The Perpetrator Pretends to Be a Victim

It’s a funny thing about fraud. It’s a bit like poisoning a well. Once you’ve done it, there’s not really any going back, either for the water or for you. I guess people wanting to use the well could conceivably purify the water after the fact, but that would take both an honest assessment of the poisoning, and expert knowledge of how to get poison out of water. Lacking either of those elements, the water is poisoned—that’s that. And regardless of whether well-meaning people clean up your mess or not, you’re a poisoner—and that’s that.

If, for example, you put cyanide into the town well every day for a week, and then some other bastard shows up in the dead of night and puts arsenic into it, you don’t suddenly become a victim of poisoning. You’re still the rotten schmuck who poisoned the town well. The fact that there’s more than one schmuck in the vicinity doesn’t make you an innocent victim. It just makes the poor schlubs in your town really unlucky.

And if, (just for example), you commit election fraud throughout the Democratic primary, and then, when you fraudulently advance to the general election clutching the ill-gotten gain of the nomination to your breast, your rival commits election fraud against you, that doesn’t make you a victim of election fraud. It just means there’s another schmuck as bad as you playing the same rotten game you are. The victims are the voters.

Yes, the voters. Those people you’ve been committing character assassinations on for months. The ones you’re trying to set at each others’ throats in an ideological war. The ones whose existing race war both you and your rival are trying to expand. They’re the ones who were the victims of the fraud that was committed, in ways both subtle and blatant, direct and indirect, to benefit Hillary Clinton’s primary campaign. And if Trump committed fraud in the general, those unlucky voters have now been robbed twice.

Ordinarily, it might be a time for the angry townies to ride both schmucks out of town on a rail. But something’s wrong with the Town Crier. He’s everywhere, he’s got the biggest megaphone ever seen, and he’s playing his own part of the rotten game. He’s pretending that the cyanide in the well never happened. Even when people were dropping like flies, he kept saying it was just a winter virus. When people said there was something wrong with the water, he ignored them. The really persistent ones he called crazy, or said they wanted to kill the Black people in town. The fact that this made no sense didn’t seem to bother him. Many in town suspected he’d been paid off by the Cyanide Schmuck. Later they found some letters confirming their suspicions.

Now that it seems there could be arsenic in the already-cyanided well, the Town Crier is going out of his mind with righteous fury. He preaches against the Arsenic Schmuck daily. Well, he was doing that already, but now he’s accusing Arsenic Schmuck of a serious crime. And he’s subtly turning Cyanide Schmuck from a danger to the community as bad or worse than Arsenic Schmuck into an innocent victim who should be given the keys to the city.

Unfortunately, by now the town’s entire water system needs to be overhauled. Some efforts have been made to get bottled water to the townsfolk in the meantime, but recently the gal with the biggest truck has been seen in town talking loudly about how it’s all Arsenic Schmuck’s fault and how we need to search his house to find evidence of the poison. And she’s not using her big truck to haul clean water into town anymore.

It’s starting to feel a little Invasion of the Body Snatchers around here.

While the town tries to come up with a plan, a few good basic rules:

  1. Don’t blame anyone who makes less than 250K/yr. They are, at worst, willing flunkies of one of the Schmucks.
  2. Don’t trust anyone who works with the Schmucks in an official capacity.
  3. Under no circumstances trust the Town Crier.
  4. Don’t kill anyone, especially not your neighbors.
  5. Be kind.
  6. Be generous.
  7. Forgive those who fall prey to deceit and manipulation, for you too, in your time, have been tricked.
  8. Don’t forget what just happened. Don’t forget what happened 5-10 years ago. Don’t forget what happened 20 years ago.
  9. Find new sources of water, and new ways to get it to the people.
  10. As Wendell Berry says, practice resurrection.

Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front
by Wendell Berry

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,
vacation with pay. Want more
of everything ready-made. Be afraid
to know your neighbors and to die.
And you will have a window in your head.
Not even your future will be a mystery
any more. Your mind will be punched in a card
and shut away in a little drawer.
When they want you to buy something
they will call you. When they want you
to die for profit they will let you know.
So, friends, every day do something
that won’t compute. Love the Lord.
Love the world. Work for nothing.
Take all that you have and be poor.
Love someone who does not deserve it.
Denounce the government and embrace
the flag. Hope to live in that free
republic for which it stands.
Give your approval to all you cannot
understand. Praise ignorance, for what man
has not encountered he has not destroyed.
Ask the questions that have no answers.
Invest in the millennium. Plant sequoias.
Say that your main crop is the forest
that you did not plant,
that you will not live to harvest.
Say that the leaves are harvested
when they have rotted into the mold.
Call that profit. Prophesy such returns.
Put your faith in the two inches of humus
that will build under the trees
every thousand years.
Listen to carrion — put your ear
close, and hear the faint chattering
of the songs that are to come.
Expect the end of the world. Laugh.
Laughter is immeasurable. Be joyful
though you have considered all the facts.
So long as women do not go cheap
for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: Will this satisfy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Will this disturb the sleep
of a woman near to giving birth?
Go with your love to the fields.
Lie easy in the shade. Rest your head
in her lap. Swear allegiance
to what is nighest your thoughts.
As soon as the generals and the politicos
can predict the motions of your mind,
lose it. Leave it as a sign
to mark the false trail, the way
you didn’t go. Be like the fox
who makes more tracks than necessary,
some in the wrong direction.
Practice resurrection.

