This is the year of cursing, and I am trying to pace myself.
A few days after the election, I canceled cable tv.
I was done, and content to read for a while.
I had to go to chicago, sadly, for a funeral of someone I really liked.
He had died on election night.
On the way home, O'hare was awful. Endless little mobs at the sea of self-serve check-in machines: understaffed by overworked people as the frustrated passengers gathered and pressed. TSA staff threw luggage on surgical tables with lazy disdain, opening most in slow motion and swabbing compartments and underwear while wearing latex gloves.
The snakey line at security was sequestered behind a distant partition; all present were weary and cautious and, slow, of course. Shoes and belts off, pockets patted for phones and loose change, lest "the beeping," and further scrutiny.
One gets singled out anyway.
Airport CNN carried shaky green video of Falluja's demise; marines are blurry in flashes of brightness. Some of them will die. Wolf Blitzer asks an expert to explain.
I am cattle again and the air hurts my eyes and throat as I find my seat.
There is cuastic static in the speakers just overhead.
Looking back I spent most of the weekend trying to convince people I know, (all -- but for one - who voted sanely), that the were serious questions about the fairness of the election. Clearly, by some measures, the vote count did not seem to reflect the popular will, and further investigation was warranted.
Almost to a person, they asked why they had heard nothing on tv, nor seen it in the papers. They were not happy to face the fact that fraud was possible.
I ended up lecturing, calmly:
There is only one reason to make a voting machine completely vulnerable to fraud.
I think they stole the election.
I have read a few plausible hypotheses, as well as some of the contra-indicated material.
I think that with so much possible doubt, anybody, on any side, should be demanding full disclosure of what happened.
Anybody who says that a true accounting should not be made because it would be damaging to the nation is missing the point.
Not having a true accounting makes the nation weak and ignorant.
Un-democratic, one might say.
I did get the avowed republican to admit that if there was evidence that fraud influenced the election, the president should be removed from office.
Let us know how you are.