PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Rigging 2024 - with Semiogogue
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Summary
In this episode of Brokernomics, I talk to the great semi-aggressor, Alex Blumberg, about the upcoming presidential election in the United States, and whether or not it will be the most important election of our lifetime.
Transcript
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Hello, and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, in this episode, back in the home studio again,
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hopefully got the tech set up correct this time. I seem to be getting better at that.
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I wanted to do an election, sorry, a podcast, sorry, on US elections, because I hear there's
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one coming up. And it might be significant. Now, I don't know why, but last time I got
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the impression that that wasn't quite as peachy clean as it should have been. And I've also
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got this sneaking suspicion that perhaps the next one might not be as sneaky clean as it
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should have been. So I thought, who do I know who can set my mind at ease that actually everything
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is currently well in the US with their election process? And for that, I've got the great semi-agog.
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Thank you for coming on, sir. Hello. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate your good
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humor in getting this thing arranged. And I'm very happy to be here. Although I have to say,
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I'm not entirely sure that I'm the best person to set the minds of those in your audience at ease,
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being somewhat skeptical myself. Ah, right. Okay. Well, we best get into that. For anyone who's
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not familiar, where do you put your stuff out? And what kind of stuff do you do?
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Well, I'm all over the place, I'd say. You can find my material on YouTube. It's backed up on
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BitChute. Much of it makes its way over to Odyssey. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Telegram. I am on
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Gab, though, less often these days. So really, Twitter and YouTube are the main places to find me.
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The kind of things I do, there's sort of a core of geopolitics, the great game, global strategy,
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this sort of thing. But I've also got a number of other interests. There's stuff on esoterica,
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the overlap between secret services and secret societies. And then there are a number of like
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one-off streams that happen from time to time. Like I've got one coming up that I'm
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in the works on planning about Black Sabbath. There's another one I've done about Conan the
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Barbarian viewed from the right. So there's all kinds of material on the channel. But the core
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Yeah, I mean, you've got some really good stuff on there. Some of the Ukrainian ones really stood out
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from me, actually. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff on there. But some of the recent Ukrainian
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ones I found to be fascinating. That's something you've certainly kept on top of. So yeah, thank
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you very much. That's absolutely excellent. So the first question I've got for you is over here,
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we are often told by US commentators, every time an election comes up, they say that this is going to
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be the most important election of our lifetime. Now, I don't think I believed them when it was John
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McCain versus Obama, because I don't think that it would have made the slightest shot of difference
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whichever one of them got in. And I didn't believe it when it was Romney versus Obama.
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But after that, I must say, I started believing it a bit more when it was Hillary versus Trump. So
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what are the odds that this one will indeed also be the most important election of our lifetime? Is
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Well, yes, insofar as, you know, great affairs of state and great powers, you know, affect all of us. It's
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certainly an important one for the United States. And, you know, as I've seen many of my friends
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abroad, you know, I've learned that they all watch events in the United States, knowing that, you know,
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well, what's the old expression, shit flows downhill, you know. So, you know, people around
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the world are forced to suffer the consequences in ways that are often more striking and more
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unpleasant, for example, than even the people in the United States. I mean, the things going on in
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the Middle East and Ukraine, and all kinds of things historically illustrate that. I think it is,
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it's certainly going to be another turning point. You know, there's this old idea of the fork in the
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road, you know, the point at which you arrive at this, this major point of potential divergence.
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And I think each one of the elections, certainly 2016, 2020, and increasingly so 2024, all fit that
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pattern. Okay. And that's bearing in mind that there's probably considerable truth to this idea of
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the uniparty. And so I don't want to set that hypothesis aside. But in certain respects,
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I think everyone in the United States who is sober and views this thing as close to objectively as they
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can, there is, there are two choices. And those choices, I think, in the case of the United States
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are probably a bit more stark and different than, for example, what you're dealing with, with,
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you know, Labour and the Conservatives and the rest in Britain.
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Yeah, I mean, our election has got a bit more interesting lately. I mean, it was going to be
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swapping out one part of the uniparty for another part, but it looks like we might actually have
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the option to destroy one part of the uniparty here. So our elections got slightly more interesting.
