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and the damage has subtle aspects, as well as gross ones. For instance, in addition to demoralization and disempowerment of the progressive majority, when people like this 'nutcase' parade before the cameras as our 'leaders,' we start to think ill of other Americans--for instance, that the majority of us are stupid cretins, or goosestepping nazis. I don't think this is true AT ALL. Yet, how can we account for the 'election' of someone like this--or Orrin Hatch, or Jim DeMint, or Joe Lieberman, or Bush-Cheney, or any number of lying, hypocritical, traitorous 'Blue Dog' Democrats?
Diebold/ES&S (which now has an 80% monopoly of the U.S. voting machine 'market') tells us that the majority voted for them, but no one--and I mean NO ONE--can prove that. It's all run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code with virtually no audit/recount controls.
Yes, some Americans CAN be and ARE stupid cretins or goosestepping nazis, or worse. They have always been with us. I remember their ilk wa-a-a-ay back in the early 1960s. But they were always a tiny minority and I think they still are. Now, the corpo-fascist 'news' monopolies promote such views and Diebold/ES&S makes sure that they are well represented in Congress and other offices, despite such views being grossly unrepresentative of most Americans.
American democracy not only ENDED in 2004--the conclusion of the 2002 to 2004 period during which these diabolical private voting machines took over the country--as a technical matter, that is, the mechanism of American democracy by which "the people" transfer their power to their political representatives ended, but also the heart of democracy--the soul and the tradition of democracy--among our people was and is being profoundly damaged by this loss of the mechanism of our sovereignty. The prominence of idiots like this, not to mention horrendous criminals like Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld, in the national consciousness, makes us distrust democracy itself. We descry those who 'vote' for such monsters, yet nobody can prove any vote count in the country.
True, we didn't have Diebold/ES&S (a corp with hair-raising far rightwing connections) running our voting system when Ronnie Raygun was elected. Probably the majority voted for that slaughterer of Latin Americans, although corporate money and media were by then so powerful that hypnosis surely played a part. It is INCREDIBLE what the corporate media DIDN'T TELL people about Raygun, and the MYTHS that they promoted.
Bush/Cheney were so much worse, however, that Diebold/ES&S were needed to keep them in power, to keep the Forever War going and to finish the Big Looting. And now utterly NON-TRANSPARENT, PRIVATELY CONTROLLED vote 'counting' is needed to accomplish the astounding feat of making Bush/Cheney economics and corpo-fascist war and all the rest seem reasonable, DESPITE EVERYTHING THAT HAS HAPPENED.
Bush/Cheney were CLEARLY not elected in 2000. They were appointed by the Supreme Court. And I will never ever believe that they were RE-ELECTED. There is too much evidence that they were not, including the supporting evidence of opinion polls showing big majorities opposed to the Iraq War, big majorities opposed to torture "under any circumstances," and big majorities on numerous issues in opposition to Bush Junta policy.
But the media pretend that they WERE re-elected--one of the most demoralizing and disempowering events in our history. The far rightwing billionaires who now control the vote 'count' can do anything they want to us. They can outright insult us with Bush Jr, or lull us with Mr. Smooth-talker Obama, or inflict us with Hitler II. None of it has to do with what the MAJORITY wants any more. BUT, and this is the subtle part and this is the worst part, they are slowly convincing the members of the great progressive American majority that they are a minority and that most Americans are idiots.
Well, accepting Diebold/ES&S vote 'counts' may be a sign of brain damage. That's true. But I give my fellow and sister Americans the benefit of the doubt on that one. They have been so propagandized and disinformed about the election system that they just don't get it, yet. They are also in such a state of demoralization that they can't even SEE what they have been deprived of--PUBLIC vote counting--let alone imagine how to throw this tyranny off. I do think they will but it will take time.
Meanwhile, the Forever War goes on and on and on, with the backup Forever War--Oil War II: South America--well beyond the planning stages, currently under the guise of the "war on drugs"--a massive U.S. military build-up in the Caribbean/Central American region (Colombia, Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica (!), Haiti and the Dutch islands right off Venezuela's oil coast), following upon a half decade of intensifying psyops against the Chavez government in Venezuela and other leftist democracies in Latin America.
Fascist regimes like the multinational corporate/war profiteer regime running things in the U.S.A. always fail and always fall. They cannot maintain their "Big Lies." And we have many examples now, in Latin America, that democracy CAN recover. We need to take heart from that and understand its lessons, one of the main one being that TRANSPARENT vote counting is the bottom line condition for recovery and reform. Peaceful change cannot occur without it.
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