Avuncular American

Coup anniversaries: Algeria 1992, US Capitol 2021

Soviet era BMP tank

Thirty years ago today, tanks filed past our window at the American consulate in Oran, Algeria's second city.  We'd put the kids to bed, said good night to our dinner guests, when I noticed that there was unusual traffic noise just below.  It was surreal: a tank was maneuvering to make a U-turn just in front of our venerable building.  Up and down the boulevard, a line of tanks and APCs.  Algeria's coup ousting its president, overturning an election, and jailing the winners was underway... triggering a bloody civil war that lasted a decade.  January 11, 1992: see LA Times report.

The January 6 anniversary of the Trump attempt to overturn the U.S. presidential election is barely over, but articles and interviews with scholars of authoritarianism, of democracy-ending regimes, and of civil wars continue to remind us that the danger has not passed.

Barbara Walter, a University of California San Diego political scientist who was part of a study commissioned by the CIA to identify precursors to political violence in other countries, has started to see some of the main signs in her own country.  Her podcast in the New Yorker makes sober listening.

I am not suggesting that the actual coup by the Algerian military, leading to a decade-long civil war that killed hundreds of thousands is akin to the attempted "constitutional" coup by defeated president Trump and his supporters culminating in the violence of January 6, 2021.  That embarrassing fiasco is being dealt with by the January 6 House Select Committee and by the Justice Department.  But Professors Walters' principal points - that civil wars are preceded by demonization of the opposing side and that the breakdown of democracy is a precursor to violence - make me very concerned about the Algerian "model" and its relevance to the US.

Contrary to the US, Algeria had no long history of democracy, and prior to the brief window of free elections in 1990 and 1991, it was always a foregone conclusion that the governing FLN party would win.  Until it didn't - twice losing to the Islamist party FIS in the country's first fair elections.  And it was the fear on the part of the privileged elite -- the army and oligarchs who'd been benefiting from Algeria's oil and gas riches -- that democracy would end their decades-long kleptocracy, which precipitated the coup.  After the ensuing bloodshed, they tried to rewrite history and made noises about the threat of "democratic terrorism" to justify their action.

In the US, we have a political party, the Republicans, which works to stoke fears of the end of privilege by a white, rural population on its way to becoming a demographic minority.  In state after state, laws are being put in place to cement minority rule through elections that will be tilted in their favor.  And political demonization has gotten literal, with Congressional and other prominent Republicans mouthing Q-Anon crazy talk about Democratic politicians.  Death threats against elected officials are in their thousands, and we've already seen in 2020 armed militias threaten state capitols.

"It could never happen here" is something that fewer Americans say with any certainty.  That's what I'm thinking about today, the anniversary of when I witnessed a "successful" coup.

Save our (overseas) US citizens - with Covid vaccine

Apple stock photo

Hey Biden administration: here's a soft diplomacy, old-fashioned goodwill way to win hearts and minds among foreign countries in need of Covid vaccine, AND, while we're at it, help overseas American citizens, some of whom are desperate about getting vaccinated.

It's what China is doing for its citizens:

The Associated Press says China had donated 500,000 doses, and Thailand then agreed to vaccinate Chinese expats. Around 150,000 Chinese nationals live in Thailand. “Spring Sprout” launched in March and so far, more than 500,000 Chinese nationals in more than 120 countries have been inoculated, according to the country’s official People’s Daily newspaper.

Here's the key phrase: "China had donated 500,000 doses, and Thailand then agreed to vaccinate Chinese expats."  Get it?  The US could easily do the same.  Win win, quid pro quo (not in the bad, Trump sense, but in the national and diplomatic interests of the United States).  We help your country, and in return you help our citizens.

The need is real, and it's urgent.  Full disclosure: my older brother is a longtime resident of Bangkok, and he's alerted me to the problem, including the efforts of expat Americans (a nod to Democrats Abroad Thailand) to lobby for help from the US government.  In this NPR report, I find that last week's response by White House press secretary Jen Psaki completely misses the point:

"We have not historically provided private health care for Americans living overseas, so that remains our policy."

