At this moment it is hard to locate the limit of what either of the two main political parties in the U.S. will do to avoid losing.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris during the Sept. 10, 2024, presidential debate on ABC News. (C-Span screen shot)
By Patrick Lawrence
Special to Consortium News
Uh-oh. The New York Times is picking up its familiar theme now that the Nov. 5 elections are but a few days out front: Those mal-intended foreigners are again “sowing discord and chaos in hopes of discrediting American democracy,” it reported in a piece published Tuesday.
The Beelzebubs haunting this political season, when everything would otherwise be orderly and altogether copacetic among Americans, are Russia, China and Iran.
Why can’t this year’s version of the old, reliable “Axis of Evil” leave us alone with our “democratic process,” the one the rest of the world envies and resents? Troublemakers, with all their “sowing.” You could probably call them “garbage” and get away with it.
Uh-oh. We’re already reading of tampered voter-registration forms and forged applications to vote by mail in two districts in Pennsylvania, the populous state where the results in 2020 could not have been blurrier and whose 19 Electoral College votes were decisive in getting Joe Biden into the White House last time around.
But not to worry. In a delightful reprise of one of the truly memorable phrases to come down to us from the 1960s, an election commissioner in one of the districts where officials uncovered the malfeasance tells us, “The system worked.”
I think I understand.
I tell you, whenever I read of people in other countries sowing anything, whether it is doubt or chaos or disinformation, and at this point even pumpkin seeds, it always turns out the same. This word “sowing” has been a favorite in the mainstream press since 2016, when we read daily — and of this we were to have no doubt — the Rrrrrussians were “interfering in our elections.”
Since then, everytime I read of someone sowing something it sows more doubt in my mind — more than I already harbored — that one can take our electoral system, as we have it in the 21st century, the slightest bit seriously.
This is to say nothing of putting one’s name on it behind a little green curtain in a voting booth.
On the one hand you have the Times, which has diminished itself over the past eight years to little more than the Democrats’ house organ, already preparing to suggest that the malign enemies of American democracy corrupted the elections. Believe me, you will hear this if Kamala Harris loses but not if she wins.
On the other hand, you have early but clear cases of attempted vote-rigging and local election officials waving these cases off as nothing at all to fret about. It is interesting to consider why said officials profess so cavalier a view.
I have thought for months that the 2024 elections, discord already in plentiful supply, could easily tip over into a degree of civil chaos beyond anything so far recorded in the American story. Just such a day of reckoning now seems to beckon.
Neither of the main parties appears prepared to lose. At this moment it is hard to locate the limit of what either party will do to avoid losing.
Remnants of Democracy
All by our lonesome selves, it seems to me, we Americans have made a mess of the remnants of our democracy these past eight years.
This is not to suggest American politics has ever been other than, let’s say, in the way of a barnyard. In this, neither of the major parties, whose function since the mid–19th century has been to circumscribe acceptable politics and policy, is free of responsibility.
But in the matter of responsibility I assign more to the Democrats than to the G.O.P. It was Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump eight Novembers ago that confirmed America’s swift drift into post-democracy.
The Democrats have never recovered from the disruption in 2016 of their dream that history was about to end and their idea of the liberal ethos would eternally prevail, all alternatives withering away the way Marx and Engels thought the communist state would.
Anti-Trump protest in Washington, D.C., Nov. 12, 2016. (Ted Eytan/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
I have long detected that American liberalism has at its core a vein of illiberalism that is essential to its character.
America is simply not, to put this point another way, a tolerant nation. It does not encourage its people to think: It requires them to conform. Alexis de Tocqueville saw this coming two centuries ago in the two volumes of Democracy in America.
We are now, post–Clinton, treated to the spectacle of full-dress liberal authoritarianism, and if you do not like the term there are others. De Tocqueville, prescient man, called it “soft despotism.” I’ve always favored “apple-pie authoritarianism.”
Institutional Corruptions
There is a feature of this awful manifestation among NPR–addicted, kale-eating liberals that distinguishes our time as especially discouraging as to the future.
