In my last piece I coined the term The Inch Erection to describe the events of 6th January 2021 in Washington DC. What can I say? I grew up watching the Carry On movies which are full of smut, double entendre, and innuendo.
It’s always dangerous to comment on the toings and froings of another country from afar, but I simply can’t take the term “insurrection” to describe the events of that day in 2021 with any degree of seriousness whatsoever.
The Inch Erection in my view, then, was all desire and no satisfaction.
The rampant desire of the Democrats to paint this event as some sort of major existential crisis for the US is absurd - it is a position that brings no satisfaction. At least not in any sense of satisfying “truth” or “logic”. The satisfaction will occur if they are able to paint the Orange Don of Doom as sufficiently bad and evil so that people don’t vote for him.
There was also no satisfaction for the Republicans who believed the election had been stolen and were exercising their legitimate right of protest. Their desire was to have this, in their view, fraudulent election result overturned.
Having spent a couple of years of my life involved in an EU-funded research project on secure electronic voting, I had to familiarize myself with the security issues of elections and the various techniques to minimize any security weaknesses. The 2020 US election, in my view, had security holes a mile wide. Whether these vulnerabilities were actually exploited is another question, but I am not able to state with any certainty that they were not. There remain, for me at any rate, some serious concerns about the integrity of the result.
The Jan 6th protesters, therefore, had a potential legitimate grievance. Attempts had been made through the legal system to question the veracity of the election result, to no avail. With an independent and objective judiciary this might be enough - but it’s pretty obvious that the US judicial system is neither independent, objective, or fair.
I can’t say that the UK’s judicial system is any better.
Things changed in the US between 2016 and 2020. After 2016 it was perfectly acceptable to cast doubt on an election result - it seemed almost mandatory if you were a Democrat. After 2020 it became almost an act of treason to do so.
In 2020 you could burn the shit out of cities, try to destroy any number of Federal buildings, and call for the dismantling of the entire system, and receive only a minor slap on the wrist. After 2021, simply walking through the wrong building could land you with a very stiff jail sentence indeed.
The whole judiciary and the way it has been used as a political weapon stinketh to high heaven. This is a very dangerous game to play. It’s all fun and games when it’s your side that are the puppet masters; not so much fun when the other side are holding the strings and get to use the same tools and processes.
The current US administration seem to be viewing the Constitution as some kind of minor advisory note that can be ignored when circumstances dictate, or when convenient. That’s what it looks like to me. The constant, shrill, claims that Donnie boy is “a threat to democracy” ring hollower than the back passage of a Congressional staffer on a lunchtime break in a Senate hearing chamber.
The Biden administration has done more than the Trump of Terror ever did to undermine democracy - by a long, long, way. It’s all rather Goebbelesque.
I still recall the speech in which Biden accused the other side of “extremism” in yet another Goebbels moment.
I liked Trump because he was different. And funny. It was refreshing to see a politician who just didn’t care what people thought of him or what he said - and the results were often very entertaining. I don’t know enough about the situation in the US to know for sure how to weigh up the good and the bad things he did whilst in office, but certainly some things he did seemed good - like his efforts to bring peace in the Middle East which resulted in more progress than anyone else had achieved in decades.
But I actually think a 2nd Trump term will be a disaster. A 2nd Biden term will, I think, be even more of a disaster. It’s time for these creaky old gits to go, and fade into obscurity. That’s just my take on things - which isn’t worth very much.
With either Biden or Trump the divisions and hatred will only deepen and widen - and that’s not a good thing at all. I couldn’t say who the right person is - but someone who can start to bring people back together would be nice. Maybe the situation has degenerated so badly that this is no longer possible - but I like to be optimistic.
What is very clear, however, is the level of sheer derangement some people have when it comes to Trump. I used to like Sam Harris, for example, but he’s gone decidedly wonky in recent years with his intimation that the serial murder of children could be overlooked if it meant getting rid of Trump - not to mention his bonkers ‘reasoning’ when it came to the covid ‘vaccines’.
The level of derangement regarding Trump was nicely commented upon in a recent Russell Brand piece (9m 38s)
The clips contained in this piece of (allegedly) rational people discussing Trump is a wonder to behold. I seriously doubt whether these people actually believe what they’re saying - they just want the great unwashed to believe it.
He’s basically accused of everything - from wanting to be the most tyranty person ever known, to eating broccoli in an offensive manner1.
When did so many people lose their sense of the absurd?
Now, I don’t think a 2nd Trump term would be good for the US, but the accusations levelled against him are just nuttier than a Snickers bar. OK, he didn’t establish a fascist dictatorship or co-opt the media and judiciary and Big Tech last time2 - but he will this time round. Pinky promise.
It would be kind of nice, one naively optimistic day in the future, to see an election focused on policy rather than personality.
The great experiment that is the US is in danger of failing - but the danger isn’t coming from Trump. It’s in danger of falling apart from a totalitarian ideology that has infected all its major institutions and a level of crushing debt that is truly mind-boggling.
I hope to God that it doesn’t fail. It’s too important to fail. Within the pages of that minor advisory note known as the Constitution is the blueprint for a truly liberal and free society - the kind of society that is fast becoming a thing of memory.
OK - I made that last one up. Pretty much like most of the accusations against Trump have been made up.
Things which the Biden administration can be more legitimately accused of
I don't have access to it or even remember the title of the study but a bunch of people over here did one on e-voting once, in the late 1990s. What they concluded was that it was technically feasible, but also that the entire system didn't have a single point of failure:
The system itself /was/ the single point of failure due to how easy it would be for anyone faction in control to rig it without anyone else being able to notice.
The current system with paper ballots, where volunteers from all parties in parliament tally the votes manually is much more difficult to manipulate, because competing interests are keeping tabs on each other. Not to mention the logistics of even trying.
What election fraud we've seen here has been low-key, feminists and leftys stealing the slips put out by parties they don't approve of.
Curiously, no right-of-centre party has ever been found engaging in such behaviour. Only the feminists, the moslems and the communists.
In there lies a truth, methinks.
I might not even need to read the article as the title is such a winner!