Does administering millions of doses free of charge to Americans living on US soil amount to the provision of "private health care?"  I thought it was just sensible public health policy during a deadly pandemic.  And if it makes sense domestically, wouldn't it also be sensible internationally?  Aren't American expats part of the herd, so to speak?

A year ago, at the outset of the pandemic, the State Department pulled out all the stops to Bring#AmericansHome.  And proudly trumpeted (no pun intended, though I am surprised at myself for giving this credit to the previous administration)...  From June 2020:

"Our nation’s diplomats are serving on the front lines of the global COVID-19 pandemic as international first responders, as they have for 200 years. Their priority is to protect American citizens abroad during crises and bring them home, or repatriate them, if needed. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo initiated the social media hashtag #AmericansHome to signal his support for these heroic behind-the-scenes efforts. As of June 1, the State Department has repatriated more than 98,000 American citizens during the pandemic."

So how about somebody (Secretary Blinken - hint) coming up with a new hashtag, like "Bringing#AmericansVaccine?"  Not only is it the right thing to do, but it would be the smart thing.  Let's not forget this:

"Absentee ballots (domestic, overseas and military) were requested by far more Democrats than Republicans in the 2020 election. Democrats Abroad estimates that approximately 1.8 million eligible American voters living abroad received ballots in the 2020 election."

I daresay that many of those taxpaying, voting overseas US citizens would appreciate a little lifesaving recognition in their hour of need.

More disclosure: I live in Brussels, and have received my first vaccine shot, thanks to the European Union/Belgian government program.

My Morocco: Living in a museum in Tangier

President Theodore Roosevelt reacting to the kidnapping of American Ion Perdicaris by Moroccan chieftan Raisuli in Tangier in 1904. Illustration by Lawrence Mynott in Lions at the Legation & Other Tales: Two Centuries of American Diplomatic Life in Tangier, by Gerald Loftus

To help raise funds for the Morocco Library Project, I contributed a chapter to Our Morocco: Moroccans and Expats Share Their Lives, Hopes, Dreams, and Adventures.

Though I'd much prefer that people purchase the book and thereby help fund more English language and public libraries in Morocco, I'll provide you with a couple of excerpts from my humble contribution.  Hey, I'm just thrilled to be in the same book with the likes of Tahir Shah and Alice Morrison!  Excerpts:

_____

When people imagine an expat’s life in Morocco, what do they see? Luxuriating on beaches or strolling through the souks of Marrakesh. Romantic notions of arabesque refurbished riads abound, designer-perfect and easily available through AirBnB.  But what is life like in America’s only National Historic Landmark located abroad, living upstairs from the museum that is the Tangier American Legation? Let me tell you.

Tangier, where Americans first set foot just after the Revolutionary War, and where we looked out over the flat rooftops of the ancient medina to Spain, as the very modern tankers and container ships plied the Strait of Gibraltar.  But other than Night at the Museum, few people can imagine what it is like to live in the place you work, especially when that place is a museum.  Like Ben Stiller’s museum guard, we too had Teddy Roosevelt to keep us company...

So there it is: “my Morocco” is also the Morocco of the 1830s American Consuls who had to deal with successive sultans’ gifts of Atlas lions destined for the President of the United States; of World War II skullduggery in the Rif mountains by secret agents of the pre-CIA Office of Strategic Services (OSS); and of the quasi hippie Peace Corps volunteers in training at the Legation in the seventies, who turned an underground (and dried-up) water reservoir into a disco they named “the Cistern Chapel.”  Living in the present — while imagining life there in the past — was a large part of the pleasure of my years in Tangier.

To really appreciate how unique the Tangier American Legation is, you might start by running that phrase through a search engine. You’ll learn that “legations” have all disappeared, replaced in the 1950s by embassies. All the Morocco tourist guidebooks, from Lonely Planet to the Guide du Routard, sing the praises of the Tangier American Legation museum, but you might need a good map to locate it, hidden as it is just inside the walled, mostly narrow pedestrian streets of the medina of Tangier.

