Lose the System, Gain a Dear Leader

Via Alice, who says: "We have a hard enough time convincing lefty blogosphere, nevermind the news media."

If they can disable an election, what's coming next?

“That was when they suspended the Constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn’t even any rioting in the streets. People stayed home at night, watching television, looking for some direction. There wasn’t even an enemy you could put your finger on.” — Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale

What if it could happen here?

This is the disquieting question I hesitate to ask because, once asked, it pretty much changes everything. The answer roars in behind it, as obvious as a Florida hurricane, an Ohio twister, ripping up the complacent heart. What if it could? What if it did?

A number of voices think it just might have.

Was the election of 2004 stolen? Thus is the question framed by those who don’t want to know the answer. Anyone who says yes is immediately a conspiracy nut, and the listener’s eyeballs roll. So let’s not ask that question.

Let’s simply ask why the lines were so long and the voting machines so few in Columbus and Cleveland and inner-city and college precincts across the country, especially in the swing states, causing an estimated one-third of the voters in these precincts to drop out of line without casting a ballot; why so many otherwise Democratic ballots, thousands and thousands in Ohio alone, but by no means only in Ohio, recorded no vote for president (as though people with no opinion on the presidential race waited in line for three or six or eight hours out of a fervor to have their say in the race for county commissioner); and why virtually every voter complaint about electronic voting machine malfunction indicated an unauthorized vote switch from Kerry to Bush.

This, mind you, is just for starters. We might also ask why so many Ph.D.-level mathematicians and computer programmers and other numbers-savvy scientists are saying that the numbers don’t make sense (see, for instance, www.northnet.org/minstrel, the Web site of Dr. Richard Hayes Phillips, lead statistician in the Moss v. Bush lawsuit challenging the Ohio election results). Indeed, the movement to investigate the 2004 election is led by such people, because the numbers are screaming at them that something is wrong.

Avedon Carol says: People don't want to know when you point this stuff out. Even if they think we're right, they want to disassociate themselves from what the media wants us to believe is just "conspiracy theory".

But the Republicans were by no means all that secretive about their utter willingness to thwart a fair election - they openly worked to prevent paper trails, they overtly acted to keep adequate voting facilities from being provided where they were needed the most. And after what happened in 2000, what thinking person could disbelieve that they would go as far as they had to in order to retain power?

And for that matter, after the four intervening years, how else would the Republicans avoid facing the music for the litany of crimes they have committed while illegally at the helm of our democratic republic? They have trashed our Constitution and disgraced our nation in the eyes of the world in an act of mass murder and a celebration of arrogance and corruption. They have behaved as if they knew they would never be held to account; what did they know? They could not afford to have power put back into the hands of the people.

All the talk about religion and such is just a distraction used to keep our eye off the reality: that it was not how people voted at all that brought us to this pass. Invisible religious folk did not surreptitiously vote late in the day without anyone noticing. Republicans did not lie to exit-pollsters, nor Kerry-voters hog their attention. Bush was unpopular on election day just as he is now.

Of course the election was stolen. If anyone says otherwise, there's a simple rejoinder: Prove it.

They can't.

Finally, Arthur Silber:
You’re not a “conspiracy nut” if you think Bush actually lost the last election.

He did.

And for any hawks and/or Bush supporters who stroll by: even this guy thinks so.

Not that this helps us in our current awful predicament, as our country hurtles still closer to hell. Nonetheless, there is a certain value in knowing what the truth is. But it’s cold comfort. Very, very cold.

...But let me make one brief point, which relates to an important distinction. There are two separate issues involved in evaluating the results of last November’s election. The first is simply to note that numerous facts and a great deal of evidence exist that lead one to the inescapable conclusion that something is very wrong about certain of the reported election results...

I’m not at all a fan of conspiracy theories in general. Usually, events are fully explainable by the actions of the major players that are in full view, and by the ideas and other factors that motivate them. However, I also think it is true that we don’t know even a fraction of what actually goes in the world at the highest levels of government (and often, even at the local level). To acknowledge that simple truth is not to endorse conspiracies: it is only to recognize that many of those in our government feel they are under no obligation whatsoever to tell us the full truth about matters that affect our lives, or anything approaching it.

And I don’t see how that can be denied, at least not by anyone who is an adult. And that’s not being cynical. It’s just being realistic. Our government leaders tell us only what they must and can no longer avoid, or what they choose to reveal. And they consider that telling us anything further is a wonderful bonus, for which we should be appropriately and grovelingly grateful. As for “the people’s right to know,” please. Don’t make me laugh.

You don't need conspiracy theories to explain what the conspirators are doing when they come right out and brag about it.