This is their wanton corruption of some of the institutions without which even a semblance of democratic government is impossible. I am thinking particularly of three that figure in the pre-election picture.
One is the judiciary — federal, state, county, local. Beginning with the Mueller investigation, the in-plain-sight corruption of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the ridiculous court cases brought against Donald Trump, Attorney–General Merrick Garland’s subversion of the Justice Department to protect President Joe Biden as his son’s influence-mongering schemes came to light — all this in behalf of the Democrats:
Well, as I learned during my days as a correspondent abroad, when the judicial system goes down, the path to failed-state status opens.
Two is the intelligence apparatus and the military. Intel, from the days of James Clapper and John Brennan, has lined up unequivocally behind the Democrats ever since the brash real-estate man from New York foolishly assumed he could “drain the swamp” — his declaration that he would take on the Deep State.
U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security John Kelly at the Munich Security Conference in Germany, Feb. 18, 2017. (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Wikimedia Commons, Public domain)
As to the military, the generals thought nothing of declaring eight years ago, at the Democrats’ convention in Philadelphia and in open letters published in the Times, that they would refuse the commander-in-chief’s orders were Trump to win and attempt a new détente with Russia and an end to “the forever wars.”
Yes, you’ve got John Kelly, who served in Trump’s cabinet and then as his chief of staff, suddenly calling Trump a fascist — the Democrats’ favorite epithet these past weeks. Doesn’t anyone want to know why Kelly worked closely with a man he considered a fascist? Doesn’t it occur to anyone — it must, surely — that Kelly, a retired Marine general, says these things to serve the party he trusts to keep the wars going and the tax dollars flowing?
A paradox here, more apparent than real: John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, James Mattis, Mark Esper, and various others like them did not wear uniforms when they served in the Trump administration, but they never took them off.
If this election is about anything — apart from the price of groceries, of course — it is about the national-security state’s place in American politics. In our post–2016 era, intel and the military are perfectly welcome to operate openly, unabashedly, in the American political process — this because the Democratic Party gives them a wide berth to do so.
Deep-State Democracy
Now, do you think the Deep State gives a toot about democratic process? Ask the Italians and the Greeks, the Iranians and the Guatemalans, the Japanese, the South Koreans and the Indonesians, the Chileans and the Venezuelans, and… and damn, ask most of humanity at this point. As others have pointed out since the Russiagate days, what the spooks have long done abroad now visits itself upon the American polity.
The obvious follow-on: Should we be concerned as to whether the Democrats and these institutional allies would let this election go to Trump just by the vote count?
I am.
As to the third of the institutions that have corrupted themselves in the Democratic Party cause, may I let mainstream media speak for themselves? Apart from independent publications such as the one you are reading, the intent of American media is no longer to inform the public but to protect the institutions they purport to report upon from the public gaze.
Trump’s “a threat to American democracy,” Harris its savior: It’s a bust at this point. The New York Times has made itself a re-enactment of The New York Times. The Washington Post under the ownership of Jeff Bezos and this ghastly new chief executive of his, Will Lewis, cannot manage, and doesn’t seem to attempt, even a re-enactment.
I do not seem to be the only one ill-at-ease at the prospect of mayhem to come after midnight Nov. 5. The Post published a survey Wednesday, conducted in the first half of October, indicating that among voters in the states where the election could go either way, 57 percent are nervous that Trump supporters won’t accept defeat and may resort to violence, while a third of those surveyed think Harris supporters will take it to the street, as they used to say, if the candidate of joy and vibes loses.
Harris campaigning in Glendale, Ariz., on Aug. 9. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
The numbers skewed even more dramatically when The Post asked Democrats about Trump’s people and Trump’s people about Democrats. In a survey The Associated Press published Thursday, you have 70 percent of those polled saying they are “anxious and frustrated.”
Join the party. I cannot, myself, take either candidate seriously. I take seriously the thought that a lot of people will not take the result seriously and a mess will ensue.
