The epitome of vampirist (and conceivably racist) caricatures, the once sceptered but never crowned Nicolae I, would merrily be unable to run . In the end, death is the perfect disqualifyer. As knows tyrants around the world, including those preferring to extend this disbarment over far younger and (mayhaps) more competent, less As knew Mr. Routh, and as knew Mr. Crooks, presumably, although his preference for gross brain damage reducing the Republican candidate to a vegetable less appealing than the incesthysteria-spouting, board-grooming, recently-crowned and then abdicated Democratic versus death, direct and disqualifying, may have been one of as callous indifference as to the question of his own future as a voter, man and (conceivably) president.
Why then do I favour assassination over barring someone for office? Well, for similar reasons that capital punishment - on which I have made my opinion obsequiously and quite abundantly clear - disturbs a constitutional, liberal order less than liberal (in the less attractive sense of the term) rules for imprisonment sans trial, such as those in merry Sweden, where the recently instated nine-month rule (apartheid South Africa allowed for 90 days, a move decried by Mandela as one against which "no dictator could covet more power") was almost as recently, and entirely predictably (without consequences) broken. Add to this the conditions of remand, which combines overcrowding with near-complete isolation of Florentine (yes, I hate that name too) conditions against the decidedly innocent, and the faux compensations gently exceeding American minimum hourly wages, per diem, and you have something more repugnant, and certainly more irreconcilable with democracy, than the notion of a Mr. Valjakkala, Mr. Arklöv or Mr. Eklund being escorted into a yard following three trials, further appeals and a request for mercy, to be very un-summarily shot. This latter image is distasteful, but so are the very real images of their crimes, living and dead, and their ended political aspirations would not, I think, affect the very partisan and ostensibly stable political system of ours more than the death of their banes (welcome and cheered, should it be delivered more brutally, without the benefit of due process). Nor should any party, of popular movement worthy of the name be hampered by the assassination of one, or three, of its members, or even Cole di Rienzi (plural). The ability to exclude a political candidate, otherwise qualified, on vaguely political grounds, is an inferno to the match of a single name, with no ability
Whether this discretion could be employed... sparingly, should not be entirely dissuaded. In Germany, now without the "West" but very much of the West, and of the same constitution and Bundesverfassungsgericht,
What then of the question, should we not safeguard this constitutional, liberal order with . Well, asides from the age-old question of Plato: , (further) translated into English as "who guards the guardians", the question which is outmanoeuvred with the same move as these undemocratic political actors, i. e. candidates not fit for election, now in the more literal sense,
What then is to be done? Ignoring the persona associated with that phrase, and his view of an assembly elected but not yet seated, which could not be trusted with carrying out his objectives and where his party got only the second tally, we must ask for whom democracy is, and whence the legitimacy distributed comes. In the framework of the EU, this is more obviously . As Tony Benn said, evoking the (old-fashioned, bloody and decidedly toxic) English revolution, properly called if the later American and French nephews are, as well as the concept of popular sovereignty not merely as a tongue massage for certain lawyers, but as a real concept to be held in mind by the elected, from which they derive their powers, and to which it is stripped bare and returned and resurrected (or not) once a general election is held, "rather a bad parliament than a good king". While King Georgescu, just as his predecessors Ceausescu and Antonescu, may be maligned as a monarch in waiting, symbolically, . And so do the opposition, by which I mean the (opposition in mind to the hypothetic future) government, fit into the historic mold of oligarchy which, as any tenuous or gobsmacked student of the classics knows, is just as un-democratic and distanced from democracy. We ought to know now, with Senator Sanders denouncing the Trumpist oligarchy and its Märzveilchen as oligarchs and plutocrats (and, notably, less so the very same men when they sided with the party he himself now very obviously does, and not necessarily in the interests of a wide Popular Front for Schumer, Soros and Sanders, in Madrid in late summer 1936). The Russian subtext is clear, but so is the . Lest we repeat history, in this case the eye shining towards the ancestral leaders of the ÖVP, and of Austria 1933. And maybe we should. But if we should; there are, as the Austrians learned, worse outcomes, but as with the 1930s Freudian-friendly dictatorship, the stiff medication may usher in the disease, and if unleashed, "we" must carry a substantial burden, one which cannot be redeemed by position and interest alone, and certainly not prejudice. Playing the role of Mahdi and pointing to a golden path seems incredible, in the literal sense of the term, and here, the drunkedness precedes the trip, with the most gouged-out eyes for the most predictable consequences.
An old face, now doubly discredited. But would he have seemed as untenable in 1968? In 1945? We do not know, but cannot say, until it is too late. Unless we are to elevate ourself into a Shora-ye-Negahban of democracy.
