Random Thoughts

We’ve just had a weird election where the rules changed in the middle of the extended campaign creating an appearance of partisan fraud, and the President is on social media making his case (rather poorly in my opinion).  Ultimately, the courts will at some point probably side with the various states that the certification of results is a state issue and that is all that counts.  Will this undermine the next President’s administration?  In the wise words of Bugs Bunny, “hmmm, could be.”  But with an adoring press and social media probably not.

This got me to thinking about the road we’ve traveled to this point.  Elections have always been a contentious thing with good and bad winners, or good and bad losers.  I don’t think John Adams was particularly enamored with his job after coming in second to George Washington, and not too long after that the election of the Vice President became linked to the election of the President.

In the early, to mid-nineteenth century the South would routinely threaten to leave the union unless their favored Democrat (or Democrat-Republican) was elected.  With the election of Abraham Lincoln, they made good on their threat. I guess this would be the ultimate example of “delegitimizing” a Presidency.  After the war, the winners got the spoils and there was a period where only Republicans were elected followed by a relatively even period of swapping where both parties traded power back and forth.  At least until Franklin Roosevelt felt it was his destiny to save the nation and held onto the office for four terms (he died in office or it might have been five terms). 

After the latest of the World Wars (2^nd for those keeping track), both parties were made up of liberals, moderates, and conservative, but with the advent of President Johnson’s “Great Society,” and the recognition of the overt racism still plaguing America that began to shift as the parties seemed to abandon an inclusive approach to appeal to specific population segments.  I often wonder if the creation of the Presidential primary system did this?  For me, it is kind of a chicken and egg question.  Did the primaries create the power of political activists or did the activists lead to the creation of the primaries?

What I’ve seen in my lifetime, the role of the President has gone from an astute politician/administrator, seeking to protect the country from its outside enemies, while working towards what he viewed as best for the nation (meaning he would work with the opposition when he could convince enough members of the other side it was in both parties interest) to the point where we are at today where each party believes only they have the nation's interest at heart and they need to control the entire government so they don’t have to work with those “other guys,” or if they don’t have the entire government they have enough to stop “those other guys” from doing all sorts of bad things.

We as a society, thanks to the internet and social media, have pushed that relationship with mass movements to legitimize or delegitimize both parties and their candidates.  For brevity let's only go back to the very end of the last century where the Florida election held up the concession of Al Gore until the Supreme Court ruled in GW’s (Bush the younger) favor. I think he would have remained a challenged President by the losers if 9/11 hadn’t united the nation at least for the next several years.

In 2009 when Barrack Obama was sworn in – those who didn’t like him spent years on the conspiracy trail claiming he wasn’t really a natural-born citizen and in so doing sowed the seeds of dissent.  The fact he came out of almost nowhere to win the Democratic Party’s nomination and all his records were sealed only added fuel to the conspiracy fire.  For the eight years of his Presidency, the press seemed to find a lot of things to investigate, but those questions weren’t high on their list of things to wonder about.

Then we come to 2016.  A year when both the major parties find as their “best choice” candidates, people who carried as much excess baggage as Jacob Marley[1].  When the anointed Democratic woman lost, the left went wild.  We had women marching where the women wore “pussy hats” to demonstrate their mature response to the loss.  We had street riots where stores were vandalized to demonstrate the principled response to what was clearly a stolen election.  Then there were the never-ending investigations of the Trump campaign and principles associated with the campaign.  The evidence now strongly suggests many of these activities were begun by the previous administration which had, in its words, “a scandal-free administration.”

I’m just guessing here but I assume two things.  First, President Trump will be unsuccessful in his appeals since the Federal Courts are hesitant to step into something that is really a state issue.  (The Dominion Servers issue might be a federal issue which the court could address under the Commerce clause but that seems unlikely to me.)  The second is the media will return to its preferred role of quiet partnership with the DNC where its sole role is to protect the Democratic incumbent whoever he or she might be.

---

[1] Charles Dickens “A Christmas Carol”

How Do We Know Who to Trust?

We are in a time where we’ve seen the obvious political agendas of the news outlets and where opinion is offered as fact. How then do we know whether or not we can trust the results of the election?  Each side will make its claims, each side will say the other is lying, and each side will find fault with something about the election.

In the past, we looked at politicians as trustworthy public servants.  Can the same be said today?  We’ve had four years of the vilification of the President so can we trust him?  Then again, we had eight years of the celebration of a President who claimed his administration was “scandal free.”  Unfortunately, even the smallest amount of research shows that is a pure fabrication.  If we consider President Obama’s time we see:  A gun running scandal that led to the death of a federal agent.  An IRS targeting scandal that called into question the impartiality of the IRS approval tax of free status when it came to requests from conservative organizations.  The unexpected withdrawal of forces from Iraq that led to the creation of ISIS.  The claims  the Islamic riots in Egypt and the over throw of Libyan’s dictator were due to some minor YouTube video.  The failure to help the Ambassador in Libya when he was attacked by violent mobs.  The dispersal of Kaddafi’s stockpiles of weapons after he was overthrown.  How about the cages he built to house children at the southern border?  The list could go on, but I think I’ve made my point.