And in this I worry more about Democrats resorting to corrupt conduct than I do the Republicans. Why this, you may ask.
To begin with, I do not at all like the smell of that Times piece quoted at the top of this column. It reeks too strongly of the scene in 2016, when, on either side of the election, the Democrats and all manner of repellent “progressives” conjured of thin air a frenzy of Russophobia from which American has yet to recover.
Steven Lee Myers, previously of the Times’s Moscow bureau, is now some kind of “disinformation” reporter and led the work on the piece in question. And all is as it was for four years after Clinton’s defeat: no shred of independent reporting or sourcing in anything under his byline. Intel people and other unnamed officials feed this guy like a foie gras farmer feeds his geese.
This is all you get from our Stevie. And I don’t see anyone trying on this disgraceful stuff in behalf of the Trump campaign. I have suggested my conclusions.
But Jan. 6, Jan. 6, Jan 6! First of all, what happened on Jan. 6 does not rise to “coup” or “insurrection.” It was a protest, with much to suggest the presence of agents provocateurs. And second, there seems to me there was plenty to protest by that point.
Straight off the top, there was the liberal authoritarians’ perfectly legible collusion to suppress the contents of Hunter Biden’s vastly incriminating laptop computer three weeks before the vote, to the point of blanket censorship of the New York Post, the oldest newspaper in America. If this was not open-and-shut election interference someone will have to tell me what constitutes it.
On less certain ground, I have read of many election officials in many states, Pennsylvania high among them, certifying the 2020 results. But a truly convincing, here-are-the-numbers case for these results in states such as Pennsylvania is hard to come by. You never read of Trump’s claims that the Pennsylvania results were rigged. You read only and always of Trump’s “false claims” or “discredited claims” or “disproven claims” to the point you start thinking of Lady Macbeth and how she doth protest too much, methinks.
Trump addressing The Believers religious group, in July in West Palm Beach, Fla. (Gage Skidmore, Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0)
I recall, very imperfectly, seeing research purportedly done by a computer scientist at one of the universities in Philadelphia. Just after the election he or she put out a series of screenshots on social media, time-stamped to the second, that appeared to show the results in a significant number of districts changing all at once and by enough to give Biden a swift come-from-behind victory by a margin of slightly more than 1 percent.
Genuine or a put-up job, this research? Credible or not credible? I would not dream of judging it, but this is not my point. My point is that there should be no cause to doubt such results as these and, eight years on, as I read it there still is.
Doubt recreates itself, as you may have noticed, like some organism that regenerates. So we come to the Times’ report Tuesday of attempted voter fraud in Lancaster and York counties, two populous areas of, once again, Pennsylvania.
Campbell Roberston’s piece has just about everything, starting with a headline that has Trump “sowing doubt.” He, Trump, is even “using reports about suspicious voter registrations to cast the election as already flawed.”
What a cad. What a scoundrel. What a… fascist tyrant.
It seems that some thousands of forged or otherwise fraudulent voter registration forms and requests to vote by mail arrived recently in the offices of the Lancaster and York election authorities.
So far as one can make out, some official or officials in each county brought these “large batches” of falsified government documents to light. Whereupon other officials in each case smothered this discovery as if suffocating the matter with a pillow.
Alice Yoder, an election commissioner in Lancaster, put it best, or anyway most preposterously. “The system worked,” saith Ms. Yoder. “We caught this.” I honestly had to read this quotation several times to believe anyone would say this.
I would like to know a few things about this case that we are not told.
The batches of forgeries “were submitted by out-of-state canvassing groups,” Robertson reports, groups that remain unidentified.
One, what are canvassing groups and what do they do in whose behalf? Two, what were such groups doing in Lancaster and York counties if they are not from Pennsylvania?
Three, if they are not from Pennsylvania, what were they doing with Pennsylvania election forms that were purportedly genuine?
Just two more questions.
Four, why are the election officials in these two counties not naming the guilty canvassing organizations? This seems to me very troubling.
