There are all too many, and it’s way too late to bother learning ’em now.

Elections are one of those windows into the nature of a society, like the roads or public transport systems. It is a manifestation of the real nature of society. In the case of elections, it is not about the results, but about how the election is run. Orderly, well run societies have orderly, well run elections. The results are known soon after the votes are cast and no one questions them. In disorderly, low-trust societies, the vote is messy and chaotic and no one takes the results at face value.

It used to be that America would send international observers to a country to make sure their elections were free and fair. The claim was the government was either too crooked or too inept to manage an election, even if they wanted to do it. A gaggle of experts from the West would be sent in to help organize the voting and make sure everything was done properly. These international observers would supervise the counting so that everyone could trust the result.

Now, the shoe is on the other foot. The UN should probably step in and start supervising American elections, because the government is so corrupt and incompetent, no one can trust them to run an election. Iraq now has more orderly and honest elections than most states in America. Iraq actually requires voters to present an ID and they make voters do the purple finger thing to prevent ballot stuffing. Maybe the Iraqi government can send supervisors to Pennsylvania.

In the coming weeks, as this circus drags on in the courts, lots of people will compare it to the so-called banana republics. That is not fair, as those banana republics did not ask for democracy. It was imposed on them. Left to their own devices, they would have been happy with some form of big-man government. It was Western business that demanded democracy, so they could more easily exploit these countries. It is easier to bribe parliamentary mediocrities than an oligarch or despot.

The United States does not have that excuse.

Oh, I dunno. Bribing our homegrown parliamentary mediocrities, as well as our own oligarchs and despots, has always been simplicity itself. But Z’s underlying point about gratuitously insulting banana republics with invidious comparisons to the wholesale corruption endemic to Amerika’s integrity-bereft elections is a good one.

Here are three more lessons that will almost certainly go unlearned:

Election night revealed a few disturbing items that should trouble freedom-loving Americans.

If any. Ahem.

First that the race is even this tight speaks to disturbing number of Americans who are woefully uninformed. Second, Fox News has gone over to the dark side, or, rather, the left. And third, the level of coordination to make this race close is stunning.

That the senile and corrupt Joe Biden could finish so strong speaks to either the gullibility or unseriousness of far too many Americans. Biden obviously has mental acuity issues and has a history of corruption, but that did not seem to be a big deal to the Americans who voted for him. I guess the probability of more lockdowns are lost on a number of Americans who are more frightened by the Wuhan virus than the probability of America becoming a socialist, if not communist, nation under a Biden presidency.

Frightened by the prospect of a Marxist Amerika? Dude, are you serious? It has just been demonstrated, beyond all debate, that far from being “frightened” by such a thing, a clear majority of “Americans” are all for it. At least fifty-sixty million of ’em just cast their ballots for exactly that, after all. No one can claim that those people were ignorant or misled about what they were voting for, either; it’s not as if Harris-Biden and the rest of their fellow Democommies have been trying to keep it a secret from anybody.

Bahr goes on to discuss Biden’s corruption, senility, and role as a mere figurehead, along with Harris’s hardcore Leftism, all of which topics are unworthy of further interest in light of last night’s national disaster. The real fun is in the Faux News denunciation.

Fox News should be forever viewed by conservatives as the enemy. Its early calls for states for Biden that had not finished voting such as Arizona and Virginia and their slow–walking of states which Trump decisively won like Florida, Texas and Ohio, was an absolute disgrace. By sitting on the results of states like Georgia and North Carolina, states that, of this writing, showed Trump with narrow leads with 99 percent of the precincts in, Fox allowed Biden to gain momentum while slowing Trump’s dominance. It looks like the influence of RINO Paul Ryan as a Fox Corporation board member and the legacy of analyst Bill Sammon (Fox News VP Politics) resulted in a psy-ops (psychological operations) campaign against conservative morale. Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity and Lou Dobbs should go to other networks rather than being associated with this betrayer of its conservative audience. Fox News should be shunned by all conservatives from this day forward and they should throw viewership to OANN (One America News Network) and Newsmax.

Too, too true. Fox willingly hurled itself into the maw of the Lefty leviathan to be swallowed whole, abandoning the organization’s unique position in American media to become just another insignificant cog in the shitlib deception machine. Nice thing is, that betrayal will buy them not a single friend on the Left. No matter how subserviently they cringe and grovel to please their new masters, the Left will forever despise them as the treacherous curs they are, just as they always have. To hell with them.

Update! Did somebody make disparaging mention of the nonexistent “integrity” of Amerikan “elections” earlier? Why yes, I believe someone did.

Right now on the telly, Rudy Giuliani (a man who, for all his qualities, speaks only to the diehards) is announcing litigation and raging against the Philadelphia machine: “Do you think we’re stupid? Do you think we’re fools?”

Meanwhile, the Dementia Kid has just been given Michigan. So he stands at 264 electoral votes. In the next couple of hours he’ll be given Nevada and will hit 270, so I may be preempted tonight by the you-know-the-thing victory speech.

4.35pm Re the toughing vignette from the frontlines of Georgia, Sal Tessio writes:

How is it possible that the concept of ‘closing up for the night’ exists when you’re counting ballots for any election, let alone a presidential election?

Because, election-wise, America is a dysfunctional craphole. The more respectable Third World dictators would regard the above as a little too obvious.

Probably so. But then, they’re well aware that they run the very real risk of provoking an uprising by their subjects should they try to cheat in such a stupidly obvious way, leading to said dictator being summarily beaten, poked with sharp sticks, set afire, and/or lynched. In America, we’re far too “civilized” to ever insist on reasonably honest and above-board elections in such a ghastly fashion as those savages, the poor devils.