Might Gives Right

 

The current - some would say ancient, but at least centennial - struggle for voting rights, now almost impossibly thrown into the debate over the just-as-old question of the filibuster - or so often, where parliamentary government is concerned, the threat accompanied by full regalia blazoned by an uneasily governing majority party - has been . And while the prospects of a red revival may seem distant (they sure look, in numbers and, frankly, "opposition", better than for the long 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, for the very upcoming November 2022) . And as implied by the relinquishing, as it should be said, filibuster holding back the baton of simple majoritarianism, it would - for whatever ends - spell the victory of democracy over liberal democracy. Now not only in Budapest, and other post-Communist capitals ostensibly hurling themselves and their children from Tarpeian rocks into the jaws of fascism (and not only from the lips of Democrats) but in the dreaded capital of the free world. 

And with a majority that slim, having to muster every fibre of two ostensibly centrist Democrats to govern, it can be assumed by any man not giving complete command to his senses, that the foul Reds will govern yet again... as the revolutionaries of the failed putsch of 1832 may never have said, "one day". Alas, so many put it in the phrases such as this, that should the Republicans recapture either the Congress or the White House, either civil war or authoritarian rule will emerge, conceivably both in rapid succession or multitudes. Unfortunate because when such predictions are made, even with due substance, or partial and reeking substance, the saged-by-example breakdown of the serious, main, democratic parties are sure to continue. (The Reichstag fire analogy is apt, I would say, or more so than the events at the Bürgerbräukeller which did signal an attempted coup... by the Bavarian government!) And as that process continues, the tactic of blaming every move by the other side as one perpetuating aggression is one only demanding a mirror to the face, or in the head, and just as graceful. 

Fire and ashes could not quell the machinations of the Reichstag; only as the body, intact but for the extremists most obviously bearing the responsibility now quelled, reassembled could the institution be rendered a mere humiliating boondoggle for fellow travellers of the new order.  

With the Democrats then firmly - by the skin of the proverbial horse's teeth - in an elephant-reeking saddle, presumably for another salient two years (remember 2009 through 2011?) and we presume the logical desire would be to attempt to perpetuate this state. And while the early Obama years offered something like, yes, a promise - comparable even to the days of mighty Camelot - the promise of Biden is naught but the shadowy attempt, or attempt at an attempt, to be an undoer, a "healer" - two laudable pledges, which hardly are coherent in execution. Undoing of Trump's major or generally favoured reforms will undoubtedly herald unrest, not because the politics of undoing is inappropriate - I think the emergence of faux consensi is just as bad, and spells the dire end of democratic politics through the apocalyptic credence of now-or-never, which - mind you - never stops once the vote is tallied and the will of the people is, finally and forever, deciphered... the decisions to, in wisdom, and lash at his reputation less than he deserves, 

Few people with a brain more complex or refined in pedigree than that of Dinesh d'Souza - a curious line in the sand, as so many things concerning our public intellectuals and standard-bearers, who combine refined grit and skills of organising with supposedly sub-childishly stupid utterances and ignorances (and not merely regarding the existence of sexes and their conceivable implications) it must seem apparent the poll was, on the whole, fair and safely nestling on its pedestal, untouched - or at least untaken - by crawling fingers. Likewise, it would be very arrogant to supersede the very visible attempts by domestic actors to doctor a certain result, for a certain candidate, given either the goodness of their yet-unreplaced hearts (neoconservative or not) . I myself could not share 

Some countries, it should be noted, do put this distinction and fortification into law, not least the liberal constitution of free Germany, whose distinction between "right radical" (a rather good misnomer for Trump) and "extreme right" note the distinction between campaign, however spittle-enduring, and ban, open persecution by the most secretive and democratic of police forces in Germany, the only one tasked with the mighty task of delivering political repression. The United States, for all the unsavoury and enduring (like the Verfassungsschutz, and the great Atlantic Treaty, beyond the collapse of the Red Menace) activities of the FBI and CIA and other, more recent and blood-and-chaos-steeped and unsavourily ever-rearranging acronyms, has no such policy which could not be changed by the consensus of its governors (not the fifty, again mainly in the red) and its origins in the Enlightenment recognise no such mechanism, even as a special department in the basement of the most fringe agency. The distinction, which should well be mentioned in every mentioning of the Sixth - and the autogolpe president's own words, of "peacefully" as well as "patriotically" - is only between words and violence, which cannot - by any mind of integrity - be interchanged or substituted. But should such a distinction, between mere "radicals" and "extremists" be observed in electoral politics and, if not in constitutional law, where is it put into action? By which corporation and which elected (or unelected) decision-maker? I can only answer these hard questions by a ringing silence. Surely a coup of the kind which may have emerged in the summer of 1934 against an actual Führer which had, in much shorter time, dispensed of his loyal parliament, the federalism he never cherished, the promises to the churches whose endorsements he never feigned, would have been lovely, and at any rate ended in less bloodshed than the actual timeline of our following decade. But who, even of the blood of Atreus, is fit to make that evaluation and its appropriate ? Even in peaceful, ostensibly democracy-enhancing procedures? Surely  

Added to these efforts to "fortify" or "secure" elections that ought have been secure already last time - but not, never with regard to a particular candidate or programme - . There must be no super-agendas in the world of electoral politics. Bar, that is, the constitution, which is notably open to changes, or more so than - say - Qu'ranic incantations. 

But, I should ask in fairness, is this possible? Is the process of electoral politics a task which can be distilled, half-blindly, into a cycle of four (and, to many, two) years? Certainly, the democracies or half-democracies (with a stronger leaning towards oligarchy than is generally accepted; yet another threshold here which may not as much shock but frighten you) which count their politics in decades and generations are rightly thought of as successful indeed, and pursuing the right incentives. But is this not an indictment of those who think differently, or pursue those same goals by different means and different minds, and ought it in any way affect the designs and chances and - yes - rights of those who engage in politics outside these lofty goals? How ought we - not citizens, but foreigners ascribing to these liberal rights - react if, say, the scions of Chinese rule, or resurrected British dominionhood, in Singapore start organising and handing out leaflets to this end, and should we condemn the leadership of Singapore when their Verfassungsschutz authority respond to this challenge - with batons, not (as so successfully before) by ballots?  

Beautiful. A model, and not only to the drug-eschewing Bloombergs and Gingriches of the world? How will it seem in yet another half century? 

Given all this, it is fair to return to the question of democracy versus liberal democracy with a mind to the intentions of those who wish to use force - the legitimate force earned, or more to the point borrowed, through the anonymous voting slip - to secure the future of electoral politics or rather - let us be this fair - the outcome of such fortified processes. No vote will be taken to fortify the integrity in elections which have not been backed by both (preferably more) major parties, and with a mind to the complaints against an unusually tragic and chaotic procedure, but only for the blurring vision of an eternity, or say a generation, of single-party dominance - directly or, more humbly, through the (re)acceptance of the sacred and undeniable values of free trade, the Atlantic Treaty and free movement. We