And five, what are the party affiliations or otherwise the voting preferences of officials who will not identify the offending organizations and say things such as “The system worked.”
There are no grounds to draw any conclusions whatsoever on this point, given we know absolutely nothing about these people, but I went to the trouble of looking up Ms. Yoder’s c.v.
There is a bit of the sociologist in all of us, well– or underdeveloped as the case may be. Journalists often make use of their endowments in this line.
Drawing on mine, I would speculate that Ms. Yoder’s c.v., after a careful peruse, is highly suggestive of a Kamala Harris voter, perhaps even of a liberal authoritarian.
Could be dead right, could be dead wrong. I cannot go beyond more or less idle speculation.
And not more or less idle doubt as Nov. 5 draws close.
Patrick Lawrence, a correspondent abroad for many years, chiefly for The International Herald Tribune, is a columnist, essayist, lecturer and author, most recently of Journalists and Their Shadows, available from Clarity Press or via Amazon. Other books include Time No Longer: Americans After the American Century. His Twitter account, @thefloutist, has been permanently censored.
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Sadly, we are all missing the “Big Picture”.
Imagine our nation as the car used in the movie “Thelma and Louise”. We have no brakes, no steering, and the gas pedal is welded to the floor. We are headed into the Grand Canyon.
Therefore, in true democratic fashion we will take a vote…should the car be using premium or regular gasoline?
What about sowing as a Supreme Court nomination held up for a religious group to perhaps double cross party lines just to get control of a culture war Supreme Court no matter who the republican nominee is and then double cross again the next election. Then have to endlessly attempt to undue the damage they did the first time by promoting religious war against Russian orthodoxy they had already helped start with a coup.
Our addiction to covert warfare alive and well at home as well as abroad for winning is the only go(0)d.
For us, the working class majority, “liberal authoritarianism” has been visible for some time. It’s a common experience for us commoners to have been treated by the professional and administrative elite like something distasteful they’d scraped off the bottom of their shoes. The less than 20% of the population whom the D party actually represents. It goes with the idea we inferiors should be neither seen nor heard.
As a blue collar union rank and file activist and local D campaign mgr, in the late ’70s I fought the unfriendly take-over of the D party by neolibs. Who promptly dumped the New Deal, abandoned labor, and became friendly with the corporate econopaths. Like the deregulation that happened under B. Clinton. And NAFTA, the WTO, etc. Agreements among government neolib elites worldwide in the interest of international corporations. The D party also did FOR the suffering, unemployed Rust Belt what they did TO the rapacious Wall St. vultures who caused the ’08 crash–NOTHING!
I’m also one of those maligned ‘identity’ types: BIPOC and LGBTQ. The D elite has no problem with race, gender, or sexual orientation…as long as you have Ivy League credentials or the equivalent. Whatever distinguishes you from the masses; in H. Clinton’s memorable phrase “a basket of deplorables.” We who should defer to our betters. An elite so certain of its own superiority (‘meritocracy’) it cannot conceive of being in error any more than did the subjects of Halberstam’s book //The Best and the Brightest// about Vietnam.
Then add the egregiously smug neocons. The neolib/neocon cabal a real “axis of evil” if there ever was one. To maintain their fantasy of a unipolar empire, they are willing to escalate the forever wars. Not all working people understand the intricate details, but we do realize that all of those expensive wars suck up our tax dollars. Leaving nothing to fix the crumbling infrastructure, or healthcare, or anything else benefitting the common good.
Thank You Patrick
“ And in this I worry more about Democrats resorting to corrupt conduct than I do the Republicans. Why this, you may ask.”
For reasons I can only speculate on, the GOP’s extensive and robust voter-suppression and electioneering machine gets very little scrutiny from much of the left as well as contrarians such as Mr Lawrence.
I suspect the cause is simply obscurity. Has Patrick heard of initiatives like “interstate crosscheck” (the GOP program to purge non-existent “duplicate” voters from the rolls with bad data science meant to target mostly democratic voters of color)? There are numerous initiatives by the GOP happening in public right now to ensure a Trump victory through voter suppression, spoiling, invalidation, challenges, etc.