So that’s “our Morocco,” in a nutshell. Like many foreigners, we’re smitten by the warmth and generosity of Moroccans and always feel at home when we return. But we have a few additional friends that no one else can see, and they’re also there to keep us company.

There’s Sidney Paley, the modern-day American pirate, tried at the Legation Consular Court in the early 1950s (he got a reduced sentence and said he’d go back to his original occupation — smuggling).

And then there’s Dean of Dean’s Bar, a wartime man of mystery who’d remind you of “Rick” and his café in Casablanca.  There’s Raisuli, the bandit who kidnapped an American and was played by Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion.

There’s ... you know I could go on forever. “My Morocco” is in the present, and of the past. A bit of real-time traveling, thanks to living in a museum.

_______

 

My stamp suppression story

Listening to some furious questioning of Postmaster General Louis DeJoy by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee, let me tell you my own story of a lesser known DeJoy "improvement" since he took over the US Postal Service.  It's the story of me wanting to order "PhotoStamps" with the message on my mask, at left.  "I Voted By Mail."

The design of my face mask was done with the express goal of broadcasting the message that voting by mail might need to be the default option in the face of a pandemic whose virus has already been shown to infect voters who show up in person (see: Wisconsin primary).  Duh.  Thought that would be a simple message.

So I remembered that the US Postal Service ran a Photo Stamp program, where for the past 15 years, people could upload their own pictures of dogs, cats, Christmas trees, whatever.  And produce their own custom postage stamps to use for their mail.  My plan: I would use my face mask design and order First Class stamps (since I live overseas, I planned to have them shipped to family and friends in the States for their use).  I thought, maybe the idea would catch on and go viral.  Stamps emblazoned with the message "I Voted By Mail," how appropriate, how timely!

But when I went to finalize my order on the USPS website, the system just froze.  I wrote to the USPS help desk, but by the time I received their response, it was to inform me that the program had just been discontinued: 

Sadly, the U.S. Postal Service has ended its customized postage program and we are no longer able to offer PhotoStamps. All of us at Stamps.com would like to thank you for 15 memorable years and all your amazing PhotoStamps. From weddings to baby announcements to birthdays to grand openings, It's been our great honor to be a small part of your life through PhotoStamps. Your creativity, kindness and loyalty never ceased to amaze us. Thank you for the memories. It's been our pleasure to serve you.

I was disappointed, and cursed my timing.  But I didn't realize this: the Photo Stamps program ended just as Louis DeJoy began his job as Postmaster General on June 16, 2020.  So, a money-making operation that was very popular with stamp collectors, business people who wanted to use something other than a franking machine, and famously, TV comedian and activist John Oliver as a way of raising funds for a beleaguered USPS, was unceremoniously scrapped.

As I write this, the House Oversight Committee grilling of DeJoy continues.  No one will bring up this little discontinued Photo Stamp service, which only brought in $15 million in revenue in its last year.  And the stakes are so much higher than me getting my "face mask" stamps printed.  But the message is important, and so is the action that Congress - and American citizens and voters - need to take.  One suggestion for August 25 - tomorrow - at your local post office, brought to you by the American Postal Workers Union:

Aug 25 #SaveThePostOffice Day of Action

I rest my case.  Waiting now for House Oversight member AOC to use her ace questioning skills on Mr. DeJoy...

R.I.P. Algeria's Idir: Two Shores, One Dream

Woke up to the news this morning that Algeria's famous Kabyle folk singer Idir had passed away.  Allah yirhamu.  Below is a post I wrote while still under the spell of his concert in Lyon in July 2008.  And for those who don't know the music of Idir, here's his trademark song A Vava Inouva, sung in tandem with Scottish vocalist Karen Matheson, whose haunting voice is the centerpiece of the Celtic folk group Capercaillie.  This beautifully illustrated video by Ismail Abdelfattah has the added advantage of providing the transcription of the original Kabyle Berber along with a French translation.

