I received a telephone call last Saturday from an esteemed history professor who teaches for an Ivy League School, thanking me for being one of the litigants that took the Electoral College to the U.S. Supreme Court this spring. (As an unremarkable graduate from a Big Ten school for me having relationships with renowned Ivy League scholars is something way-cool for an aging Hoosier.) The cases now etched in case law were Chiafalo et all vs Washington and Colorado vs Baca et all, (I was at the end of this et all contraction), where the SCOTUS reversed the judgment of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 10th Circuit for the reasons stated in Chiafalo v. Washington). That landmark decision outlawed faithless presidential electors. Our phone discussion quickly moved off the cases’ merits where I said in the end the court rightfully ruled with the amicus briefs that chaos could ensue if full freedom was allowed in this dangerous political climate. I told the professor our objective was, in part, an objective to educate America about the severe faults of the Electoral College and bring the nation to its senses that we need to abolish the Electors for a direct election, where all of us are electors for the presidency. Our conversation then pivoted from what was hypothetical to the current unfolding reality as to how Trump and his fascist-cult allies were engaged in trying to overturn the self-evident election of Biden/Harris. Fully exposed an effort to discredit, delete, disavow, deny, denounce, repudiate, and wave off the election results and the collective “will of the people”, is a plain naked fascist effort by a wanna-be, faltering, authoritarian autocrat, right here in America, now in the post-modern the 21st Century no less, broadcast on cable TV and published on social media!
Random appropriate movie quote from the movie “Hoosiers”:
George:
Look, mister, there's... two kinds of dumb, uh... guy that gets naked and runs out in the snow and barks at the moon, and, uh, guy who does the same thing in my living room. First one don't matter, the second one you're kinda forced to deal with.
Coach Norman Dale:
Translate. That some sort of threat?
Ironically the socially disconnected Senator Ted Cruz referenced this quote at an Indiana GOP Dinner in 2016.
Translate; the one kind of dumb was Trump going cra-cra all those years doing his Trumpian bankrupt stuff right up to saying that Obama was actually Kenyan-born and had a birth certificate to prove it---he didn’t, and most of us thought it was just a dumbass running around naked barking at the moon on the roof of his New York Tower. But he entered our living rooms when he came down his Trump Tower escalator and stayed, barking like a rabid dog infecting many Americans with fascist rabis as their imaginative moon was a vinyl stencil on a wall. This savage cra-cra is forcing “we the people of our democracy” to deal with it. The threat is our very democratic-republic of 245 yrs, and with it all our liberties, our freedoms, and our very lives.
Be it in the 20th or 21st Century fascism is real, and it is reborn here right on America’s Main Street. It is the outgrowth of the always latent authoritarianism that lays within all modern national societies but often what we call the cra-cra right wing on the margins. Professor Robert Altemeyer, of the University of Manitoba, research holds that up to one-quarter of a population in a modern Western are actually authoritarians to various degrees. Washington Post’s book review: “Measuring the authoritarian mind-set of Trump’s followers”
Altemeyer’s “RWA” scale measures how much someone believes in right-wing authoritarianism based on their responses to various statements. For example: “Our country desperately needs a mighty leader who will do what has to be done to destroy the radical new ways and sinfulness that are ruining us.” RWA followers strongly agree with this statement.
Those who score high on the RWA scale are submissive to authority but can be aggressive on behalf of that authority. They are conventional in their thinking and behavior, highly religious, have less education, are highly prejudiced against other groups, oppose equal opportunity, lack critical-thinking skills, and often hold inconsistent positions. They “have only a superficial belief in liberty and democracy,” the authors write. When authoritarians and their followers talk about how much they value freedom, they are talking about their own freedom — not that of others. They believe in being lenient if they and their leaders break the law but merciless against those they deem inferior, according to Dean and Altemeyer.
Fascism is the intoxicating outgrowth of authoritarianism placing it into the human political organizational structure as a unified, consolidated force seeking raw political power. At its kernel element, fascism challenges the basic premise of democracy----voting is the supreme element, the only path to legitimizing governments. It is the very essence of a formal institutionalized consent of the governed, as the people elect through a majority their governments and thereby grant temporary permission for those elected to rule over those elector’s lives. Inherent to any functioning democracy is the concept that all votes are of equal measure, (unlike shareholders in a corporation or the donor classes in party politics) and that all eligible citizens have free and open access to express their vote, canvassed, accounted for, and published. And when there is a change, there ensue’s a peaceful transition of power of one regime to another.
