By Yuram Abdullah Weiler

Post-reality America: Trump’s (s)election and the irrelevant recount

December 7, 2016 - 14:37

“If voting could change anything it would be made illegal!” —Robert S. Borden, M.D. in 1976 Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, or did he?  In a surrealistic scenario, third party candidate Jill Stein is feverishly filing for recounts of the popular vote in an expensive exercise that, if not irrelevant, appears to be of no benefit to her.  Moreover, with the Obama administration accusing Russia of hacking to influence the election, and Trump having warned of rigging beforehand, we are seeing the advent of what could be termed a post-reality America.

The popular vote

We begin by noting that the U.S. government does not do an official tally of the popular vote. Instead, this task is left to the 50 individual states and the District of Columbia, which must submit official results by the December 19 deadline when the members of the Electoral College do the voting that actually counts.  The votes cast by the electors are then counted in the U.S. congress on January 6, and the result will be announced by the current vice president.

Since verifying the popular vote count would require checking with each individual state’s election office, let us accept that, according to numerous sources, Hillary Clinton has won the popular vote in the recent U.S. presidential election with an unofficial 48 percent versus 46 percent for Donald Trump.  But in the convoluted U.S. system, winning the popular vote does not assure the required 270 electoral votes to clinch the presidency, and this year, once again, the loser of the popular vote should win the electoral vote, provided the electors vote as expected.

That Hillary Clinton won the popular vote comes as no surprise, for 23 out of 25 public opinion polls taken in the two months prior to the election predicted that she would edge Trump by an average margin of four percent.  Two of the polls, both conducted by NBC News, had sample sizes over 23,000, and both predicted a five percent or greater margin for Clinton in the popular vote.  And polls are reasonably accurate predictors as can be seen by the fact that Gallup polls have predicted the winner of the popular vote in 17 out of the last 20 U.S. elections.

There have been notable exceptions, such as 1948 when Harry Truman trounced Thomas Dewey or 2012 when Mitt Romney was predicted by some polls to win over Barack Obama.  Yet this time, something seems amiss since only two polls, Bloomberg and Rassmussen Reports, predicted a Trump victory.  And with so many polls proven wrong —polls with substantial sample sizes and margins of error plus or minus one percent—it is not unreasonable to suspect foul play.  

The recount effort

Some have suggested that there may have been voting fraud, like investigative journalist Greg Palast, who reported that “there were a massive number of votes that were simply rejected, invalidated and spoiled; they were simply not counted.”  Other individuals have alleged the presence of anomalies in voting patterns in three states: Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin. Leading them is J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, who presented evidence that Clinton may have been shorted seven percent of the vote in precincts using electronic voting machines with no paper trail as opposed to those using optical scanners.  

If Dr. Halderman is correct, the winner in Wisconsin may actually have been Clinton, but with only 232 electoral votes, she would need to win in all three states mentioned above to bump Trump, who currently has 306.  And who pulled off this electronic subterfuge?  “Russia has sophisticated cyber-offensive capabilities, and has shown a willingness to use them to hack elections,” wrote Halderman, but as far as Russia being the culprit, “Probably not.”  Still, the only way to know for sure, according to Halderman, is for the candidates to demand a recount.  

Due to the scant margins favoring Trump in Michigan (0.3%), Wisconsin (0.7%) and Pennsylvania (1.2%), Halderman urged the Clinton staff to petition for a recount, while warning, “The candidate needs to pay the cost, which can run into millions of dollars.”  But instead of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein is spearheading the recount effort, a candidate who only gained a fraction over one percent of the popular vote and does not have the proverbial snowball’s chance in hell of winning.

Why Jill Stein?

Based on Federal Election Commission data, Stein took in a little over $3 million in contributions during her lackluster 2016 campaign, but has so far has amassed over $7 million for a recount effort that could only benefit Hillary Clinton.  Why? According to Stein’s lead attorney, Jonathan Abady, “We are committed to this fight to protect the civil and voting rights of all Americans.”  Such dedication and altruism is commendable, but hardly believable.  A more plausible explanation for Stein’s suspiciously stellar fundraising performance would be that she has the backing of wealthy Clinton supporters.

Assuming the money is raised, how, within the allotted time, could this recount be accomplished, particularly in Pennsylvania, whose electronic voting machines lack any paper trail?  Furthermore, if by some chance Stein is successful, Trump, no doubt, has deeper pockets to fund litigation; or does he?  The answer is, maybe not.  Marc Elias, the general counsel for the Clinton team, will be participating in the recount proceedings initiated by Stein, and Elias is backed by none other than staunch Clinton backer, billionaire George Soros.  

While it appears that Stein is simply a not-so-subtly-disguised front for a Clinton recount drive, other benefits may be accruing to her.  Harvard constitutional law professor Laurence Tribe suggested that one of Stein’s goals may be “trying to gain attention and establish herself as a national player.”  Also, she is building a large donor list, which adds to her potential to influence policy by urging contributors to call their representatives in congress and voice their opinions.

Who selected Trump?

The media have long intimated that Trump is Russian president Putin’s choice.  If we were to ask James Clapper, the U.S. director of national intelligence, he would most likely agree that Russia was backing Trump.  “The emails released on sites like WikiLeaks are consistent with methods and motivations of Russian-directed efforts,” stated Clapper referring to the DNC hack, adding, “Going after U.S. political organizations is a new aggressive spin on the political cycle.”  Adding additional credibility to this new reality construct, representative Michael McCaul, chair of the homeland security committee, told Trump himself that Russia was trying to influence the election, something which then candidate Trump rejected.  One former western intelligence operative claimed the “Russian regime has been cultivating, supporting and assisting Trump for at least [five] years.”

However, Michael Collins Piper, in his study on the Zionist elites, claims that Trump got his start in 1987 when CIA front man and head of Resorts International James Crosby died.  Trump bought Crosby’s interests in the gambling enterprise after lobbyists from the Mossad-linked Meyer Lansky syndicate had successfully lobbied to legalize gambling in Atlantic City, New Jersey.  Trump “definitely owes much to the patronage of the Zionist elite,” according to Piper.

Why is America “post-reality?”

Firstly, it is doubtful that recounts underway could be finished in time for the December 19 deadline and therefore, a situation would arise similar to what happened in the 2000 election where the U.S. supreme court stepped in to halt the process. 

Secondly, even if Clinton gains a plurality in the popular vote in the three states in question, she probably would not be accepted as president by a majority of Americans, who, unable to face reality, would view this as a coup by the Clinton cabal.

Thirdly, if the recounts were to give Clinton the needed electoral votes, some electors have declared their intention to vote for candidates other than as required by protocol and the popular vote.  This would make recount efforts irrelevant.

Fourthly, if we ignore reality and suppose that the electors vote for Clinton on December 19, is it reasonable to assume Trump, whose supporters have already filed lawsuits on his behalf to stop the recount, would accept the result?  Probably not.  Calls for “patriots” to “stand up and resist” Clinton’s “coup” are already on the internet.

Lastly, that either candidate could halt the downward imperial spiral to “make America great again” is unreality.  Yet, in a society as polarized as in America, violent demonstrations or even civil war might result should the election results suddenly be changed.  Such extreme polarization has happened before, from 1862 to 1865 with nearly a million casualties as a result.  

Irrelevant recounts notwithstanding, the Zionist elite have selected Trump in post-reality America, where government of the polarized, by the polarized, and for the polarized, shall likely remain polarized until it perishes from the earth.

YAW/YAW