[Apologies for posting and running, like I've been doing for the past few weeks. My internet connection and I are currently living in two different houses, and I have to steal bits of time to come over here and post. I've been posting a lot fewer diaries on that account, because I don't think it's fair to dine and dash, but this latest development disgusts me so much that I really needed to write. I promise to get to any comments within 24 hours (that's what I've been doing with the Open Threads), and I really appreciate you guys' indulgence on this one. ]

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Steven D's picture

The well's been poisoned for decades unfortunately. The poison changes, but not the effect it has had on the poor schmucks who drink from the well.

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"You can't just leave those who created the problem in charge of the solution."---Tyree Scott

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

of the votes cast(both under 50%), how about a do over with new candidates? Yeah I know, not f@ckin' likely.
Well, at least Maine enacted ranked choice voting so hopefully no more Paul LePages' in the future.

peace

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Ya got to be a Spirit, cain't be no Ghost. . .

Explain Bldg #7. . . still waiting. . .

If you’ve ever wondered whether you would have complied in 1930’s Germany,
Now you know. . .
sign at protest march

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

At this point, I'd prefer drawing straws.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cassiodorus's picture

The only real event of this one was Bernie Sanders saying this:

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"The war on Gaza, backed by the West, is a demonstration that the West is willing to cross all lines. That it will discard any nuance of humanity. That it is willing to commit genocide" -- Moon of Alabama

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Unfortunately, I can think of at least one other real thing that happened: Americans had their noses rubbed in the fact that Hillary Clinton is above the law.

Apparently once wasn't enough for that, so we got a repeat performance.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

riverlover's picture

In fact, water test kits should be available soon to test for a lot of possible contaminants we do not think are healthy. Oh, one exists, and may not pick up CN but much other stuff. Price isn't bad, either. Does not include radon, radioactive products, however. YMMV.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

riverlover's picture

who are unable to smell CN. I am not among those. Try a peach pit, if you smell almonds, you can smell cyanide. If your water smells like that, beware, it's not almond water. Unless it is. And you bought it.

The mainstream press is highly questionable now. If you smell almonds, hold your breath and run away.

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Alligator Ed's picture

The mainstream press is highly questionable now. If you smell almonds, hold your breath and run away.

There is little reason to watch television anymore (I haven't for years). Note, there is CN--N, which is every bit as poisonous as the cyanide of metaphor.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

I was thinking more of the water protectors--but yeah.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

dance you monster's picture

To go along with your metaphor, one can leave the well poisoned (and gradually die if you can't find another source of water), or you can try to clean it up. And if you choose to try to clean it up, you have to find out what or who poisoned the water in the first place and how, so it isn't poisoned again as soon as you're not scrutinizing the whole watercourse.

Look, everyone knows I have no love for Hillary, and I would cringe to see her benefit from this recount effort, about as much as I cringe from the outcome that stands now. For this election season it's next to impossible to imagine we'll get an outcome that is in any general sense fair. But if we establish there was poisoning and where it came from, we will be a step closer to cleaning up the water. We won't get there by insisting that the one poisoning cannot be investigated unless all poisonings are.

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Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

And the reason why, I just realized on the way over here, is that everyone knows by now that Hillary Rodham Clinton will never be held accountable for anything.

She could beat babies with a shovel on Sunday morning TV and they'd charge the babies with obstruction of shovel.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

twice and it was allowed to stand, so it is for Clintons, apparently, given that we're all able to act like entire city blocks of voters weren't purged off the voter rolls in this election, to say nothing of the thousands of people whose voter registration information was changed without their consent, which basically constitutes a purge of the party. These things are not being addressed by the audit, as far as I know, and won't be, as far as I know. If the audit also included an audit of the primary, I'd consider it quixotic, given that Clintons and Bushes never get held accountable for anything, but I'd more or less have your opinion of it. An audit of the general without an audit of the primary is nothing but grist for Hillary's mill, in a way that greatly benefits her politically and hurts her opponents (including me).

It's not just the Presidency at stake. What this campaign has been about is credibility, and this is going to re-establish Hill's credibility to an extent that I suspect it of being of her making.

Trump will be held accountable for any fraud he committed; she won't. His fraud, if any, will be shouted from the rooftops 24/7; hers will be rendered invisible.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

This is a rich vein of psychological analysis. Reading about the behavior described by the Karpman triangle changed my life.

The concept is that much subconscious behavior that manifests in life comes from the "drama" triangle, where one can play one of three roles: Persecutor, Victim or Rescuer. All of us do this for at least a good portion of the day, and when you're in one of these roles it's pretty automatic to either stay there or switch to one of the other roles. It takes real effort and self-insight to recognize when you're "on the triangle," and make a different choice of how to respond. Other people in your life will very frequently be on the triangle too, and it's important to recognize it when they are. Not responding with one of the other roles makes it harder for them to stay in these subconscious reactive states.