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I'm, I'm pleased to say that. But I mean, I mean, looking at yours, I mean, you've got
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somebody who's, on one hand, got a proven track record of starting no new wars, going up against
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somebody who has a proven track record of escalating towards World War Three with a nuclear arm
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superpower. So, I mean, it really does feel to me like that on top of the fact that
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if they did cross a Rubicon in 2020, which I'm inclined to believe they did,
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it's going to be fascinating to see if they are actually willing to cross back across that Rubicon
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or whether there is going to be some sort of shenanigans coming as well, which is,
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you know, exactly why I wanted to talk to you, because I obviously have substantial concerns that
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Yeah, well, there are a number of ways of looking at the whole question of democracy and whether or not
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the people and their votes really have much to do at all with, you know, great affairs and who,
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who comes into office. So leaving that aside, you know, our mutual friend, academic agent,
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talks at length, and I think convincingly about elite theory, you know, Pareto and Mosca and some
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of the other people that he's discussed in his recent book, books. So that's, that's one thing to
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think about how much do our votes actually matter. But leaving that question aside, and it's an
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important one, certainly the process has been undergoing degradation consistently since at least
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2016. I remember at the time of the 2016 election, that's when Trump came out with fake news.
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I began to follow it very, very closely in 2015, because I saw, you know, all Trump supporters are
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Nazis and Trump, you know, he's calling Mexicans rapists. And I saw the the massive
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sort of hysterical press coverage that we have become accustomed to now at this point. And I want
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to, I want to gesture back to 2016, because we'd seen it before. And we're used to that sort of fever
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pitch around election time. And, you know, let's dig up any dirt on anyone we can. But there was
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something about it that had qualitatively changed, as well as, you know, quantitatively, there was an
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increase in the intensity. And this continued throughout the entire period of Trump's time
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in office. And I just, I just out of memory, I began to think about the things that happened before,
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during, and to some extent, some of this extended into the period after Trump's presidency, you had all
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the Russiagate stuff, you had the mid-year and crossfire hurricane investigations, Christopher
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Steele, the Steele dossier, the so called P tapes, all sorts of odd connections between operatives in
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the United States, in Britain, other ones further afield, like Joseph Mifsud. And, and then you have
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this stuff with George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, people going to jail, all sorts of charges being
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brought. There was Mike Flynn stuff. Then there were the, remember the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page
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text messages? That was crazy, yeah. Democratic, Democratic emails and Seth Rich somehow, you know,
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happening to die. And nobody decided to take his watch or wallet, they just shot him in the street.
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Yes, Imran Awan, the Pakistani IT staffer who worked for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was sending
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all kinds of money home to Pakistan and, and was carrying, apparently, this is all everything I say
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in this discussion. It's all speculation. I'm no expert on this. I'm not making strong assertions
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of fact, as we'll see as we look at all of this. Lots of people who do try to speak out or talk about
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what happened. Uh, it seems that, uh, we're not limited to being gaslighted. We can also be
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prosecuted. So, you know, I'd like to be very careful, uh, about how I talk about these things
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because we're in 2024 and it's only going to get worse, but Imran Awan and the laptop stuff, uh,
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Michael Cohen, uh, Stormy Daniels, uh, all the Trump, uh, rape and sexual harassment claims, uh,
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you know, uh, more than a score of women, if I remember correctly, Fang Fang and Eric Swalwell,
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you know, the Chinese spy, um, Senator Dianne Feinstein's Chinese driver, the Chinese driver
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who worked, uh, apparently for Chinese intelligence, all the Epstein stuff. So I didn't do that just to,
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to, to sort of, you know, remind everyone I want to, I want to paint a picture of how much,
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uh, corruption, how much there is in the way of allegations, but also how much of this stuff
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has subsequently been swept under the rug. And so you see this very strong division,
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which matters when we come to lawfare and how it bears on all of this. We see a very strong trend
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like Imran Awan, he pleads, uh, guilty to one bank fraud thing and it all gets swept under the rug.
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Um, did you ever hear anything about Fang Fang and Swalwell, any charges being brought, anything with,
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Uh, well, I remember the stories, but I don't remember the conclusions.