 

July 2008:  I’m still catching up after weeks in the mountains and on the road, so I’m only now writing about a concert we attended in Lyon on July 6, on our way back from Italy.  Our son treated us to tickets to “Nuit de l’Algérie,” a double bill concert at the city’s open air Roman theater.  And what a treat it was: legendary (it’s overused, but a term that suits) Kabyle (Berber) musician Idir (check out his website - he looks like an Avuncular Algerian), followed by the 40-member chaabi orchestra El Gusto.

The world has just finished paying brief attention to the Mediterranean and its peoples thanks to President Sarkozy’s weekend summit meeting in Paris, but the multicultural crowd in Lyon a week earlier personified a Mediterranean unified with a passion that politicians can only dream of.  On stage and in the audience, Muslim, Jew, Christian, whether Algerian, French, or a stray American – the atmosphere was joyous (El Gusto = “joy,” reflecting the Spanish/Sephardic element in Algeria’s melting pot).

Idir set the stage, and his following is intensely loyal.  Several showed up wrapped in Kabyle and Algerian flags, and it didn’t take long until they were dancing (mostly solo, in the demure folk style of North Africa that has vulgar belly dancing beat by a mile) in the Roman stone aisles.  Idir, who has been a Kabyle Algerian institution for more than thirty years, is a voice for moderation, for inter-religious fraternity, and respect for women.  Indeed, it appeared to us that of the largely Maghrebi-origin audience, women accounted for a hefty majority of Idir’s fans - though very few head scarves were in evidence.

Following the rousing folk-rock-fusion Idir group intro, it was a little odd to shift to the suited and decidedly graying “El Gusto,” which some European writers have nicknamed “the Algerian Buena Vista Social Club.”  Last year Robin Denselow of The Guardian attended an El Gusto concert in Marseille:

Behind the rabbi and the imam was a 42-piece orchestra, composed of Algerian Muslim and Jewish musicians. Some of them had lived together in the country before 1962 - the year of Algerian independence - when some 130,000 Algerian Jews, the vast majority of the community, fled for France, fearing for their future in what was now a Muslim state. It was the end of an era in which Muslim, Jewish, and European musicians had lived and played together in the narrow streets of the Casbah in Algiers, developing a rousing, wildly varied hybrid style - chaabi [literally, "popular"] - that the El Gusto project set out to rediscover.

No rabbi or imam on stage in Lyon, but otherwise an excellent resume of the band’s origins.  Just how "popular" is chaabi?  The concert flyer and website has a picture of three of the musicians practicing in what looks like an Algiers barber shop.

As in “Buena Vista” the Ry Cooder of El Gusto, responsible for bringing these respectable gents together, is a young Irish-Algerian film-maker, Safinez Bousbia.  According to Denselow, Bousbia

was determined to track down surviving musicians from the heyday of chaabi, the 1940s and 50s. Chaabi is a mix of Arabic and north African berber styles, blended with modern French chanson, American boogie and Latin American styles, brought by the American troops stationed in Algeria during the second world war. It's a lively, versatile music suitable for weddings, bars and concert halls alike, and played exclusively by men.

American boogie... that explains the banjos.  I can testify to the influence of American GIs, who landed in Vichy-held Algeria in November 1942: our plumber in Oran, an impressionable boy at the time, years later still remembered chewing bubble gum and repeating '40s pickup lines like “What’s cookin’ chicken?” for the soldiers’ amusement.  For francophone readers, it’s worth watching the video excerpt of Bousbia explaining her first contacts with the elderly musicians, whom she feared tiring out with the first hour and a half long session.  Not to worry: the music went on for close to four hours!  For anglophones, Quidam Productions has a wonderful series of clips from Bousbia's documentary film "El Gusto: The Good Mood."