I hold no brief for the rogue’s gallery behind the Democratic Party, but the Republicans are brazenly attempting a daylight robbery, and much of the alternative media is derelict in its duty to cover this beat (to say nothing of the MSM). Maybe the Dems and their backers are trying to pull a fast one (it wouldn’t surprise me), but the GOP absolutely is.
For those interested I’d recommend Greg Palast’s journalism on election theft going back 2 decades.
Consortium News’ CN Live! had an extensive interview show with Greg Palast to discuss these GOP methods, including “crosscheck” but YouTube removed the video and gave us a strike but it ridiculously thought a few seconds from one of Greg’s films that showed Trump supporters chanting that the election was stolen meant that we supported that, which of course CN never has.
My apologies, but why am I not surprised! CN does consistently trenchant work.
Another example of the TechnoFeudal overlord monopoly can arbitrarily remove content from established journalists. Free speech for the overlords, but not for us.
FYI. So far I’m receiving my email notifications- when I do the google, the date in the prompt is current but the page is a day old.
TWO comments are up here as I start mine. Drew Hunkins and Richard Mynick.
I could not agree more with the two! Get ready this may get very ugly! Mature Audiences only.
Patrick sets the stage here for his diatribe. I like this term because of his use of portents in his title, which I like even more, signals serious urgency in his message.
No one be surprised by what Patrick wrote here. It hits at ground zero. I definitely am trilled to see the word chaos.
Lately my comments here have been strongly influenced by work being done at another site, by a rather large group of contributors. I’ll get back to this later here.
When the democrats decided to use a totally authoritarian process to nominate Biden in the previous election one thing was very obvious to me. The dems made a grievous error it seemed to me. How could this large group of professional politicians be so transparent in their efforts to derail a bona fides (?) selection process by advertising their authoritarian actions?
It seems very obvious to me they did not give one care about appearances. A hall mark attitude displayed by most all authoritarian groups. It was a seemingly expected move by a party in apparent serious disarray.
What happened?
There is a reason for Russia gate or WTFE you wish to call it. The diversion process. My take is this was an inside job to derail the Clinton bid to win. The Deep State is like the mob and it’s gambling houses, they are in the business, the house must win at all costs.
I will not get into naming government organizations at this point but I will be making serious points about how how those institutions operate. Remember I do not believe in coincidences.
Imagine your desire was to, using the same great term Pat used here, ‘sow’ the seeds of discontent. Something one of our famously tarnished governmental institutions is very adapt at pulling off after years of doing so successfully.
IMHO the ruse worked. The Clinton’s who “can’t suicide us all”, took one for the team and Seth Rich died in the process. This is my firm personal belief. Why else did the facts not come out about the time line of his death?
I have one point here of serious, although I’m not angry, contention with this story Pat tells so poignantly. The language in question is this at the beginning of “Remnants of Democracy”, he writes “All by our lonesome selves, it seems to me , we Americans have made a mess of the remnants of our democracy these past eight years.”
When it became apparent exactly what the democrats were in pursuit of to me I was beside myself.
I will take this one opportunity to point out my serious belief the democrats had been set up for a very serious fall by those who work in the shadow government. The single most disturbing thought I had was how easily #44 gave in to the homeland, national- security, MICCIMAT full monty, exhibit #1 the extra judicial (executive action) execution of American citizens on foreign soil.
This was not the Presidents way or in MHO, his idea of doing what was right. This action seemed in no way of his mind. He seemed in lock step with the Village Idiot from Crawford Texas. And no I care not about sounding divisive, because I’m not being divisive, it was the government being such. Sowing those nasty seeds of hate and discontent.
How could “We the people” be on guard for this attack on American values and remain patriotic? This seems to me to have been the work of those at the behest of the Deep State.
