YES, THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE FAILED AMERICA

ABOLISH THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

TRUMP IS A USURPER

Donald Trump usurped the Presidency of the United States of America. He did so by exploiting divisions and corruption within the two dominant parties. Trump ascended to the  Oval Office upon the backs of the Electoral College as the electors failed to properly vet the candidates and failed to vet them independent of party and state pressure. The Electoral College of the United States failed not because Trump lost the popular vote by the largest margin in history to carry 77 more state delegates than Hillary Clinton or anyone else to win the EC vote. Thus Trump was declared POTUS with the assumption the Electoral College did its job. It did not.

The EC failed America and yes, Earth, by failing to do its Constitutional duty. As such the EC failed to consider all of America’s presidential candidates, not just those from the Democrat-Republican Duopoly, i.e. the Two-Headed Snake in bed with the Giant Octopus of Big Business and Bigger Banks. This Duopoly distracts us all with its superficial drama while deep down below “the two heads” the body of the snake quietly and pursues its agenda. This pursuit is nearly unconsciously and habitual as if programmed from long ago. As an expression of Duopoly control, the Electoral College failed to deliberate over the candidates’ qualifications and character. The EC electors failed to even consider any of the strengths, weaknesses, and integrity of any of the women and men competing to become POTUS and VPOTUS to best determine who shall most faithfully execute the responsibilities and carry the burdens of such high offices. If the electors had done so, both Clinton and Trump would most likely have been dismissed as not worthy of the office. Unethical if not illegal practices became habitual over the years to eventually become normalized. What became normalized became established and accepted as “real” and thus “legal.” The Constitution gives little guidance to the otherwise helter-skelter structure of America’s overlapping jurisdictions in regards to the Electoral College.

The EC was designed by wealthy adult White male Capitalist revolutionaries to prevent demagogues and what they feared as those demagogues’ rabid mobs of ignorant and dangerous goons from the so-called lower classes from storming the political process to take over the country. The EC allowed itself instead to be manipulated by the Fifty States and by two corporatocratic political parties to allow Donald Trump to usurp the Presidency. Events since January 2017, a mere four months ago, have cemented the disastrous results of the Electoral College process as yet another example why we must abolish this institution.

Meanwhile, the country’s gone nuts in a world already on fire. It is as if the nation’s mind is seriously afflicted with the political and financial equivalent of toxoplasmosis parasites and brain tapeworms. This is yet another example of a much deeper malaise: so many of our actions arise from fear, hurt, greed, anger, and reactivity rather than from love, forgiveness, acceptance, courage, and responsiveness. This point is acknowledged here and is best served for another time.

The Electoral College of the United States nearly fractured in early January 2017 thanks to the lack of courage and foresight among many electors. The electors allowed themselves to be intimidated by the State regimes to vote for one of the two dastardly primary party candidates. “Nearly fractured” is not the same as “fractured,” obviously, but enough EC electors threatened to vote their conscience for whom they felt would be the best for their state or threatened some kind of mutiny some were removed by their state regimes and replaced with docile and obedient people. Yes, the states suppressed elector independence as well as full vetting of the various candidates.

Imagine being told you would not be allowed to vote unless corporatocratic political party operatives in control of any one of the fifty American state regimes, a corrupt setup that would have appalled those Founding Fathers who opposed political parties in the first place, commanded you to cast your ballot for a particular candidate. And you thought you lived in a democratic republic, albeit a capitalist one, where one puts country before party.

Despite all of the obstacles placed before them, seven electors survived attempts or threats to remove them from the EC to cast their vote for candidates other than the one from their party. None of the seven voted for either Clinton or Trump. They came closer than any of their colleagues to vet at least some candidates. One Republican elector stood up and dared the other electors of the College to vote their conscience to prevent Trump from becoming President. Clinton received 232 Electoral College votes. Trump, however, received 306 votes. Trump carried more states and counties while Clinton carried more of the population who actually voted. None of these hundreds of electors, however, gathered as an actual college to vet all of the candidates and then deliberate amongst themselves for whom would best serve the interests of the American people and their United States. Most of them voted for the political party they represented rather than on behalf of the population of their state. They obeyed the demands and expectations projected by the political machinery and governments of the states, all controlled by the Democrat-Republican Duopoly. Indeed to not do so would have those electors be branded as “faithless electors,” as were those seven “rebel electors.”

