Much of the World is extremely critical of the United States right now. Folks have cause to be, though as usual things are more nuanced than people like to make them. Because Bush won re-election they are critical of the whole country, many of them believing that we are an intensely immoral and dishonest place. After all they all "knew" that he was a massive liar, and that he'd lied brazenly and repeatedly. How could we have voted for such a liar?
Well the fact is, that many of us didn't vote for him. That doesn't excuse us collectively, but the other fact is that we have been developing a proto-fascist controlled press where people were sold on George Bush like he was an Oscar Meyer Hotdog and not a mere human being. It wasn't just Fox either. Worse both Kerry and Gore failed to represent the Democratic party with the kind of leadership we needed. Kerry worse than Gore because the stakes were higher.
But the final factor is that it is turning out that many people didn't vote for Bush in this last election after all. Bush officially won the popular vote only because many votes were not counted, because there was whole-sale election fraud in many districts. But that still doesn't excuse us Democrats. Kerry like Gore before him conceded the election despite evidence of wide-scaled voter fraud. In a sense that was betraying the system. He should have challenged voter fraud on principle grounds, by conceding so "swiftly" he gave undue credence to the frauds and misrepresentations of groups like the Swift-boaters and other authoritarian neo-cons.
Even before the votes were totalled and certified there was wide-spread evidence of massive fraud in Ohio:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/november2004/031104votefraud.htm Even fox news conceded there was widespread fraud:
"http://www.foxnews.com/projects/pdf/Vote_Fraud_Intimidation_Suppression_2004_Pres_Election_v2.pdf", though -- naturally -- they spun the issue to blame the Democrats (for loosing?). Of course they neglect to mention two facts about the allegations they made. One is that the perpetrators in each of the Fox news cases were caught before any serious damage was done, and two, in each of the cases they noted the damage not only was minor, but in the case of the tire-slashing incident the incident not only didn't impact get out the vote efforts, but probably motivated the workers to work even harder. See Wikipedia's report: 2004 election irregularities.
What made the voter fraud by Diebold and election officials so pernicious was that it was officially sponsored, secret and fraudulent. Nobody was caught, those who perpetrated it were rewarded and promoted, and there is evidence that there is a repeat planned. That should not be.
But I'm not posting on that this time (see bottom for links). What is irritating is that Europeans and others "out there" are judging the whole country on the basis of this evil man and his evil cabal, and I have to explain why this man gets away with it to them. He gets away with it because our media, and entire society, are getting to be controlled by the 3-5% who have most of the money; and because we've been so comfortable so long that we are susceptable to being hoodwinked. In that we are no different than any other country out there. The French Government is famous for blowing up Green-peace ships and invented Razon-De-Stat (forgive my spelling). The British have been conniving with us. The Italians invented Fascism, the Germans perfected it, and the Spanish, and Portuguese refined it and made it pallatable to Post War Europe. There is not one country on the earth without blood on its hands.
Forgive the US for being made of humans. There has ever been a gap between principle and practice, ideal and attainment. And I'll be damned if I'll take any blame for this man and his administration being elected, re-elected, or serving as anything other than trash-collector. I will accept that I live in a Democracy, where the majority rules, and where we go along even with minority rule until we can do something about it legitimately.
I will accept blame for having been stupid enough to give these theives the benefit of the doubt on their intentions. And I will explain that most Americans are decent people who are guilty of no more than refusing to believe it when some group are such bald-faced liars and sociopaths that they will lie in tandem to accomplish their goals. There are darker things going on as well, but I'm sure that older Germans, French and Italians can relate to what we are going through now.
Chris Holte, Shabbat Shalom!!
Oh and here are the URL's:
Start here: http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/election-fraud.htm
http://www.reformelections.org/commentary.asp?opedid=759
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/
http://www.electionfraudnews.com/news.htm
and what to do about it;
http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/19/2006/2077
Ohio:
http://www.gadsdentimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060831/ZNYT02/608310336
I remeber when Kerry cinched the nomination, I turned to my friend and said they managed to nominate the one man George Bush could beat,and if he wins it's still skull and bones vs skull and bones. So I hope that they got all the artifacts they were looking for during their looting of Iraq and the soldiers didn't die in vain.
Voting is a mind game anyway, and any proffesor of american history can prove to you your vote means nothing and I mean back in the good old days when they counted the votes. It's all nonsense.
"Voting is a mind game anyway, and any proffesor of american history can prove to you your vote means nothing and I mean back in the good old days when they counted the votes. It's all nonsense."
I don't think it would be such mind game we: 1. did away with the Electoral College, and 2. made all elections publicly funded.
GE
Posted by: Guitar Eddie at September 6, 2006 11:15 AM
There is a move on to undermine the electoral college CA is considering changing it electoral votes so that they would be cast for whoever won the popular vote for president, other states are considering it also. I'd be all for public funding and when pigs fly we might have it.
clown hidden
I don't know what history professors you've consulted but my History teachers and professors, sociology professors and Anthropology professors, and those people whose expertize I value have explained very well the value and utility of voting so I don't agree with your argument Clown. Any process can be made corrupt. Corrupt people create corrupt processes. And corruption starts with the conception that the world is so corrupt that there is no point in one not jumping in and eating all the putrid fruit.
The electoral college is just proof that we are part of a Federation and are not a direct democracy.
It is not the fundamental problem itself, it is simply a recognition of the importance of States in a functional Federation. I'd like to see direct elections for President, but I'd also like to see the office divided up into a President and a Prime Minister, kind of the way Israel, France and Itally do it. We have too much power concentrated in the hands of the President and no checks on that power absent a functional Congress.
Making campaign reforms or public funding of elections would help to minimize corruption, but only if those doing so are serious about eliminating it. Even the best reforms serve mostly to ameliorate current problems not end them. There is no perfect system.
Elections are only meaningless when people don't participate in the process. Life is a mind game, but that doesn't make it a "mere mind game." We can play all the mind games we want to with each other -- but they have a way of kicking us in the pants if we think and do wrong things.
If you don't believe in the value of the process and you are a US citizen you are stripping yourself of the right to change it.
Posted by: chris Holte at September 7, 2006 08:45 AM