Charles P. Pierce: Russia's Interference in This Election Should Not Be a Surprise

[bluedigger]

This kind of thing has been a long time coming.

Innocence always calls mutely for protection when we would be so much wiser to guard ourselves against it: innocence is like a dumb leper who has lost his bell, wandering the world, meaning no harm.

—Graham Greene, The Quiet American

In the mid-1980's, the aides to the president of the United States committed serious crimes in their efforts to send sophisticated weapons to a state sponsor of international terrorism. The president of the United States likely committed impeachable offenses. We were told to get beyond it, that the "country" couldn't afford another presidency crippled by its own crimes so soon after Richard Nixon had hobbled his. We got beyond it. We moved on.

In 1998, the House of Representatives impeached a president on the most spurious of grounds and full in the knowledge that the charges had no chance of prevailing in the Senate. There were many grand and glorious speeches on the floor of the House about the rule of law and about the House's constitutional duties. It was a proud moment and many an ambitious young politician thumped his chest over the righteousness of his cause. By 2000, nobody in the political party that had brought the charges even mentioned it any more. We got beyond it. We moved on.

In 2000, the Supreme Court of the United States interfered in a presidential election in an extra-constitutional and unprecedented way. It essentially installed a man in that office who had lost the popular vote by half-a-million and likely had lost the crucial state of Florida, too, which would have denied him a majority in the electoral college. From all sides, even from the candidate who was so badly wronged, we were told that "the country" needed to "heal" from this terrible crisis, even though the country seemed to be rocking right along. We got beyond it. We moved on.

In 2008, we elected a president after eight years in which the country's moral foundation had been winnowed away by faceless bureaucrats and torturers in black sites in Thailand and shipping crates in Bagram, and eight years in which much of the national wealth was stolen by brigands in expensive suits on Wall Street. The new president was a good man. He wanted to look forward and not back. We got beyond all of it. We moved on.

http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/news/a51430/russia-election/?src=socialflowFB

[uponit7771]

1. I pray this time is different

[ginnyinWI]

2. This is scary stuff.

I hope someone can start using those long-unused political muscles and save the nation.

[shraby]

3. Excellent read!

[yallerdawg]

4. We have to figure out which way we want it.

We want to get rid of the Electoral College because it doesn't represent the will of the people.

But now we want the Electors of each state to abandon the will of the people and the rules of that state to select the candidate of our choice.

Flailing around willy-nilly from one position to the next is not where we want to move to. It looks like we recognize no rules and no votes unless they favor OUR outcome.

Which is not the way we sustain democracy.