It’s been quite a while since I submitted anything to this forum. Those of you who have been with Catholic Journal long enough to have read my “stuff” back in the day know I primarily wrote satire. The title of this article is not intended to be satirical and is something of which I am firmly convinced.
Gentle readers, the contest is over. There never really was one. I admonish you to accept this and save yourself any election season stress and the associated life-shortening overproduction of cortisol. Kamala Harris absolutely will ascend to the Oval Office.
The fix is in and it’s all thanks to you and me. Allow me to explain.
The “O” Word
I am weary of overused terms like “Orwellian” in modern political writing. Yet, I struggle to articulate what we are seeing play out across the national theaters of politics and media while eschewing such tropes.
How, for example, does one describe the real-time re-writing of history and the removal of archived news reporting in plain sight for the purpose of securing the power of a political regime?
How does one reconcile the naked contradictions between what one has literally seen, heard, experienced with what one is told is the “truth?”
How does one characterize a population so permissive and subdued that tens of millions of us are more concerned with the threat of inconvenience (or worse, social discomfort) than with the threat of a small group of people successfully taking the power of government away from citizens and bestowing it on their select?
These are not eventualities. Nor are they conspiracy theories. These are events that have happened in the past and are accelerating in real time.
At this point you are perhaps rolling your eyes. You might fancy that you orbit such alarmist rhetoric from the high altitude of rationalism. These, you observe from that vantage, are the common amplifications of a partisan hack. This is the United States of America. At worst we have a blowhard political figure inspiring dangerous idiots to run amok in the Capitol while wearing cow horns. We do not have dystopic efforts to sweep aside elections and imprison election opponents being conducted by political power players, major media figures, elements of the legal system, and shadowy moneymen.
Oh really? Russiagate.
The spoken or unspoken cooperation between a presidential candidate, a political party, a law firm, legislators, the news media and God only knows who else – all for the purpose of discrediting, removing, and possibly imprisoning a political opponent by advancing an obvious lie right in front of the public. In America. In your America. And almost all of us have already forgotten all about it. That’s the “O” word.
Citing No Sources
When first I conceived of this submission, I imagined including copious text links to sources supporting all my examples below. “That ’ill show ‘em,” I arrogantly figured.
I am including none.
Documentation of the recent removal and modification of online content related to the 2024 Presidential campaign, specifically as related to Vice President Harris, is conclusive. If you cannot accept that, much as if you cannot accept that the Clinton campaign (and its many helpers) orchestrated Russiagate, we have nothing to talk about – so godspeed, Fellow American. Out of concern that such links might not age very well, I have excluded them.
For Your Rumination
For those of you who are still with me I ask that you come along on a journey through what we, the American people, have tolerated – have allowed – in very recent times.
As mentioned above, we were told that Donald Trump was a compromised degenerate and that Vladimir Putin had as much as installed him as President.
We were told that Joe Biden was a candidate who would govern from the center and work to unite the nation.
We were told that it was NOT Biden’s son’s laptop and NOT Biden’s daughter’s diary, and that the nightmares they both contained smacked of Russian fabrication.
We were told the horror that was our withdrawal from Afghanistan was anything other than incompetent and avoidable.
We were told that inflation was a transitory non-issue.
We are told, in fact, that the economy is strong and that anyone who believes otherwise is simply listening to right-wing extremists.
We were told that documentary evidence of Mr. Biden’s unfortunate decline consisted of MAGA deepfakes, that he was as sharp as a tack.
President Biden’s policy actions demonstrably have been problematic (or disastrous) at home and abroad, but we are told that he has the best record of any modern president.
It is openly known that Barack Obama worked with prominent Democrats to remove Joe Biden from the 2024 race, yet we are told he, Biden, “stepped down to save democracy.”
We watched prominent members of the left pummel Biden in the weeks following his heartbreakingly incoherent debate performance, but we are now told by the same people he is an American hero and a saint living among us.
We empirically know that Vice President Haris was handed the border as a part of her portfolio and now we are told that was never the case.
For that matter, we are told that the border is under control.
We are told that Mr. Trump is a dictator, a rapist, a Nazi, and we are told that persons who do not tolerate these unforgivable diminishments of such hideous monikers are likely Nazis themselves.
We were told at first by some that Mr. Trump was not the target of an assassination attempt, later by others that he himself staged it, and most recently that he was not hit by a bullet.
We are told that what is being permitted in Washington DC this week with the defacement of our capital and flag has nothing to do with any antisemitic groundswell in the ruling party.
We are told that despite her own disastrous presidential run that Ms. Haris is a master politician who secured $100 million in support in the 48 hours following Mr. Biden’s 11th-hour exit.
We are told that Ms. Harris’ true genius has been masked by a collection of unfortunate sound and video bites.
Indeed, we are told that an unpopular VP, who has largely been hidden from the spotlight over the past three years, has instantly galvanized a grateful nation.
We are told that the strengthening lead that Mr. Trump had over Mr. Biden evaporated in the course of three days so completely that he now looks to have lost the election.
We are told, in action, innuendo, and bespoke polling that Kamala Harris is effectively the new President of the United States of America.
In the interest of ever ending this essay I will limit this list to the above, although given sufficient indulgence by you, the reader, it could go on for pages and pages and only cover the past handful of years.
Why?
With the surgical precision of today’s algorithmic marketers, the architects of these falsehoods and events have measured exactly what they can get away with and exactly when they can get away with it. It is the same grim and exact science that has you, the consumer, giving your money to businesses that openly condemn who you are and what you believe.
But despite that, the hard truth is that the inevitable election outcome and all these other things transpire exclusively because you and I allow them.
And why do we?
Perhaps the struggle seems too big. Perhaps the individual acts seem too small. Perhaps we are all too easily demoralized – a particular specialty of today’s operative left.
Maybe it’s because it all seems okay if it means not having such an odious iconoclast as Mr. Trump back in the White House. Surely these tactics will not be required against the Republican’s future, more palatable candidates.
Sure. Ask the mild-mannered Senator Romney exactly how that worked out for him and his family.
To the devil with the litany of disproven, destructive, unpopular, and radical agenda items that she has touted her entire public life: it has been decided by those who decide such things these days. Ms. Harris will be your next president. Ms. Harris already is your next president. And there are only two reasons: you and me. We allow it. Unless we don’t.