These same observations can be made of Representatives, Senators, Governors, State officials, and so on down to the lowliest bureaucrats.  How many politicians have enriched themselves and their families while claiming to make life better for their constituents?

So, now we come to the question, who can we trust to reassure us that our vote was counted and the election was fairly run and the results legitimately reflect the will of the people?

Our Constitution delegates the running of elections to the individual states.  It is their job to organize, train and equip the state to run a fair and unbiased process.  For most of the states the job falls within the purview of their Secretary of State and if history is to be understood they have done that reasonably well, although there are always exceptions.  If there weren’t those exceptions the jokes about the dead voting in Chicago, the paying for votes of Irish immigrants coming off the boat to support Tammany Hall, or the resurrection of newly found ballots wouldn’t exist.  The controversy of recounts, having people try to determine what a voter really intended, or what constituted a legal ballot would not be a consideration.

Now, in this information age we come into a new spectrum of data manipulation.  We see in the nature of polls a natural bias that may exaggerate one set of data or eliminate another.  With our transition into massive voter data collection, we also see the potential for vote manipulation.  When one side points this out, and the other side dismisses the possibility we are left with a legitimate question, why would one side not acknowledge the possibility?

My conclusion is a simple one.  One side thinks they have control of the data and the other side does not. I’ll leave it to you to decide how you answer that question.  But at the end of the day, we individual voters really don’t get to say who we trust or not.  Until something remarkable changes our system we must accept the decisions of the individual Secretaries of State, and of course the court challenges that arise from questions about those decisions.  My takeaway from recent elections is we can no longer trust the media projections sent out to support a clearly bias agenda.

And The Beat Goes On.

    It is Saturday, November 7th, 2020, and the Democratic party is giddy with excitement.  The media has projected Joseph Biden will replace Donald Trump as President based on the vote projections for the State of Pennsylvania.  If the vote is upheld it is an interesting choice for a state so heavily committed to the fossil fuel industry, but then when does Presidential voting ever really make sense.  For example, four years ago there was absolutely no way Donald Trump could beat Hillary Clinton, yet despite all the protestations of her and her supporters he did.
    So, what happens next?
    As we are seeing – political rallies are no longer “super-spreader” events as the people mass in the BLM approved massing zones of the major cities to celebrate the downfall of “Orangeman Bad.”  But is the king truly dead?  We can expect to see at least a month of legal squabbling over “every vote” versus “every legal vote.”  
    I assume based on the software “glitch” found in dominion software at least some minor investigations may be made, but if the ruling parties in those affected states have their say it will be quickly asserted that we should ignore the man behind the curtain and the media will assure us there is nothing wrong with the software since the high tech companies are all neutral in their political beliefs.
    To the benefit of the Democratic Party, the RNC and President Trump eliminated any claim they might make about being fiscally responsible.  Biden has pointed out he will increase taxes -- so those people who complained about not getting as big a refund as they were used to under Obama will now have the opportunity again (maybe).  They say they are going to tax the rich, but somehow it never seems to work that way… Maybe it’s because the rich donate all those campaign dollars?
    On a bright note, all the mansions of southern California will be okay since none of their millionaire stars will have to move to Canada.  “We are the world” telethons will return, and the ability of the rich to fly wherever they want with the simple purchase of “Carbon Credits” will become unquestioned as the rest of us transition to a green new deal.
    The questions that will remain unanswered are:
    Will the Democrats be as partisan and vengeful as they have been these last four years?  If we look back to how they reacted in 2009 I think we can assume they will.  Sure, there will be the public displays of serving the “entire nation,” but certainly not the deplorable's or those who didn’t vote for the progressive movement.  Their social influencer type people have already started making up their enemies list of who to remove from the public space.
    Will the government continue to be stalemated by the separate control of the House and Senate?  I assume we won’t know the answer to that until Georgia is sorted out.
    Will the press remain as hostile and questioning as they have been these past four years?  I think this is the simplest of questions to answer, and we should know the answer with certainty by inauguration day.
    They will return to their sleepy little role of broadcasting the state media approved message.  Jim Acosta will be elevated to the head of the White House Press Corp and his tweets will cause many to develop diabetes as they sing the praise of President Harris.
    As a friend pointed out the hardest question is, what will late night talk show hosts (formerly known as comedians) find to make fun of.  For the life of me I can’t imagine what they will do for their monologues except dig up the material they used from 2009-2016 to mock the Republicans and make sure they comply with the new standards of wokeness. Those changes should keep the writers busy as those standards seem to change weekly.
    One final question, which may go unanswered for the next four years.     Where is Hunter Biden?