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Please help support caucus99percent!

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Deep, tough, and real.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

sojourns's picture

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"I can't understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I'm frightened of the old ones."
John Cage

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

shaharazade's picture

best essay I've read about this FUBAR election so far. Running around blaming and shaming the voters who did not get properly hysterical over racism, sexism, privieage or other divisive by design social issues when both sides of the duopoly, red and blue, were deplorable on every level from local state to feds does nothing but empower the whole rigged system. How can you get the puppet politicians and tptb that are poisoning the world for mad power and profit to unfix what they have spent decades rigging.

Electoral politics are just a reflection, a meaningfulness show put on by this broken so called democratic republic's system. Elections mean nothing when your vote is extorted by fear of other. When both sides are complicit in poisoning the water as it's 'inevitable' and profitable to the greed heads who have no restraints imposed on their destructive global agenda what good does over turning the rigged election do. Degrees of harm and evil at this level just doesn't motivate people to give their consent.

The electoral system cannot be 'reformed' by the by-partisan perpetrators anymore then any of our righteous grievances can be addressed by the corrupt anti-democratic, lawless sham of governance that has become a unbelievable circus for the masses. 60=a majority, greed is good, and the Russians did it. Do you want a vagina probe along with your austerity? Ask me not only was the Dem. primary rigged by the Clinton Third Way D machine but perhaps so was the general. They overestimated the fear factor and the partisan wrestlin' match enough people saw that the poisoned wells are the result of the whole freaking system. The Democrat's were not effective with their fix, it did not overcome the Republican's fix.

Maybe this is a good start. They did not take the fear and hate bait after decades of being poisoned by the complicit fake blue vs. red. Both sides use social issues the culture war to divide and conquer. This time around many voters were hip to their jive. Perhaps the lame, lying Democratic lip service to social issues while implementing a austerity,destruction and killing humans and the planet as 'inevitable' and the only way forward pissed people off. You can lead a horse to water but if it's poisoned you can't make it drink. (I'm on a horse idiom roll today).

The arrogance and corruption displayed by the ruling elite Democrat's and their power mad candidate caused enough people to balk at the 'lesser evil'. A pox on both their houses. 'Were So Screwed- 2016'. Could it be that Republican candidate, The Hairball, won this round of the partisan electoral cheating contest because many voters refused to drink the poisoned waters or believed that the Dems. were the lesser evil. They believed their lying eyes instead of the insane political circus. That will happen when your told to drink the poisoned water because the likes of Nestle's, Big Oil, The Pipeline Industry and the transnational investors own it.

When the complicit criminal perpetrators blame their victims for resisting and not consenting to their mad global agenda it's insult to injury. If they re-do the rigged results who's going to count/ investigate the vote results this time around? Seems pointless to me as no change can come from within this duopoly which is owned and operated for and by the oligarchical collectivists. It's up to humans to come together outside their rigged 1% owned and broken systems globally and refuse to give our consent to be governed by the perpetrators. Practice insurrection as well as resurrection. We all need to become water protectors.

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Oldest Son Of A Sailor's picture

He who smelled it dealt it...

Nearly odorless poisons or the scent of almonds is far to pleasant for the foul wind that blows off the Clintons...

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"Do you realize the responsibility I carry?
I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."

~John F. Kennedy~
Economic: -9.13, Social: -7.28,
Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

This could kinda be what I do as a writer; apply different exciting metaphors to the rottenness of the Clintons and their machine.

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal's picture

Great comment, Shaz.

Could it be that Republican candidate, The Hairball, won this round of the partisan electoral cheating contest because many voters refused to drink the poisoned waters or believed that the Dems. were the lesser evil. They believed their lying eyes instead of the insane political circus. That will happen when your told to drink the poisoned water because the likes of Nestle's, Big Oil, The Pipeline Industry and the transnational investors own it.

I think it could be.

I have no proof, but what I believe is this:

The two sets of fraud counteracted each other, and weirdly, we ended up with a result not that far off from what we would have gotten if there had been no fraud.

A lot of people would say that makes the whole issue into a tempest in a teapot. But unfortunately, whether you've got a democracy or a republic, you can't allow election fraud to stand. In an actual democracy or republic, election fraud would be an extremely grave crime. As a woman in 2000 said--back when we protested election fraud--"It's Not About the Result." My favorite sign from those Trust the People protests. Smile

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"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Socialprogressive's picture

Bernie would be president and we wouldn't be having this conversation.

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When I offer to wash your back in the shower, all you have to say is yes or no.
Not all this "who are you, and how did you get in here?" nonsense.

bondibox's picture

Maybe the Clinton team is convinced the Russians hacked the vote because they had already hacked it in Hillary's favor.

Kind of like when Karl Rove expected the Ohio results to change at a specific time on election night 2012 and when that didn't happen at the foretold minute he had a sudden and visible change in demeanor. He was like, "WTF someone must have hacked the election and undone my preplanned hack."

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F the F'n D's