Political parties were not supposed to dominate government and political systems. Yet networks of wealthy capitalist oligarchs control two of these parties. As such “their” Republicans and Democrats rule and distort the electoral process. Voting in America is a shameful and asinine mockery of democracy. Instead of voting for one despotic puppet one gets to choose between two despotic puppets cloaked with illusions of liberty, prosperity, and peace for all. The Dem-Rep Duopoly dominates all Fifty States and thus determines for whom EC electors must vote.

Enough electors cast their votes without any attempt to deliberate to thus select Donald Trump as the next President. They did so even tho Trump LOST and LOST BIG by THREE MILLION votes! In an election riddled with accusations of electoral fraud by both sides, too. Ironically much of the current evidence beginning to emerge damns the Republicans altho they’re the one crying fraud the most and the loudest as the Democrats seek to point out Russian interference in the 2016 Election. The United States Electoral College of constitutional, capitalist, quasi-democratic republic thus elected a loser as President.

They elected a so-called “strong man” with a temperamental mind, an apparently untreated form of paranoid narcissistic illness, and possessed with a vengeful, trickster spirit. This man is about and for making deals as a game of risk. He makes decisions based on emotions without any desire to understand history or to consider evidence and analysis presented by everyone from journalists in the field to U.S. and Allied intelligence agencies.

The American EC electors chose a far-right populist demagogue, a man adored by the Alt-Right, a billionaire whose version of Mein Kampf is titled, The Art of the Deal. Note Trump’s book was ghostwritten, not co-written by Tony Schwartz, who apparently came to feel “remorse” for doing so. Shame on these electors for refusing to deliberate upon our presidential candidates! Shame on those electors for groveling before the States!

Trump is already notorious for his bigotry including racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, xenophobic nativism, and classism as well as for his attacks on people of different religions and from different countries. His misogyny includes assaulting women and leering at girls. His business acumen, built in large part upon fraud and exploitation of immigrants and other working class folks, delighted business-owners including banksters and corporatocrats. His dismissal of global climate disruption, the environment, and green energy has the fossil fuel industry waxing orgasmic. White supremacists including American Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan are elated. So are the Christian Dominionist and other Christian supremacist theocrats who have infiltrated the Executive Branch as did their fellow Dominionist Mike Pence, former Governor of Indiana and now Vice POTUS.

Trump’s penchant for straight talk is conflated with truth. The public’s belief in his lies is twisted into facts. Less than half of those who voted cast their ballots for him. If one analyzes Trump’s speeches one will note patterns of juvenile gibberish interspersed with slogans and topics of distraction other than what Trump was supposed to address. Yet his speeches have a populist, hypnotic rhythm to mesmerize, sway, and provoke crowds with a certain mindset. He appears to be well-trained in a particular subset of the art of public speaking, those of a more negative vein, leveraged to reduce the gravitas and tarnish the image of his competitors and enemies.

This isn’t about Donald Trump and Mike Pence however. This is about the Electoral College. This is for removing the systems that hold it in place, ultimately including the capitalist system of slaveholders, financiers, merchants, and other wealthy White male elites who took over and led the American Revolution thru a long war and an extended Constitutional process.

This regards a system set up by these privileged elites to overthrow the aristocracy while securing their control of the rebel American colonies behind the façade of liberty and equality of opportunity. A vital aspect of maintaining and strengthening their capitalist domination of the political system is to keep the rest of the population conquered and divided by race, ethnicity, religion, age, gender, education, and class. By abolishing the class divisions of Eurasian aristocracies, rooted in Feudalism, these White male elites of property accelerated both the creation and generation of bourgeoisie capital and industry as well as sped up the rise of the proletariat, i.e. the working classes. The Electoral College itself was intended to reserve power for national and transnational bourgeoisie elites while fostering the illusion of State’s Rights. As such the EC was to prevent the so-called “ignorant, stupid, and emotional masses of regular, low-class working folks” from electing their leaders while fooling them into believing they actually elected presidents by simply voting.

