Democracy2020 - US Democracy Died

It has been many decades in the making. Western democracy is dying, evidenced its abject failure to produce the greatest benefits (social, political, economic, legal and cultural) for the largest numbers in their respective societies. In 2020, American democracy enters its terminal dying stage towards imminent death. 

The firewalls protecting American democracy finally came down in 2020, like the Berlin Wall in 9 November 1989 which began the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union. 

There are 3 firewalls of democracy: (1) free and fair elections; (2) a fearless and objective 4th Estate of news and social media; and (3) the rule of law with high integrity.

(1)       Free and Fair Elections

The manipulations and shenanigans of the 2020 US Presidential elections through the malfeasance of mail balloting and prevention of unobtrusive observations of ballot counting by duly appointed polling officers resulted in a highly questionable outcome of an “illegitimate” Manchurian US President. This is the last straw in the death knell of US democracy.

The Immaculate Deception – 6 Key Dimensions of Elections Irregularities

A Report by Peter Navarro in his private and personal capacity. 

The findings of the Navarro Report infer what may well have been a coordinated strategy to effectively stack the election deck against the Trump-Pence ticket. Indeed, the observed patterns of election irregularities are so consistent across the six battleground states that they suggest a coordinated strategy to, if not steal the election outright, strategically game the election process in such a way as to “stuff the ballot box” and unfairly tilt the playing field in favor of the Biden-Harris ticket.

Peter Navarro heads the National Trade Council in The Trump Administration to guide the President on trade and tariff policies, and has been an outspoken critic of China's trade policies for decades. He graduated from Tufts University in 1972, joining the Peace Corps in Thailand for three years before earning an MBA in 1979 and a PhD. in Economics in 1986 from Harvard University. For more than 20 years, he has been Professor of Economics and Public Policy at The Paul Merage School of Business, University of California-Irvine. Peter Navarro dedicated years of research to economic forecasts and the geopolitical landscape for businesses and institutions. In addition to his professorship, he has worked as a corporate trainer for clients such as Marriott, Wells Fargo Partners, John Hancock, Lima Peru Chamber of Commerce, and the FBI. He has also appeared on major media outlets, including Bloomberg TV, BBC, CNN, CNBC, and 60 Minutes. He has also published multiple books on business, management, and the markets, such as “The Well-Timed Strategy”, “When the Market Moves, Will You Be Ready?” and “What the Best MBAs Know”.

Peter Navarro concludes that “the weight of evidence and patterns of irregularities uncovered in this report are such that it is irresponsible for anyone – especially the mainstream media – to claim that there is “no evidence” of fraud or irregularities.”

(2)        A Fearless and Objective 4th Estate Media

Most of the major network media and main outlets have refused to cover the 2020 Presidential elections irregularities. In contrast, some courageous alternative news outlets, primarily associated with the American conservative movement, have provided extensive, in-depth coverage of the many issues of fraud, misconduct, and other irregularities that are coming to light. 

From Steve Bannon’s War Room Pandemic and John Solomon’s Just the News to Raheem Kassam’s National Pulse, to Newsmax, and One America News Network, Americans hungry for facts and breaking developments have been able to find such critical information only by following their alternative coverage. The abdication of the 4th Estate in their legacy self-assumed guardian role of democracy’s vanguard essentially strangled the free flow of unbridled information and news which is the lifeblood of any thriving viable democracy.

(3)       Rule of Law with High Integrity

Trump and Republican officials have also lost at least 40 lawsuits filed since Election Day on alleged election irregularities, supported by thousands of affidavit pages of by persons who would be charged and imprisoned if untrue. The lawsuits argue, with considerable specificities and contexts, that certain “battleground” states and counties have violated election laws, and sought legal judgments to discredit and overturn the results of the 2020 election. 

The various State and Federal Courts, including the Supreme Court, have either dismissed the cases without even calling witnesses and examining the evidence and/or refused the hear the cases entirely. This is downright judicial abdication of their Constitutional and sworn responsibilities to protect the integrity of Constitutional Elections. The Courts seem to have conveniently forgotten that justice must be “seen” to be done in the eyes of the 70+ millions who voted for President Trump among the overall 150+ millions (inclusive of faked voters) who voted. 

Is there not sufficient basis to re-do the 2020 US Presidential Elections? It would be the best outcome if allowed under the US Constitution. It is possible that the Biden-Harris ticket could prevail in a Presidential Election re-vote. And if that’s the final outcome of truly free and fair democratic elections, that's mighty fine.     

The American electorate needs to know whether their President indeed has the popular mandate through the Electoral College to claim democratic legitimacy. The following FoxNews polls suggest a massive cloud of indeterminacy now hangs over the Republic:

Indeed, if the US, often touted as “the greatest democracy”, could not even conduct a free and fair election, and with much of the mainstream media of this country who would not even fully investigate the mountain of evidence calling into question the election result, and a feckless, cowardly and fearful Judiciary, there can be no doubt that American democracy is already finished just like the Soviet Union in 1989. Whither a “new” USA grounded on cherished democratic values and practices? When?

“Democracy's worst fault is that its leaders are likely to reflect the faults and virtues of their constituents.” – Robert Heinlein

From a longer-term holistic perspective, the factors leading to the decline and demise of American democracy are manifold, including both internal corruption and external pressure. Internal causes are related to a lack of overall adaptability to evolving situations, elites' blind belief in its perfection, money politics, empty promises, enforcement of coercive tactics for the people's compliance instead of relying on civic consensus building, mass media's manufacturing of consensus, political polarization, nepotism, abuse of power, condoning discrimination, and instigating gun violence.  

