Coup Coup Ka-Choo
It's Already Happening
In my former life, working in the field of “democracy promotion,” I was tasked with administering U.S. Government assistance ($$$) for the presidential elections in Guinea. In that capacity, I awarded a grant to a U.S.-based non-governmental organization to provide technical assistance to he Guinean National “Independent” Electoral Commission. The purpose? Supporting and guiding the commission in assuring free and fair elections.
Long story short - the elections were anything but free or fair - but my boss directed me to do exactly what he had been told by his boss to do: write a cable that would go back to the big kahunas in Washington, DC to inform them that Guinea had enjoyed, “its most peaceful election day in history since independence.”
Sounds pretty good, doesn’t it?
It wasn’t. Instead, it was a classic example of US Government feel good misinformation. Sure, there were far less people killed by government security forces than ever before, but that was because the central government had “evolved.” Instead of relying on blatant thievery and brutal violence they used more “subtle” tactics: doctoring the voter registration rolls, delaying the delivery of ballots, stalling on the aggregation and counting of the votes, preventing opposition candidates from accessing air time on the country’s one (government-run) television station etc., etc., etc.
Sound familiar?
Fast forward 28 years and thanks to Dear Leader, his GOP minions, and the political party formerly known as the Democrats (now safely gelded by its corporate donors), it’s beginning to feel a lot like Guinea. Maybe Trump will rename the USA, the Banana Republican States of America or maybe he’ll just name it after himself. Whatever. He has spent the past year and change concocting some nonsensical and transparently illegal ruse to jury rig the upcoming midterm elections, using Steve Bannon’s “Flood the Zone” strategy of multiple attacks across multiple arenas. I would be happy to make his life a lot simpler by sharing the OG Banana Republic playbook from Guinea. Hey, I’m available and relatively cheap. My daily rate is a very reasonable $1k/day, payable in Francs Guinéens.
