Authenticity in Politics: What It Means for the U.S. Election

“To thine own self be true.” - Hamlet

I first heard this phrase many years ago when I started my professional career. I took it to mean that you had to be true to yourself and act with integrity and authenticity. When you are authentic, you are in tune with your values, not those of someone else.

Authenticity will play a significant role in this upcoming U.S. election, which is just three days away. Election Day is a bit of a misnomer because more than 40% of the people will have voted prior to November 5. Right there, the election process itself is a bit inauthentic. So, before we even get to the candidates, will the process be authentic?

The authenticity of Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will play a big role, but the other factor is the process itself. I have friends in America who believe the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. There have been movies about it, such as 2000 Mules, but the ‘fact checkers’ claim it is misinformation.

I do believe there were irregularities. I can remember that on election day, around midnight on the east coast of the U.S., at 1:00 p.m., where I reside in Australia, there was a halt to the voting count in several of the swing states. This was a strange occurrence. Even the network commentators were perplexed as to the delay. I remember texting my wife, who wasn’t home, and telling her what was happening. At the time, Trump was leading in several of those states.

It was about a couple of hours, then suddenly, the tallies started coming again, and it was as if someone had turned a switch. The states that had Trump in the lead showed the count with Biden in the lead. I texted my wife again, and we both thought it was fishy. In the aftermath, we saw that Dropboxes were tampered with, and in one case, the windows at a voting precinct were covered up, and scrutineers were denied entry.

There are just too many irregularities in the U.S. voting system. How do we know the election and how it’s conducted is authentic? Voting so far ahead with ballots kept in some undisclosed location seems open to tampering. Also, the voting machines can be altered. To say they are totally secure is to live in a fantasy land. We have major corporations with high levels of security software getting hacked. 

So now we come to the candidates themselves.

Donald Trump is a known entity. He has been around for many years, both as President and as a media personality. You can say that Trump is the most famous person in the world. On the core issues that affect America and the world he is fairly consistent. He bloviates at times and exagerrates but his policies and actions are authentic.

Trump believes in peace through strength and has shown that many times. He’s engaged with enemies such as Russia, China, and North Korea. He believes in win-win results for those who want to partner in that philosophy. This resulted in the Abraham Accords, in which Israel and the Gulf Arab states exchanged diplomatic recognition. With a country like Iran, which promotes terrorism, and a genocidal armageddon, he imposed crippling sanctions that worked.

On topics such as abortion, he is authentic. While he is pro-life, he is liberal insofar as not wanting to ban abortion and believes it is a state-right issue. Trump is an unabashed capitalist, which is in line with his success in the business world, and believes that all, even the oppressed, can be lifted up by economic prosperity. Trump is a reasonably authentic candidate, and labeling him as a Fascist and Nazi is vile.

Then we have Kamala Harris. There is little authenticity about Harris. She’s a political chameleon, trying to appear moderate when her record speaks of left-wing extremism. She had the most left-wing voting record during her tenure in the Senate of all the other Democrat Senators. For the sake of getting elected, she claims to be for fracking––when she was always against it. She claims to be strong on the border. What a joke, since she was Biden’s border czar and did nothing about stemming the massive flow of illegals across the Mexican border. 2019, she said, “By 2045, there will only be zero-emission vehicles.” Now, she claims she doesn’t want to ban gas-powered vehicles.

Harris supported the Black Lives Matter group and excused their violent actions. More recently, while claiming to support Israel’s right to self-defense, when Hamas supporters appeared at one of her rallies, she said, “I hear you.” She purports to have grown up in a middle-class family and was a victim of racism. However, she spent many childhood years in Montreal, Canada; her parents were professional people, and her father was a Marxist professor.

One of the big things I don’t hear much about is when Harris ran against Biden in the 2020 primary. She implied that Biden was a segregationist because he opposed the busing of school children. You can see in this video clip how angry and animated she became.

Yet, Harris accepted Biden’s selection as the Vice President nominee. Why would she if she felt so strongly? The answer: there is nothing authentic about Kamala Harris.

What is worse is that Harris and her Democrat partners in government and the media are accusing Trump and his supporters of being Nazis and Fascists. Watch this 15-minute video by podcaster Bill Whittle, who debunks and excoriates the phoniness of this rhetoric.

So, in three days, or whenever we know the election results, we shall see if authenticity wins out.