“Certainly the game is rigged. Don’t let that stop you;
if you don’t bet, you can’t win.”
Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long

 
Imagine an election where a nation chose its leader from a group of highly qualified candidates. Imagine campaigns and debates where candidates would share their ideas about policy positions, and the voters would cast their support based on how well the candidates’ ideas reflected those whose values and principles they were being elected to represent. Imagine an intelligent discourse sparked by the candidates and continued throughout the electorate, culminating in an informed public ultimately making its decision by casting one vote by each person, independent of spin masters, organizers, and manipulators. When you come out of your reverie let us return to our own reality, where elections are dictated by money and pull, where discussion of issues take a back seat to finger pointing and personal attacks. Here in our dark country, policy decisions are only the spoil of war, and campaigns are war campaigns. Little concern is given to the presentation of ideas (“You can visit our website to see all that…”); instead, we are condemned to evaluate our leaders by the collected manure of their lives, and which smells least offensive to our pristine holier than thou nostrils.

Oh, I’m not saying that occasionally some Watergate type scandal might not rightly sink a candidate, these are after all political warriors, and the temptation to not play by the rules might sometimes lead to a fall; but not every single election, and not always in October. We shouldn’t need to go back to high school days, or drag seventy year old candidates back to the things they did in their twenties, and expect that this would have a significant effect on the election… but we do… and it does.

Mr Trump has been widely castigated for blaspheming against the dogma of false patriotism by insinuating that our election process is not entirely on the up and up. In his usual style, preferring pithiness to precision, Trump has declared the election to be rigged. That leaves a lot of room for interpretation, and his critics have not been shy about taking full advantage of that room. Condemning him for suggesting that we have a crooked system, they accuse him of destroying the public’s confidence in our elections, and laying the groundwork for violent rebellion. The over the top attacks only serve to prove the point of the proclamation. As Heinlein wrote, “Certainly the game is rigged.” Who could honestly say it is not? When it comes to press coverage, who I guess are the referees in this game, who could question that the response to the same sentiment expressed by Bernie Sanders or Al Gore was not nearly as apoplectic? Having the President on your side, using his bully pulpit to sling mud from, has to help rig the game for your side, just as having the majority in the House and statehouses helps rig those elections for the Republicans. Who can deny that dead people are continuing to vote, non-citizens are voting, people are being registered in multiple locations, and some are voting more than once. Who can deny that ballots disappear, that voting machines get tampered with, that voters are intimidated, that organizers influence and manipulate uninformed voters? When journalists demonstrate their political leanings by contributing to the Clinton campaign over the Trump campaign at a rate of 25 to 1, who can help but question their ability to be neutral? Imagine if news was only delivered by white male middle aged plumbers… would the left be comfortable with that press pool? The question is not whether the game is rigged, of course it is, the question is just how rigged is it? I share Mr. Trump’s optimism that it is not so rigged as to be not worth playing, but it’s an uphill fight for sure.

IMHO: I like to believe that game rigging is not a major influence in our elections, but how often do we actually get anyone but the party’s choice for candidates? Outsiders Trump and Cruz this year for the GOP show a continuing weakening of that party’s stranglehold, but the Dems have a tougher nut to crack. It may be that winning elections is more important to them than fixing the system. Skeptics will say that the rigging is minimal, and probably evens out across the parties. Maybe, but that hasn’t been my observation. Alternative news sources are the ultimate answer to a biased media, but unfortunately that will also lead to polarization and even less journalistic integrity. As with so many problems, education is the answer. When the game is rigged the way forward is to play the game better. That is not to say that you don’t continue to take a stand against corruption in the system; ignore it, and it will only grow. Expect the vilification from the left for shining a light on the rigging; the team that’s winning always supports the system. Always remember that engineered discouragment is part of the rigging, and polls oddly seem to tighten just before the election. There may be victories and defeats in elections, but the battle is more than that, whoever wins. Our elections show us our worst now, and I pity the President who gains victory by the dark arts of insult, spin, personal destruction, dishonesty and outright lying. To our future President: (insert name here), congratulations, you have proven yourself less horrible than your opponent… or possibly more horrible in your power. Four years will come soon enough; we must do better than this.