Alamogordo is a small desert town located roughly midway between Roswell and Truth or Consequences, New Mexico. If the name sounds familiar, that’s likely due to the Trinity Test on July 16, 1945, that detonated the world’s first nuclear weapon at the nearby USAAF Alamogordo Bombing and Gunnery Range. Alamogordo’s residents witnessed the birth of the atomic age.
Last week the town made news for another first. The three Republican commissioners for Otero County, the local seat of government, refused to certify the county’s results from the June 7 statewide primary elections. Cowboys for Trump founder Couy Griffin and his fellow commissioners claimed without evidence that the vote-counting machines supplied by Dominion Voting Systems could not be trusted.
Dominion, one of three major providers of voting machines in the United States, has been demonised by Trump and his allies as part of their relentless dissemination of the “Big Lie”. The company has filed multiple defamation lawsuits against right-wing cable networks Fox News, Newsmax and One America News Network, Trump lawyers Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Powell, and pillow spruiker Mike Lindell, for their roles in spreading Trump’s Lies. Their poison is now bearing toxic fruit.
Notwithstanding their false allegations, Otero County’s conspiracy-minded commissioners had no legal authority to withhold their approval. Their duties are prescribed by state law, with certification being a procedural formality. Any voting irregularities unable to be resolved via the normal counting process must be adjudicated by state courts, not the county commissioners. Following the local rebellion, New Mexico’s Secretary of State Maggie Toulouse Oliver and Attorney General Hector Balderas moved to enforce the law.
Last Wednesday the New Mexico Supreme Court ordered the commissioners to record the almost 7400 votes cast as valid by Friday’s certification deadline. Faced with potential civil and criminal legal consequences for their conduct, two of the rebels blinked. On Friday they reversed their decision in a 2-1 vote to certify the results.
Trump cowboy Griffin remained defiant. “My vote to remain a no isn’t based on any evidence. It’s not based on any facts,” he said. “It’s only based on my gut feeling and my own intuition, and that’s all I need.” Griffin was compelled to record his dissent via telephone, because he was in Washington, DC, to be sentenced for breaching Capitol grounds during the January 6 insurrection.
As with the Trinity Test, this is only the beginning. What unfolded in Alamogordo will soon be repeated across America. Furious at Trump’s defeat and mired in denial, Republicans are positioning themselves to rig elections nationwide. In addition to myriad new gerrymandering and voter suppression laws enacted in red states since the 2020 election, GOP activists have exploited lies about “election integrity” to pursue new plans to fix the results. Their tactics are an electoral equivalent to denial-of-service attacks on the internet: designed to harass, choke and overwhelm the election process. Chaos is their aim. Chaos breeds opportunity for fraud.
A feature of their strategy is to install MAGA partisans in official roles to ignore votes they don’t like. People like Couy Griffin. The Washington Post has identified more than 100 2020 election deniers who Republicans have nominated for this November’s elections. If they win, and many will, they will wield direct influence over the conduct and counting for the 2024 presidential election. The lesson they learned from 2020 is not that they should have better policies to win more votes. It’s that they should decide who wins.
Should they attempt to steal the 2024 election, the only option left to stop them will be the courts. But with the Supreme Court even more partisan now than it was during the Bush/Gore showdown in 2000, that avenue provides little comfort. We all remember how that race turned out.
Election denial has metastasised like a cancer throughout the Republican Party. This past weekend the Texas GOP, the largest state branch in the nation, held its annual convention in Houston. More than 5000 delegates adopted a platform that declared President Biden “was not legitimately elected” and demanded the repeal of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that guaranteed ballot access for Black Americans.
Addressing the crowd, Texas Commissioner of Agriculture Sid Miller bellowed: “The battlefield used to be between Republicans and Democrats. Then it was between conservatives and liberals. Now the battlefield has once again changed. This new battlefield is between patriots and traitors.”
Texas Republicans are so infested with conspiracist delusions that the party changed its official logo after the January 6 insurrection to incorporate the symbol and battle cry of far-right QAnon cult: “We Are the Storm”. Apocalyptic language and violent rhetoric are the hallmarks of the GOP’s fascist tilt.
On Thursday retired Federal Court judge J. Michael Luttig testified before the January 6 committee. Luttig is an icon in conservative legal circles. John Eastman, who drafted the blueprint detailing Trump’s insurrection plan, clerked for Luttig. So did Ted Cruz. Luttig was a serious contender for nomination to the Supreme Court. It was Luttig who steeled Mike Pence to resist Trump’s demands to block the count of the Electoral College votes. Luttig has been outspoken about Republicans’ ongoing efforts to steal the 2024 election.
Here’s how he opened his testimony: “A stake was driven through the heart of American democracy on January 6, 2021, and our democracy today is on a knife’s edge.” He stated that “the war on democracy was instigated by the former president and his political party allies”, who “falsely claimed and proclaimed to the nation that he had won the election, and then he and they set about to overturn the election that he and they knew the former president had lost”.
Luttig warned the committee, and the American people, that “Donald Trump and his allies and supporters are a clear and present danger to American democracy”.
As Couy Griffin and millions like him prove, he’s not wrong.
In a nation flooded with guns this anger has the potential to create a nightmare for US society, systems & structures.
The worry is that Australian politicians view the US as a stable & reliable ally. Will the scales ever fall from their eyes…?
Yes Zut I just wonder what will happen to Australia when the proverbial hits the fan. Will we have thousands of plane people arriving in Australia from the US. What will Border Farce do?
I believe we should start distancing ourselves from the USA to avoid the potential to be drawn into a position of a target for a nuclear war as undoubtedly the right wing crazies will want to wipe out the little yellow fellas and the despicable Ruskies.
