Loss Of Trust: Elections And Vaxxing

Two interesting posts at Zerohedge touch on the "complete loss of trust" that is manifesting itself in seemingly unrelated areas of life. Seemingly unrelated, but in reality they touch on the breakdown of trust that the public has in our ruling institutions and elite.

The title of the first post is self explanatory, so I'll just add the initial sentences that will establish the connection:

"Complete Loss Of Trust": Half Of French Home Health Workers Say They'll Resist Taking Vaccine

Astounding new figures out of France suggest what is no doubt a broader global trend of hesitancy and skepticism when it comes to the current big push to 'vaccinate all'. 

Reuters in covering the country's vaccine rollout finds that merely around "half of health workers in French care homes do not want to be vaccinated" — even after many of these routinely witness the ravages of COVID-19 on the elderly and infirm. 

"There’s a complete loss of trust," one home health care worker and trade union representative was cited in the report as saying, reflecting resistance to the growing pressure ...

The post goes on to document similar attitudes in other Western countries. The point is simply this: The "complete loss of trust" is the loss of trust of the great unwashed, hoi polloi, the masses of the public who no longer have any faith in their rulers. All of this applies to America.

Switch gears, and James Bovard worries: Is The U.S. Going The Way Of Afghanistan? He's talking about electoral integrity, and what happens when that trust in the process is lost because of malfeasance on the part of the ruling elite. It's a long and somewhat rambling piece, but we can pick out some nuggets

Acrimony and recriminations continue to swirl around the 2020 presidential election. Three out of four Republicans believe that there was “widespread fraud” in the election, while Democrats have sought to turn criticisms of the election into a “Big Lie” heresy against democracy. Senior congressional Democrats are pressuring the nation’s largest cable providers to cease carrying conservative networks such as Fox News that raised too many questions about Biden’s victory.

What could possibly go wrong with sweeping the 2020 election controversies under the rug? Clues can be found in a recent report, “Elections: Lessons from the U.S. Experience in Afghanistan,” produced by the Special Inspector General for Afghanistan Reconstruction (SIGAR). ...

With that beginning, Bovard documents at considerable length that “Afghan democracy” is one of the most brazen shams of U.S. foreign policy in this century. Among the points he makes, which should resonate with Americans:

SIGAR notes the difficulty of building a viable democracy when elected officials formally receive a license to steal. ...

Afghanistan also illustrates the perils of computer voting. ...

Sound familiar? Bovard then notes the bottom line to take from his study of the Afghan experience of "democracy":

Perhaps the real Afghan lesson is that there is no “guardian angel of democracy.” Politicians permitting citizens to vote does not assure that election results will receive even a whiff of legitimacy. Once fraud or suspicions of fraud reach a certain level, any election winners will be suspected scoundrels. More than 15 years of corrupt elections in Afghanistan have resulted in a central government with little or no popular support or credibility. A U.S. Army colonel who deployed several times to Afghanistan told SIGAR that as early as 2006, the Afghan government had “self-organized into a kleptocracy.” Officials who were stealing everything else never hesitated to steal votes. The only reason the Afghan government has not yet been toppled by the Taliban is because of the presence of the U.S. military.

Hmmmm. Can you say: Complete loss of trust? And does any of this suggest why the New Army of the Potomac--fed on raw chicken and metal shavings--still occupies the Imperial City? There's lots more where that came from, if you follow the link. However, Bovard concludes by tying this in directly to the American situation and the parlous state of our constitutional order:

And is there a lesson from the endless lies that U.S. government officials have told about Afghan democracy? At a confidential 2015 National Security Council meeting, President Obama admitted that the U.S. would never “transform Afghanistan into a semblance of a democracy able to defend itself,” the New York Times reported. But that didn’t deter Obama from publicly bragging the following year that U.S. troops and diplomats had helped Afghanistan “establish a democratic government.” Are U.S. government officials more honest when they talk about American democracy than when they praise sham democracies abroad? 

..., U.S. election processes remain far more credible than Afghanistan’s. But last year’s election was the fourth U.S. presidential election since 2000 that was widely perceived as heavily tainted. When the Supreme Court voted last week not to hear cases challenging arbitrary changes in state election procedures, Justice Clarence Thomas dissented, “The decision to leave election law hidden beneath a shroud of doubt is baffling. By doing nothing, we invite further confusion and erosion of voter confidence.”

Justice Thomas' very pointed observation, of course, is what is behind my reservations (which we discussed yesterday) about Shipwreckedcrew's explanation of the Roberts grand strategy for restoring integrity to our elections--which translates to: restoring trust in our constitutional order.