The Time article confession

I’ve waited a bit to comment on this, but I’m going to urge everyone with access to a computer to look up an article in the Time magazine online edition.

The article is, “The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election” by Molly Ball, dated February 4.

The article does not quite admit the election was stolen, but proudly proclaims it was rigged, while denying it was rigged.

And it is the slickest description of what amounts to a vast criminal conspiracy I’ve read that doesn’t actually admit to anything specifically illegal since the autobiography of Don Giuseppi “Pepito” Bonano, the last serious contender for “capo tutti de capo” of the Sicilian Mafia in the United States.

After reading Don Pepito’s memoir one wanted to corner an FBI agent and say, “You leave that nice old man alone!” After reading the Time article one wants to shout “Hip hip hurray you saved democracy!”

That is until the enormity of what Ball is describing sinks in.

Start here: “In a way, Trump was right. There was a conspiracy unfolding behind the scenes, one that both curtailed the protests and coordinated the resistance from CEOs. Both surprises were the result of an informal alliance between left-wing activists and business titans.”

OK, so it’s a perfectly legal bipartisan effort to win an election and throw out a president they regard as a loose cannon.

And then there’s this: “Their work touched every aspect of the election. They got states to change voting systems and laws and helped secure hundreds of millions in public and private funding. They fended off voter-suppression lawsuits, recruited armies of poll workers and got millions of people to vote by mail for the first time. They successfully pressured social media companies to take a harder line against disinformation and used data-driven strategies to fight viral smears.”

Every adjective, every implicit assumption, shows these people sincerely believe they were saving the Republic. Every word choice shows they believe they were making sure the election was “free and fair” but that “free and fair” means “produces a result we can live with.”

And why did they do this? Why did they pick a writer for a magazine with an old and honorable name, now fallen on hard times to tell the story?

“That’s why the participants want the secret history of the 2020 election told, even though it sounds like a paranoid fever dream–a well-funded cabal of powerful people, ranging across industries and ideologies, working together behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”

If “change rules and laws” and “control the flow of information” doesn’t make chills run down your spine then consider this:

“They were not rigging the election; they were fortifying it.”

To which I can only offer the perceptive comment, “Huh?”

“Change rules and laws,” i.e. change the rules of the game in the middle of the game.

“…steer media coverage and control the flow of information.”

Does that sound like, “tell you what to think”?

Folks, I don’t care what your opinion of Trump is. I don’t care what your opinion of the likelihood of significant voter fraud is.

This is an in-your-face proclamation the most powerful people and institutions in this country did not trust you to make the “right” decision and united to make sure things went their way.

And if you nonetheless agree with that decision, consider they’ve realized the advantages of uniting and are not going to stop here.

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