Actually, we pooped out before the end of the Lyon concert, since the next day was a working day for our son and his girlfriend.  As we climbed down and left the amphitheater, the music followed us as we walked towards the car.  That night in Lyon was a gift, for us of course, but mainly for the young “beur” (French slang for the sons and daughters of Algerian, and also Moroccan and Tunisian, immigrants) fans celebrating these ambassadors of normality from the oft troubled country of their parents or grandparents.  I suspect that the audience, like some of the chaabi old timers, included a certain number of pieds noirs and their descendants, from the community of Europeans who left Algeria in 1962.  Algeria has a way of going to your head, and staying there, as Alistair Horne noted in his everlasting work on the Algerian war of independence, A Savage War of Peace - "l’Algérie, ça monte à la tête."

“Deux Rives, Un Rêve” (Two Shores, One Dream) is the title of Idir’s album that we picked up before the concert.  That’s exactly what was happening last week in Lyon.

"I have in my hand a list" - Ghosts of McCarthy at State?

This has been a tough week for American diplomacy.  First and foremost, the very notion that hyperactive adult disorder sufferer Rudy Giuliani could take it upon himself to play diplomat (or, as one CNN pundit called him, "international man of mystery") in Ukraine was bad enough.  No, I take that back.  That the President of the United States would send his voluble personal lawyer on a mission to usurp the Senate-confirmed US Ambassador to Ukraine - why use a pro when you have such a gifted amateur?  And of course the rest will be history.  That was bad enough.

Then we had this: POTUS threatening with execution (in so many words) legally-protected whistle blowers in front of an audience of diplomats and staff of the US Mission to the United Nations.  Some reacted with nervous laughter at the image of McCarthy era lists of suspects ("I have here in my hand a list) within the State Department.

But it's not just a fever dream of those momentarily in the august presence of the Commander in Chief.  No, McCarthyism appears to be back at the State Department, as the Washington Post reported on this weekend of Impending Impeachment talk.  While most of the world assumed that Hillary Clinton's State Department tenure was a matter for the history books, in Trump World, she remains a clear and present danger, and all those State Department staffers whose reports wound up on her desk are now sweating the "up-classification" (a new term for this retired Foreign Service Officer) of their previously unclassified communications.

It's a pressure tactic, of course, but one that has a potentially career-ending bite: lose your security clearance for ex post facto "transgressions" and you are rendered useless in Washington and at overseas American embassies.

It's only the latest twist in what could be termed Trump's war on American diplomacy.  We know that he has, from the very beginning of his presidency, considered himself "the only one who counts" in matters of state.  "Rex, don't waste your time" on North Korean affairs, when Trump took on that portfolio all for himself.

When Putin ordered the reduction of hundreds of US diplomatic staff in Russia in 2017, Trump welcomed the move, thanking the Russian president for "saving the US a lot of money."  Never short of ideas on how to accommodate Vladimir Putin, Trump then offered up the former US Ambassador to Moscow for interrogation.

Then, in his infamous telephone conversation with the Ukrainian president, Trump opined that the recently recalled US Ambassador to Ukraine, career American diplomat Marie Yovanovitch, would "go through some things" - surely one of the most threatening things a US president ever uttered, until, that is, his execution chatter at the USUN gathering.

So, where does all this leave us?  The coming days will see a parade of State Department officials appearing (or not) before House Committees investigating the Ukraine affair.  Some of those summoned are career officers, others are political appointees.  American diplomacy, if not on trial, will be the focus of Trump critics and Trump loyalists alike.

One thing is certain: for those people who have faithfully served their country, under Democratic and Republican administrations alike, staying on at State in this atmosphere is increasingly problematic.  It seems like a lifetime ago when - on September 18 - career Foreign Service Officer and Deputy Assistant Secretary Elizabeth Fitzsimmons penned her "Love Letter" to State in the New York Times.  Subtitled "Why I stay. Yes, even now," you have to wonder how long she and others will persevere when reputations are being sullied for being in the service of this administration.

