“There always is this fallacious belief: ‘It would not be the
Aleksander Solzhenitsyn
same here; here such things are impossible.’ Alas, all the evil
of the twentieth century is possible everywhere on earth.”
The events of the 2020 USA election confirm Solzhenitsyn’s insight. America stands on the brink of collapsing into an oligarchy. The Newspeakers of democracy have made a Mephistophelean bargain. They exchanged their will for power for the rule of law. They calculated they could offer Trump as the sacrificial victim, and in the frenzy of the blood rites conceal the corruption of their restoration. But the crowd and the victim stood courageously against the illusion, and the rite did not go as rehearsed. It got messy. The fraud of the high priests was revealed. Beneath their dress robes they carried fake ballots.
The American Republic has been exposed as a theatre state. The theatre is enacted in the legacy media, and the spectacle is framed rigidly by Big Tech. The spectacle evokes all the great myths of the American Republic: the greatest democracy, the wisest founders, the greatest lovers of freedom, the home of the brave, the unifier-in-chief. But the fourth wall has collapsed. The audience can now see the technical operators behind stage. They can see these technicians scrambling to hide their cocked-up election fraud. They see the old actors, reading badly from the autocue. They see the oligarchs tampering with the production. The audience now must decide: do we walk out of the show, and, if we do, what form of government does that leave us with?
What happens next is difficult to predict and terrible to imagine. If the allegations of systematic election fraud are substantiated, you would imagine the cultural elites would be scandalised by this most inconvenient truth, and the political elites ashamed of their cowardice and corruption. How could a party and celebrities claiming to act for democracy, decency and truth engage in such alleged conduct? How could they not want to investigate irregularities if they authentically lived in the truth? But these same elites have slipped away from the RussiaGate hoax, that involved a conspiracy between these same Newspeakers of Democracy, Big Media and the shadow security state to overthrow a democratically elected President. These elites say nothing about this betrayal of the Republic: not a word of retraction, not a word of apology, just continuing the lies. They will continue to shout down any calls for an investigation of irregularities, and force the failing theatre to go on with the show.
Assuming some significant election fraud is demonstrated, two political scenarios seem likely, and both suggest a time of troubles for the American Empire, and all its allied city-states around the world, including my democratically challenged province of the Great Southern Land.
The first scenario is that Biden, the oligarchs and the mercenary merchant elite prevail at first. They succeed in the plans they outlined in the Transition Integrity Project, and force the hands of the courts through repeating their Big Lie loud enough. They ratchet up the threats to officials, the courts and Republican doubters who may question the legality and constitutionality of the transition. They will increase the calls for military intervention to guarantee the transition. The courts may baulk at overturning results. The state legislatures may give in and certify results despite unaudited counts. The media will fan the hysteria of Trump’s norm-breaking threat to democracy, and Big Tech will twist the screws of censorship harder. The electoral college will fall into line, and then Biden will be inaugurated as the most stained, illegitimate President in USA history. But one-third or more of the country will dissent, and face a decision to live in the truth or compliance with the fraud: exit, voice or loyalty? So will begin a long war of the oligarchs and the new nomenklatura against the people to enforce the restoration of this ancien regime. Soft left totalitarianism will become brutal in America. There will be organised opposition, but it will face an overwhelming full-court press in the newly revealed post-democratic society.
The second scenario is that, against the odds, Trump prevails by the courts or state legislatures overturning any illegally conducted elections, or, following an inconclusive Electoral College, the House of Representatives, in state counts that favour the Republicans, voting for him to be President in a contingent election, as set out by procedure in the Constitution. This is exactly the scenario described by Steve Bannon and by the 79 days report of the Claremont Institute and Texas Public Policy Institute. For this result to be secured, there will need to be a clear strike against Biden and the Democrats that undermines their legal claim to have sought election by free and fair rules. It will be an assertion of republican virtue against majoritarian illusion. But that republican virtue will be opposed by the Furies of the Oligarchs. If Trump prevails, he will hold a deeply insecure position against a ruthlessly determined and well-resourced enemy. The same post-democratic full-court press will constrain the constitutional government of America.
Either way, a time of troubles is coming for America. The Time of Troubles or Smuta (Смутное время) is the period of political crisis, war and civil war in Russia between 1598 and 1613. The Rurik dynasty died out, with the death of Fyodor, intellectually disabled and incompetent, and in its wake competing claims to authority fought for fifteen years. Boris Godunov became Tsar. Pretenders who claimed to be the surviving son of Ivan the Terrible, the true heir of the old dynasty gained the throne. Poland and Sweden occupied almost all of the country, and Russia was almost extinguished. In the end, the Romanov dynasty rebuilt a new Holy Mother Russia, an alliance of autocracy and Orthodox faith. It did so in part through the actions of the volunteer army activated by Prince Dmitry Pozharsky and Kuzma Minin, who are commemorated outside St. Basil’s Church in Red Square, Moscow.
America’s fate will not be Russia’s. Its time of troubles will see a different kind of war, new claims to authority, new pretenders, new heroes. But all unhappy families are unhappy after their own fashion. And so too, all disintegrating empires crumble in their own unique pattern.
Image credit: Pozharsky and Minin monument Moscow, 1816, Wikipedia
