Editor’s Note: I am happy to lead the week with Arrias on our recent exciting election. Point Loma and Marlow also have contributions to brighten the coming days. There is some fascinating stuff coming for us all, and be assured, your Daily Socotra staff is watching. More as it happens.

– Vic
09 November 2020

Before the Heavens Fall

The election is over, but the results are still somewhat up in the air. There were a host of “irregularities” reported, to include such unusual voting habits as the bizarre and repeated violation of Benford’s law in at least four states, and such interesting statistics as 7 wards in Milwaukee with anywhere from 101% to 202% voter turnout.

This has immediately raised responses from some who insist that – ‘for America’ – Trump needs to concede, as Nixon did in 1960.

It’s fascinating how so many people who spent the better part of the last 4 years railing against the United States as the most evil of nations, despicable in nearly every way imaginable, now appeal to patriotism to end the electoral crisis. Some have even noted that if the Supreme Court were to decide that, indeed, the vote had been fraudulently skewed, and then awarded votes, and hence the win, to Trump, that the nation would erupt in violence. And this, of course, must be avoided.

Ironically, President Trump pointed out that: there are some 70 million people in the US who are angry with how this election was held. But there’s been no rioting.

Of course, if one were to bet, it’s likely the Supreme Court will, as it and other courts have done in the past, decide any election related issue in as narrow a manner as possible. The general understanding is that the last thing representative government wants is for elections to be decided by judges.

Nevertheless, the process of elections is one that has always struggled with fraud, will ballot stuffing, with false voter registration, with voting by dead uncles, etc. Robert Caro’s 4 volume biography of Lyndon Johnson gives a detailed account of how election rigging used to take place; gaining an elected office by chicanery is nothing new. It has probably been going on since the dawn of time. But that doesn’t mean we should simply nod and shrug our shoulders and agree to the idea that there will be fraud.

We must, for the good of our nation, for the long-term health of our nation, and for the very idea of elected government, demand better.

But at what cost?

In 62 BC Pompeia, wife of then High Priest Julius Caesar (Pontifex Maximus – it was an elected position), was involved in a scandal. She was in fact quite blameless and this was shown to be so. But Caesar divorced her, stating that his wife “ought not even be under suspicion.” Pompeia was without guilt, but for Caesar – a relatively poor man at the time divorcing the daughter of a rich and powerful family – the idea that there was even a hint of scandal in this regard was something he wouldn’t abide. It should be noted, Caesar was hardly a squeaky-clean figure; far from it, in fact. Nevertheless, there were some things that were beyond the pale.

Just so. Would that our elections were above all suspicion.

The old saw applies: Fiat Justitia Ruat Caelum, – Let Justice be done though the Heavens fall.

One might argue that the heavens won’t fall, whether justice is done or not. Those who’ve spent a little time looking at our history (or the history of elected governments around the world), will be able to give scores of examples of clearly fraudulent elections, yet the nation survived.

But I would answer that what we are really seeing is corrosion, the steady eating away of the foundations of the nation, the eating away of the prime aim of the nation: “to form a more perfect union…”

If we simply shrug, if we simply let stand what many perceive to be a fraudulent election then indeed the sky has already fallen. This election must be parsed and as much as is humanly possible must be done to find out what the real – and legal – vote was, no matter for whom those votes were. To do otherwise is to take the underlying premise, the foundation stone of representative government, the idea of fair elections, and to throw it out, accepting some sort of quiet in lieu of the rule of law. It would be to suggest that the application of law, the pursuit of justice, is only to be pursued when it doesn’t hurt, when it doesn’t threaten our peace, when there’s no serious risk.

And to accept that is to accept that, indeed, the heavens have already fallen. And without justice being done.

The law, and indeed civilization, demand just the opposite; we must insist on justice.

There’s a marvelous scene in Robert Bolt’s “A Man For All Seasons” in which Thomas More (then Master of Requests (a judge), later Lord Chancellor of England) is walking down a hallway and is being “pressed” by a host of people with petitions. One man asks for mercy for his daughter. More answers that he will “give her the same treatment I would give my own daughter: a fair judgment, quickly.”

That, of course, is the correct answer. The anger and frustration mustn’t be lost, it must be channeled. Now is the time to turn that anger into real pressure to fix the election process across the country. 70 million people need to stand up and demand just and accurate election systems. Again and again and again, until we get what the nation needs.

Copyright 2020 Arrias
www.vicsocotra.com