Photo Credit:Carol M. Hghsmith collection
LoC
If the elites succeed in manipulating the count with illegitimate ballots, all the populist opposition will have left is Carl von Clausewitz's “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”We’re fast approaching a forced consensus on the future of our society. The process has been a lively contest up until now. Results have largely been determined by rules of the game, what we have long considered binding and absolute: our Constitution. The rules laid out how we might get along amicably in a diverse society of free-thinking people in an association of states, with varied interests, faiths, backgrounds, and concepts of what is important in life.
It’s the Republic we could keep, if we could get along by obeying the rules. The Constitution specifies we would conduct elections for our leaders at regular intervals together, but that the specific conduct of the elections would be left up to each state. Unfortunately, our founders, and more recently our leaders, didn’t see the need to specify rules of local election conduct that we could all agree on — like what constitutes cheating. For many years, that was resolved by varying interests at the state level that agreed on founding principles of fairness. Rules of the game. Real majorities of eligible voters determining the outcome of elections through an electoral college balance of power between large and small states, urban conglomerations and vast rural regions. Contests were determined by hard work, motivating voters by freely aired grievances, open condemnation of wrongs, and passionate appeals to virtuous conduct.
There have been infrequent instances of election fraud and cheating in our history, but usually not sufficient to sway results in choosing our leaders when all the important issues were publicly aired. That is, up until it was determined by the uniparty administrative state in D.C. and state capitals (Ike’s Military-Industrial-Complex) that only they were qualified to lead. These elites left it up to their bought-and-paid-for representatives to sway counts by gerrymandering, media manipulation, and modes of raising money to pay for it all.
The courts occasionally mediated disputes, but the uniparty determined which of their purchased politicians got to play. Now one of the parties wants to dictate only they get to play — like they’ve done in several blue states. Meanwhile, plebes in the heartland and ghettos are pandered to, largely ignored between two- and four-year campaign intervals, thrown scraps, and expected to fall in line as directed. The elites then go about their business of overtaxing, physically and digitally printing money, overspending, and feathering their own nests with insider deals, grift, and graft.
Apart from violent revolution, the only counterbalance to such a monopoly of power by out of touch elites, is populist resurgence. The theme recurs in history, infamously from the Gracchi Reforms onwards.
In national contests, the most recent instances of fraud determining outcomes were Illinois (Joe Kennedy with the Chicago machine) in 1960, and in 2020 with election fraud across numerous states under the guise of rule exceptions for Covid. The earlier case was corrected by administrative state operators through assassination. In 2020, it took courts overruling legislatures, oligarch private money for drop boxes, mass-manufactured ballots, and opportune counting after the polls closed. It was the inevitable result of a lust for retaining power by elites who believe they can bend the rules to the point of breaking — and still get away with it. But, enough of a critical eye remains from conservative groups, free media, and free-thinkers to expose their folly.
And so, a movement to Make America Great Again continues the struggle. In 2024, the MAGA populist resurgence rallies around the quintessential experienced patriot, Donald Trump, who has again called out these elites and further incurred their wrath resulting in unmitigated attacks. Impeachment attempts have been defeated, elite media fake news refuted, blatantly unconstitutional lawfare and election interference blunted — and finally assassination plots foiled, one by the grace of God.
Executive, legislative, and judicial dominance was once understood to be transitory, shared in any case between an ebullient majority and an often seething but “loyal” opposition minority, sometimes with a grudging continuity in the process; as in “politics stops at the water’s edge”, and the antics of the filibuster. Power sharing between the parties was effectively balanced, enough so that — with a universal belief in the system — all that was needed was a bit of course correcting and some hard work by a minority to get back on top. These concepts were the guardrails of democracy. There were winners and losers, and the losers just needed to up their game the next time around.
At the founding, and through a civil war, when rules of the game were beyond repair, an innate, visceral competition for power was required to prevail. After all, loss meant annihilation, or a breakup of the Union. Since then and until recently, competition with cooperation has been the ethos of the nation, the merit-based means of excelling and weeding out the weak, inefficient, immoral, and poorly conceived.
Collectivism, the antithesis of competition, was regularly beaten back over the last century and a half, but kept reappearing despite a dismal track record in every other locale it has been attempted. Progressivism, essentially a gradual collectivism of the credentialled elites, steadily encroached upon government at all levels and academia.
Government at all levels metastasized, protected by public sector unions. Academia was co-opted from its religious origins and connived to supply dubious credentials to agnostic and atheist elites. Competition was found by the most recent class of DEI administrators and educators to be passé. Dodgeball gave way to soccer, participation trophies, and now men in women’s sports, the ultimate repudiation of feminism. The result is a relaxation of rigorous thought and action, and an expectation that all participants deserve to be winners, even if so evidently undeserved. And so, the collectivist and progressive ethos has transitioned to the power struggle as exemplified by Barry (née Marshall) Soetoro’s radical transformation plans, accelerated exporting of manufacturing jobs and importing illegal people and drugs.
Unfortunately, and particularly in blue states, the elites and their subsidized minions believe they can retain and extend power if they steamroll and cheat at elections by any means necessary. Even if they don’t attempt to hide it. After all, they believe their count at the end is all that matters.
Biden’s Executive Order 14019 on March 7, 2021 directing all federal agencies to implement voter registration stratagems at the state level targeting blue populations, and the invitation to millions of illegals to enter and register to vote Democrat, are but the latest means to their progressive, collectivist end.
For free and fair elections there must be rules of legitimate participation. If the elites succeed in manipulating the count with illegitimate ballots, all the populist opposition will have left is Carl von Clausewitz’s “War is the continuation of politics by other means.”
The short term solution: participate legally, vote early, and don’t forget to prepare for the worst — just in case.
In the long run, we will need term limits for legislators as well as government employees, and a balanced budget by slashing the scope and depth of the administrative state before moving the capital 1,000 miles west to the nation’s center (real equity). Then we can devote our attention to external enemies.
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Image: Public domain.
