560. The clinging (XI)
The previous post describes how to parasite an organisation; particularly it describes how important it is to control “poll monitors” or the people who count the votes—you want to them to be your men, either officially or as allies. This is because the political forces in dispute will have geographical distributions and you want the poll observers to apply the rules as regards ineligible ballots very tightly in areas hostile to you—and lightly in your own areas.
As with all such techniques—the manipulation of procedural outcomes—no rules are broken; technically, you just apply the rules; and if people smell a rat then you can say they are racists who want to deprive minorities of their rights, since your opponents will call for votes from your areas—minority areas by default, in accordance with your worldview and propaganda—to be as stringently examined as votes in their areas. Only crude, desperate, or stupid people resort to ballot stuffing—although this does happen, particularly with absentee ballots.
Politics is war, war is politics: from the outside you might think politics—especially democratic politics—is about convincing more people to back your cause, but that is just for show. If you look at military history, decisive battles—battles that win or lose a war—often come down to a tiny decision, such as: “Did Napoleon wait too long to commit his reserves at Waterloo?” It comes down to the old saying: “For want of a horse, the battle was lost; for want of a horseshoe, the horse was lost; for want of a nail, the horse was lost…” In other words, victory in battle or politics depends on the right people or equipment at the right time—it has nothing to do with raw numbers, everything might turn on one tiny factor.
You might have a judge who is “your man”, yet for almost his entire career he is a regular judge. His relevance for politics only comes at a specific election when a specific point is disputed—and if that situation arises the “general” with foresight will make sure it is his man who will make the decision; and again it will not be a blatant, “The socialists are right, 100%.” If this is done cleverly the judge will make an esoteric technical ruling, perhaps not directly in your favour but just enough so as to tip the scales in your favour. Right man, right place, right time—the general considered the eventualities and so won the political war. This is why wars are won before the war even starts, the great general covers all the chokepoints—finds or creates new chokepoints to his advantage. Then in the battle’s heat—when the simulation is run—and the eventuality arises he has what he needs to hand and slots it in…clunk. Mm. Satisfaction.
This is how you end up with a system that is corrupt in spirit although it is difficult to demonstrate actual corruption as people imagine it—brown envelopes stuffed with cash (actually the lesser corruption, useful corruption). Conspiracy theorists default to storytelling mode to explain it all: electronic voting-machine companies have a special chip that adds votes and politicians have shares in these companies and they are motivated by money.
Yes, perhaps. Yet what about when Somali families arrive in London with a clan system in place and the clan head says, “We’ll vote for candidate ‘X’,” and everyone does so because that is how a clan works? The system is predicated on individual voters who make up their own minds, not clans. Conspiracy theorists never think about these situations, being egalitarians themselves—they have storybook ideas as to what constitutes corruption, they are still too warm. The problem is that there is too much humanity in political systems; we need to engineer the humans out of politics, their corruption is too innate and subtle—ultimately that will mean more “voting machines” and similar, only more inhumanness can create responsible political systems.