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Pathological Horrors.  The popular and electoral landslide for which Nixon yearned had always eluded him.[1]  In 1972, he ran for re-election against Senator George McGovern from Sout Dakota.  According to journalist Stewart Alsop, Nixon did not regard his opponent as a homme sérieux — a man  to be taken seriously.[2]

McGovern had been Nixon’s opponent of choice for the 1972 race.[3]  The South Dakotan did not disappoint; he was obviously short on personal charisma, and the lack of skill with which he managed his campaign was just as evident.  He accepted the Democratic nomination during the wee hours of the morning and so most Americans did not hear his acceptance address.[4]  A short time after becoming the Democratic nominee he was also compelled to find another running mate, when it was revealed that Senator Thomas Eagleton of Missouri had previously undergone electro-shock treatments for depression.[5]

Helping McGovern blaze a path to the nomination meant that Nixon’s re-election committee had to torpedo the campaign of the Democratic frontrunner, Senator Edmund G. Muskie of Maine, who enjoyed a reputation for calm and deliberate decision-making.  Donald Segretti, a low-level functionary in Nixon’s campaign, played “dirty tricks” on the Senator as he was vying for a primary victory in New Hampshire.  Segretti fabricated a letter, which purported to be written by Muskie to the Manchester Union Leader, referring to Canadian-Americans as “Cannocks” [sic].[6]  Segretti also fraudulently sent  the newspaper a second letter, which contained vicious slanders against Muskie’s wife.  Exhausted and overcome with emotion, the Senator unleashed a bitter, self-destructive attack against William Loeb, the owner of the newspaper. The diatribe ended Muskie’s presidential aspirations.[7]

Another Nixon operative was sent to Chappaquiddick Island to pose as a reporter in order to secure incriminating information against Senator Edward M. Kennedy. Nixon believed Kennedy might still attempt to run for the presidency although most considered the Senator’s dream shattered by the scandal of Mary Jo Kopeckne’s having drowned while a passenger in his vehicle.[8]

Nixon’s reprehensible actions against Democratic opponents were hardly necessary for his re-election.[9] His actions did, however, give new meaning to the term “overkill.”  His operatives also, in an infamous act of intrigue, burglarized the opposition’s campaign headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, in Washington, D.C.[10]  The subsequent cover-up, orchestrated by Nixon and his closest aids, resulted eventually in the revelation of the “White House horrors,”[11] which included but were not limited to the payment of “hush money,”[12] the offer of clemency to a Watergate burglar,[13] the plan to murder a journalist,[14] other covert break-ins and plots of break-ins,[15] the use of prostitutes to compromise Democratic politicians,[16] the utilization of the Internal Revenue Service against the chairman of the Democratic National Committee,[17] and the discovery of a White House “Enemies List.”[18]

Although Nixon was re-elected in 1972, he faced certain impeachment in the House of Representatives when his actions were made public. Instead of being impeached and standing trial, he resigned the presidency in disgrace in 1974.[19] Read more

Zbigniew K. Brzezinski, Johns Hopkins University professor and leading national security advisor to President Jimmy Carter, once suggested that, as a partial cure for what ails the country of Syria, the United States and other world powers consider supervising elections there.[1]  This recommendation is curious, for one of the most unspeakable truths in America is that election improprieties have undermined its national democratic ideals since the dawn of the Republic.  Does it really take a Donald J. Trump or any other brave political warrior to remind us of this fact? Stealing and manipulating elections is as American as apple pie.  One may chuckle at Louisiana Governor Earl Long’s request to be buried in Louisiana so as to remain active in politics.[2]  Senate Majority Leader and later President Lyndon B. Johnson was fond of evoking laughter at Washington dinner parties when he mimicked, in heavy accent, a Mexican boy’s sorrow upon discovering that his father, deceased for ten years, had neglected to pay him a visit although having obviously returned from the dead to vote for Johnson in the 1948 Texas Senatorial primary.[3]  One may even raise an eyebrow at Tammany boss William M. Tweed’s aphorism that the counters, not the ballots decide an election.[4]  Lurking beneath the surface of these humorous, tongue-in-cheek remarks lies, as Sigmund Freud would have suggested, the dark reality of subverted elections in American democracy.

