Stalemate

By Paul Edwards

December 21, 2020 "Information Clearing House" -  In chess, stalemate describes the endgame situation in which one party has no possible legal moves. It is the point at which we are arrived in our Presidential fiasco. There has been great angst and gnashing of teeth over it, and ebullient, if tentative, rejoicing on the part of giddy enthusiasts for whom Trump’s electoral defeat represents the Jubilee, the Dawn of Glory, and re-establishment of righteousness on earth. This view, deluded and infantile as it is, is nevertheless sincere and widely held.

Stalemate, though, is not victory, in chess or otherwise. In a stalemate the game ends in a draw. That said, it seems likely Trump will depart—in spite of the hysteria peddled by so many in media and cyber-flackery—without anything faintly resembling the Reichstag Fire, or even a Proud Boys version of the shootout at the OK Corral. He’ll go with a whimper, not a bang.

So the crisis ends in victory? Or has it indeed been a sort of draw? We’ve been assured from authoritative quarters, in the most decisive terms, that, in his mulish, petulant refusal to take no for an answer to his grandiose ambitions, Trump has done irreparable damage to the Great Institution of our Electoral Democracy; that his dogged denial of his loss, and utter rejection of the protocols of cordial transition have sorely undermined, and perhaps even fatally shaken, our collective faith in the purity and justice of our Constitutional process and its benign functioning.

On top of that, there is now—I won’t call it news—official yammer that those pesky Russkies are at it again. Yes, by golly, they’ve diabolically infiltrated our Official Secrets Crypt, no doubt goaded into it by that fiend, Putin, who, according to what we’ve been schooled for four years to believe, ought to have been spending all his energies backing Trump, but somehow overlooked that. It appears that after doing so much to elect him in ‘16, they didn’t bother this time and let him lose. Just no fathoming their deviltry.

Anyhow, our noble protectors and defenders, those fab Security Services—FBI, NSA, CIA and the other sixteen or twenty-three sister spook units who’ve done so much to keep us from harm—all have their knickers in a twist, one hand clutching their pearls and the other making a bold fist at the Kremlin, over Vlad & Co. attacking the dead meat of our sanctified secrets catacombs.

What a dogpile! What a gang-bang! Trump and the Russians, allied again, bringing all their satanic powers to bear on the frail, vulnerable vessel of our fate, the very motor and mainspring of Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean: our hallowed electoral system.

Come on, somebody has to call bullshit on this nonsense.

Voting, in our arcane, convoluted process, has been, from the beginning, a contrivance to mollify and divert hoi polloi with a specious sense of their power of governance while the owners and managers of the State accomplish their private agendas.

These include, but are not limited to, exploiting and pauperizing labor; openly burgling the public purse; plundering our natural resources while fouling The People’s lands and waters; fixing tax rates so The People pay for their own impoverishment while huge corporations skate free with big refunds; allocating government expenditure so enormous sums fatten all massive industries, banking, and the War Machine, so that next to nothing is left for public health, education, infrastructure, and the environment; and funding, with The People’s money, the imperial piracy, villainy, and murder that feed the tyranny for which we are widely hated.

Recently, due to the insecurity of those George Carlin called “our owners” about perceived slippage in the steel cogs of their propaganda machine, they’ve required their courts to eliminate limits on buying office for the swinish whores infesting Congress.

This, of course, is nothing new, historically. In ancient Athens, when a highly restrictive, bastard version of democracy—i.e., rule of the people—was tried, it was subverted by gold, and a series of assassinations and bloody revolutions led from aristocracy to mob rule, tyranny, and chaos, and tore that city state apart. The fact is, democracy is an abstract term for a system that has never been implemented by any polity, anywhere, at any time.

The notion that Trump and Russia, China, Iran, or Upper Volta, singly or in combination, could, by any conceivable measure, do any damage to our grossly, nakedly corrupt scam of a system even remotely comparable to what has already been effected by those who own and operate it, is preposterous on its face.

So, yes, the system remains as it was, rigid and stinking, with all its noisome dead tissue of party control, legal bribery, super delegates, local thuggery, mafia structure, and SchutzStaffeln tactics in place as Old Daffy prepares to helm the Ship of State.

Do you not shudder to imagine what lies ahead? With an exactly split Congress of oafs, hillbillies, loons, and trolls; mathematically and operationally incapable of anything at all; presided over by a vacuous, dysgnosic, life-long huckster; a sad, empty husk of a drone for Empire; an Obama doll, without stagecraft, glib bullshit, or even the sociopathic capacity to lie outrageously, gazing into the eyes of an adoring public while gently stroking its penis.

Layer all that over a citizenry so equally and bitterly divided on every single important question or concern to a world facing the perilous likelihood of economic implosion or annihilating war, and the certainty of climate disaster portending humanity’s probable immanent extinction, and the picture is complete.

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

Merry Christmas.

Paul Edwards is a writer and film-maker in Montana. He can be reached at: hgmnude@bresnan.net