“We Know Who Rigged the 2020 Election”

The better question – in response to Trump’s recent statement during a Pod Force One interview – is who cares who rigged the 2020 election? Because the system is rigged. Put another way, it ought to be obvious by now that it does not matter who wins these elections because we always lose. That is to say, run-of-the-mill Americans who would like the federal government to act at least vaguely in their interests – as opposed to the interests of corporations, big money donors and Israel.

Many of these run-of-the-mill Americans believed (for the last time, probably) that the 2024 election of Trump would result in a change for the better; that is to say, a change that would benefit them. To say it hasn’t is an understatement on par with saying Stage 5 pancreatic cancer really isn’t so bad.

There are still a few run-of-the-mill Americans who remain fixated on the corruption of the 2020 election, who remain mired in the tragic belief that if only the election had been above-board all would be well. Put another way, they remain mired in the tragic belief that the centralized leviathan state isn’t irremediably and inherently corrupt. They do not grasp that it exists not to protect rights but to grant (and withhold) concessions. That is to say, to dispense patronage. To take from A to line the pockets of B. It is the mechanism of the political means – as Albert Jay Nock explained in his book, Our Enemy the State – that is at odds with the economic means. The latter being the generation of wealth by individuals producing things of value freely exchanged. As opposed to the coercive, redistributionist, favor/patronage granting wheedling of the state, which pits every man against every other man in a hyena pack-like feeding frenzy to get theirs (at someone else’s expense) or (at best) to try to protect theirs from the hyenas.

Elections merely determine which faction will control the political means – the power of the state. It is thus inevitable – whenever greed is rewarded – that the greediest people will be the ones that are on the ballot. Worse than that, actually – because merely being greedy isn’t necessarily evil. It does become evil when that greed is paired with force. When a greedy aspirer to office is financed by greedy people who finance the aspirant because they expect him (or her, nowadays) to reward them if elected. There is no money in not taking any, is there? Without money, it is nigh impossible to aspire to office. Ipso facto, you end up with aspirants who take money. Put in honest language, aspirants who are bought and paid for. Getting elected to Congress transforms the aspirant into a millionaire. The onetime barrista AOC is now a very wealthy woman. So also the turban wearing Congresswoman from Mogadishu. What is their source of their sudden wealth? Did they create it? Or did power confer it?

Elections confer power. That power will inevitably be used to enrich those who have it and that enrichment can only come from mulcting those who lack it. This back-and-forth is the only thing that elections determine and it is why elections do not matter if you are – as H.L. Mencken put it a century ago – among the ranks of “well-disposed, industrious and decent men.” Elections only matter to such men to the extent that the outcome has an effect on to what degree they will be exploited, abused and put-upon.

Not whether.

It will never be never – so long as anyone’s rights are up for a vote. So long as elections are (Mencken’s words, again) a “kind of advance auction of stolen goods.” Which is what they necessarily are. Aspirants promise to do and get things for their supporters. But who will do the actual “helping” and “supporting”? It will not be the winner of the election, except insofar as he orders that others are forced to “help” and “support.” The aspirant – once elected – will not roll up his sleeves or open up his wallet. He will command the apparatus of the state to open yours.

The state, accordingly, depends hugely on people believing that elections matter. That the problem – per Trump and the people he’s duped – is corrupted elections. Not that elections are corruptions.

But how will things be decided in the absence of elections? How about by each of us, for ourselves? And everything else by explicit, consensual agreement among the individuals involved. This is (per Nock) what government is, by the way – as opposed to the state. Married couples govern their partnership; there is no coercion (except in the instances of abuse but the abused party always has the legal right to get out of the marriage). Families are governed; so are friendships. Communities can be governed, also. The cancer of the state forms when healthy social arrangements metastasize – via coercion – into the state, which manifests as a sick and perverted parody of government. It feigns respect for the individual while emasculating and terrorizing him, by micromanaging and threatening him to obey (or else) at every turn.

Worst of all, perhaps, it demoralizes him by disempowering him – via elections. This ludicrous business of letting him believe that he has a part to play in the operations of the state. It is something like the way menial workers in a corporation are often referred to as “associates,” as if they were junior partners in a law firm. The “associate” – like the voter – knows deep down he’s as nothing to the corporation, just as he is to the state. That is why the state – per Trump – wants people t vote. Wants them to get mad about “corrupt” elections.

Because it keeps them in the role of “associates.”

. . .

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