How to cure the problem is a topic which has been bandied about by politicians,  academicians, election officials, and pundits for years.  One usual, underlying assumption in these discussions is that instances of election fraud are isolated and, while serious, can be overcome and do not pose a major threat to the nation’s democratic integrity. In this article, I beg to differ with that assumption.  I will, first, seek to illustrate that election improprieties have generally characterized American democracy.  Acts of dishonesty and illegality have pervaded the electoral system to an extent that they may be understood as common occurrences.  This shameful fact, however, is only the first and most obvious part of the story.  There are other parts which deserve highlighting as well.  The second is the way in which election fraud has gradually eroded citizens’ democratic spirit by heightening their sense of disempowerment and crippling their desire to participate in the electoral process.  The third and perhaps most significant part is that a cure for this malady appears remote.  The American citizenry lacks the moral stamina necessary to surmount the challenge of fraud at the ballot box and so, contrary to other times perhaps, may now be defenseless against it.

1. Strolling Down Memory Lane 

The term “election fraud,” as used in this essay, encompasses a wide and diverse multiplicity of ways in which one can subvert the integrity of an election.  As one pundit correctly notes, “There is no one way to steal an election in the United States.”[5]  The methods used depend upon the opportunities relative to the historical moment in question.  George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, for example, dispensed gallons of liquor on election day to voters.[6]  James Madison was disgusted by the practice and maintained that “swilling the planters with bumbo” was “a corrupting influence.”[7]  Corruption, unfortunately, did not stop with the distribution of liquor during colonial times.  Since only propertied White men were privileged to vote, a well-to-do candidate for office would purchase freehold estates for landless men to be returned immediately after the election.[8]  Buying votes was also a popular practice, most notably in Rhode Island, since “Rhode Islandism” became synonymous with vote-buying.[9] Read more

Logic is a fascinating subject, full of subtleties, paradoxes and intellectual adventure. But it has one shocking flaw: its evolution has been dominated by stale pale males. Men like Aristotle, George Boole, Gottlob Frege and Bertrand Russell all belonged to the White majority in their societies. This toxic legacy has tainted logic for far too long.

Jeremy bursts the envelope

But now there’s some good news. Some astonishing breakthroughs are being made by men and women from oppressed minorities. The tainted logic of stale pale males — hate-logic, as we might call it — is being challenged by a vibrant new logic, or vibro-logic. And are you surprised to learn that Jews are leading the way? You shouldn’t be. Take Jeremy Newmark, national chair of the Jewish Labour Movement (JLM) in Britain. He hasn’t merely pushed the envelope of logic: he has burst through it and triumphed over millennia of gentile hate.

Jeremy Newmark of the Jewish Labour Movement

Here’s the story. In 2013 he appeared before a legal tribunal that was investigating a claim of anti-Semitism against the University and College Union. A lawyer alleged that Mr Newmark had attempted to “push” his way into a meeting despite not having the right credentials. You might think Mr Newmark then had two options: to deny the allegation, if it was false, or to accept it, if it was true. But that’s hate-logic. Mr Newmark applied vibro-logic and came up with a devastating response: he was being stereotyped as a “pushy Jew.” In other words, the truth or falsity of the allegation was irrelevant. It invoked a stereotype and ipso facto could not be made against him.

But alas! The tribunal refused to accept Jeremy’s ingenious use of stereotype denial:

Evidence given to us [the tribunal] about booing, jeering and harassing of Jewish speakers at Congress debates was also false, as truthful witnesses on the Claimant’s side accepted. One painfully ill-judged example of playing to the gallery was Mr Newmark’s preposterous claim, in answer to the suggestion in cross-examination that he had attempted to push his way into the 2008 meeting, that a “pushy Jew” stereotype was being applied to him. (UCU cleared of antisemitism — Anthony Julius charged with ‘being rubbish’, New Left Project, 26th March 2013)

The tribunal was obviously using hate-logic, which is simply unacceptable in a vibrant multi-racial society like twenty-first-century Britain. Read more