No Smoke without Fire

Op-Ed

Trump is not conceding the election to Biden in habitual solemn verbosity, but he is giving a green light to a peaceful transition of government, because he will never allow there to be fuel poured on the fire – not in his nature of a businessman! Nor would it be characteristic for his distinguishable stance of chief executive of the still-most-powerful nation of the planet. America has had more than its share of tumult and commotion this year, and the wisest among the presidential moves would certainly be to give a little slack to his scared and exhausted people. America deserves a better image to operate on both internal and external political arenas, and Americans deserve better setting to carry on with making even better their wonderful country.

But it’s not over yet, and the transition of power cannot be called smooth and happy. A number of decisions and conclusions still await us. Whether we like it or not, the next presidency seems a little lame, if not crippled, because the traditional midway process of going-out and coming-in has been darkened by doubts about the integrity of the American electoral process. As a matter of fact, not only the United States but entire humankind has forfeited the perpetual pattern of fairest and strongest democratic rule, exuding hope for democratic wannabe nations around the world, like our little but resilient Georgia. We, the rank-and-file of this country, may not know exactly what’s happening to our strategic partner; we only see what we see, and we read just as much as is available in the media. Only, there is a gut feeling that something more is happening than is seen on the surface or felt underneath. It is simply unbelievable that the democratic elections could have been rigged in the political culture that has been the forerunner in the marathon for democracy since its constitution was adopted in the late 1780s. Just imagine, more than 230 years of time! How could it be possible that somebody would want to stuff the politically sacred ballot boxes without any remorse or pangs of conscience? How come it was allowed to send the votes out of the country for counting by some unlikely services? How could it happen that somebody lied about the vote count and got away with it? Or threw out the legal ballots, trampling the will of the people that much?

The newly introduced terms like ‘voting machine glitch, software malfunction in voting systems and change of votes while avoiding detection’ seem to be totally wrong for a once pristine and transparent electoral showground like America. But there can’t be smoke without fire! Some of the well-known American political columnists are putting it straight that the 2020 electoral misgivings in the United States go deeper. What they are trying to deliberate on with a purely conservative olfactory sense of politics is not very easy to interpret, especially for a foreign reader like myself, but some of the excerpts from certain publications have forced me into thinking that ‘something is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark’.

I have known the widely-published American political writer and journalist Bill Thomas for well over 30 years, I have read every single of his books and articles, including the ones about our Georgia, but I have never heard words like this from his mouth: “It’s time to call the Democratic Party what it really is – an organized crime syndicate that’s been fixing elections for years under the pretense of saving the planet, ending racism, or whatever else sounds like a good cause to divert attention from the heist in progress . . . In fact, Democrats have been getting away with it for so long, they make little, if any, attempt to hide what they’re doing. And why bother when Republicans have always been perfectly willing not to notice? Enter Donald Trump, making an issue of deep state corruption’. Well, this is the evaluation of a real McCoy American, patriot of his country and a talented modern columnist, and I have absolutely no right not to lend an ear to it.

By Nugzar B. Ruhadze