December 06, 2005
Distorted Democracy - is there another name, perhaps?
Well we suspected it after listening to NPR's Ira Glass' November 7, 2003 indepth report on Diebold and its voting machines (that cannot print out a paper ballot, lest a jam occurand spoil the results -- even though Diebold manufactures all the state lottery machines which spew tickets like....I'll spare you the analogy), but now there is an official report issued by the Government Accountability Office which locates the dead rat that we've been smelling in the voting system and brings it to us rotting on a stick (this time I won't spare you).
Soooo..ooo what exactly does this mean? It seems that we have had what looks like a fascist dictatorship, just like the nations where Jimmy Carter goes to monitor free elections -- one that has been in power for five years, and we didn't even know it -- exactly.
Let's see, we have a paid mercenary army in the Blackwater Guard, ready to intervene, just in case. The press and the media have been infiltrated sufficiently to create an adequate propaganda machine. Dr. Condi is in Europe, as we speak, selling the off-site gulag idea. We hare holding prisoners without due process and the administration is adamantly defending its right to torture them. Oh, and then there is the financial faucet flowing from the national treasury into the sticky hands of insiders, which can be found in every dictatorship worth its salt.
So does that make John Kerry our rightful President? Maybe Al Gore? How soon can we demand a recount? Before Alito pollutes our Supreme Court? Before avian flu gives them an excuse to declare martial law? Before Paris Hilton spends her enormous permanent tax cut on herself? Not soon enough to save the globe from warming beyond salvation, 2000 American lives, 30,000 Iraqi lives, thousands of severed arms and legs, shattered families and minds, countless ancient treasures, millions of cozy moments in cafes or a nurseries, and far too many people with their NOWs destroyed and their futures hopeless -- except, of course, for retaliation.
I doubt the founding fathers planned for such a contingency in the Constitution, but shouldn't we get on this immediately? Someone call Laurence Tribe, for heaven's sake, and see what can be done.
Photo note: Reflection off of the window of an SUV, what else?