The Podcast of the Lotus Eaters

00:00:00.460 Hello, and welcome to Brokernomics. Now, in this episode, back in the home studio again,

00:00:05.460 hopefully got the tech set up correct this time. I seem to be getting better at that.

00:00:09.260 I wanted to do an election, sorry, a podcast, sorry, on US elections, because I hear there's

00:00:15.200 one coming up. And it might be significant. Now, I don't know why, but last time I got

00:00:20.480 the impression that that wasn't quite as peachy clean as it should have been. And I've also

00:00:26.760 got this sneaking suspicion that perhaps the next one might not be as sneaky clean as it

00:00:30.520 should have been. So I thought, who do I know who can set my mind at ease that actually everything

00:00:37.240 is currently well in the US with their election process? And for that, I've got the great semi-agog.

00:00:44.300 Thank you for coming on, sir. Hello. Thank you very much for having me. I appreciate your good

00:00:49.560 humor in getting this thing arranged. And I'm very happy to be here. Although I have to say,

00:00:54.420 I'm not entirely sure that I'm the best person to set the minds of those in your audience at ease,

00:01:00.260 being somewhat skeptical myself. Ah, right. Okay. Well, we best get into that. For anyone who's

00:01:07.760 not familiar, where do you put your stuff out? And what kind of stuff do you do?

00:01:12.900 Well, I'm all over the place, I'd say. You can find my material on YouTube. It's backed up on

00:01:19.480 BitChute. Much of it makes its way over to Odyssey. I'm on Twitter. I'm on Telegram. I am on

00:01:25.880 Gab, though, less often these days. So really, Twitter and YouTube are the main places to find me.

00:01:30.820 The kind of things I do, there's sort of a core of geopolitics, the great game, global strategy,

00:01:38.900 this sort of thing. But I've also got a number of other interests. There's stuff on esoterica,

00:01:45.400 the overlap between secret services and secret societies. And then there are a number of like

00:01:50.960 one-off streams that happen from time to time. Like I've got one coming up that I'm

00:01:54.820 in the works on planning about Black Sabbath. There's another one I've done about Conan the

00:01:59.240 Barbarian viewed from the right. So there's all kinds of material on the channel. But the core

00:02:03.800 is geopolitics and strategy.

00:02:08.000 Yeah, I mean, you've got some really good stuff on there. Some of the Ukrainian ones really stood out

00:02:12.380 from me, actually. I mean, there's a lot of good stuff on there. But some of the recent Ukrainian

00:02:16.120 ones I found to be fascinating. That's something you've certainly kept on top of. So yeah, thank

00:02:21.980 you very much. That's absolutely excellent. So the first question I've got for you is over here,

00:02:28.900 we are often told by US commentators, every time an election comes up, they say that this is going to

00:02:35.200 be the most important election of our lifetime. Now, I don't think I believed them when it was John

00:02:40.300 McCain versus Obama, because I don't think that it would have made the slightest shot of difference

00:02:44.100 whichever one of them got in. And I didn't believe it when it was Romney versus Obama.

00:02:50.060 But after that, I must say, I started believing it a bit more when it was Hillary versus Trump. So

00:02:55.420 what are the odds that this one will indeed also be the most important election of our lifetime? Is

00:03:02.340 there any truth to that?

00:03:03.120 Well, yes, insofar as, you know, great affairs of state and great powers, you know, affect all of us. It's

00:03:13.320 certainly an important one for the United States. And, you know, as I've seen many of my friends

00:03:18.000 abroad, you know, I've learned that they all watch events in the United States, knowing that, you know,

00:03:23.280 well, what's the old expression, shit flows downhill, you know. So, you know, people around

00:03:32.840 the world are forced to suffer the consequences in ways that are often more striking and more

00:03:39.740 unpleasant, for example, than even the people in the United States. I mean, the things going on in

00:03:44.520 the Middle East and Ukraine, and all kinds of things historically illustrate that. I think it is,

00:03:50.800 it's certainly going to be another turning point. You know, there's this old idea of the fork in the

00:03:57.600 road, you know, the point at which you arrive at this, this major point of potential divergence.

