I have been accused of yelling at my friends.
All of this is a long introduction to my answer.
The specific instance most recently was by Boadicea, in the diary Ohio Election Investigation Thwarted by Surprise Blackwell Order.
She(?) was not the first to accuse me of that, and likely wont be the last.
The exchange that prompted her response is here.
Alyshiba said
This is not helpful.
This is why Democrats always lose: because we prefer to write eloquently about the misery of defeat rather than pursue what we all want...
In response to an early post on that thread, where I suggested that conventional remedies would not do us any good.
I responded
No, Democrats lose because we always try to follow the rules, even when the other side cheats.
We come off as weak, and flighty, and the other side can pull what ever shit they want, cause we WILL NOT EVEN CALL THEM on it, let alone, HORRORS, FIGHT BACK.
In fact I will plead guilty as charged. Below the fold, I will explain why, including why there are so many similar feelings through out Kosland.
I was origionally going to add it to the thread, but it became so long and so general to a lot of the acrimony on the board right now that it seemed appropriate to post a diary.
If you believe things are going to hell, and you need your friends to work with you to do anything about it, and your friend don't appear to take the situation as seriously as you think is prudent, What else are you supposed to do?
Find new friends? There does not seem to be a reason. I like my friends very dearly, but they seem almost blind to some real dangers bearing down on us all.
Could I be wrong? Certainly, but nobody has really suggested that in general. A couple of specific events, sure, but in general, people here seem to agree with my individual beliefs; they just do not appear to be aware of the whole pattern that I see.
So, am I supposed to walk away and let you all burn? I can't do that if I care about someone enough to believe they are my friend, or even an enemy, if we face the same threats. Don Quixote is a good stereotype for me. If something is clearly wrong, I will continue to fight it, even if it is clear that the fight is done, if for no other reason then I believe true evil must be opposed to the last breath.
I am learning to pick my battles, and not try to fight every fight, but some things you have to fight or you are not much of a person.
Should I keep quiet and let us all go over the cliff together? Not a good idea for me, and bad for my friends.
Attack me friends or try to restrain them in some way? There is one of me, and many people who are at least fellow travelers, and some that are true friends. I cannot get physical, even if it was not counter-productive. Amd of course on-line just make such things even more wastful to pursue if I was that type of person in the first place.
That really only leaves begging, cajoling, yelling, and when I have your attention, applying logic and reason. But the dangers I fear are already overwhelming us, and we must face those dangers squarely, and in all their true depravity, real soon. If we don't I truly believe it will be too late for any action but a true, bloody counter-revolution to stop a repeat of Hitler or at the very least a weaker Fascism that still will eat up EVERY last shred of anything good in this land. Germany only took 2-3 generations to recover, but they were not the big dog before Hitler came to power.
We are unique in the modern era, and very rare through out history. Currently we are the driving force behind almost the entirety of the world's economy. Even with talk of our force depletions, if we seriously went to war, World War II style, and gave up even pretending we were trying to minimize civilian casualties, nd collateral damage, we could probably wipe our Iraq in a few months, and no conventional army on the planet could even slow us down, even in our current state.
This means we can do great damage, on the order of the collapse of the Romans, and take everybody down with us. The fall of Rome, depending on what markers you measure from took the entire western world out of commission for between 500 years, and a full millennia.
Add nukes, and the fact that we are so reliant on wiz bang technology that will fail if its support structures break down, and we are literally on the brink of a disaster of biblical proportions.
So my friends, night is coming and it will be a long dark one. And, our President is stealing and selling us out to almost purposefully to bring that night down upon us.
Whether that is the result of planning or just the unhappy conclusion to gross incompetence is immaterial. We are aimed at a cliff, and our foot is planted firmly on the gas, and no attempt is being made to change course.
I would not like to live in a police state, and I sure don't want to live in the post apocalyptic world that that police state will create when it dies.
So, as I see it, our choices are take up arms and fight back, or die before it, or duck, and be stuck in the worst nightmare any of us can imagine.
So if I get angry with my friends, it is because I am frustrated that the time has past to act in any non-destructive way, and yet my friends are still arguing if there is any danger, and not even discussion things to do about it.
2000 was the beginning of a Coup, but they have been planning it at least as far back as '59. Yes there is no hard evidence, and I can be accused of being in tin-foil land, but Iran-contra was run by people hand picked and installed in the basement of the Whitehouse, by Nixon as Vice President. And there where strong hints that The Iran-Contra hearing were uncovering evidence of a shadow government preparing to side step the leagal government. And the result of Iran-Contra is that a half dozen or so leaders got a slap on the wrist and maybe retired early, but never even disconnected from the organization they ran. There is zero evidence that that organization disbanded or even changed course, and PNAC is run, by thre very same players and their personal protégés.
2002 was the next act, and 2004 was a consolidation of their gains. They ran a covert war out of the Whitehouse in direct opposition to congress, and got away with it, even after getting caught. Ollie North is still a hero in many parts of the country, yet he was convicted of almost unspeakable acts of treason. Do you honestly belive that acts of terrorism against our own nation, or trashing an election if they have the means is beyond any moral code they have? And Watergate, Iran-Contra the Gingrich revolution, and the Clinton witch hunts, let alone the impeachment joke proved that even if they get caught red handed, there is no meaningful punishment, and they still get every thing they wanted.
