I got a bit of flack for my post yesterday pointing out that Donald Trump has asked the Russian government to hack the government of the United States. The distinction claimed is that asking the Russian government - or, really, the organized criminals who do its work for it, these days - to insert themselves into an American presidential election is asking them to hack political parties, not the government. But there is nothing that is higher in the hierarchy of American government than our elections. The idiocy often expressed from the bench of the Supreme Court pooh-poohing the importance of them as compared to what the politicians elected by THE PEOPLE and the legal hacks appointed by them is the ultimate presumption and a violation of the trust by the least democratically selected part of the system. Either you believe, as The Declaration of Independence says, that only the consent of the governed produces legitimate government or you don't and, clearly, many of the lying "originalists" and Federalists on our court don't. If that is not the case then you reject the very foundation of democracy, as, indeed, so many of our most perfumed and elite legal minds, educated in elite institutions do.
Well, I reject that, I believe that there is nothing accessible by human beings and human societies in any reliable way that is less likely to produce a terrible government than the accurately informed choice in government made by people of sufficient moral character. It is no guarantee to produce a good, never mind a superlative government but it is the least likely to produce a terrible one and, unless the mechanisms of the election are messed with, it is the system most likely to right itself when it goes off.
That is unless The People have been corrupted with a diet of lies as, clearly, the population of the United States has. Hillary Clinton is the most lied about candidate for President, over the longest period by the most powerful of megaphones in the history of the American Presidency.
The media corporations have fed The People the most seductively and attractively and easily consumed lies for the past fifty years and, unsurprisingly, their ability to elect honest. forthright people who believe in democracy has suffered. That it was done through a dishonest interpretation of the artificial privileges granted in the First amendment to the Constitution is also not surprising. "The press" isn't a person, it has no real, natural rights which are an endowment of our Creator. Donald Trump is a creation of that media which has lied us into this disaster. He is a very real threat to American democracy and that is as clear as anything ever has been in an election when he asks a foreign dictatorship, one which has destroyed the very rights and even press privilege contained in the First Amendment, to insert itself into the highest level of American governance on his behalf. And I have no doubt that the very corporate media which created him will work diligently to shield him from any negative effect which such a call should have.
This election is the ultimate test for whether or not the regime of lies and cynicism set up by the media has, in fact, destroyed the ability of the American People to elect a good government. The answer to that question will depend on whether or not Donald Trump and the Republican fascists who have nominated him win this election. It really is becoming ever more obvious that we are in danger of reaping the results of those lies sown so diligently by the cabloid and corporate electronic media, a media that the founders could never have imagined existing, never mind exerting such power as it has, dominating the collective attention and thinking of The People. We are in the process of discovering if government of, by and for The People will perish from the Earth. My suspicion is that we will find that such a government cannot be sustained except of, by and for the informed good-will of The People. It is on the choice by The People in this election that question will be decided.
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