00:04:03.380 And I think each one of the elections, certainly 2016, 2020, and increasingly so 2024, all fit that

00:04:11.320 pattern. Okay. And that's bearing in mind that there's probably considerable truth to this idea of

00:04:18.620 the uniparty. And so I don't want to set that hypothesis aside. But in certain respects,

00:04:25.360 I think everyone in the United States who is sober and views this thing as close to objectively as they

00:04:30.700 can, there is, there are two choices. And those choices, I think, in the case of the United States

00:04:37.780 are probably a bit more stark and different than, for example, what you're dealing with, with,

00:04:42.180 you know, Labour and the Conservatives and the rest in Britain.

00:04:47.040 Yeah, I mean, our election has got a bit more interesting lately. I mean, it was going to be

00:04:50.160 swapping out one part of the uniparty for another part, but it looks like we might actually have

00:04:53.840 the option to destroy one part of the uniparty here. So our elections got slightly more interesting.

00:04:58.920 I'm, I'm pleased to say that. But I mean, I mean, looking at yours, I mean, you've got

00:05:02.660 somebody who's, on one hand, got a proven track record of starting no new wars, going up against

00:05:09.780 somebody who has a proven track record of escalating towards World War Three with a nuclear arm

00:05:14.620 superpower. So, I mean, it really does feel to me like that on top of the fact that

00:05:20.440 if they did cross a Rubicon in 2020, which I'm inclined to believe they did,

00:05:27.240 it's going to be fascinating to see if they are actually willing to cross back across that Rubicon

00:05:33.260 or whether there is going to be some sort of shenanigans coming as well, which is,

00:05:37.940 you know, exactly why I wanted to talk to you, because I obviously have substantial concerns that

00:05:43.160 democracy could be on the verge of going away.

00:05:45.980 Yeah, well, there are a number of ways of looking at the whole question of democracy and whether or not

00:05:52.000 the people and their votes really have much to do at all with, you know, great affairs and who,

00:05:58.760 who comes into office. So leaving that aside, you know, our mutual friend, academic agent,

00:06:05.480 talks at length, and I think convincingly about elite theory, you know, Pareto and Mosca and some

00:06:11.300 of the other people that he's discussed in his recent book, books. So that's, that's one thing to

00:06:19.140 think about how much do our votes actually matter. But leaving that question aside, and it's an

00:06:26.040 important one, certainly the process has been undergoing degradation consistently since at least

00:06:34.920 2016. I remember at the time of the 2016 election, that's when Trump came out with fake news.

00:06:40.480 I began to follow it very, very closely in 2015, because I saw, you know, all Trump supporters are

00:06:46.480 Nazis and Trump, you know, he's calling Mexicans rapists. And I saw the the massive

00:06:54.400 sort of hysterical press coverage that we have become accustomed to now at this point. And I want

00:07:01.700 to, I want to gesture back to 2016, because we'd seen it before. And we're used to that sort of fever

00:07:08.920 pitch around election time. And, you know, let's dig up any dirt on anyone we can. But there was

00:07:13.860 something about it that had qualitatively changed, as well as, you know, quantitatively, there was an

00:07:18.520 increase in the intensity. And this continued throughout the entire period of Trump's time

00:07:25.840 in office. And I just, I just out of memory, I began to think about the things that happened before,

00:07:33.020 during, and to some extent, some of this extended into the period after Trump's presidency, you had all

00:07:40.160 the Russiagate stuff, you had the mid-year and crossfire hurricane investigations, Christopher

00:07:46.480 Steele, the Steele dossier, the so called P tapes, all sorts of odd connections between operatives in

00:07:54.380 the United States, in Britain, other ones further afield, like Joseph Mifsud. And, and then you have

00:08:00.800 this stuff with George Papadopoulos, Paul Manafort, people going to jail, all sorts of charges being

00:08:06.400 brought. There was Mike Flynn stuff. Then there were the, remember the Peter Strzok and Lisa Page

00:08:12.460 text messages? That was crazy, yeah. Democratic, Democratic emails and Seth Rich somehow, you know,

00:08:18.800 happening to die. And nobody decided to take his watch or wallet, they just shot him in the street.

