Civil Commotion

Y’all will be comforted to know that the crowd at Alan Keyes’ Renew America isn’t being deceived by our intelligence agencies’ schtick about Russian hacking.

No less a figure than the famously clear-headed Reverend Austin Miles sets us straight:

Let’s get one thing straight. Vladimir Putin with the force of Russia had NOTHING to do with this past presidential election victory in the U.S. This latest retarded idea and charge claiming that the Russians were able to hack into our government political and election systems to pull out and expose Hillary’s government classified emails and then release them to the public in order to make her look bad which would put Donald Trump into office is not only ridiculous but is is just plain stupid.

Of course, this is what the Communist Party Democrats, led by George Soros, are counting on, America being stupid, so as to not be able to think clearly, but simply giving in to whatever happens without challenging it or standing firm against it.

So there you go: Really, it’s simple when you really know how things work and remember that George Soros is the most wicked human being who has ever lived.

At this point, you need to be willfully blind to pretend this was anything other than what it was: a ratfucking operation on an epic scale aimed squarely at Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party. And while it was happening, Republicans were happy to play along.

Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

That’s about what it looks like. More shocking than the Russian scheming — Russia is our enemy, after all — is the willing Republican complicity.

We can hope that the Electoral College lives up to its design, but that seems unlikely. Basically, then, a foreign power has exploited the subterranean malice of ignoramuses to install a psychologically unstable puppet.

Now that America is Great Again, nobody will be surprised to learn that some things are changing.

1. We are commanded by The Donald to say “Merry Christmas.” “Happy Holidays” and “Season’s Greetings” are out.

2. Y’all need to stop telling Li’l Precious that made-up story about a fat man in a red suit who brings toys and start telling children the made-up story about a poor Jew with magical powers who was born in a barn.

I feel badly for the parents caught-up in this nutjob’s “witnessing,” but otherwise I actually like stories like this, just as I liked the story about that crazy lady who spent last summer howling and bellowing in Target stores about transgenders. The Pious are killing Christianity’s degrading narrative faster than facts and reason ever could.

What do you know? Ten members of the electoral college have demanded a briefing on the intelligence linking Donald Trump to Russia.

In a letter to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, the electors — nine Democrats and one Republican — argue that they require the information ahead of Dec. 19, when the Electoral College is set to meet and select the next president.

“The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” they wrote. “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”

At least some observers are dismissive.

Well … I dunno. It is the electors who will select the next president, and it seems to me entirely reasonable of them — responsible, in fact — to want to know if Donald Trump would enter office beholden to Vladimir Putin — who is, after all, an enemy of the United States. Here’s the downside: Electors aren’t distinguished by anything except the fact that their political party wants to show them some gratitude for their hard work. An elector can be a political pro with some discernment, or can be the kid who changes the oil in your car. And if on December 19th an elector can’t make it to the state capital for some reason, a traveling salesman who merely happens to be passing by at the right moment might be pressed into duty.

Very few, if any, are likely to be cleared to receive even a low classification of intelligence.

This sort of works because, nearly always, the winning party’s slate of electors simply votes for whomever won the state’s popular vote. They surely cannot be obligated or lawfully coerced to so vote, however, because if they could be there would be no point to assembling them to cast votes. That question has never been tested in the courts, but I doubt very strongly that it would pass Constitutional muster.

In the instant case, the moral and patriotic duty is plain — make certain that Donald Trump never becomes President of the United States.

Recall that most Republicans sensibly expected Trump to lose; after all, he is conspicuously unfit for any public responsibility, a fraud and a buffoon that no decent adult would ever permit into his home. Many Republican electors probably agreed to serve on a lark, “just in case,” never imagining that they would actually be called upon to vote for Trump. I’ve no doubt whatever that, on election night, a lot of electors were swept with a sense of dread and said to themselves something like … “Holy shit,” and have been trying ever since to decide what to do: Turn their back on their party, with all the opprobrium and possible legal questions that entails, or cross their fingers and turn their country over to a vain proto-fascist.

There is nothing pro forma about next Monday’s meeting of of the fifty state’s electors, and they should be accorded respectful treatment by the intelligence agencies. There are doubtless specifics that can’t be shared, but the agencies can, and should, meet with the electors to tell them what they believe, and at least provide an overview of why they believe it.

Though the 1968 election is now remembered chiefly for the riots at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, this would be a good time to recall the Constitutional crisis it almost provoked.

Not only Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey were on that ballot; George Wallace was, too. Wallace knew he couldn’t win the presidency, but had a crude, entirely legal strategy for arresting the progress of the civil rights movement. If he could win enough electoral votes he could prevent either Nixon or Humphrey from winning the presidency outright. Then, he reasoned, he would throw his electoral votes to whichever candidate would ally with him to put the weight of the federal government in opposition to those uppity dark folk.

Luckily for us, Wallace garnered too few votes and the plan never came to fruition.

James Michener received an unexpected phone call that fall of 1968. Would he be interested, the Chairman of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party wanted to know, in serving as a presidential elector? He was, and the subsequent experience made him a no-nonsense opponent of the electoral college system; being Michener, he wrote a book all about it — Presidential Lottery. Like everything else Michener ever wrote, it is thoughtful and thoroughly researched, and well worth reading.

James Madison’s notes of the Constitutional Convention make clear that the convention had two goals when they established the electoral college. The first was to make certain that the interests of the large states didn’t overwhelm the small states and render them insignificant, and the second was to backstop popular enthusiasm for a demagogue. The first was uppermost in the delegates’ minds, contrary to Alexander Hamilton’s emphasis on the second when he contributed to The Federalist. (Recall how bad communications were then, and consider the likelihood of the average citizen ever hearing a candidate speak.)

We now have the peculiar and unanticipated circumstance that, thanks exclusively to the vagaries of vote distribution, an egregious buffoon who lost the popular vote by almost 3-million ballots may soon be inaugurated as president.

The electoral college has grievously imperiled the country, and now we must hope with crossed-fingers for that same committee of unknowns to do the almost unthinkable and upend the election.

It’s too late to save us this time around, but the Constitution must be amended and the electoral college eliminated. If a candidate fails to win a popular majority in the general election, there should be a runoff election or the choice should go to the Congress (House and Senate). I favor the second for the simple reason that elected officials aren’t likely to be gulled by a cheap demagogue so easily as Ma and Pa Kettle, and the inevitable wheeling-and-dealing should be adequate to protect the individual states.

What must never happen again is that an amoral cynic tap into the subterranean malice of a minority and put the survival of the country itself in danger.