We certainly should be open to a consideration that US of A remains de-stabilized; and as a consequence Australians will need to consider impacts should American citizens, their culture and values, descend in numbers upon our, and NZ shores? Potentiality is high. And we Australians, our heritage, culture, along with Canadians may well face much more than global climate threat.
You do have to feel sorry for the Canadians – what a dangerous and noisy set of neighbours they have, and they are not able to just ignore them, like we could if we had any sense at all….
Such as the Murdochs?
I believe we should put a moratorium on immigration from the US. Right or Left, they seem to have become people I really don’t want in my country. Reading lots of comments on sites like Reddit, Buzzfeed etc I have to say that I find the left leaning as objectionable as the right. And all of them are talking about how they can get out. Australia and NZ and very desirable, and they are sharing tips on how best to get into our countries. I don’t think we want an influx of Americans here. Even those on the left have undesirable views on guns – I never see a comment supporting gun control without the person starting it ‘I believe in the right to own guns, but….’.
Honestly, I’m sad for good Americans, and I know quite a few, but I think they need to stay in their country and sort out their problems. Otherwise they will just bring them here, like bed bugs are carried from infested properties.
Interestingly enough in the same media ecosystem which also includes Canada, Oz & UK, an allegedly former (Canadian alt right) Rebel News contributor, Lauren ‘it’s ok to be white’ Southern, immigrated to Australia and is now resident.
In the past, bit like Fox News & Tucker Carlson’s love affair with Hungary & Russia: ‘In June 2018, she visited Moscow, Russia, to meet Aleksandr Dugin, a political philosopher and proponent of a Russian-dominated Eurasia. A multi-part interview of Dugin, conducted by Southern and Brittany Pettibone, was published on YouTube under the title “From Russia With Love”‘.
Bit odd how many of the Anglo nativist libertarians of the right (& left), have an affinity for autocrats?
Oh no, I didn’t realise that. She is vile. That’s what I fear. The sort of thing that happened when white people left the former Rhodesia and when they left, and continue to leave, South Africa. We end up with a whole lot of people with strong political views of a certain type.
They could very well arrive on cruise ships, numbering in the thousands.
And what do we do then – turn back the boats ?
Manus Island.
Moreover, nuclear war is a prerequisite for Christ’s Second Coming amongst right-wing Evangelicals. I’m sure they’ll be happy to help hurry things along.
The American electoral system has always been crooked. They call themselves a democracy but honestly, I just can’t see it. The greatest exporter of violence the world has ever seen cannot escape the karmic burden.
Constitutional Republic actually. The US has a system of government in which the power to govern comes from the people, but elected officials represent their interests (allegedly). It is actually an Elite Democracy under one definition of democracy.
Democracy in its purest definition means government by the people
for the benefit of the people. As such, there are multiple forms of Democracy.
All democracies are flawed- The USA’s democracy is now severely flawed with virtually no prospect of improvement.
It is a complicated situation in America, the right is basically under the control, or at the very least mainly funded by the super rich, the very small group who own and control all the corporations including the media.
The left are regarded as some sort of possessed demons, by the right, who also have the support of the Old Testament “Christian” churches.
Looking at the structure of the very individualistic group with all the money, the closest category I can see is Stirnerite Anarchism, sometimes called Egotistic Anarchism, a very different form of Anarchism from developments of Tolstoyan Anarcho Syndicalism.
Whether the political structure of the super rich is regarded as good or not, it certainly works for them, and whether Anarchism in other forms, such as democratic forms would be also a winner, is worth thinking about imho. – certainly the current American mix seems toxic.
A democracy where the president can veto decisions made by congress, where the president cannot be indicted, so is free to break the law if it’s convenient, and where the president can pardon his cronies no matter what crimes they’ve committed.
It all began with slave owners declaring that they held that all men were created equal.
The more I read about January 6th and its aftermath, the more I believe there will be civil war in America before long. This following from a recent Trump speech sets the tone:
“For the radical left,” he said, “politics has become their religion. It has warped their sense of right and wrong. They don’t have a sense of right and wrong, true and false, good and evil.”
It’s not politics anymore. It’s war.
Sadly, I have to agree. Given the level of arms, paramilitary organisations, divisiveness, the aversion to facts and statistics, and the ever-present propaganda from Fox, OAN, Breitbart, Infowars, it’s a matter of when and what shape, rather than if.
Then by virtue of the second amendment, the people will no doubt form ‘a well-regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state’.
Funny how that word ‘well-regulated’ seems to have been overlooked in the race to arm America.
The Mango Moron is a fine one to criticise anybody else’s sense of right and wrong, true and false or good and evil.
They never finished the first civil war.
The north subjugated the south economically, in similar ways to how America subjugated developing nations after wwii.
This is just what Americans do. They have a lofty constitution which is a window dressing sham. In America, rules don’t matter.
Power comes from money.
What’s right is whatever takes power.
It seems the moral and ethical decay of American democracy is irreversible. I have never been a fan of those who cite the USA as a model democracy and since the emergence of the sub-human Trump, my scepticism about the USA has been proven correct. That so many Americans idolise Trump, a worthless greedy selfish and self-interest crook and liar, condemns the place to mass stupidity as a system of government. And does no-one in the Republican Party see the sick irony if using an outright bulls*t claim that Biden was elected a consequence of completely unproven electoral fraud as a basis for deliberately making futureelectinons nothing but corrupt fraud. The stinking sh*t hole is Rome in decay.
The late Gore Vidal predicted it would come to this.
Given his antecedents, he knew whereof he spoke.
“Ah base it on gut feelin’ and intuition.” This bloke should be arrested, forced to read Kahneman’s Thinking Fast and Slow and not allowed out of jail until he’s passed a written test on the subject.
Exepcting him to be able to read AND write is a bit much.