00:08:24.440 Yep, mugged for nothing.

00:08:25.860 Yes, Imran Awan, the Pakistani IT staffer who worked for Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who was sending

00:08:33.160 all kinds of money home to Pakistan and, and was carrying, apparently, this is all everything I say

00:08:40.080 in this discussion. It's all speculation. I'm no expert on this. I'm not making strong assertions

00:08:44.920 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

00:08:50.640 what happened. Uh, it seems that, uh, we're not limited to being gaslighted. We can also be

00:08:56.220 prosecuted. So, you know, I'd like to be very careful, uh, about how I talk about these things

00:09:00.820 because we're in 2024 and it's only going to get worse, but Imran Awan and the laptop stuff, uh,

00:09:06.120 Michael Cohen, uh, Stormy Daniels, uh, all the Trump, uh, rape and sexual harassment claims, uh,

00:09:12.420 you know, uh, more than a score of women, if I remember correctly, Fang Fang and Eric Swalwell, 1.00

00:09:17.440 you know, the Chinese spy, um, Senator Dianne Feinstein's Chinese driver, the Chinese driver

00:09:23.500 who worked, uh, apparently for Chinese intelligence, all the Epstein stuff. So I didn't do that just to,

00:09:31.040 to, to sort of, you know, remind everyone I want to, I want to paint a picture of how much,

00:09:35.860 uh, corruption, how much there is in the way of allegations, but also how much of this stuff

00:09:41.840 has subsequently been swept under the rug. And so you see this very strong division,

00:09:47.480 which matters when we come to lawfare and how it bears on all of this. We see a very strong trend

00:09:53.460 like Imran Awan, he pleads, uh, guilty to one bank fraud thing and it all gets swept under the rug.

00:09:59.560 Um, did you ever hear anything about Fang Fang and Swalwell, any charges being brought, anything with,

00:10:05.140 uh, Dianne Feinstein and having a Chinese spy? 0.55

00:10:07.860 Uh, well, I remember the stories, but I don't remember the conclusions.

00:10:11.600 So I don't know how it, it's often how it worked out. Well, certainly nothing, uh, that's the

00:10:18.100 equivalent of the multiple prosecutions that are directed at Trump, uh, at present, which is one

00:10:22.680 of the things I want to underscore. So this began, this intense fight began prior to 2016

00:10:29.260 and it extended past the election. So part of what we've seen is an extension of that hysterical

00:10:35.000 faves straight through without pause, um, straight through the, the terms of office,

00:10:40.860 uh, leading, you know, there's dips and peaks certainly, but we see in, in, uh, a kind of,

00:10:47.160 um, accusatory hysteria in the media, as well as the gaslighting and debunking and, um, fact

00:10:54.440 checking, uh, going constantly. So, uh, one of the major things that's happened is that our source

00:11:00.540 of information across the board has been thoroughly vitiated, uh, you know, disinformation,

00:11:05.400 misinformation, malinformation, all these, uh, sorts of, um, uh, terms they have for it. So,

00:11:11.480 yeah, we have, um, we've seen such a shift as well as all the polarization that, you know,

00:11:19.380 when you ask this fundamental question to come back to it, you know, is democracy under threat

00:11:24.320 in a sense, you know, that, that, uh, we could be, you know, waving bye-bye to it. Uh, yes. And I

00:11:31.380 think we've already gotten there. And, and what I've been attempting to say here, I'm sorry, in my

00:11:35.780 long winded way is that after a fashion, we're in a state of, uh, warfare that we are not accustomed

00:11:45.100 to thinking about. We generally think of warfare as this thing that happens in a war. There's a state

00:11:51.020 of war. There's a declaration of war. And then the war's ended when there's peace. Um, you know,

00:11:56.880 you might have a conflict, but that's a conflict. There's a conflict zone, you know, soldiers will

00:12:01.420 be sent there rules of engagement will apply. Um, and we have distinct domains of civil and martial

00:12:08.080 life, which is why, you know, when there's a big problem, we have, um, martial law. But the thing is

00:12:14.160 that so many states of emergency have been imposed in the United States. Certainly I imagine it's similar

