Thoughts on today's midterm elections

 

So, once again, America gets to vote on who will be its representatives in Congress and the Senate for the next couple of years.

The question of whether those representatives will, in fact, be truly "representative", or merely political golems and automatons who've been shoehorned into office over - and often despite - the votes of the electorate, will be neither asked nor answered by our political powers that be.  That's a pity, because it's the single most important question that this election will raise.  If the same sort of shenanigans take place today that took place during and after the November 2020 elections, we'll know that the USA has become just another banana republic, just another corporate state, where "we the people" have effectively been stripped of the powers allocated to us in the republic's constitution, and we've become nothing more than "we the peons" or "we the pitiful".  Three out of the "four boxes of liberty" will have been demonstrated to be ineffective, for all the world to see.  If we want to see change, that will leave only the fourth box ... and nobody in his right mind wants that to happen.  I've seen it too often in too many other countries, and the outcomes are unspeakable.  The further we can keep that from our shores, the better!

It behooves all of us to pay very, very careful attention to how the votes from today's elections are counted, and to demand accountability from electoral officials at any sign of anything untoward, including delays, vote counting being stopped, additional "mysterious" batches of votes being "found" for a particular candidate, statistically impossible voting patterns, and a host of other irregularities.  We tried in 2020, only to have the courts largely refuse to hear the cases.  (Do note that.  It's not that there was no evidence of electoral fraud in 2020 - there was evidence, out the wazoo.  However, the courts refused to admit or examine that evidence on procedural grounds, often very flimsy.  It was very instructive to watch how the "deep State" manipulated the proceedings.)

Speaking of the 2020 elections, I said the other day:

Those who manipulated that election are bound and determined that they won't be called to account for their misdeeds.  There's simply no way they're going to sit back and allow the voice of the people to override their political imperatives.

That observation still stands.  They're going to try something - anything - that will prevent their losing power in this election, and forestall their being called to account.  Depend upon it.

Tucker Carlson points out that "Transparency restores faith in institutions".

In a functioning democracy, you're not simply allowed to raise questions about elections, you're encouraged to. You're encouraged to because it's your government. There's no such thing as election-denying in a free society. It's called free speech. You're allowed to say it if you think it, period, and yet our media, which exists to defend free speech, is doing its best, day after day, to shut it down. "How dare you raise any questions about next week's midterms! Why are they telling you that? It's ominous."

. . .

First of all, if people have questions about the last election ... there's a really simple way to put those concerns to rest, to stop the conspiracy theories, and that's produce the evidence. Show us the facts. If people are worried about vote totals in a specific state from 2020, first of all, they have a right to have the party in charge prove that that election was fair, but moreover, they have a duty to ask because the only way you have a free and fair system is if everybody is free to ask questions about it and demand real answers.

. . .

There's nothing wrong with asking questions — period — and if that's banned, this is a totalitarian country.

There's more at the link.

If we'd had a lot more transparency after the 2020 elections, I wouldn't be so concerned about those taking place today . . .

Martin Armstrong, who's proved to be a prescient and largely accurate economic observer, goes so far as to warn that if the same shenanigans occur today, manipulated as always by oligarchs and pressure groups like the W.E.F., there may not be an election in 2024.

"The cheating in the midterm election next week is going to be so great that it is almost impossible to make a prediction. . . . In a fair midterm election, the Republicans would win the House and the Senate."

. . .

"It’s going to be tight, and the Republicans have a shot at taking the House.  Technically, they should take the House and the Senate.  I am just not sure.  The corruption is so bad, it’s crazy.  Pennsylvania sent out hundreds of thousands of ballots to people who are not documented or even American.  I’ve gotten emails from people in Canada, they are getting mail-in ballots.  They mailed them to Canada. . . .Where this ends up, who knows?  It’s just so corrupt, it is over the top.  It doesn’t matter who wins.  Nobody is going to accept this thing, and that is the problem."

. . .