Pat goes on, “But in the matter of responsibility I assign more to the Democrats than GOP. It was Hillary’s loss to Donald Trump eight Novembers ago that confirmed America’s swift drift into post-democracy.
Pat with the utmost respect you ended up where the PYSOP led you, hear me out! one paragraph later you write,
” I have long detected that American liberalism has at its core a vein of illiberalism that is essential to its character.”
When did you detect this and I ask in seriousness. Was this around 1950? There reason I ask is because the use of the word liberalism in the U.S. seems to be unnecessarily complicated by the addition of prefixes etc. making the term ambiguous. A non-sequitur maybe!
For my purpose here will give the Definition of liberal as a noun – 1. a supporter of policies that are socially progressive and promote social welfare 2. a supporter of a political or social philosophy that promotes individual rights, civil liberties, democracy, and free enterprise. Look up the definition for the adjective use, it is no better IMHO.
My issue is this it has been my personal observation the use of this term plays into the hands of those who desire to divide and conquer. Hopefully this issue can be debated and resolved, activities sorely lacking in the last fifty or sixty years.
In your last paragraph you write ” We now are, post Clinton, treated to the spectacle of full – dress liberal authoritarianism.” I do realize this may rankle me and me only, however the democrats are supposedly identified as being the more liberal of the two parties which is something clearly not true. This causes me significant mental conflict. Bill Clinton broke the use of the liberal terminology IMHO.
It is not my intention here to pick apart you article, nothing could be further from the truth I’m trying to expose.
Pat goes on to write Institutional Corruptions, most which I concur with, but last paragraph I have issues with. Pat seems to gloss over the affect the Homeland Security Act and the Patriot Act mandates had on the Democratic party in particular and none of this happened post 2016.
I think we all should can agree these Acts both were power grabs by the government likely as a direct result of Deep State sycophants working in the shadows of our government and the republicans took the ball and ran with it saying “You are either with us or( against us) with the enemy.”
I find the next section, the nexus quite interesting however I feel it is somewhat of a let down here at the end.
Non of this is really about Trump getting mistreated, which in my opinion he deserves, but the idea misses the pregnant point. The only reason any any of this is about Trump is because he was and is a useful idiot for the Deep State.
More important if we study new developments in the JFK saga we learn the story has been exposed and the government responsible outed. Our government ate one of it’s own at the behest of those who were and still are, we will soon discover inextricably in the effort to deceive the U.S. Congress and the American public.
In my opinion this is and was about the authoritarian take over of our government. Something that has been in the works since before Nov 22, 1963. I say this often and as loud as I am capable of, when JFK died all of congress got the gaddamned message. It has been all down hill until 911 and with the truth coming out about the U.S. Governments involvement the Deep Stater’s have no choice but to go All IN!
There are 2 things that can still surprise me about US elections.
1. Americans genuinely believe their federal elections are democratic. This despite the electoral college system, despite the control of vote counting by political parties, the reconsideration of invalid votes after the first totals are reached, the acceptance of late votes after the first total is reached. The control of polling by party donors, the list goes on and I probably have only seen small bits of it.
2. Americans think the rest of the world wants to interfere. Why?? US foreign policy never changes. Apart from the individuals the president decides to assassinate (and anyone else in the building with them), who the president is, affects no-one outside the USA.
The only quibble I have with that is that most ‘Americans’ hardly realise that there is a ‘rest of the world’. I imagine most of them think Russia is somewhere on Mars, and that Russians have eight eyes and tentacles.
True enough, P.L., here we are. Here we are wondering where we will be a week from now. It is certainly almost guaranteed we will be in a radically different paradigm / dynamic, one previously unimaginable to most of our citizen brethren.
