With US voters heading to the polls on 3 November, CJ Werleman sets out why he believes the next five months could be some of the most dangerous ever for America – and the rest of the world
On this day 56 years ago – 17 August 1964 – the Indonesian dictator President Kusno Sukarno used the Italian phrase “vivere pericolsamente” meaning “living dangerously” during his Independence Day speech.
With his country crippled by his corrupt leadership, costly expansionist military operations and economic malaise – including an inflation rate exceeding 600% – Sukarno could clearly see that his ‘presidency for life’ was unravelling at the same time the fragile balance of power he had shared between the military, communists, nationalists and Islamists was rapidly dissolving.
Significantly, the military was being divided by a left-wing faction backed by the Soviet Union and Communist Party (PKI), and a right-wing faction courted by the US.
Almost exactly one year after Sukarno warned that 1964-1965 would be the year of “living dangerously”, the left-wing faction launched a military coup in the early hours of 1 October 1965, resulting in the kidnapping and murder of six top-ranked generals, before it was snuffed out later that same day.
The failed plot set off a chain of events that would result in the rise of General Suharto, the fall of President Sukarno, and a US-backed democide that would leave roughly one million PKI members, communist sympathisers, ethnic Chinese and alleged leftists shot and hacked to death over a six-month period spanning October 1965 to March 1966.
To this day, communism and political parties adopting communist policies remain banned in Indonesia, while leftists remain objects of suspicion by both nationalists and Islamists.
If August 1964 to October 1965 was Indonesia’s “year of living dangerously”, then the same could be said now for the United States – and the rest of the world.
Trump Plans Ahead
The period spanning this coming Labor Day (7 September) – the unofficial start date of the US Presidential Election – to Inauguration Day (20 January) arguably has the potential of being the most dangerous four months the world has known.
The global chain of events that could potentially be ignited by an undemocratic US Presidential Election and/or a less than peaceful transfer of power are as many as they are unthinkable.
With the election now fewer than 80 days away, and with early voting starting even sooner, President Donald Trump finds himself trailing his Democratic rival, the former Vice President Joe Biden, by double-digit points – a margin that has remained stubbornly consistent for the past several months, indicating that voters have made their minds up on the incumbent. They want him gone.
And, despite his bluster and bravado, Trump knows his handling of the Coronavirus pandemic and the ensuing economic catastrophe has killed his re-election chances. His internal pollsters are providing him with the exact same data found on scientific-based polling sites. The polls were laser accurate when they predicted a Hillary Clinton win by two to three points in 2016 (national polls predict the outcome of the popular vote, not the electoral college count), and they were even more accurate when they forecast a Democratic Party landslide in the 2018 mid-term elections.
In betting terms, Trump has fallen from a slightly better than even-money chance to a 100-1 outsider since the start of the year. Biden is very likely to be the next President of the United States. That is if all votes are counted.
The bookies know this. The pollsters know this. And, more significantly, Trump knows this, which is why he is doing everything in his might to suppress voter turnout and steal the election. He started off by falsely claiming mail-in voting is subject to fraud, but then backtracked months later, after learning this strategy was discouraging his supporters from registering in the key battleground states of Florida and North Carolina.
But with his campaign team discovering that Democrats now enjoy a huge lead in requested mail-in voting application forms, Trump has waged war on the US Postal Service in cahoots with one of his top 2016 donors, who happens to be the US Postmaster General, by denying it funding and thus the ability to guarantee that all votes will be counted on time.
This is an unprecedented crisis in American democracy.
In the middle of a pandemic, one that has already killed 170,000 Americans, the President is making it harder for voters to cast their ballot safely and freely in order to secure his political survival.
While the Republican Party has devoted an incredible amount of energy and resources to suppressing vot