Time Magazine Article On How Our Election/Democracy Was Saved...And What is Missing
I read the entire article, linked below, and it's a bit long but well worth the read. It's an excellent account of the war that unfolded behind the scenes which actually stopped Trump's Coup attempt.
In addition to the unlikely alliances that formed to protect the vote, like the Afl-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce, there was an unprecedented mobilization of People Power, Data nerds, advocacy groups, and strategic planners, which included even fair minded Trump supporters.
I would emphasize two things, one in the article, and one not. The article details the vital importance of the discipline shown by the so-called Left-progressives in not "jumping the gun" with massive street protests and conflict with Proud Boys etc. Trump's plan for Martial Law and suspending the vote count was contingent on such violence spreading right after the election. When that didn't happen, Trump's post-election strategy collapsed.
The second thing not covered here, which I wrote about, was the threat that the Election itself would NOT happen. There was an active scenario which many Establishment outlets have tried to minimize or bury. The danger was that a fifth column of Russian Intelligence steered Neo-Nazi militias, which later surfaced on January 6th would be activated in a terror wave before the Election. This would be played by a counter gang activation of false flag or other Russian assets being activated in the name of Antifa or the "radical Left", which would launch terror attacks on symbolic targets before the election, giving Trump the pretext to invoke the 1807 Act, suspend the Election, and declare a state of emergency in a "Reichstag Fire" scenario.
The fact that this did not happen was the result of behind the scenes work by the Secretary of Defense, Esper, (for which he was attacked and fired) General Milley Chairman of the JCS, former CIA directors and their allies in the Military/ Intel community, and handfuls of investigative journalists, writers, Think tankers, retired diplomats, and analysts who blew the whistle on this operation and neutralized it before the fact. I was a small part of that.
I think the article's omission of this aspect is problematic, given the continuing danger represented by these Russian Influenced Terrorist Entities, as we saw on Jan 6 and will continue to see. They are designated inaccurately as violent extremist domestic groups. They are more than that, and sooner or later it will have to be addressed that way.
The other criticism I have of the overall theme of this Time article is that it is a kind of sigh of relief, a self-congratulatory pat on the back, reflecting on how close we were to losing everything, but didn't. It is a collective "whew"!!! In fact the threat we face is still only in its early phases, and activity to defend elections alone is far from all that is needed to defend our Democracy.
It reminds me of the mindset of Union General George Meade, who after the victory at Gettysburg, failed to go into hot pursuit of General Lee, and lost the opportunity to defeat the Confederacy and Lee right there, ending the War much earlier. That failure by Meade led to the war dragging out, the assassination of Lincoln, and the failure of Reconstruction. The question I ask is whether we have the luxury of making those kind of mistakes in judgment again, given where we are in history? Sometimes I feel alone in asking these kinds of questions.
