it is obvious that he is being persecuted through abuse of power in order to prevent his return to power, and that the corporate media has made a mockery of the truth in order to assist in that process, trust that same media when it calumnies against those who oppose genocide, apartheid and ethnic cleansing, deeming them domestic terrorists, the same label it applies to those who expressed their outrage at what they perceived to be massive electoral fraud, in their protests at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.  And how ironic that the students, faculty members and their supporters who are being subjected to high handed mass media and police abuse and abuse of legal processes to stifle their protests against obvious genocide, with tactics all too similar to those used against the s called January 6 terrorists, don’t realize that they not only have a commonality of interests in the legal process, but that many of their goals are compatible rather than antagonistic.

It is irony such as this, it is our own civic incoherence, which permits the worst among us to attain and maintain power, while the lives of the best and most courageous among us are destroyed.  Something for all of us to consider as we vote this November and to consider that there are at least five candidates running for president, not just two, and that many political parties and movements are fielding candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives, not just two.  And that the same is true at the state and local levels.  And that the only wasted votes are those we decline to cast for the things in which we believe and which we instead cast based on induced fears and in support of purportedly lesser evils.
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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, an intermittent commentator on radio and television, and, an occasional contributor to diverse periodicals and publications.  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/.

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/.

Rethinking Delusional Popular Governance

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The concept of democracy in conjunction with governance seems a sacred cow, unfortunately, a dysfunctional sacred cow given that the concept of democracy is neither understood nor respected and that what is required for the constitutionally guaranteed “public welfare” is efficient, transparent and honest governance with the capacity for long range planning and for providing its constituents with the opportunity to fully realize their capabilities and to lead peaceful, comfortable, happy and fulfilled lives.  That is certainly not what exists anywhere today.  Rather, we have self-perpetuating systems built on pillars of omnipresent corruption implemented through corrupt mass media and administered by corrupt entrenched bureaucracies.  Human rights, as the long-term Israeli genocide in Palestine supported by the United States and NATO makes clear, are mere delusions.

There are two principal poles for what is considered democratic governance, presidential systems with legislatures elected for fixed terms, and parliamentary systems which meld legislative and executive functions for variable terms, the exact length depending on how well the executive, which stems from the legislature, and the legislature are able to function collaboratively.  The latter is both more democratic and more coherent, but has its own internecine flaws.  In addition, there are forms of governments that require voters to participate (or else), generally in uniparty Communist systems, the most successful being those in the Peoples Republics of China and Vietnam, but according to the western press at least, they apply serious restrictions on personal liberty.

Looking at the most efficient governments, those most able to function strategically as well as tactically, it appears that long term executive leadership is essential, leadership such as that demonstrated in Germany during the long chancellorship of Angela Merkel and in the Russian Federation during the Putin era and the aforementioned Chinese and Vietnamese systems.  Of course, corrupt and inept long term leadership, such as that in Egypt, is awful.  Trusting that a majority of the people make the best electoral decisions has proven a fallacy, largely because the “people” are not free to select candidates, that function in reality being effected through a partisan filtering system controlled by purported elites and now, imposed in countries like the United States through blatant judicial manipulation as well.  In addition, the resulting disinterest results in lack of participation so no candidate is likely to ever receive more than 50% of the eligible vote, the quintessential aspect of democracy.

If the foregoing is accurate, then perhaps we need to consider how to implement a meritocratic rather than democratic method of selecting our leadership on a long term basis, but a method subject to earlier democratic revocation for misfeasance or malfeasance and with significant personal penalties in the case of any such revocation.  It could, for example, involve, in the first instance, a selection process embodying the philosophy of the original Electoral College in the United States, with a democratic revocatory process exercised both periodically, say every five years, or on the spot if invoked by a significant portion of the electorate dissatisfied with the results of the incumbent leader.  Electoral participation by the citizenry would, as it was in ancient Athens, be a duty and not a right, with serious consequences for shirking it or exercising it in a corrupt manner (e.g., selling or renting it).  It smells a bit too much like the fascist ideal of an overall, all-powerful leader, except for the revocatory mechanisms but those make all the difference.  Admittedly, the concept needs to be polished a bit with a check and balance mechanism such as a negative legislature, an elected body charged with political control functions and the ability to veto executive decrees (which would replace traditional legislative functions), but not responsible for enacting legislation.  A multi cameral negative legislature would be best, one chamber being selected democratically, one based on pluralistic concepts and one selected meritocratically based on expertise in diverse areas but all three chambers voting as one.  Of course, an independent judiciary would be essential, but not one charged with constitutional control or review, as would an independent body controlling the electoral system, perhaps a body selected by the legislature.  The most serious penalties under the penal system would be reserved for violation of political and judicial duties, pretty much the way it is today in the People’s Republic of China.

If it ain’t broke don’t fix it is a saying reflective of a great deal of common sense but one that does not apply to our current models of governance.

Something to at least consider, although implementation in the face of the entrenched and ruthless deep state makes any kind of real reform improbable.
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© Guillermo Calvo Mahé; Manizales, 2023; 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/.