Politics in a banana republic
Over many decades, I’ve read hundreds of articles discussing politics in banana republics. It tends to follow a familiar pattern:
1. Accusations that opposition candidates are ineligible to run—claims that they don’t meet the legal qualifications.
2. Accusations of widespread voter fraud.
3. Attempts to suppress the vote of those expected to vote against the incumbent.
4. Attempts to overturn term limits on an office.
5. Launching legal investigations of political opponents.
6. Using the intelligence services to try to influence the election.
7. Encouraging foreign powers to try to influence an election.
I won’t say these things never happened in the US when I was young, but much more rarely. I recall some questions raised about the 1960 election, and of course 2000 as well. But the losers (Nixon and Gore) accepted defeat with a fair degree of dignity. (Nixon and Kennedy respected each other.) Something really has changed.
This caught my eye:
A federal judge appointed by Donald Trump gave the president’s campaign one day to turn over evidence to support its claims of widespread mail-in voting fraud or admit that it doesn’t exist.
I eagerly await the outcome of that inquiry.
Tags:
15. August 2020 at 22:25
1. Accusations that opposition candidates are ineligible to run—claims that they don’t meet the legal qualifications.
– Democratic party supports this
2. Accusations of widespread voter fraud.
– Democratic Party wants this too through mail in ballots and vote by hand. Only a computer is unbiased! In New Jersey 10K ballots were written off as “uncountable”. What a coincidence!
3. Attempts to suppress the vote of those expected to vote against the incumbent.
– Democratic Party with control over ABC, NBC, CNN, etc, etc.
4. Attempts to overturn term limits on an office.
– Democratic Party doesn’t just want to overturn limits, they want to abolish the electoral process altogether. They also want to increase the number of justices from 9 to 15 – simply because their parties ideologues are outnumbered.
5. Launching legal investigations of political opponents.
Democrats lovely investigation of Russian “collusion” that used 40M in tax payer money and produced wait for — NOTHING!
6. Using the intelligence services to try to influence the election.
– Once again, you must be talking about the democratic party.
7. Encouraging foreign powers to try to influence an election.
– Clinton using a former British SPY to investigate on his campaign? She joked about “bombing” Julian Assange for releasing more of her “deleted yoga emails”. 30K deleted yoga emails. Does anyone actually believe that?
Where is Trumps involvement in this? He is the one guy who is fighting against that level of corruption, and he’s got to deal with academics like you who are too narrow minded to see that he’s trying to save this country from being a banana republic.
15. August 2020 at 23:37
“Where is Trumps involvement in this? He is the one guy who is fighting against that level of corruption, . . . ”
Is he?
“And it’s deadly. Doubtless, Crosscheck delivered Michigan to Trump who supposedly “won” the state by 10,700 votes. The Secretary of State’s office proudly told me that they were “very aggressive” in removing listed voters before the 2016 election. Kobach, who created the lists for his fellow GOP officials, tagged a whopping 417,147 in Michigan as potential double voters.”
http://www.gregpalast.com/trump-picks-al-capone-vote-rigging-investigate-federal-voter-fraud/
“In 2016, no fewer than 5,872,857 ballots were cast—and never counted.
Does it matter? In Detroit, 75,355 ballots were never counted because of 87 broken scanning machines. And Trump supposedly won Michigan by 10,700 votes — really?
And, no fewer than 1,982,071 legal voters were denied the right to vote. Told to get the hell out of the polling station. Can you guess their color?
Add it up. That’s at least 7,854,928 legitimate votes and voters tossed out of the count.
So God Bless America. By the way, these numbers are from the raw data supplied to me by the US Elections Assistance Commission.
https://www.gregpalast.com/how-trump-stole-2020-2/
16. August 2020 at 01:26
I like it when the investigators start investigating the investigators. Like Ukraine or Mexico, you can’t tell who is wearing the white hats, if anyone is.
I will say this: It is pretty easy to recite a list of domestic crimes by Nixon, let alone Nixon Administration atrocities in Vietnam.
I still can’t sum up what Trump did with Russians, in terms of collusion. As Gertrude Stein said of Oakland, “There is no there there.”
Trump’s overseas atrocities are rather limited by US standards.
But hey, maybe Biden will do better. He looks like he will win.
16. August 2020 at 04:45
The comment section on these US politics posts get crazier by the day. Trump makes it more obvious daily that he’s willing to do whatever he can get away with to either steal or delay/cancel the Presidential election. There is no number of people he wouldn’t gladly sacrifice just to hold onto power and avoid prison.
I’m very concerned with how the country is responding to this. I have a feeling the post-election environment will be the craziest and nastiest, perhaps in the history of republics.
I keep wondering, what if Trump just doesn’t leave office? The Secret Service is supposed to escort him out if he refuses to leave, but what if they don’t? Trump has already made illegal appointments in the executive branch and isn’t being held to account. What if he just names a head of the Secret Service who will follow his rigged election narrative?
I think the courts, including the Supreme Court, would rule against him, but what if the Attorney General, Bill Barr, refuses to enforce the courts’ decisions? obviously corrupt for Trump.
If he even went so far as to declare the judges ruling against Trump criminals and have them arrested, who will stop him? Would the Republican Senators stop him, or go along to maintain their power? Those who lose election could also declare their elections rigged. There might be an internal fight at the Justice Department, but who knows how that turns out?
Would the military get involved?
It sounds crazy, but it doesn’t sound implausible that Trump will push for this as hard as he can. I was perhaps the first here to refer to Trump and his supporters as fascist, and many told me I had TDS at the time. I also said Trump was senile. How does this look now? I also said Trump would attack democracy, but even I didn’t think it would happen so openly.
We are living in very dangerous times, and Trump may create enough confusion and doubt in the legitimacy of the next election to allow enough Americans to shrug, so he can take this a long way. Perhaps only his extreme incompetence will save us.
16. August 2020 at 08:12
Xu, Thanks for proving my point; we are becoming a banana republic. Your paranoid post is exactly the sort of thing I used to hear in the 1970s, when I visited Latin America.
16. August 2020 at 09:12
Even if you start from the assumption that Trump is focused on turning America into a banana republic, his attempts are doomed to failure or even counterproductive because they draw so much attention.
As Xu has stated 5-7 were in play long before Trump, and with far greater success.
18. August 2020 at 09:45
Xu’s comment about Trump trying to save the US from being a Banana Republic presumes that he even knows what one is. I’d love to hear him give a rambling, nonsensensical definition.
21. August 2020 at 14:27
Agree. The US is becoming a banana republic or is already one. And