“Our great democracies still tend to think that a stupid man is more likely to be honest than a clever man, and our politicians take advantage of this prejudice by pretending to be even more stupid than nature made them.” ― Bertrand Russell, “New Hopes for a Changing World”

The inevitable outcomes in a dysfunctional US political system include critical unresolved issues pertaining to the lack of a meritocracy, poverty, income inequality, voter suppression, political corruption, a disproportionate Senate, gerrymandering, overzealous prosecutors, a partisan Supreme Court, a skewed tax code favouring the very rich and big tech companies, and mass incarceration.

At the end of 2020, the cancer of corruption, that eternal enemy of democracy, which long infected American democracy for many decades, finally reached terminal stage. We bear witness to the end of an American democracy that was never one from the beginning.

The Washington Post in fact already pronounced in 2017 that US democracy had died in darkness, but continued to beat the dead democracy horse daily nonetheless. In 2019, American democracy faced her greatest ordeal of rape, abuse, torture and misuse by both (fake) advocates and detractors.

Who can forget the 2019 evil spectre of unreason which surfaced to subvert democracy by corrupting rational thinking, systematic reasoning and objective intellectual discourse to denigrate and make nonsense the rule of law, that cherished firewall and cornerstone of democracy?   

The Abuse and Misuse of Democracy

In 2019, an American was singled out prominently to face uncertain and fabricated pseudo-criminal charges without any direct evidential support, and was denied common-sense due process to confront his accusers, or be represented by his own lawyers or defend himself with his own witnesses and body of evidence. Yes, it happens in the UNITED STATES. And that man is President Donald Trump, THE US PRESIDENT. Ironically, he was indicted to be impeached by the Senate only by members of the opposition Democratic Party’s House of Representative members, many of whom are also legally trained and have been Federal Prosecutors and Practising Attorneys! The sham partisan proceedings actually began 3 years earlier before any impeachable offences were even allegedly committed!

The “deep state” conspiracy to destroy a duly democratically elected US President is now well documented in many books.

A few months earlier in September 2018, a Supreme Court Nominee was accused by mostly the same ‘legally-trained’ politicians of (unsubstantiated) improper sexual behaviour allegedly happened some 36+ years earlier by someone unknown to him and who was unable even to recall when and where her traumatic assault took place but told no close friends or her parents about it. The Nominee has already been cleared by at least 6 earlier FBI investigations during his 26 years of judicial office as part of the normal judicial appointment background investigations. In the 7th investigation into the Nominee, the FBI indeed found "no corroboration of the allegations" of sexual misconduct against him. Thereafter, he was then confirmed by the US Senate as a Supreme Court judge. 

Over the past decade, the 4th Estate, composing the press and news media, has also declined in objectivity and lost their ability to frame political issues in an ideological balanced manner. Their social influence capacility necessary for credible advocacy is therefore severely diminished and discredited, to be overtaken and overwhelmed by presumably more credible social media reporters and their on-site reports and videos. 

The public has mostly lost their ability to distinguish facts based on serious research by qualified scientists and objective factual reporting by genuine journalists vs ungrounded but often popular half-truths and true lies spread by social media and some once-credible news organisations.  An unbelievably huge number of otherwise intelligent and well-educated people choose instead to suspend critical thinking for reasons unknown to discern and distinguish truthful facts and their otherwise partial versions. 

In 2020, politicians and several members of the ruling elites repeatedly lied blatantly to their constituents, in conscious and unconscious collusion with newspaper editors, TV anchors and journalists through fabricated and falsified “facts” supported by convoluted logic to impeach a duly and democratically elected President, as well as impugn the longstanding reputation of a Supreme Court judge. 

The factual evidence shows that the final stage in the systematic destruction of American democracy was in fact initiated by key officials in the previous US President Obama’s administration (2008-2015). History would expose President Obama’s role as to whether President Obama himself knew, and when did he know, of the “deep state” strategic “insurance” plan to de-legitimise the democratic succession of the US Presidency.  

By 2018, the de-legitimisation of the duly-elected President, the perversion of justice and fairness, the corruption of due process, the inaction of a biased and impotent judiciary and the dominance of undemocratic national US leaders came to a confluence to end American democracy. American history will have the opportunity to evaluate and examine critically how her corrupt power elites infested the Judiciary, Executive and the Congress through clever arguments, money and privileges in an uncontrolled spree to murder America’s fledgling democracy. 

Was the US ever a Democracy?

In the US, political power has never truly been in the effective hands of the American people. Abraham Lincoln’s Gettyburg Address on 19 November 1863 that “… the government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth” never really had an even chance to grow into full maturity. 

American democracy died still-born in 2020.

Political power develops through concentration not by dispersion or distribution. Democracy’s promise of popular power in the hands of the people is an illusion, an empty promise made by those in power to a permanently gullible, weak and na?ve electorate. Political power easily slipped out of their hands as they rather basked in comfortable living without participating in the process of political life through debates, discussions, confrontation and regular elections.   

In the end of 2020, many could recall Thomas Jefferson’s “… if a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.” 

US democracy died in 2020 in the darkness of ignorance as predicted.

The key takeaway lesson is that members of a sustainable democracy must leverage on her core strengths to be able to think clearly, reason rationally and argue coherently with great intellectual inspirations while navigating and avoiding the emotional manipulation of ochlocracy. Fortunately, sustainable democracy will persevere into 2021 albeit bruised, wounded, disfigured, maimed with numerous broken limbs as she continues in the many countries, among whom is Singapore, where she has been properly respected and treated with the utmost dignity by a mature and grateful people.