Notice how the emphasis was subtly shifted from eliminating interference in the election process to assuring a proper outcome. Voila! Ball, as spokesman for the elite media establishment, anoints groups like Project Democracy with the moral right to decide ahead of time what the proper outcome of any election ought to be, and then make certain that such an outcome is delivered. If this sounds to you vaguely a lot like Soviet style elections you get to move to the head of the class. ALL elections in Socialist paradises like Venezuela and Red China result in the proper outcome ─ 100% of the time! Surprise is a highly overrated stimulant after all.

Ms. Ball then teasingly lets the cat out of the bag just a bit more, revealing the workings of “a well funded cabal of powerful people… working behind the scenes to influence perceptions, change rules and laws, steer media coverage, and control the flow of information.” Did her readers catch all of that? I have always understood that in this country changing rules and laws is intended to be an open, public process accomplished through legislation. And isn’t media coverage supposed to be independent and unbiased, not steered by some invisible hand? Yet here she openly brags about powerful people encouraging unilateral executive and judicial actions which skirt the established rule-of-law.

Up until now, people who suggested the existence of such high level back door dealing or collusion between journalists and politicians were generally dismissed as conspiracy kooks. But suddenly conspiracy is the “in thing” ─ depending on whose conspiracy is being promoted anyway. There are virtuous conspiracies, undertaken by the Left of course, and evil Trumpian conspiracy theories: “baseless claims” which must be zealously extinguished lest they incite dangerous extremists to horrible deeds.

We now get to the real heart of the 2020 election confession, in typical “Newspeak” parlance: Time’s own backhanded way of laying guilty admissions on the table. Ball relates, “They (Project Democracy and fellow Leftist partisans) were not rigging the election, they were fortifying it.” Translated into common English this reads: “yeah, we threw the election results in several key states by “fortifying” the tally with thousands of phony ballots.” But an exculpatory rationalization immediately follows this implicit explosive admission of election rigging. “The public needs to understand the system’s fragility in order to ensure that democracy in America endures.”

If outright theft failed, the Left was prepared to unleash another round of urban rioting on our nation because the proper outcome was not achieved. This was to be the sort of indiscriminate violence that had been occurring all summer long with hardly a word of protest from media outlets or Democrat politicians who either cheered it on or cavalierly dismissed the chaos with, “people will do those things.” Ball speaks glowingly of the Democracy Defense Coalition which created a force of “election defenders” and “activists who “began preparing to reprise the demonstrations if Trump tried to steal the election.” She boasts how “More than 150 liberal groups… from Democrats.com to the Democratic Socialists of America, joined the “Protect the Results” coalition… listing 400 planned post election demonstrations to be activated by text message as soon as November 4. To stop the coup they feared, the Left was ready to flood the streets,” says Ball. This is a candid admission of pre-planned nationwide “insurrection” if things didn’t go their way, two full months before the staged “false flag insurrection” at the capital.

In other words, there was a concerted and planned effort to further intimidate and terrorize society if election results were not to the liking of the Democrats. Ball passes it all off as “protecting fragile democracy.” She introduces mastermind Mike Podhorzer, who knew a full year ahead that “the election was headed for disaster ─ and determined to protect it” with hundreds of millions of dollars from various “patriots” like Facebook’s Mark Zukerberg. Most of the funds were used to alter statutory election procedures, implement mail in ballots, enable widespread ballot harvesting, and train partisan election tabulators. Podhorzer was confident. “He could tell that as long as all the votes were counted, Trump would lose.” Miraculously, despite holding significant leads at 10:00 p.m. on election night, at some time in the wee hours of the morning enough votes materialized in places like Atlanta and Detroit’s TCF Center that democracy was saved.

Ball continues, “So the word went out, stand down. “Protect the Results” announced that it would not be activating the entire national mobilization network today, but remains ready to activate it if necessary.” Does that sound like a dog whistle warning judges, state legislators, even the Supreme Court that anyone daring to investigate “baseless claims” of election rigging might have to deal with serious consequences? Intimidation, or just a friendly warning? You be the judge. But if all those claims were truly baseless, investigation would surely confirm the fact. It was a perfect opportunity to debunk Trump voter fraud claims, but nobody jumped on it. Huh?

