My home state of Ohio just defeated four electoral reform measures. I can see only two possibilities for why this would be so. Either the newly-installed Diebold machines fraudulently defeated the issues or the voting public really is that stupid and this is really the way they prefer things. If the former is true, democracy has been subverted and I can not have any faith in it as a solution. If the latter is true, democracy is in the hands of a destructively stupid population and I can not have any faith in it as a solution.
If America is the greatest democracy - and it takes great pains to present itself as such - and then compounds folly (first Bush election, which was decried only somewhat later) with war-mongering (second), it must be the people, and not the system (democracy, cherished by all) that is to blame. Many people - around me anyway - have never heard of Diebold and are astonished when I tell them the elections were stolen. Some of them remember Florida as the land of the hanging chad, but not more. After all, a democracy has procedures to deal with that kind of thing, and Americans love to make a huge fuss about Gvmt. and so on - they are agressive, loud mouthed, have a free press, tend to argue and blame and indulge in conspiracies, is the pov.
This is complicit arrogance, nothing else. I linked to the Rupert Murdoch/Hillary Clinton lovefest and the Elder Bush/Bill Clinton happy families stories a year ago in these very forums. If you don't think the Clintons are a.)Bush Republicans who will fight to the death for corporate rights by slaughtering innocents when it's expedient, and b.)are being handed the keys to the White House by Diebold in 2008, then there's a big problem with your brain being either AWOL or willfully blinded by hatred of "them" (just pick one, they're all equally bad).
The link I provided contains the money quote: "Democrats prefer Clinton wars and Republicans prefer Bush wars." I'm as sick of hypocrisy from the one "side" as I am from the other. Time was, I could at least tell the difference between them on paper. It just seems like so much overkill that Diebold even bothered seizing the apparati since we are only permitted to vote for either Evil, Incorporated or Incorporated Evil. Enantiodromia. "Oh, don't use obscure vocabulary!" Fellate me. I'll stop using obscure vocabulary when everyone stops turning into the mindless, lock-step, sociopathic stooges they so love to hate and offers up some solution that actually makes things an iota better instead of just increasing the petty divisiveness.
There's absolutely nothing to be optimistic about. Until we deal with the Diebold issuse nothing, I repeat no thing else matters!
Investigative Reporter Greg Palast on Election Fraud