2nd Random appropriate movie quote from “Gangs of New York”:
Boss Tweed:
Remember the first rule of politics. The ballots don't make the results, the counters make the results. The counters. Keep counting.
What Trump and his fascist minions are attempting is seeking to strikethrough selected consolidated oppositional votes, through lawful means in court and namely African-American votes en masse in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, but also votes that were cast in a certain manner (mail-in or absentee) or in the case of the State of Nevada the entire electorate, [UPDATE; just rejected by the court]. This is what the actual Boss Tweed as reported by Harper’s Weekly on October 7, 1871, was infamously known for;
“That’s what the matter. As long as I count the votes, what are you going to do about it?”
The Washington Post Tuesday offered a sound summation of Trump and his fascist cultists reaching now up reaching to the charge of “Crimes Against Democracy”.
Trump called political advisers Monday to say he had doubts about the GSA initiating the transition, to inquire about whether he could block certification of the Michigan result, and to express reluctance to travel to Georgia to campaign for the two Republican senators facing runoff elections, according to officials and advisers….
...In Michigan, a Republican member of the canvassing board broke from his party to certify the vote in that state, stressing that he was following the law. [In Michigan, the vote of the Board of State Canvassers effectively awarded the state's 16 electoral votes to Biden, who defeated Trump with a margin of more than 154,000 votes.]
The Trump campaign suffered yet another legal defeat on Monday as well, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court refusing to toss thousands of ballots in Philadelphia and the Pittsburgh area that had technical errors on their outer envelopes but showed no evidence of fraud…
...On Monday, Trump's campaign filed an emergency motion in federal appeals court in yet another case in Pennsylvania to temporarily block certification there. [UPDATE Pennsylvania’s top elections official certified the state’s presidential election results on Tuesday, officially declaring Joe Biden the winner and paving the way for him to receive the state’s 20 Electoral College votes next month.] The move came after a lower-court judge had rejected the campaign's arguments on Saturday in a withering opinion, expressing disbelief that the Trump campaign would seek to disenfranchise millions of Pennsylvanians with no hard evidence of fraud or irregularities.
Meanwhile, in Arizona on Monday, Mohave County became the last county to canvass its vote, putting the state on an apparent glide path to certification on Nov. 30 — though Trump allies have said more challenges could be coming. Biden won the state by about 10,400 votes, according to unofficial results.
Trump's efforts in court to overturn the election result, as his legal team has sought to block certification of Biden's victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, Georgia and Pennsylvania — yet has offered no evidence of widespread fraud to justify such drastic action…
...In Nevada, the state Supreme Court was scheduled to canvass the statewide vote Tuesday, with Gov. Steve Sisolak (D) expected to quickly announce the winner thereafter. The Trump campaign has filed what’s known as an election “contest” asking a state judge to overturn Biden’s victory or annul the election, which would mean no electoral college votes would be awarded. Biden’s unofficial margin currently stands at about 34,000 votes. The campaign has lost all previous efforts to delay the count.
In Wisconsin and Georgia, the president’s efforts to reverse results focused on recounts, even though officials in both states said there was virtually no chance the outcomes would change. The recount in Wisconsin, which Trump requested in only its two largest counties, began Friday, while Georgia was set to start its recount on Tuesday — the second in the state since Election Day.
That is precisely what Trump and fascist actors were trying to do, a Boss Tweed to count only the votes for himself and his party with impunity. Even the voicing these efforts from a sitting president and his fascist allies as being somehow acceptable---is, of course, it is not. Those are “Crimes Against Democracy”. Each of these crimes is predicated by psychological warfare where Trump and his fascists continue to promote the feeling of powerlessness and the rhetoric of fatalism where they have no consequences, that despite the overwhelming voter turnout, the majorities received by Biden, nothing will change. Secretary of State Pompeo on November 10th just two weeks ago stated openly replying to a FOX News reporter question:
"There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration," Pompeo said during a briefing Tuesday. "All right? We're ready."
Or on the same day the Washington Post reported that the [outgoing] Trump Administration was preparing for a budget for 2021:
The White House budget office has instructed federal agencies to continue preparing the Trump administration’s budget proposal for the next fiscal year, according to multiple administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to share details of private conversations.
Fortunately, despite Trump's efforts, officials throughout his administration were planning to coordinate directly with counterparts on the Biden team starting Tuesday, November 24th as part of the standard transition process that takes place between administrations.