This contemporary mood of tremulous uncertainty that foils a majority of our fellow U.S. denizens into wandering off into a constant and paralyzing fog of cognitive dissonance also keeps them from initiation of critical thinking agency, an ongoing promotion of a disassociative mis-under-understanding of the magnitude of what has been built brick-by-brick and foisted upon the nation by subterfuge—both foreign and domestic. And the ‘foreign’ does not describe our resurrected and remanufactured ‘enemies,’ esp Russia, but to include China and Iran. Hell might as well throw in any nation expressing an interest in BRICS. I’m wont to conclude that’s exactly what resounds and echoes in the MIC/Israeli-paid Atlanticist basement think tanks of Foggy Bottom. (Known Dem cheerleaders.)
By utilizing the entirely notional “glorious,” “exceptionalist” myth of representative government as inevitable ‘purity of destiny’ is part of the pre-planned package to ultimately sow confusion at the precise moment where ‘the wind from a butterfly’s wings thousands of miles away starts a chain of events. . .’ A requisite constituent part of pulling this scheme and scam off cleanly to achieve Lenin’s dictum “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”
I can only sum it up from my perspective by stating “It’s our turn for forty lashes on history’s wheel,” in spite of the woefully delusional foregone and utterly false conclusion for most participants that “It can’t happen here.”
Just what it is they have cooked up for contingency plans should Trump win will no doubt be a very unpleasant surprise for most, buttressed by the unprosecuted historical examples established by the 3 Letters / Dem honchos in both 2016 and 2020: both elections serve as a preview on a very unappetizing menu for November and beyond. We’ve really, truly done it this time. Our self-determination? It got away from us
Well then, let’s get on with it.
My fondest wish for the outcome of this election if my candidate Jill Stein doesn’t win, would be for her to win a few states that would prevent anyone from winning the necessary electoral votes to declare victory. I can’t think of anything that would be more entertaining. Establishment heads would explode everywhere at the same time. It’s exactly what the whole dirty corrupt genocidal lot of them deserve besides being frog marched to The Hague.
Me too, fwiw : that Stein scores enough EC votes to force a Contingent Election.
No need for the fatally compromised Vice Presidental contender to certify EC votes. Just a live-televised straight up, State by State tally, leading to a first past the post crystal clear result, teflon coated against lawfare.
I honestly can’t think of a better outcome for America at this time.
Thank you so much Patrick Lawrence for your article. All you say makes sad sense. Yes, de Tocqueville’s Democracy in America saw the threats and threads of what has been happening, especially since 2016, Who could have imagined during the protests over the Iraq war that the neo-cons, who played such a terrible role is that disaster would be part of the cheering squad for a Democratic candidate for president. Ah, the Deep State is now part and parcel of the current administration and will be in place should Harris win. Donald Trump was naive and uneducated in terms of “the swamp.” A business executive who thought he could make a deal with our supposed enemies…. whether one likes the guy or not, I think he genuinely wanted and wants a more peaceful world. The Dems using Trump’s anti-border words against him fail hugely to ignore that our Mexican American farm workers and others who are working for decades as gardeners, health carers, cooks etc. do not want an influx of millions of people to take their jobs. (Dems want no borders because they realize a welcome mat means more Dem votes). Thank you Patrick Lawrence ! As Roy Bourgeoise would say: “in solidarity”
Open borders — brought to us, I believe, by Israel — create chaos, and Israel is a specialist in chaos. What amuses me is that the Christian Zionists who hate everything Israel wants the US to do are fanatical Israel supporters. Americans rule the world in stupidity.
Not that anyone really needs it,but more reason to not vote vote for either of the two major party candidates for President of the United States, Better to sit this one out or cast a protest vote for Jill Stein or Cornel West.
Got 2 last-pitch topics nailed:
1. MSM bleaters of Kamala’s mis-take of Trump’s ‘protect women’ remark
Kamala: Trump comment on women ‘is offensive to everybody’ hxxps://startribune.com/kamala-harris-says-trumps-comments-on-women-are-offensive-to-everybody/601172520
“She’s making the pitch that women should be free to make their own decisions about their bodies and if T is elected, more restrictions will follow.”
NOT what he said. What SHE has said, since the brilliant Afghan commandante Kelly ‘fascist’ tone of closing arguments.