00:12:19.340 in Britain that we're operating now under overlapping states of exception that extend government power

00:12:26.940 that never end. And their, their answers to crises in the same way that the declaration of martial law

00:12:34.420 would be. And so when you combine the fact that it's an ongoing crisis, that it seems to be a kind

00:12:40.720 of war, a low intensity war, uh, staffers getting shot in the street, Antifa being mobilized to attack

00:12:47.200 Trump supporters as they come out of rallies, uh, lawfare, what gets called anarcho tyranny. Um, you

00:12:54.520 know, uh, uh, uh, judiciary that, that in many respects is wanting, you know, when you, when you think

00:13:01.840 about all of these things at once, I think it's important to understand that we're in a continuous

00:13:05.600 state of a kind of low level war that impinges on all our lives. Um, and so think about this against

00:13:14.080 the background of democracy. How can you have a democracy? How can you have an election in a state

00:13:20.260 of war?

00:13:21.400 Well, I mean, I like the analogy to it, it being a state of war because I mean, after all, what, what is

00:13:25.860 the purpose of a war? The purpose of a war is to get to the other side, controlling more power, resources,

00:13:32.280 land, people, um, access to taxable resources, access to resources. So if, if the stakes are the same

00:13:41.300 as a war, well, why wouldn't you treat it as seriously as a war? Because that is, that is 0.51

00:13:47.020 exactly what it has become. So why would you not be prepared to do the same exceptional things that

00:13:52.860 you might be prepared to do in a war if the, if the end product is exactly the same? I mean, it,

00:13:57.380 it seems to me like an apt analogy. Um, one thing I think that would be helpful is, is just to take

00:14:02.660 a few moments to set out what your process actually is, because I know it's a lot more complicated

00:14:06.680 than ours here. To give a very quick overview of how the UK election system works is first of all,

00:14:12.420 the candidates are decided by the parties. They used to be decided by the local associations,

00:14:17.320 but that's really functionally no longer the case. It is the parties just select a person and put them

00:14:23.460 in. Um, and then on election day, you turn up at the polling station, uh, you show an ID, um,

00:14:32.180 you go in, you get given a piece of paper and a pencil, you go into a booth, you, you mark a cross

00:14:36.740 on a ballot. You can, you can take a byro, a permanent marker if you want, uh, put it on the

00:14:41.160 ballot. You drop that in a box and that box has got a, um, a seal on it. Um, that is only broken

00:14:49.040 after those boxes are at the end of the day, collected up, taken to a central location.

00:14:53.480 And it's normally a big hall. And I've done a number of these myself. You get it, you get a big

00:14:57.260 call like a sports center, uh, and you'll have a bigger tables around the outside, big table in

00:15:02.840 the middle. The boxes are brought to the middle. The seal is broken in front of representatives from

00:15:07.280 each party. The, the, the papers are dumped out. They're then distributed to the, um, the outer

00:15:12.180 tables where, um, again, representatives from each party can stand there literally just right over the

00:15:17.680 top of it, looking down as they start to sort these votes, count them, bundle them up into piles

00:15:22.960 of a thousand. And then they, once they're in a pile, they go back to the center table and you can

00:15:27.540 see the vote progress by the night. And normally by about two or three o'clock in the morning, um,

00:15:32.500 it's very obvious to everybody exactly where you stand, who's winning. And if it's close, um,

00:15:37.740 I think within 5% or maybe a bit tighter than that, you can, you can ask for a recount, but the whole

00:15:43.260 process is entirely transparent. There is, it's quite hard to rig a process like that. And so I

00:15:49.540 generally have faith in the, in the UK election process. The, the only examples that we've had

00:15:54.460 of that going awry, um, is when there's been heavy use of mailing ballots, which never used to be a

00:16:00.560 thing until the last election. Um, but, um, but, but, but generally they're not used that heavily

00:16:07.280 here. People do make the effort to go out on the day. So it's quite a simple process and it's quite

00:16:12.800 difficult to rig it in any particular overt way, but your process appears to be, I mean,

00:16:19.960 a complete mirror. I mean, every part of what I've just described seems to function differently from,

00:16:24.220 um, uh, the primary elections, which, which obviously get rigged in, in, in many cases,

00:16:30.800 if not all cases, I'm thinking of Ron Paul, the first candidate I ever really was rooting for was

00:16:36.180 Ron Paul. And clearly the process was rigged against him. Um, if you're on the left, you might say

00:16:41.060 Bernie Sanders, but then on election day, I've just got no idea how it works. You seem to have

00:16:45.340 these voting machines and God knows what's going on there. Why you can't just vote in a ballot box.