As America goes through this ringer, like the old-fashioned laundry ringer that was on your past grandparent's machine where you had to manually ring out water, we are getting educated of the minutiae of laws and procedures elevating up to the election of a president. Only a handful of legal beagles know these details as to what is the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, where since 1892, the ULC has provided states carefully conceived uniform laws in many areas of commerce and interstate trade and most importantly, the area of the Electoral College. Specifically, the state’s processes of selecting, certifying, and accounting for elector votes and was connected with my previous efforts to gain lawful faithless trying to overturn their laws. The Electoral College controversy where Polly Baca and me sought a Temporary Restraining Order (TRO) in Federal Court regarding Colorado’s State Law smacked dead solid into that century-old the provisions; Colorado’s law:
“Each presidential elector shall vote for the presidential candidate and, by separate ballot, vice-presidential candidate who received the highest number of votes at the preceding general election in this state.”
My telephone discussion with the esteemed professor double-backed to our case and how at a deeper level we revealed how America’s democracy is withstanding this Trump fascist onslaught that recognized as now deeply embedded in the apparatus of the Republican Party. We talked about how the Republican Party has made corrupt anti-democracy bargains with this geyser of authoritarian spouting in the American electorate. Initially, it was Nixon’s Southern strategy going teamed with George Wallace delivering the old Dixiecrat segregationalists and outright racists into Lincoln’s Republican Party. That was then followed by the recent emergence of the astroturfed created Tea Party constituency that preceded Trump’s coalition of fascists and authoritarians as MAGA’s. Fully flowered into today’s dangerous threat to America democratic republic, our very existence. It is the something we have to deal with like a naked man barking in our living room!
It was then we came to the reason for his telephone call as he brought up Politico’s article: Trump calls on GOP state legislatures to overturn election results:
President Donald Trump made explicit Saturday the strategy his legal team has been hinting at for days: He wants Republican-led legislatures to overturn election results in states that Joe Biden won.
It was a strategy taken right out of the 1876 election of Harrison over Tilden but things have changed greatly since 1876 as I referenced above how state laws regarding the use of each state popular vote as the method for choosing electors. State legislatures do not have this power at this point of the election. But Trump and the fascists are not about the rule of law just the illusion of the law in the quest for them maintaining and obtaining raw political power.
Our efforts in December of 2016 seeking a TRO was rejected by Federal Judge Daniels in Colorado’s District Court before the Electoral College met. Ironically my 93-year-old Republican father telephoned me Monday, bemused by the fact that Trump seemingly was trying take a page out of my Electoral College playbook---he, then laughed saying---with the same result. Not exactly but yes a similar effect. The difference was that in 2016 we also had the moral standing of Clinton’s 2.8m national popular vote majority, AND, also the judgment that Trump was an autocrat. Four years ago our loss in Federal Court was followed by a state circuit court hearing ordering us to vote for Hillary Clinton under threat of a contempt of court, charge, misdemeanor state charges, and removal anyway, a consequence of the efforts by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws. Those same legal and political forces were in play in Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia other state canvass processes “trumping” Trump's fascist plans of creating an opening for the partisan legislative majority. It is also why the Trumpist who abstained in Michigan a vote that offered him safety so he wouldn’t be hauled into court and be removed. It also compelled a Republican state legislator aide, Aaron Van Langevelde, a brave and principled citizen to vote as the law directed. Those are the mechanisms in procedural and ministerial functions when it comes to certifying and acting on the people’s vote are critical. Ultimately it is why I voted for Clinton and sought to fight in court later. This is what the Supreme Court affirmed with little doubt in our case.
My telephone conversation concluded with the political reality for Republican Party is now grappling having that proverbial piano is hovering over their political heads: Biden won a 51.073% to 47.089% national majority, 80,186,397 to 73,931,066 votes; on a record 157,001,734 and they are still counting ballots mostly in New York State. There remain 1 to 2 million votes to count in New York City. Fascist cults do not subscribe to democratic majorities, nor do they adhere to the reciprocol nature of representative governments. It is why you witnessed the Supreme Court nominations first get blocked in Obama’s Administration and then rushed through in waining days of Trump’s. The Republican Senate is now mostly fascist. Those senators who did not step up before yesterday are now branded as either fascist or allied to fascism unless they fully disavow and work with us to deal with it.
The concept of one person, one vote, equally measured is only reserved for their own inside fascist community and even that is a formality as they take their cue from the supreme autocratic leader.
3rd Random movie quote, “Capitalism; A Love Story”
From the leaked CitiGroup Plutonomy Memos:
One person, one vote. At some point, it is likely that labor will fight back against the rising profit share of the rich and there will be a political backlash against the rising wealth of the rich.