"We may not even have an election in 2024.  It is not looking very good, and it’s probably because this election is not going to be accepted.  When it is so over-the-top corrupt, what do you do for the next one?  The United States will not exist after 2032.  After 2028 and 2029, we are going to have to redesign a government from scratch.  America is being destroyed.  Republics always end in absolute corruption.  We just saw the same thing happen in Brazil.  They staged a major effort to take Bolsonaro out. . . . This is a worldwide effort.  They had to get rid of Trump.  The other one who stood in their way is Bolsonaro.  Then there is Putin (Russia) and Xi Jinping (China).  I think you are going to have historians look back at this 50 years from now, and they will call this period ‘The Climate Change Wars’. . . .They are trying to take down as much oil energy capacity as possible."

. . .

"Our computer is showing it’s going to be a rocket launch for volatility and civil unrest next year."

Again, more at the link.

I wish I could believe that Mr. Armstrong was exaggerating, but he's not.  Think about it.  Those who most fervently support the 2020 election results and the resulting government are going to be all-in on expecting the same thing again in 2022.  If they don't get it, they'll reject the result as "unrepresentative" and/or having been "manipulated", and probably cry electoral fraud and mismanagement.  If the opposite happens, and the 2020 results are repeated, everyone on the conservative side is going to claim exactly the same thing.  Neither side trusts the other;  neither side is willing to listen to the other;  and neither side is willing to examine the evidence objectively and in full, in order to resolve any doubts using "just the facts".  When facts no longer rule, opinion, conjecture and emotion dominate.  None of them are reliable, and none can be objectively verified.  That's a recipe for disaster - and for no future free and fair elections, because nobody will trust them or accept their outcome.

The Good Citizen offers some gloomy - but soundly argued - thoughts about that.

[Electoral politics has] become another corporate-state money laundering operation while attention snatching to distract and demoralize a public that desperately grasps for ‘hope and change’ every few years only to find there is little of either on offer anywhere.

The spectacle of elections has ballooned into a multi-billion dollar corporate-government bribery scam that reveals the most plainly crooked state in the history of human organized systems. No other country or perhaps even empire comes close in shamelessness of open bribery. Until money is removed from the process, nothing will ever change.

As a result, there is no sign of a heartbeat for a Constitutional Res-Publica any longer ... The political structure of the American government today resembles a three-layer cake: Oligarchy - Corporatocracy - Kakistocracy, in order of power.

. . .

The word Democracy today is nothing more than a rhetorical political weapon to wield in justifying tyrannies whenever rulers need to gaslight their constituents. The assumption is always that whatever is a threat to their tyranny is a threat to democracy itself, so they use the word like a club to beat their slaves into submission to keep them voting every few years. It’s a protective shield to hide from the blowback of their own atrocious incompetency while projecting the offer of change if their debt slaves simply lend their minds to the charade of slum and spectacle that is American electoral politics.

More at the link.

Despite all that doom and gloom, my wife and I will still be voting today.  After all, if you don't play, you can't win:  and, as Robert Heinlein famously observed, "Always cut the cards".  You never know what might happen.  Let's all proceed on that hope.  If our hopes are unfounded . . . well, at least we tried.  Nobody will be able to accuse us of letting things slide over the edge into chaos without doing our best to prevent that.

As for assessing the election results tonight and over the next few days, the American Spectator has some very amusing suggestions as to how to assess what's going on.

We on the red team will know we’re having a rough night if these things happen:

• John King is working the big CNN election map with a drink in one hand.
• We’re shown film of Antifa members serving as poll monitors in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
• A conservative-heavy precinct with long lines is reported to have run out of ballots at 10 a.m.
• Late in the day, NBC, coming out of commercials, is playing “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

. . .

But if the following is happening, then the red team is having a nice night:

• Rachel Maddow is taking off her glasses and wiping her eyes a lot.
• PolitiFact is reported to be rehiring the 500 fact-checkers who were laid off after Biden won the presidency and Democrats won the Senate.
• Hunter Biden is seen boarding a flight to Brunei, which has no extradition treaty with the U.S.
• CBS is going to commercial breaks and coming out of commercial breaks to [the] strains of Mozart’s Requiem.

More at the link.  Go read it all for a good laugh.

Peter