At least the Russians seem to be off the hook this time.
It looks like the Americans have only themselves to blame for this election shocker. Well half of them at least.
Electing a dangerous imbecile to the presidency against overwhelming odds once is barely plausible. Doing it again after he’d already been exposed as a traitor would be stretching the genre so far even John le Carre would balk.
(Not that I’m totally ruling out the Manchurian candidate theory this time, nor presumably will the mainstream media once they finish their time in the stocks along with the pollsters).
Still, as we await the finale of this bizarre political thriller, it’s worth noting a few positives. For example, the actual vote on the day seemed to go remarkably well, with the minimum of interference. I mean from their own side.
Sure, the president tried to disenfranchise every opponent he could imagine ahead of time, from the entire Black community to former felons, and tried to prevent people voting every which way right down to removing the actual post boxes. And then there was the risk of death courtesy of the pandemic, of course.
Yet the Americans came out in record numbers — including for the president.
The most extraordinary statistic for Australians to digest as they look down smugly at the electoral college mess is that Joe Biden has gotten more votes in this election than any other candidate in the history of America.
You would think those 70 million votes would guarantee you victory, but let’s at least take heart that an estimated 67% of registered voters did their democratic duty.
We might not find that so incredible here in a country that regularly hits over 90%. But we have to make it compulsory to get there. The Americans managed their figure without being forced into it.
Despite fears of everything from voter intimidation to machine failure, each state reported that things ran smoothly. The main issues were things like a broken water pipe flooding a polling booth in one county. But no votes were harmed, they assured us.
What happened after the polls closed is a whole other ugly story, with Trump questioning the validity of the count and threatening to undermine the democratic process. Not to mention the Russians, who are presumably still keeping a close watch. The final chapter has not been written yet.
As for the bewildered Australian reaction to it all, there have been a few comments that prove Trump lies spread far and wide, swallowed not just be rednecks but by our own political, corporate and media elite.
Take Alexander Downer’s comments to the AFR this week that he would vote for Trump because Biden was “elderly and weak and past his best”. This from an unemployed 69 year old whose jobs all came from political connections.
There are those like the septuagenarian company directors I encountered who claimed to abhor Trump but thought Biden was bad or worse because he was “senile”. They didn’t see the irony as they clung to their own board seats well past their use-by date.
There are those Jewish Australians who are quick to denounce anti-Semitism but who don’t seem to have a problem with a neo-Nazi sympathiser as leader of the free world.
And then there are those Australians who ponder naively “How can the Americans vote for Trump? He’s a joke. An embarrassment. Don’t they know the whole world is laughing at them?”
The answer, quite simply, is that most of them couldn’t give a toss what the rest of the world thinks. Never have. Never will. They barely care what their next-door neighbour thinks about them.
Shy Trump voters my arse. They are out and proud and more deplorable than ever.
What is your main takeaway from the fraught 2020 US presidential election? Let us know your thoughts by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication in Crikey’sYour Say section
Methinks the odd Australian scribe would do well to pass on the Putin references, and take a look at what’s happened in the last week.
The Steele dossier has been blown to smithereens, shown to have been dreamt up by a Russian ex-pat employed by the Demorat Brookings Institute, who was assisted by 2 women ‘drunks’ from Perm – “from”, not “in” (Perm’s near the Urals), with lolly flowing via Cyprus, and with enough redactions being reversed in Muellers’ to show not even Mueller thought there was any evidence linking Julian Assange to the Kremlin, and the exchanging of any emails.
And, this, I remind, is central to why Julian Assange is sitting in Belmarsh Prison, awaiting extradition to the US.
Further, this week also saw the suicide of another ‘inmate’ at Belmarsh, a chap who had lived in the UK for around 2 decades, yet had been sitting in Belmarsh for over 12 months, awaiting deportation back to Brazil, which he’d left due to persecution for being gay.
He and Assange had struck up a friendship – Assange’s frame of mind has not benefited from the suicide.
I couldn’t give a flying fork about the Yank election. People seem to think the result might make some sort of difference to the way Amerika operates.
That’s almost a text book example of supreme delusion. The joint’s shot to bits. The only remaining question is how much damage will they do on the way down?
The rest is just filler and noise.
Took the words right out of my mouth!
That few seem to give a “rat’s” about, David, is the foreign policy. The “I” country is central to Trump’s policy in the M.E. to say nothing of the table service offered to the Gulf States. There is the Saudi-Qatar stuff but we won’t digress. Up north we have Syria with the Russians taking most of the tricks; at least to date.
Exercising restraint, I will type only ‘Silk, Belt, ADB, and the South China Sea although an essay could be written on Pompeo’s recent visit to Vietnam.