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So I don't know how it, it's often how it worked out. Well, certainly nothing, uh, that's the
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equivalent of the multiple prosecutions that are directed at Trump, uh, at present, which is one
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of the things I want to underscore. So this began, this intense fight began prior to 2016
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and it extended past the election. So part of what we've seen is an extension of that hysterical
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faves straight through without pause, um, straight through the, the terms of office,
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uh, leading, you know, there's dips and peaks certainly, but we see in, in, uh, a kind of,
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um, accusatory hysteria in the media, as well as the gaslighting and debunking and, um, fact
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checking, uh, going constantly. So, uh, one of the major things that's happened is that our source
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of information across the board has been thoroughly vitiated, uh, you know, disinformation,
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misinformation, malinformation, all these, uh, sorts of, um, uh, terms they have for it. So,
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yeah, we have, um, we've seen such a shift as well as all the polarization that, you know,
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when you ask this fundamental question to come back to it, you know, is democracy under threat
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in a sense, you know, that, that, uh, we could be, you know, waving bye-bye to it. Uh, yes. And I
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think we've already gotten there. And, and what I've been attempting to say here, I'm sorry, in my
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long winded way is that after a fashion, we're in a state of, uh, warfare that we are not accustomed
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to thinking about. We generally think of warfare as this thing that happens in a war. There's a state
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of war. There's a declaration of war. And then the war's ended when there's peace. Um, you know,
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you might have a conflict, but that's a conflict. There's a conflict zone, you know, soldiers will
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be sent there rules of engagement will apply. Um, and we have distinct domains of civil and martial
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life, which is why, you know, when there's a big problem, we have, um, martial law. But the thing is
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that so many states of emergency have been imposed in the United States. Certainly I imagine it's similar
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in Britain that we're operating now under overlapping states of exception that extend government power
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that never end. And their, their answers to crises in the same way that the declaration of martial law
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would be. And so when you combine the fact that it's an ongoing crisis, that it seems to be a kind
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of war, a low intensity war, uh, staffers getting shot in the street, Antifa being mobilized to attack
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Trump supporters as they come out of rallies, uh, lawfare, what gets called anarcho tyranny. Um, you
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know, uh, uh, uh, judiciary that, that in many respects is wanting, you know, when you, when you think
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about all of these things at once, I think it's important to understand that we're in a continuous
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state of a kind of low level war that impinges on all our lives. Um, and so think about this against
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the background of democracy. How can you have a democracy? How can you have an election in a state
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Well, I mean, I like the analogy to it, it being a state of war because I mean, after all, what, what is
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the purpose of a war? The purpose of a war is to get to the other side, controlling more power, resources,
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land, people, um, access to taxable resources, access to resources. So if, if the stakes are the same
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as a war, well, why wouldn't you treat it as seriously as a war? Because that is, that is
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exactly what it has become. So why would you not be prepared to do the same exceptional things that
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you might be prepared to do in a war if the, if the end product is exactly the same? I mean, it,
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it seems to me like an apt analogy. Um, one thing I think that would be helpful is, is just to take
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a few moments to set out what your process actually is, because I know it's a lot more complicated
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than ours here. To give a very quick overview of how the UK election system works is first of all,
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the candidates are decided by the parties. They used to be decided by the local associations,
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but that's really functionally no longer the case. It is the parties just select a person and put them
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in. Um, and then on election day, you turn up at the polling station, uh, you show an ID, um,
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you go in, you get given a piece of paper and a pencil, you go into a booth, you, you mark a cross
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on a ballot. You can, you can take a byro, a permanent marker if you want, uh, put it on the
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ballot. You drop that in a box and that box has got a, um, a seal on it. Um, that is only broken
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after those boxes are at the end of the day, collected up, taken to a central location.
