In the article last month in Time magazine by Molly Ball, it was stated that “they (The Shadow Campaigns) were fortifying the (last presidential) election; not rigging it.” After reading the article in depth several times, it was clear that this article can be likened to putting lipstick on a pig. The more recent article in The Epoch Times by Jeff Carlson [“Time Magazine Details the ‘Shadow Campaign’ Against Trump,” published Feb. 10] was very good, but I thought it did not go into detail enough about what the Time article was really about.
The pig itself was portrayed in great detail without undue bias. Using traditional reasoning, all of the elements of the Shadow campaign were laid out in good scientific fashion. The campaign was organized into clusters of differentiated data. They were 1) the alliance, 2) securing the vote, 3) the disinformation defense, 4) spreading the word, 5) people power, 6) strange bedfellows, 7) showing up, standing down, 8) the five steps to victory, and 9) how close we came. These groups were organized to follow the progress of all these secret liberal groups.
Within each of these clusters were long lists of mostly liberal groups that met secretly in order to thwart the lies of Donald Trump. It was presumed that his lies were the source of the upset that had overtaken the voting public. No other source was even mentioned. What all this organized lipstick said was that indeed a secret cabal had worked feverishly to overcome what they thought was overbearing intimidation and lying to the American public. But what if the underlying premise of the Time article was wrong.
What if Trump was right and had not lied? His verbiage can be quite forceful, but I think he is only intimidating to those who prefer to think he lied. What if our archaic system of voting is flawed? Maybe it has become necessary to review and incorporate new updated laws. The result then may include a more modern, more efficient election result. Consider that our system of voting is over 200 years old. Perhaps it does need an update.
Let us consider that maybe, just maybe, either party in a polarized group conflict could consider the opposing party to be liars; in other words, it works both ways. This view could depict a situation where each group presumes guilt for the opposing party without any admission of guilt for themselves. Under those conditions, there would be no real search for the truth, just unimaginative defensiveness. As far as I know, there has never been this kind of intense polarization in presidential elections before. Because it is new, old solutions may no longer work. To impose a secret marketing campaign on the opposition is surely an attempt to rig the election, not fortify it.
As I’ve said before, the Time article is metaphorically putting lipstick on a pig. The real solution to the problem of the election process is to diminish or eliminate the real cause of the general upset. We appear to need laws or regulations that limit the amount of all upsetting intense communications under crisis conditions, including presidential elections. That way, media can be limited under certain conditions while still being able to function freely as an advocate of freedom of speech. The media should not be allowed to censor certain special political entities because it would certainly encourage special interests to become self-interests. When the media is allowed to censor, it is analogous to having basketball players serve as umpires in their own games; it is self-serving.
Sincerely,
Floyd Sours, MA
Retired Clinical Psychologist