Agreed : domestically, it won’t make a lot of difference and since Carter the election of Dem hasn’t been of benefit to the average joe. The significance of the current event resides in the likely (as I type) moving of our mate off the stage and that, I suggest (with all the humility that I am able to marshall), is material.
Yes, given the possible/probable ‘gridlock’, with the Demorats having the 2 ‘Houses’, and the ‘publicans the Senate and the Supreme Court, the only arena on which Biden (rather, his ‘carer’) could exercise some authority is Foreign Policy.
But, given there is barely a cigarette paper between the ‘rats and the ‘publicans, on FP, I’ll stick to my original suggestion that there’ll be little to no change in the WAY Amerika operates.
While there might some movement on the ‘enemies’ list, the m.o. won’t change.
It really hasn’t altered much since WWII, when they sought assistance from the Poms on how to run ‘intelligence services’ (Ian Fleming of ‘Bond, James Bond’ fame volunteered his advice).
A very enlightening read, Vincent Bevins’ ‘The Jakarta Method’.
For instance, a CIA ‘freelancer’ pitched a movie project aimed at ‘destabilising’ Sukarno in Indonesia. The ‘plot’ involved a blond airline stewardess, a KGB agent, no less, and Sukarno’s well known habit of ‘playing away from home’.
‘Allegedly’ the film met the ‘porn’ standard of the time, but was so bad (a made up Hispanic played Sukarno) they decided it probably wouldn’t be ‘credible’. So, they binned it.
The producers were very disappointed to have been judged to have let the side down.
Those producers were brothers – Bing and Larry Crosby.
Fair and amusing points David.
It was Philby (of all people) who originally organised the training and administration procedures for the fledgling CIA.
Sources abound but Philby’s book “My Secret War” compares with that of White’s “SpyThatcher” (misspelling intended).
With regard to Downer’s criticisms of Biden, at least none of his staff ever leaked a Top Secret ONA document to his favourite media mouthpiece, such as, for example, Andrew Bolt.
Great article, Janine
What’s great about it?
Well, it’s the way Janine doesn’t pull her punches. At all. Refreshing in this litigious world.
Perret:
We might not find that so incredible here in a country that regularly hits over 90%. But we have to make it compulsory to get there. The Americans managed their figure without being forced into it.
This could have easily been rephrased. The American turnout reached 67%. So a third of Americans understood that voting is a complete waste of time and didn’t turn up. Numerous studies have shown that only the rich 1% of people in the US affect government policy.
The 67% who voted are thus rather silly as whoever they voted for won’t represent them. The 33% of people who didn’t vote are much smarter. They have either studied the evidence or more likely their “life experience” has shown them that voting is a complete waste of time.
As Emma Goldman said “If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal”.
You can be sure that the 33% who didn’t vote don’t watch knobs like Perret on Fox News.
So Perret in discussing the US Election has to have a side-swipe at Australia’s compulsory voting. Why? Well Rupert of course doesn’t like compulsory voting as it “favours” the left wing.
de Tocqueville marveled, in the mid 1830s, how voting could be manipulated. He wrote to his friends (being an astiro) something to the effect “that is all that we have to do in France” because, equally, de Tocqueville recognised that the ‘phenonomena’ was to be unversal; eventually.
Janine, can you please not use the American “gotten”.
The most extraordinary statistic for Australians to digest as they look down smugly at the electoral college mess is that Joe Biden has gotten more votes in this election than any other candidate in the history of America.
gotten=> obtained (simple – about year 5)Received seems more apt…
I’m in sympathy, Marguerite, but I’m facing the fact that we sticklers will have to give up on gotten, like haitch, and the possessive it’s, and route pronounced “rowt”, and trash, and sidewalk, and first floor instead of ground floor, and…., and….
“Shopping malls” urgh…..”high street”…..even worse
My granny abhorred the Americanism ‘truck’, when we should have said ‘lorry’.
And even worser, truck instead of ute!
Someone (you?) recommeded a crossword for Crikey. Perhps Fray could offer quartly extensions as a prize for displaying erudition. Given the TV stuff (that I don’t read – don’t have any such instrument) a ‘dear Aunty’ might not go astray either
Not me mate. No time.
Perhaps they could subcontract Mungo’s from the Byron ECHO?
Best little paper (now on line) in the country.
And it’s distributed as a free paper in Lismore & Casino!
There is rarely a need to even use that abomination of a crutch word ‘got’ which itself cannot stand alone and has to be nailed to a real verb.
People have grown so inured to bad grammar and ugly phraseology that the simple & elegant “..Joe Biden has
gottenmore votes..” seems lacking.For those suffering withdrawal from extraneous words there are plenty of other modifiers as Erasmus proffered.