The Sovietization of Federal Elections

Traditional community life is nearly non-existent in the modern United States, the natural effect of the venomous ideologies that have been imbibed in copious quantities over the decades by both Left and Right, progressives and conservatives.  Voting days are one of the few remaining vestiges of those earlier times, one of the few communal gatherings left to us – when folks at the polling places might run into old neighbors or friends and catch up with one another, or meet new people and strike up a conversation while waiting in line to vote.

It was with pleasant thoughts like these that I set out to the polling station to cast my ballot during Louisiana’s early voting season.  The building in which the polling station itself is located is rather new, a health clinic surrounded by some nice greenery and built in an architectural style that is reminiscent of Dixie’s antebellum Greco-Roman designs, thankfully eschewing the ugly brutalism of many modern buildings.  But the dark clouds would soon overshadow all this sunniness.

In 2020, early voting was a madhouse.  It took the better part of an hour to be able to reach the actual voting machine.  This year there was no line.  So I happily stepped into the room prepared for the election occasion.  Things quickly went downhill.  There were at least three big burly police officers in the room, all decked out in formidable gear.  I tried to greet the one who approached me with a smile and a ‘How are you doin’?’, but he cut me off, giving me a gruff order to move on up to the table.

This I did.  Once again, I tried to engage the person I was directed toward, a rotund, graying woman, with pleasantries.

‘Driver’s license?’, I asked with a smile – which was met with a sour scowl and a nod.

She handed me back my license, and, wasting no time at all, the Amazonian police woman to my left (who thankfully had retained some of her natural femininity despite her very unfeminine career choice) asked me to move down to the next woman seated at the table, who kept the book we had to sign to verify our identity and to show that we had voted.  It is worth noting that there was only one other woman behind me at the time in the line, and there were two other workers at the other end of the table who were available to tend to her and any others.  There was no reason for this sort of hurried hustling of us along.

Ah well, at the least the lady with the book, a wiry, older, Oriental woman wearing a face mask, exuded some joyfulness when I approached to sign.

With the key card in hand given me by the scowling woman, which was necessary to activate the voting machine, another big barking police man directed me in how to use the voting machine.  The deed done, I was swept toward the exit by the same fellow, to whom I gave the precious card.

What a travesty.  No warmth.  No pauses for conversations.  Just a cold, efficient, businesslike transaction.  Very Yankee.

Traditionally, elections in the South were festive, mirthful occasions.  Southern folklore is full of colorful stories about them.  Local and State elections still retain some of this flavor, but it is all but gone in federal elections.  The latter are now mostly grim, angry, loveless affairs.

And worse still, with the militarized police presence, very Soviet/Stalinist.  ‘Well done comrade.  You have executed your most important duty as a citizen.  With your vote, you have strengthened the People’s Republic of America.’

The latter is the thought that has haunted me since I cast my vote.  It is difficult to shake the feeling that this portends in some way the future of the States.  A number of people in recent years have noted the similarity between the Soviet Union and the current United States.  Rod Dreher, a Southern writer who for various reasons is now living in Hungary, noted some of them in a recent essay of his for The European Conservative.

Even more, there are predictions, prophecies, that the US will in fact experience the same totalitarianism that Russia did under the communists.  A holy Russian elder, Ignatius of Harbin (reposed in 1958), who lived through the horrible years in which thousands upon thousands of Christians, landowners, and others were murdered by the Bolsheviks, once remarked, ‘What started in Russia will end in America.’  However, the Holy Scriptures caution us to seek two or three witnesses to establish the authenticity of a matter (II Corinthians 13:1, Deuteronomy 19:15).  And there is a second witness:  St Seraphim Rose (reposed in 1982), of Platina, California, on the opening pages of his book Russia’s Catacomb Saints, repeats the same message of Elder Ignatius:  ‘Today in Russia, tomorrow in America’.

Yet all prophecies, whether they are fulfilled or not, depend on the response of the people to whom they are given, whether or not they will change course and repent.  Now is therefore a prudent time for the Southern people, rather than repeating the mistakes of the past – playing the same old political game by putting their trust in a Trump renewal of Yankeefied America or a Harris vision of a more overt socialist future – to heed instead all the voices of the coming totalitarianism, repent before Christ, leave the current crumbling union (the interest payments on the federal debt have now surpassed one trillion dollars per year, a horrid ‘achievement’ that couldn’t be in greater contradiction of the most elementary Southern principles of political economy:  a balanced budget and no debt – another sign that the union is headed for a bad end), and guard and strengthen as best we can our Southern culture, whose birth predates the present union by almost two centuries, with its Christian foundations, cheerful people, and its venerable old customs of dispersed and limited governmental and corporate powers that yield to the authority of the Church and the family.

Walt Garlington

Walt Garlington is a chemical engineer turned writer (and, when able, a planter). He makes his home in Louisiana and is editor of the 'Confiteri: A Southern Perspective' web site.

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