Decadence and Desperation

I don't know that tomorrow's scheduled Electoral College vote will result in any surprises, but the way things have been going -- one "shock" after another -- suggests that the effort to convince Electors not to elect Trump may be a failure, and yet it will have serious repercussions.

Our indirect system for electing presidents is bizarre and anachronistic. According to elite academic and legal opinion, it is intended to prevent the ascension of incompetents, unqualified candidates and demagogues to the presidency, but it doesn't do that. What it sometimes does, and what it is intended to do, is enable minority vote-getters to ascend, whether or not they are incompetent, unqualified or demagogues.

It is a system tailor made for what is likely to happen tomorrow: the ascension of Trump to a decadent presidency, exactly as the system is designed to enable.

Decadence, yes.

Many of Trump's defenders seem to believe that his ascension will end the rule of the neoLibCon cabal that has led to so much mischief, stagnation and suffering for so many people for the last 40 years or so.

How they come to that conclusion is a mystery. Every sign is that Trump will accelerate the ruling paradigm into hyperdrive. NeoLibCon rule on crack and steroids.

Without any mitigations whatever.

The system of rule may crash because of the chaos inherent in the Trumpian practice, but if a system crash is what his defenders are after, they should say so openly, and they should have long ago proposed an alternative to the current deviant, decadent and unstable system. But they haven't. Instead, they act like Puritan scolds, criticizing the system and then supporting and defending a plutocrat disruptor whose sole interest is his own preening eminence. Great.

They haven't proposed an alternative because they don't have an alternative. They just want to see the whole thing come crashing down or not -- which is nothing but nihilism.

The desperation of the Ruling Clique to maintain the decadent system that has propped them up and given them so much is plain to see what with the various strategies in play to prevent the ascension of Trump to the throne. Of course, there is always a reserve strategy should none of the rest of them work.

I understand that he has decamped to his Winter Palace in Florida, a more easily defensible location given the instability of the situation. I wonder if he has a fortified bunker there.

Speaking of, I was thinking about Jeffrey Epstein's nearby Zorro Ranch the other day. We pass by it every time we go to Santa Fe. There is a little Western town on the road up to the Big House, one I assume was built but never used as a movie set. The Big House sits up on a mesa overlooking the Galisteo and Estancia Basins. It's huge. At least at one time, it was designated the largest private home in New Mexico. I've always assumed that it was built as a bolt-hole when everything goes to shit.

And I assume it has a deep bunker built into the mesa -- just in case. Probably another one under the Western town set, too. These people. I tell you. According to reports, it's not certain that Epstein still owns the Zorro Ranch. Whenever we've passed by, there is hardly any activity there. Cattle are sometimes seen pasturing; there might be a worker coming or leaving. But never any motorcades or even a single armored Escalade or Yukon. No sign of the "owners" in other words.

Decadence aplenty. But where are the Owners?

I guess we'll find out soon enough.