This onslaught that we have witnessed over these last four years and especially these last three weeks will not just go off into a sunset like a John Ford western, (some of my favorites.) John Wayne is not going to get the girl in the end and we will live on with peace and tranquility. Trump has laid out the future playbook for future efforts to overturn a presidential election for the fascists. He and his cult has committed Crimes Against Democracy and must be held accountable. We had the Nazi’s face Crimes Against Humanity, where in recent decades had Serbians faced the same measure in the Hague. We need a national commission and legal remedies.
The playbook especially in a close election, like 2000, 2004, and 2016 where even though the popular vote was as significant as this year, a 4% difference, 2000 was an incomplete 517 vote difference in determining state where Gore held a 0.05% advantage nationally. In 2004 Bush won reelection with a 2.4% national popular advantage, yet if Ohio had turned to Kerry where Bush recorded a 135,000 vote margin. In 2004 there were systemic controversies where 92,000 punch card votes did not register a vote plus 155,000 provisional votes were disallowed, not counting the long lines in urban centers causing many voters not able to vote. Imagine if the vote in Ohio come to the same conclusion as 2000 where the loser of the electoral vote won the election?
2016 we know that 79,646 votes in three states that gave Trump his Electoral College victory. In this election it is apparent that 81,000 votes in four states pushed Biden over the Electoral College projection. Yes, this is not a functioning democracy where four presidential elections in six with national large polarities are not supreme and three times a minority vote gained the Oval Office.
Yet Trump and his fascist allies is actually educating how precious that concept of one person, one vote is. Aristotle:
Of governments, there are said to be two only forms--democracy and oligarchy; For aristocracy [plutocracy--the rule of the rich], is considered to be a kind of an oligarchy, as being the rule of the few, and a constitutional government is considered a democracy.
The form of government is a democracy when the people are free, who are also poor and in the majority, govern and in an oligarchy when the rich and noble govern, they being at the same time few in number.
In a democracy, the poor will have more power than the rich, because there are more of them, and the will of the majority is supreme.
As we concluded my telephone conversation the professor reminded me that I predicted that Trump would try many efforts to manipulate the Electoral College last summer in the post-election period where it would demonstrate to the country that the Electoral College needs to be abolished. That will cause a movement to seek a constitutional amendment to replace it with a national referendum. Within this future amendment I envision it will be embody the absolute right for all eligible citizens to vote, have their vote canvassed, and recorded without impediment, intimidation or restriction. It will further allow for the Congress to establish national standards for a national direct election. It will establish national standards for drawing of district divisions in the House of Representatives. These standards will affect the down-ballot positions in each state and then local levels as state courts will hear cases about the right of equal vote in all redistricting. This now might seem revolutionary, even far-fetched in this climate but after a previous wrenching, horrible period in our democracy, the Civil War, when the carnage produced three constitutional amendments passed involving the vestiges of slavery and black-American rights. Yet it took to 1965 for a more enforceable Voting Rights Act to pass. This we as a country, a nation, a democracy, a representative government we must pursue.
I still hold that Trump will not give up on this charade and delusion. He is not just cra-cra, which he is, but he seeking to gain some transactional negotiated corrupt bargain-seeking a Nixonian “get out of jail card” for all his transgression, even the Crimes Against Democracy. We concluded our telephone call and promised to reconnect after the inauguration.
After the call I went over to reread the haunting Nostradamas prophesies that I was made aware of back in February 2017 which seemed to suggest veiled references to this period of Trump. None of the events over the four years seemed to connect until now.
Century III: # 50
La republique de la grande cité, The republic of the great city
A grand rigueur ne voudra consentir: With great rigor it will not consent to the great severity:
Roy sortir hors par trompette cité, Summoned by trumpet the crown will go out
L'eschelle au mur la cité repentir. The ladder at the wall, the city will repent.
Century X #76.
Le grand Senate discernera la pompe, The great Senate will ordain the triumph
A l'vn qu'apres sera vaincu chassé: For one that will be vanquished, driven out:
Ses adherans seront à son de trompe The trumpet followers will remain convinced by its sound
Biens publiez, ennemis dechassez. Enemies expelled, their possessions put up for sale.
Like artwork the interpretation is of the eye of the beholder but it appears to be suggesting that they are suggesting some greater events about to occur. Concluding this essay we are on the walls of the democracy, protecting our republic from a great seige from within and abroad. We must remain viligent through the inauguration day and beyond taking on these fascists. If the AG office or Congress finds serious threats they must act. The democracy must find within itself to participate in even greater numbers, participate in paper ballots that are easy and efficient to cast while also being secure. All we can do now is pay attention.