00:16:50.140 I don't quite understand. So, so perhaps you could give us just a couple of minutes on,

00:16:53.620 on what your actual system is. Well, one of the great problems with that is, uh, the degree of,

00:17:00.720 uh, decentralization that's involved. Okay. So, uh, even in federal elections, um, and, and there are

00:17:08.920 going to be exceptions to this, there are details with which I'm unfamiliar. So bear that in mind,

00:17:13.740 but in terms of the general picture, federal election, like when you, uh, you know, uh, for

00:17:18.740 the upcoming 2024 election for, you know, when I voted in 2016 and 2020 presidential election,

00:17:25.300 you're also going to have, um, you're also going to have, uh, members of Congress, um, candidates

00:17:32.160 for Congress, uh, on the ballot, these sorts of things. And they'll throw in other things,

00:17:35.860 sometimes a referenda, um, and, um, and, and things related to municipalities and the rest,

00:17:41.600 depending on, you know, what kind of ballot it is, uh, or where, where, uh, it's happening. Um,

00:17:47.720 it's highly decentralized. So here, here's, uh, here's something that I pulled up the other day,

00:17:53.880 and it's just, this is from the United States, um, election assistance commission. Um, now I,

00:18:02.480 I'm not entirely sure that this is, uh, this is a government. Oh yeah, it is. It's a government,

00:18:07.460 uh, email. So basically they say, who is in charge of elections in my state? The answer here is each

00:18:13.880 state has a chief election official who has an oversight or advisory role over state or federal

00:18:18.760 elections. Like for example, that could be a secretary of state. Um, however, elections are

00:18:23.960 usually administered at the county level. So not only do you have all 50 different states,

00:18:29.800 but you've got the counties, uh, where the elections, uh, take place. Uh, they say though,

00:18:34.680 in some states, cities or townships run elections, no two states administer elections in the same way.

00:18:40.240 And there can be variations within a single state elections can be run by a single individual or

00:18:46.780 department, a board or commission, uh, of elections or combination of two or more entities. Uh, election

00:18:54.340 administration in America is highly decentralized. There are more than 10,000 election

00:18:59.080 jurisdictions in the United States. The size of the jurisdictions varies, you know, a few hundred

00:19:04.680 in some places, uh, others have as many as 5 million people. Um, and so when you think about

00:19:12.120 this, there are enormous differences. So there's some sort of basic background things that you can

00:19:18.980 conceive of. If you're a soldier fighting abroad or stationed abroad, I should say, then you can fill

00:19:23.880 out an absentee ballot. Likewise for some sort of, you know, embassy employee living and working

00:19:28.280 abroad, that kind of thing. So these absentee ballots come in. Uh, then there are, uh, there

00:19:33.940 are the people who go to choose to vote on the day. Uh, there are mail-in ballots and now there's a

00:19:40.680 kind of mail-in ballot harvesting that in many States is permitted, which is where you just go

00:19:45.620 collect big bundles of ballots from people. And on their behalf, you know, a lot of that happens with,

00:19:51.480 uh, with, uh, uh, care homes, uh, that house the elderly, uh, retirement homes, uh, these sorts of

00:19:58.520 places. Oddly enough, those are places that were sort of locked off permitting all sorts of, you know,

00:20:04.220 intermediaries to operate in the 2020 election, um, as a result of, uh, the, uh, the, the medical

00:20:11.320 condition that shall not be named. To watch the full video, please become a premium member at

00:20:15.920 lotus eaters.com.

PREVIEW： Brokenomics ｜ Rigging 2024 - with Semiogogue

Episode Stats

Summary

Transcript