Gerald Loftus

US Foreign Service Officer, retired

NATO deals with sustained turmoil

Wall art near Brussels' EU institutions

"Sustained turmoil" might be a metaphor for the presidential whirlwind that just blew through Europe, but the phrase is actually a heading in the German Marshall Fund's (GMFUS) survey of the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue.  Last Friday, when the wheels of Air Force One were just up from Brussels, GMF hosted a round table to launch their in depth study of this NATO initiative which began in 1994.  Though some of the participants, during the coffee before the proceedings got under way, marveled at sighting "The Beast" or FLOTUS in person, it must be said that the name of DJT himself was never mentioned.

Shows you that not everything revolves around the Man Baby, and that serious NATO business goes on, despite his tantrums.

Well attended by a roster of diplomats, journalists, and civil society people from a number of Mediterranean countries (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco, Tunisia are the seven non-NATO member partner countries), as well as NATO International Staff from the Political Affairs and Security Policy Division, the round table showed how NATO goes beyond traditional East-West concerns (NATO's "comfort area," as one of the participants called it) and engages with countries whose stability matters to NATO member states.

"Beyond crisis management, NATO and partners must address protracted instability," summarized one of the participants.  Several lamented NATO's role in Libya, which was seen as unfinished business, contrary to the extensive stabilization work done over years in Bosnia.

The Med Dialogue is relatively unknown outside specialist circles, and is seen as under-resourced.  With all the shouting about "2 percent" or even "4 percent" at the summit last week, how much will trickle down to this effort in preventive diplomacy?  Luckily, the European Union (EU officials were present too) knows the value of this NATO effort, and is increasing its cooperation in the same region.

This long term and low profile engagement with its southern flank shows that NATO defines security in a holistic fashion.  Limiting the discussion to how much countries devote to military spending - the POTUS doctrine of spending = security - is way too simplistic an approach to collective security.  What if encouraging Med Dialogue partners to invest in coast guard patrols contributes way more in the long run than buying a couple of F-35s?

The Med Dialogue, like much of great value at NATO, has no warships or tanks at its command.  But it does have a network of experienced people committed to dialogue, and the GMF is to be commended for its serious evaluation of this program that contributes to human security, among NATO countries and their neighbors to the south.

No rules: Trump's international disorder

No need to belabor what the entire world now knows (in case it had any doubts) - Donald Trump, world class bad boy, wants to have everything his way, all the time.  Even if His Way is the antithesis of the American way of fair play, of playing by the rules.  His Way or the highway.  Okay, no surprises here.  Except His Way might change from one tweet to the next.

"No rules. Great Scotch."  William Lawson's ad campaign has been fun: a bunch of randy shirtless Scots in kilts making off with the competition's women and downing their "no rules" whiskey.  Try now to transpose that to the world of relations between countries.  No wait, try applying that to crossing the street.  "No rules" might just get you killed.  Rules, norms, well, they exist for a reason.  The law of the jungle, survival of the fittest, might makes right - all these are things that we're supposed to have evolved away from.  Trump Man is a throwback to an age where it's every man for himself.

William Lawson's wild Scotsmen get away with playing soccer by firing cannon balls at their adversaries.  Which is fine because their competition is always a bunch of losers who deserve to lose their women to the Lawson team.  Problem is, in international relations, you can't count on the other side to always be dweebs.  Sometimes, they have nukes and nasty intentions (Russia, for example), and other times, they have nukes plus an economy that's almost as big as yours (China).  But these are rival powers.  Since when do you make war with your own side (see G-7, or as it's been downsized, to G-6 plus 1)?  Since when?  Since Trump arrived in the White House, January 20, 2017.

I don't know how this will end, but it certainly doesn't look good for the good guys.  Whose side, we ask, is Trump on?

Recognizing propaganda

American "soft power," so often undermined and derided by the current occupant of the White House, is on display in Brussels right now, at the European Parliament's "Parlamentarium," its exhibition area for outreach to European and other publics.  I'm sure that Trump loyalists would see it as another emanation of the so-called "Deep State."

On loan from the USHMM, the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, "State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda" is a montage of posters, images and other documentation, expertly explained to a public - there are lots of school groups - used to getting its information through a hand held screen.