Of 20+ google links, Milwaukee Journal is only ‘full context’ source:
“My people told me sir please don’t say that…we think it’s very inappropriate… Why I’m president I want to protect the women of our country. [The media] pay these guys a lot of money
I said well I’m going to do it whether the women like it or not;…protect them…from migrants coming in…from foreign countries that want to hit us with missiles and lots of other things remember for 4 years we had no war other than I defeated Isis but I inherited that I felt like Brett Favre I defeated Isis in 4 weeks instead of 5 years because we have a great military we just didn’t have any leadership at the top…”
Walter Mondale did ‘local football’ thing during ’80 Prez campaign: “It’s like Woody Hayes said: 4 yards & a cloud of dust.”
Maybe not artful, but not Harris’take either. Call it the Garbage Truck speech. Maybe a slight bend in ‘missiles’ attitude, thanks to Tulsi Gabbard.
2. So, now we learn, from ‘offended’ AP reporters no less, that Biden himself intervened to alter his ‘garbage’ remark.
apnews.com/article/biden-garbage-transcript-puerto-rico-trump-326e2f516a94a470a423011a946b6252
Just an apostrophe at issue. Too complicated for NYT or WAPO?
I can’t take these freaks seriously either. They are both genocidal, racist sociopaths. The DT is taking money from Israelis and so is KH, and they fall all over themselves to show that they are even MORE supportive of Israel and genocide than the other.
Millions of insouciant, gullible US dwellers will vote for one of the two and they will be complicit in the genocide. No one in the US who votes for these clowns will be able to criticize any regime, past or present, and not be a rank hypocrite. But I guess hypocrisy and genocide are considered virtuous in US culture.
Vote Genocide 2024!
Re: I can’t take these freaks seriously either. They are both genocidal, racist sociopaths.”You know not what you say. I don’t know much about know Cornel West, but I do know plenty about Jill Stein, and you lie when you say that she is a genocidal, racist sociopaths. She is the only one who has come out publicly in condemning the Palestinian genocide. She is anything but a racist, and is what the Dems used to be when they were the tolerant supporters of all races and ethnicities. She is Jewish, but anti-zionism. You either know nothing whatsoever about Jill Stein, or you have no shame at all.
How can anyone in his/her right mind take this nation seriously. I thought carnival was in February…
The lives of 330 million people in the US are to be taken seriously! The people under the oppression of war and genocide are to be taken seriously. I actually thought this article trivial, whiny and missing perspective; the grand ‘We’ are in a world of trouble, this sort of analysis doesn’t seem helpful to me.
The divisions in America have not been caused by the people but by the political classes. Democrats will say blame Trump supporters and Republicans will say blame Harris supporters, but it was the political class on one side up to and including Trump, and on the other side up to and including Harris who are to blame. To paraphrase Lord Acton, “Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Then it divides.”
Thank you Mr. Lawrence for such an incisive, trenchant and spot-on piece.
IMHO, anyone who quits reading the NYT (except perhaps for dark amusement) and instead reads Patrick Lawrence is making a move in the right direction. Or more broadly, reading sites like CN instead of the corporate media (and getting your friends to do the same) can only elevate one’s political consciousness.
When I saw that NYT ”top story” the other day about how “Russia, China & Iran” were once again “interfering with our election,” I almost felt embarrassed for the pathetic Times, that they couldn’t come up with anything more clever than that. I wonder if the editor who approved that “story” and that headline feels ridiculous already.
I didn’t read the NYT story. Does it give any concrete examples of interference by Russia, China, Iran, or anyone else?
If it´s the quoted NYT that would be here:
“As Trump Sows Doubt on Pennsylvania Voting, Officials Say the System Is Working
Donald Trump is using reports about suspicious voter registrations to cast the election as already flawed. County officials say the episodes are being distorted.”
hxxps://archive.is/eFZ3R
(I yet have to read myself)
How dare people from other counties say things. How are we going to protect our precious fucking democracy if other people are talking while we weigh the important question of who gets to send bombs to Israel. Yeesh.