Even today efforts remain to make circumstances more difficult for working people to vote due to their race, religion, immigrant status, age, gender, and level of education. Elections are held on weekdays where the established work schedules of most working class people conflict with open poll times. Declare Election Day a national holiday during which only those in essential services are scheduled to work (they must be allowed time to vote as well). This act will increase the voting power of the people as well as independent candidates in regards to the Electoral College.

Abolish it. Abolish the Electoral College. Let us the Citizens of these United American States abolish our Electoral College.

Not because Trump won. Corrupt Machiavellian Hillary Clinton would have been a disaster for the American republic in another fashion. Many Americans preferred alternatives such as Jill Stein of the Green Party, Gary Johnson of the Libertarians, or Evan McMullin, a conservative Independent from Utah. Not enough people voted for any one of them, however, to make much of a difference. Large numbers of voters stayed away from the polls in disgust. Clinton did win the popular vote by almost three million votes as of recent counts. Trump won the popular vote in several key states that mattered per the Electoral College Count. Johnson, Stein, and McMullin proved insignificant. The Electoral College in spite of Clinton’s large lead over Trump in the popular vote elected Trump to serve as President. The Electors did so with little deliberation and in a manner blatantly devoid of responsibility. Instead they caved in to pressure from the Republicans, especially Trump-Pence and the Alt-Right, from the States, and from bad habits inculcated from 230 years of drift, laziness, apathy, and what could be opined as, “Yeah, it’s stupid, it’s stupid alright, but shut up and just elect the sumbitch already, or the states ’ll go apeshit, y’know, so don’t rock the damn boat, it’s just a formality to keep the peace so don’t muck it up so we can all go home and sleep in our beds tonight instead of going off to war.”

Time and time again, election after election, the Electoral College rubberstamps whomever the Democrat-Republican Duopoly and the States tells it to regardless of who wins or loses the national popular vote. See, and this is crucial to understand, the Electoral College fails the American people even when it rubberstamps the winner of the popular vote. Not only does the EC fail to deliberate upon ALL of the presidential and vice-presidential candidates, but its very existence makes a mockery of the popular vote and thus of democracy itself. Abolish this travesty. Abolish this pillar of capitalist control!

The United States is already at war. We’re engaged in the Global Long War on Terror all across Eurasia and Africa and the Drug War all across the Americas. America seems at times since the Wisconsin Insurrection, Occupy Wall Street/Occupy Earth, the Cops’ War on Black People and Protestors, Black Lives Matter revolts, the retaliatory War on Cops, Standing Rock/#NoDAPL, and Alt-Right versus Antifa street clashes to be on the edge of another possible revolution or civil war. We’re already in a Second Cold War. The Korean War may reignite any moment. There are at least eight or nine major flashpoints around the planet that have a high probability of triggering a thermonuclear world war. This began under Bush and Obama and worsens under Trump. And people actually believed Hillary Clinton would trigger a nuclear holocaust before Trump?

Yes, war already exists, people. Just ask the millions of refugees. Ask the millions of American troops from all across the Armed Forces. See how our political and military system is rooted in the material, economic system of Capitalism. See how this same system causes and worsens Global Climate Disruption here on Earth as it continues to ignore dynamic changes thruout the solar system. U.S. Republicans and Democrats, as well as the Russians, Chinese, Europeans, Middle Easterners, South Asians, and others in power, are busy wagging their dogs. The EC never even gave superior candidates a chance because those candidates were forced to the fringes by the massive dominance of Dem-Reps and their bankster and corporatist masters over media, finance, governments, and the electoral process.

The Electoral College has failed America every time as its delegate-electors unconstitutionally rubber stamps the candidate selected by the political parties dominating the machinery of federal and state governments. The EC especially failed America and failed abysmally across December 2016 and January 2017. Abolish the Electoral College. Doing so may be too late as sparks and cinders of revolution and civil war spark and fly around us.

There isn’t anything to “get over already” as sociopaths who imagine themselves victorious like to shout so damn much anytime someone points out Trump and Pence actually lost and are in power due to negligence. There is anything more for us to do except work together to remove these usurpers Trump and Pence from power.