As you stroll by the exhibits, tracing the rise of Nazi antisemitism in the aftermath of World War I, through the outbreak of World War II and the Final Solution, and finally to Nuremberg and denazification, you can't help but see parallels to our current situation.

Just consider one of the questions posed by the USHMM:

Q: Is propaganda what you think it is?

A: Propaganda is biased information designed to shape public opinion and behavior.

Propaganda:

• Uses truths, half-truths, or lies
• Omits information selectively
• Simplifies complex issues or ideas
• Plays on emotions
• Advertises a cause
• Attacks opponents
• Targets desired audiences

See what I mean?  Can't help thinking of a certain tweeter...

As Hitler said in 1924, "Propaganda is a truly terrible weapon in the hands of an expert."  Of course, he's the one who also coined the term "the Big Lie."  No fact-checkers were left alive to counter him.

Now, fast forward to April 2018, and look at the Goebbels-lite effort of Sinclair Broadcast Group to impose Trump Think throughout its vast network of local television stations in the United States.

Suggestion for the US Holocaust Memorial Museum: after "State of Deception" finishes its run in Brussels next month, repatriate it to be shown in all of the nearly 200 broadcast markets served by Sinclair.  American audiences deserve all the tools they can get to recognize - and counter - the propaganda onslaught that has only just begun.

 

 

Democracy 2018: The 3,000 county strategy

http://lachazedepeyre.fr/election-presidentielle/

Are the Russians coming - back?  Just 10 months to go before the November midterm elections.  Don't count on Twitter Man to do anything about countering renewed Russian interference; he won't even admit to their tampering in the 2016 election.  More on that later.

Over a dozen years ago, Democrats launched the "50 State Strategy," an effort to rebuild from the grass roots.  Too soon to tell whether this will pay off in November, but early signs from Alabama and Virginia are encouraging.

But it really is more than 50 states.  When you realize that every single one of the United States' 3,142 counties (or parishes in Louisiana) run their own electoral system, the amount of organizing becomes prodigious.

Or how about a "117,000 polling place strategy?"  That's the number from the US Election Assistance Commission, which says that it's increasingly difficult to recruit and retain the some 900,000 poll workers deployed.  Most of whom are senior citizens, with a quarter of them aged 70 or more.

Now, I'm not saying that the front line against the KGB is composed of septuagenarians.  But the seven or eight poll workers per voting station have plenty on their minds dealing with the long lines of people who manage to make time on a Tuesday in November, squeezing in their democratic duty between the windows of going to work or school before polls open, or joining the last minute voters in the hours after work before polls close.

Why are the lines so long?  In some cases, it's for reasons of voter suppression.  Pesky minorities or young people might vote Democratic, so why not close polling places where they live?  In 2016, hundreds of such polling places were eliminated.

The American Way of Voting - always a working day, as opposed to weekend voting in most advanced democracies - is somewhat of a mess in the best of times, and the doubts about the reliability of the myriad systems in place among the 3,000 plus counties are compounded when you throw Russian meddling into the mix.  Money would help: two Democratic members of Congress have proposed using the $400 million left over from the 2002 Help America Vote Act to improve the security of electoral infrastructure.

That illustration at the beginning of this post?  It may be the best chance of beating hacking and manipulation by hostile foreign powers.  Yes, the very modern French use transparent plexiglass urns for all of their elections, with a paper trail consisting of... paper ballots.  And somehow, this works like magic, so much so that the results are tabulated nationwide and are announced at the outset of the evening news at 8:00 PM, without fail.

Don't count on the White House "Election Integrity Commission" for help; it is open to hacking, apart from its obvious slant in favor of voter suppression efforts.  UPDATE January 4: the White House just announced the dissolution of the Commission. 

So, what will it take, Congress, to make this the top bipartisan national priority, right now?  $400 million is a good start, and maybe trading in hackable voting machines for some clear plexiglass boxes?

It's that, or letting this man cast the deciding vote.  Your choice.

(image at right from The Daily Mail)