When is corruption something else instead?
In the computer world, it is one of the unwritten “rules of the road” that doing the same thing over again and expecting a different result is the definition of insanity. The reason is simple. Computers at the hardware level are presumed to be functioning correctly, unless their diagnostic routines tell you otherwise.
As we ascend upward from the base of hardware, each level becomes less reliable than the previous. Thus firmware, the software encoded into the hardware, is less reliable than hardware combined with diagnostics. Operating systems, which rest upon the firmware and hardware, are less reliable than firmware. And the programs that users run on computers are the least reliable and, therefore, most prone to error.
We can look at the American election system in much the same way. Presidential elections are mandated in the U.S. Constitution (originally Article II, Section I; more recently by the 12th Amendment).
The Electoral College, so to speak, is the hardware. (A popular election in the 1700s was probably not logistically possible.) State laws now generally require electors to vote for the candidates who won the popular election within their state.
The states have bureaucracies to carry out popular elections. That’s the firmware. It’s usually mandated by state laws that have to fit within the U.S. constitutional mandate.
Voters cast ballots. That’s the operating system.
A small number of people, supposedly political adversaries, count the ballots cast and report the numbers to the secretary of state where the election took place. Or, a computer counts the ballots, tabulates the voter marks and reports the results. At each level of the process, the probability of mistakes, stupidity or fraud increases, until you reach computer-tabulated and reported results with no paper audit trail.
Election fraud isn’t about dynamiting the door, emptying the vault and making off with all the ballots, like the old bank heists in the movies. Rather, it’s nickel-and-diming the process to death, one ballot at a time.
A computer, of course, is under no such constraints. It can be programmed by someone not even present for the count, to misread marks randomly, mis-tally votes in favor of one or another candidate or misreport what were correct tallies. No paper backup. No way to know.
It all depends upon the integrity of the people involved in the programming, you see. I don’t know about you, but what I see across America, from the top to the bottom, is people of less and less integrity corroding the system like dead batteries left in a flashlight or radio for way too long. Pretty soon, your favorite gadget is corroded beyond repair.
Public corruption is like battery corrosion. It produces a caustic leakage that seeps out everywhere and destroys everything it touches. It comes from leaving dead batteries in place for too long.
I have mentioned previously that Washington, D.C., is the richest zip code in the nation, and yet it has no product that it sells. This has always struck me as curious. Silicon Valley, on the other coast, has products and services that it sells. Seattle builds airplanes. Detroit (used to) build cars. What Detroit shows is what happens to an area that no longer has anything to sell.
But since Washington, D.C., is so wealthy, it does make and sell something, doesn’t it? It makes laws, and it sells them. Mergers and acquisitions make for bigger companies that can in turn buy bigger laws and pay more for them. Political front groups supporting the party in power can be paid off with a percentage of the take.
And everyone lives happily ever after – provided they live in Washington, D.C. Those outside D.C., however, are not happy. Regardless of what the public opinion polls and talking heads tell us, the size and vigor of the political rallies across the various states show us that people outside of D.C. and its burbs are preparing to change the batteries.
That can mean two things: The economy in D.C. is going to change political hands, which is always traumatic for the employees; or the business of buying and selling other people’s lives is going to be shut down all together, which will wreck the economy of Washington, D.C., every bit as much as if its employees were all fired and replaced by overseas call centers.
If we would have had an opposition party on either political side, this wouldn’t have happened. But we don’t. So it did. The flashlight dimmed. The batteries started leaking. Nobody there noticed. Now the caustic mixture has rotted the entire federal government. America is at perhaps the darkest and most dangerous point in its history.
The corrupt are pathetic and despicable human beings. They are not involved in service to others or to their nation. They care for nothing beyond the fruits of their corruption, which only rots their souls further. The only people worse than them are the people who enable them by voting for them.
Corruption isn’t America’s problem; it is the evidence of America’s problem. Whether America is truly finished is surely up to God alone. After all, is was He who birthed her, and it is only right that He should bury her. Given the depths to which America’s public life has sunk, an appeal to heaven is surely her only hope.
Can the coming man-machine merger solve the world’s problems?
Media wishing to interview Craige McMillan, please contact [email protected].
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