Source: TomDispatch
by Rebecca Gordon
“I first heard the expression ‘strategic incompetence’ in El Salvador in December 1993. Along with my partner and two friends, I’d been recruited to do some electoral training there. We were working with the Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front, or FMLN, a coalition of leftist parties that had led a long-running guerrilla war against a series of U.S.-backed autocratic governments. I’d visited El Salvador once before, during the 1989 elections, when armed troops were overseeing the voting. I remembered watching as people deposited their ballots into transparent plastic bags, their choices clearly visible to the world — and to the soldiers. (Not exactly what you’d call a ‘free and fair’ election.) A new round of national elections was scheduled for early 1994, and, for the first time, instead of boycotting it, the FMLN was running its own candidates.” (10/28/25)
https://tomdispatch.com/trump-is-bad-at-running-the-country/