Reply #12: "This has worked twice before...gullible Americans...blah, blah, blah." [View All]

[Peace Patriot]

The "gullible Americans" thesis--a.k.a., the "sheeple" thesis--is not only superficial, it is strategically disastrous. The American people have been laughing at the Bush junta's colored-coded "terrorist alerts" since before the 2004 election, when it became obvious that they were just pre-election antics, without substance. The key issue is NOT the intelligence or political savvy of the American people, or even the level of information among them, for they CLEARLY DON'T TRUST the Bush junta even when they DON'T HAVE adequate information--as when 56% of the American people opposed the war on Iraq way back BEFORE the invasion, in Feb. '03, AFTER Powell's speech to the UN but before that 100% pack of lies was fully exposed. 56%! It's over 70% now.

And other stats concur--for instance, 63% of the American people oppose torture "under any circumstances" (May '04.) UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES. 63%! This, despite relentless, 24/7 propaganda aimed at producing paralytic fear of "terrorism" (news propaganda SUPPLEMENTED by "entertainment" propaganda like the TV show "24 Hours" and numerous other productions). The American people are sticking to their sense of ethics, justice and lawfulness, despite all. The propaganda ISN'T WORKING. Another for instance: According to a recent poll posted here at DU, 84% oppose any U.S. participation in a widened Mideast war--a chief Bush junta goal known to those who have read the NeoCons' "Project for a New American Century," but to few others. Some polls put it at 65%, but that is still huge.

And these views hold firm DESPITE gaps in Americans' information--for instance, a slight majority still believes two Bush junta lies: the Saddam-9/11 connection, and the Saddam/WMD fabrication. Apparently, 20% or so of those who oppose Bush foreign policy--the believers of these lies--don't think that a Saddam-9/11 connection or Saddam/WMDs are all that important or threatening.

And if you examine all the polls--corporate and independent polls, issue and approval polls--over the last several years, you will discover, as I did, the amazing fact that the majority of Americans, indeed, the GREAT majority of Americans, disagree with every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, and have for some time.

In summary, what we are looking at is a great American progressive MAJORITY! Surprise, surprise! The American people are not asleep; they are wide awake. What then is the problem?

And this is where the "gullible American" thesis is so damaging. It seems very, very, very obvious to me that the problem is DISENFRANCHISEMENT. And you don't have to look far to find out how that occurred.

You only have to review what happened to our election system during the 2002-2004 period--the swift, wholesale conversion to extremely insider hackable electronic voting systems, controlled mainly by two Bushite corporations, and run on TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls--a coup that was engineered by the two biggest crooks in the Anthrax Congress, Tom Delay and Bob Ney (both now resigned in bribery scandals), and abetted by 'Bilderberg' Democrat Christopher Dodd. And these two corporations are:

DIEBOLD: Until recently, headed by Wally O'Dell, a Bush-Cheney campaign chair and major fundraiser (a Bush "Pioneer," right up there with Ken Lay), who promised in writing to "deliver Ohio's electoral votes to Bush-Cheney in 2004"; and

ES&S: A spinoff of Diebold (similar computer architecture), initially funded by rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation (which touts the death penalty for homosexuals, among other things). Diebold and ES&S have an incestuous relationship; they are run by two brothers, Bob and Todd Urosevich.

These are the people who "counted" 80% of the nation's votes in 2004, under a veil of corporate secrecy.

There are a lot of things wrong with our elections and our political system. This takes the cake--direct corporate control of election results by means of TRADE SECRET programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it. Just think how much corruption was involved to get that in place in such a short period of time. Delay, Ney and Dodd did not forget to include a $4 billion electronic voting boondoggle, and a shameful lavish lobbying scene, with which to corrupt election officials and legislators from one end of the country to the other.

And none of the other things that are wrong with our elections and our country can be remedied until this highly riggable election system is thrown, lock, stock and barrel, into 'Boston Harbor' by an enraged citizenry.

And hardly anybody knows about it. It is the most black-holed, critically important news story in the history of American journalism.

People who call Americans stupid are themselves stupid. People who call them gullible and "sheeple" are themselves gullible and "sheeple." They think that Karl Rove is an effective, talented propagandist. He is nothing of the kind. It does not take much talent to write the copy for pre-determined events.

The American people sometimes remind me of an abused wife, whom certain kinds of leftist writers love to berate and beat up on. They get called stupid, gullible, sheeple, lazy, selfish, and worse. But they are not these things. They are a people who are STRUGGLING with disinformation and vital, black-holed stories, such as their own disenfranchisement. They are reduced almost to word of mouth communication. And it's time that well-intended leftist writers inform themselves about how this fascist coup occurred, and suggest strategies for restoring our right to vote.

One strategy is massive Absentee Balloting this fall. Boycott the machines! Let them sit idle! Flood local/state election officials with MOUNTAINS of paper ballots to deal this, create panic and crisis in the election theft industry, and FORCE reform NOW. This protest will NOT give us accurate counts this November (AB votes are not "safe" either), but if enough people do it (and many are--it's up to 50% in Los Angeles), it CAN create the CONDITIONS needed for reform.

It's time to DO SOMETHING! I think this is IT. A massive citizen revolt against these election theft machines.