Trump and Pence must be removed along with those corrupted ones controlling the Congress on behalf of the Dem-Rep Two-Headed Snake and its Giant Octopus controllers. By what means shall they be removed? The slow, established legal way, in a nation of laws where those in power determine the laws is impeachment. Revolution is the other way, faster but often with unintended and unforeseen consequences. Revolution, however, is our revolutionary heritage. We may choose to exercise our historic birthright, organize ourselves to do so, and overthrow this regime. Are we able to make these difficult yet profound changes without violence? If we do resort to violence, we destroy ourselves.  as another sacrifice upon the altar of the meme, “History repeats itself with endless cycles of oppression, protest, insurrection, repression, revolution, civil war, collapse, order, authoritarianism, et cetera, over and over and over.

Not only must this administration be removed, but also the States must be relegated to provincial status. The Fifty States are not separate nation-states. Yes, the States Righters must “get over” that! Indeed, there are many stateless-nations within America such as Native American and Alaskan Native tribal nations as well as Puerto Ricans and Native Hawaiians. The popular vote of the people must determine their leaders as the elites have forfeited their constitutional privilege to “deliberate” so as to keep us working class “cows and sheep” at bay. The Constitutional efforts of the wealthy elites to enshrine their power in an exalted document so as to nullify the voting power of women, of people of color, of working people, of people without property, of young people, all of us so-called 99 Percenters, must be overthrown.

We the People of America must also abolish the abhorrent practice of gerrymandering up racist, fake political jurisdictions as legislative districts. We do not need any more complicated nonsense such as redundant jurisdictions in this nation of overlapping kaleidoscopic jurisdictions. We already have a regime of numerous local jurisdictions for our elected representatives to represent. Simply use what already exists. Our established patchwork of counties, cities, townships, parishes, hybrid city-counties, and indigenous reservations can serve as our state and federal legislative districts. Furthermore, Native tribal states including their reservations are not to be parceled by state and county boundaries, as such boundaries must stop at the borders of the tribal territories.

Yes, Congress and the state legislatures shall be affected and rightfully, delightfully so. Yes, our ossified national Constitution must be amended. It must be made more fair, ethical, flexible, and reflective of common sense. Abolishing this electoral institution that allowed a deal-making billionaire to manipulate it so as to hijack a lost election to usurp the Presidency of the United States of America is THE place to start. Let’s go! No more waiting for the next election! One step at a time, of course. So let’s run!

 

William Dudley Bass
21 April 2017
Revised 20 January 2018
Seattle & SeaTac, Washington
U.S.A.
Cascadia

Resources

Ballotpedia Staff. “Electoral College: Presidential Elections: The Road to the White House,” Ballotpedia: The Encyclopedia of American Politics. <https://ballotpedia.org/Electoral_College>.

Graves, Allison and Jacobson, Louis. “Yes, Trump Did Win More Counties Than Any Republican Since Reagan,” The Daily Beast. <https://www.thedailybeast.com/yes-trump-did-win-more-counties-than-any-republican-since-reagan>.

History.com Staff. “Electoral College,” History.com. A+E Networks. 2010. <http://www.history.com/topics/electoral-college>.

History.com Staff. “Presidential Elections,” History.com. A+E Networks. 2010. <http://www.history.com/topics/us-presidents/presidential-elections>.

LaCapria, Kim. “Counting Blue Counties,” Snopes. <https://www.snopes.com/trump-won-3084-of-3141-counties-clinton-won-57/>.

Mayer, Jane. “Donald Trump’s Ghostwriter Tells All,” The New Yorker: The Political Scene. July 2016. <http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all>.

NARA Staff. “U.S. Electoral College,” National Archives and Records Administration. 2016. <https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/provisions.html>.

NARA Staff. “U.S. Electoral College: The 2016 Presidential Election,” National Archives and Records Administration. 2017. <https://www.archives.gov/federal-register/electoral-college/key-dates.html>.

New York Times Staff, The. “Presidential Election Results: Donald J. Trump Wins,” The New York Times. 2017. <https://www.nytimes.com/elections/results/president>.

Schaedel, Sydney. “Clinton Counties,” FactCheck.org. 2016. <https://www.factcheck.org/2016/12/clinton-counties/>.

 

 

Copyright © 2017, 2018 by William Dudley Bass. All Rights Reserved until we Humans establish Wise Stewardship of & for our Earth and Solarian Commons. Thank you.