28 October—It was 102 years ago today that thousands of Benito Mussolini’s Blackshirts and other fascist goons marched on Rome to force King Victor Emmanuel III to ask Mussolini to form a government with the charismatic draft-dodging newspaperman himself (of course) as prime minister.

The term “fascism” is derived from the Latin “fasces,” a bound bundle of rods surrounding an axe, carried by magistrates’ bodyguards in Ancient Rome as an indication of their power. Entirely appropriate for a police state.

With not even a vague allusion to fascism, just as yesterday’s disquisition predicted, Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last night was a tedious affair with all the usual suspects ranting ad nauseam. While perhaps not quite the reenactment of the 1939 Nazi rally anticipated by Hillary Clinton, it was none the less distasteful and disgusting. But it was a beautiful night of love for Donald Trump. And that’s all that matters.

🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️ 🏛️

The Electoral College is perhaps the most antidemocratic—not just undemocratic—provision of the United States Constitution. This impediment to the democratic process may have been expedient back when the Constitution was conceived, but it serves no purpose now except to deprive certain voters in certain states of the right to have their votes count.

The Electoral College is the tyranny of the majority on steroids and needs to be stripped from the Constitution. But that would require an amendment. And the amendment process is another antidemocratic—not just undemocratic—provision of the Constitution. Because—guess what—only Congress can propose constitutional amendments.

Even the ratification process by the states is antidemocratic. That’s because the U.S. Constitution requires not the mere voters, but the legislatures or constitutional conventions of three-fourths of the states to ratify amendments to it. So what? you’re thinking. So consider that state constitutional conventions can be initiated only by the legislatures—not the mere voters—of all the states except Florida, Montana, North Dakota, and South Dakota, which allow constitutional conventions to be called (or forced) by voter initiative.

Yes indeed, contrary to patriotic myth and school history books, the Founding Fathers didn’t trust the great unwashed with the election of the president or lots of other things. (And with pretty good reason. But we’ll leave it there.) Even the U.S. Senate was purposefully created primarily as a means to limit the power of the voters, to ensure that the power or will of the government was superior to the power or will of the people. Colonial American Realpolitik, like it or not.

Don’t forget that until the 17^th Amendment was ratified in 1913, U.S. senators had been appointed by the legislatures of the states, not elected by the voters. Talk about cronyism and laughing at the voters. Efforts to reform that travesty had in fact begun in the early 19^th century, but pols being pols throve on the infighting and corruption. And the virtually unbridled power. And that’s never going to change.

The people matter only as voters, no more than politicians’ means to their own ends. That’s as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be. Sure it’s cynical. It’s a fact. So live with it.

Given the Electoral College, then, in four out of five of the presidential elections in which the winner of the popular vote lost the presidency to the winner of the electoral vote, the victor was a Republican, the loser a Democrat. Even in the election of 1824, in which all four candidates were nominally Democratic-Republicans (the only party to be in back in the day) and no candidate garnered the requisite electoral votes, the House of Representatives ultimately went with John Quincy Adams, who swung Republican—although the party wasn’t actually founded until 30 years later.

Most recently it happened in 2016 with Hillary Clinton’s 65,853,984 popular votes losing to Donald Trump’s fewer but more strategically advantageous 62,984,828. Trump’s 304 to Hillary’s 227 electoral votes thus gave us a con man instead of a harridan in the White House.

It’s hoped this year by people with principles and dreams that Kamala Harris, despite all her (and her party’s) plethora of faults, will nevertheless win in both popular and electoral votes and thus be able to keep the White House from being polluted again by Donald Trump.

But what if, in a reversal of 2016, Trump should get more popular votes while Kamala got the electoral votes needed to bring her over the top? First time for a Democrat, certainly. But at least Kamala would win the beautiful White House (as Trump calls it) and save the country and the world from another four years of Trump’s abominable, autocratic, self-dealing lunacy.

It can happen again with the impractical, antidemocratic, uniquely American Electoral College. And you can imagine what Trump and his band of brutes and bullies will do in that case. There can be no doubt that his shysters, thugs, and other flunkies have been marshaling forces and concocting plans for all contingencies.

Sure, if Trump were to win the popular vote he’d have the ego-boosting satisfaction of confirming the incredible esteem he claims America holds him in—and of course the love all good, non-enemy-within Americans have for him. But does anyone really think that would be enough to satisfy his psychopathic narcissism?