So, you have a crew with a proven track record that no act that increases their power is too depraved to take, and a long history that even when caught, there are no meaningful consequences. Why would they stop now when their ultimate prize that we know for certain they have been pursuing meticulously for at least 40 years is finally within their grasp. And they must have been planning and maneuvering for much longer. Hitler's entire plan started after he was in the army in the early `20s He was still a youth when he joined, and while he may have drawn inspiration from others, everything was from his own plans, at least at first. That gives 25 years tops, plus fertile ground for their plans to take root. Hitler was gone in '45 and every thing he worked for was already gone by the time he shot himself. That means that this crew has spent twice as long as Hitler's entire career, just gathering forces to seize power, and who knows how long before that they started planning.
Remember Great Grandpa Bush was actively supporting the Nazis in the `20s and `30s along with several other industrial families that are still with us, and many of those families were the robber barons of the post civil-war west.
After at east 40 years, and maybe up to 100 years of plotting and scheming, stealing an election is simply an act of convince, and probably means no more than that to them.
So yes, my friends, I must do whatever it takes to make you see what I see. If I have to grab you by the collar, and shake you, I will. If I am wrong, show me, and I will sit down and shut up, but there is a lot of proof, and a huge pile of suspicious activity that drives this scenario to be taken seriously by me.
Again, maybe there is something wrong with me, and I am seeing simple shadows and populating them with fears from my own head. But an indisputable fact is many of you see an different reality than I do, and they are nearly mutually exclusive. My version has a bunch of events that have the same players pursuing a diliberate course to arrive at where we are. It also explains certain facts, and confirms certain rumors in a way that the alternate version does not.
Now, the age old question. When you believe these things as deeply as I do, How do you tell if it is real, or in your head. It is indistinguishable, and if you have made it up evidence that contradicts your view gets massaged to fit.
The same is true however of those that don't see what I see. If they are not seeing something real, then they will never connect the evidence to see it.
So, either I and the people who agree with me are living in a fantasy, or those who believe we are not in danger are. One side or the other is wrong. I have begged people on more than one occasion to show me why I might be wrong, and no one has ever come forward with anything concrete, and the only proof at all is suggesting I am folowing conspiracy theories and asking how anyone could be capable of the acts of depravity I see.
In all such polarized discussions the reality probably lies in the middle, and I admit I am way out on the edge, but if even only a tiny fraction of what I fear is real, the time for action is already past.
You will get no support to fight voter fraud from the courts, elected officials or the press, no matter what you can prove.The police state is forming around Us. I am already seeing a large number of letters to the editor and editorials claiming the courts are not a co-equal branch of government, and that they have no authority to over turn, or even rule on act of congress or ballot measures. Here in Arizonia the court that simply placed a stay on prop 200, the illegal alien act, is already being accused of everything from taking action that it is not legally entitled to, to outright treason.
They are actually saying that the moment a ballot measure passes, the fact that it was on the ballot, and it passed means it is beyond the realm of the courts to even examine. The state Constitution, The Federal Constitution, and the whole body of laws that precede it are simply nullified because we say so.
So what remedy do you suppose is available to us?
War protests are being intimidated in increasingly more sinister ways. ANY questioning of the dismissal of legal or constitutional protections against the governments grab for power is prima fascia evidence of treason. Civil rights law that people literally died fighting for is being cast aside or torn asunder, almost as an afterthought.
Corporate pork is reaching epic proportions as labor law is reaching the point before unions existed where you have zero rights and zero defenses against out of control employers.
The government holds secret meetings and industry representatives that have no business even at the table are invited to those meetings as the only participants and everyone else is excluded from even knowing what was discussed.
In an election that no one can say did not have irregularities, several acts that a cursory reading of the state law seem to indicate are criminal, have been committed to prevent any examination of the results. I am not a lawyer, nor have I dug into the relevant state laws to to see if there are exclusions or exceptions, but no one that I have read has presented a law that modifies what we have seen.
Common sense tells us that elections only work if extreme efforts are made to make the process open to public scrutiny. Laws are written that say in so many words, there are no circumstance that allow elections officials to refuse access to voting records. Nowhere in the law quoted has any exemption been granted for any circumstance. In lay terms that means to me that any exemption that are written later must be at least as prominent. Laws this clear cut are always supposed to be amended directly to either reference the exceptions or state them out right.
I think that the same feelings on both sides of these and other issues fuel the agrivation and frustration so evident right now through out the board.
We all think nobody else sees the same reality we do and we get frustrated when thety don't even admit that we may be seeing something real.
The fruad issue is one I return to, because it is critical to a stable democracy, and our dissagreements are so representative of our, more subtile disagreements.
One side is absolutly convinced it was fixed, and every new revolayion supports our belief.
The otherside belives the process worked, and has faith that even if there were some anomilies they could not be big enough to make a difference.
Then there is the group in the middle who does not know for sure, but trusts the existing institutions to be capable of dealing with the situation.
Each group is clearly frustrated with the other two, and friction results.