Ball relates the story in Detroit. “A busload of Republican election observers had arrived at the TCF Center, where votes were being tallied. They were crowding the vote-counting tables, refusing to wear masks, heckling the mostly black workers. Art Reyes, who leads We the People of Michigan… made his way to the arena and sent word to his network. Within 45 minutes dozens of reinforcements had arrived… they entered the arena to provide a counterweight to the GOP observers inside.” Anybody who has listened to sworn testimony by many GOP observers would immediately recognize this narrative as pure fiction. First, it’s awfully hard to “crowd vote-counting tables” from a distance of 30 or 60 feet which is as close as Republican observers were allowed to get. Many were either denied entry outright or summarily escorted out for asking questions even though they were credentialed to be on the floor. And if credentials were required, how is it that un-credentialed “reinforcements” from Art Reyes’ network gained admittance to the arena when credentialed Republican observers were routinely being denied admittance?

These are the sorts of questions investigative journalists are paid to ask. Is Ball suggesting that the few Republican observers who actually got in the door were inherent racists with nothing better to do than heckle black workers from a distance of 60 feet? One such observer who testified under oath about apparent irregularities was herself a black Republican woman. She was later threatened with physical harm for having the temerity to speak up. The silliness of the whole report was graphically illustrated by an accompanying photo showing dozens of Republican observers, obviously packed and cordoned behind a glass wall in a lobby area ─ locked out from the actual arena floor. A ludicrous caption reads: “Trump supporters seek to disrupt the vote count at TCF Center.” How one could effectively disrupt a game of jacks from behind a full ceiling-height barricade is anybody’s guess.

But poll observers were not the only ones being pressured. Ball relates that on November 17 “activists flooded the Wayne County canvassing board certification meeting to certify the Detroit vote.” She freely admits, “Election boards were one pressure point; another was GOP controlled legislatures.” Why then, if your candidate has apparently won and any questions of irregularity amount to “baseless claims” was there such an extraordinary need to flood the chambers over a routine certification? “Me thinks thou doth protest too much,” observed Shakespeare. Like Rodya Raskolnikov in Dostoevsky’s classic novel Crime and Punishment, there seems to be a subconscious need to confess one’s crimes. Ms. Ball is apparently the Left’s chosen instrument for making a public general confession of election theft. Of course any disclosure must be opaque enough to sustain plausible deniability, and yet clear enough to be constructively interpreted as an admission of guilt. Catharsis achieved, we can then all move on.

In the end, Ball indulges in a lot of congratulatory back patting. “I heard different claims about who should get the credit for thwarting Trump’s plot… Democracy won in the end.” Is this not an inverted admission that it was not the electorate who thwarted Donald Trump but a “well funded cabal of powerful people?” And who are the real plotters here? In classic Freudian fashion the perpetrators exhibit a psychological need to project their own “plottings” onto the victim. One’s own sins demand a scapegoat, in this case Donald Trump. So, even after the crime is successfully executed, the Left can’t seem to let up. As an encore they drum up a sham impeachment trial for a president no longer holding office. We are witnessing a historical deja vu moment, reminiscent of that macabre ritual when a dead medieval Pope was exhumed and put on trial in order to be posthumously deposed. This current climate reveals just how twisted the human mind can become, and we are witnessing some very twisted political theater these days.

Ironically, there is both much truth and yet precious little truth in Ms. Ball’s bizarre telling of an even more bizarre conspiracy. She seems to want badly to reveal just enough to titillate without upturning the apple cart entirely. Her task is a deft balancing act, blending deception and honesty in just the right proportions to prevent the cake from falling. She does make one truthful observation, however, although in a sense which she obviously did not intend it. Her own words have turned on her, probably without her realizing it. “There is an impulse for some to say voters decided and democracy won. But it is a mistake to think that this election cycle was a show of strength for democracy. It shows how vulnerable democracy is.” Truth does have a way of peeking its head out through the cracks of deception, we only have to know where to look for it.