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And it's normally a big hall. And I've done a number of these myself. You get it, you get a big
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call like a sports center, uh, and you'll have a bigger tables around the outside, big table in
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the middle. The boxes are brought to the middle. The seal is broken in front of representatives from
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each party. The, the, the papers are dumped out. They're then distributed to the, um, the outer
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tables where, um, again, representatives from each party can stand there literally just right over the
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top of it, looking down as they start to sort these votes, count them, bundle them up into piles
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of a thousand. And then they, once they're in a pile, they go back to the center table and you can
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see the vote progress by the night. And normally by about two or three o'clock in the morning, um,
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it's very obvious to everybody exactly where you stand, who's winning. And if it's close, um,
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I think within 5% or maybe a bit tighter than that, you can, you can ask for a recount, but the whole
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process is entirely transparent. There is, it's quite hard to rig a process like that. And so I
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generally have faith in the, in the UK election process. The, the only examples that we've had
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of that going awry, um, is when there's been heavy use of mailing ballots, which never used to be a
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thing until the last election. Um, but, um, but, but, but generally they're not used that heavily
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here. People do make the effort to go out on the day. So it's quite a simple process and it's quite
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difficult to rig it in any particular overt way, but your process appears to be, I mean,
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a complete mirror. I mean, every part of what I've just described seems to function differently from,
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um, uh, the primary elections, which, which obviously get rigged in, in, in many cases,
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if not all cases, I'm thinking of Ron Paul, the first candidate I ever really was rooting for was
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Ron Paul. And clearly the process was rigged against him. Um, if you're on the left, you might say
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Bernie Sanders, but then on election day, I've just got no idea how it works. You seem to have
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these voting machines and God knows what's going on there. Why you can't just vote in a ballot box.
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I don't quite understand. So, so perhaps you could give us just a couple of minutes on,
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on what your actual system is. Well, one of the great problems with that is, uh, the degree of,
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uh, decentralization that's involved. Okay. So, uh, even in federal elections, um, and, and there are
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going to be exceptions to this, there are details with which I'm unfamiliar. So bear that in mind,
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but in terms of the general picture, federal election, like when you, uh, you know, uh, for
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the upcoming 2024 election for, you know, when I voted in 2016 and 2020 presidential election,
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you're also going to have, um, you're also going to have, uh, members of Congress, um, candidates
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for Congress, uh, on the ballot, these sorts of things. And they'll throw in other things,
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sometimes a referenda, um, and, um, and, and things related to municipalities and the rest,
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depending on, you know, what kind of ballot it is, uh, or where, where, uh, it's happening. Um,
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it's highly decentralized. So here, here's, uh, here's something that I pulled up the other day,
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and it's just, this is from the United States, um, election assistance commission. Um, now I,
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I'm not entirely sure that this is, uh, this is a government. Oh yeah, it is. It's a government,
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uh, email. So basically they say, who is in charge of elections in my state? The answer here is each
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state has a chief election official who has an oversight or advisory role over state or federal
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elections. Like for example, that could be a secretary of state. Um, however, elections are
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usually administered at the county level. So not only do you have all 50 different states,
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but you've got the counties, uh, where the elections, uh, take place. Uh, they say though,
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in some states, cities or townships run elections, no two states administer elections in the same way.
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And there can be variations within a single state elections can be run by a single individual or
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department, a board or commission, uh, of elections or combination of two or more entities. Uh, election
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administration in America is highly decentralized. There are more than 10,000 election
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jurisdictions in the United States. The size of the jurisdictions varies, you know, a few hundred
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in some places, uh, others have as many as 5 million people. Um, and so when you think about
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this, there are enormous differences. So there's some sort of basic background things that you can
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conceive of. If you're a soldier fighting abroad or stationed abroad, I should say, then you can fill
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out an absentee ballot. Likewise for some sort of, you know, embassy employee living and working
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abroad, that kind of thing. So these absentee ballots come in. Uh, then there are, uh, there
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are the people who go to choose to vote on the day. Uh, there are mail-in ballots and now there's a
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kind of mail-in ballot harvesting that in many States is permitted, which is where you just go
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collect big bundles of ballots from people. And on their behalf, you know, a lot of that happens with,
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uh, with, uh, uh, care homes, uh, that house the elderly, uh, retirement homes, uh, these sorts of
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places. Oddly enough, those are places that were sort of locked off permitting all sorts of, you know,
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intermediaries to operate in the 2020 election, um, as a result of, uh, the, uh, the, the medical
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