Letters to the Editor
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maybe it was close...
...but I will go to my grave believing that Al Gore won in 2000, and that the GOP engaged in a legal and illegal campaign of voter-suppression in key states in 2004. In short, Cheney and Bush were never legitimately elected. They have both been pretenders all along.
Sure, a lot of people voted for them in both elections. What do you expect? The American voter, as a class, is not very impressive in any way. Like you said, they lapped up the right-wing dog-food. Proves my point.
However, I do think many more people in this country voted against these hacks than voted for them. Or would have. Both times. Our system was subverted.
So, the country is still the one we love, it's just been hijacked by a bunch of thugs. Maybe we have the power to take it back, maybe not. The GOP showed how to cheat the system once..; it'll be tried again, no question.
We'll have to work that much harder to prevent it the next time. Salon is a great weapon in that fight.
And if by more cheating, or American-voter-idiocy, the GOP keeps the House, we'll just have to fight that much harder.
These guys are lying, cheating scum, and we have to throw that in their faces at every...single..opportunity.
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Cautiously optimistic
These are the very same thoughts that have been running through my head the past six years. I'm cautiously optimistic that tomorrow America will show that we're not a nation of insensate ferns. However, I have a fresh bottle of Xanax just in case.
Q
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Psychological warfare
It isn't completely fair, though it may feel good, to blame the American electorate for putting the Bush administration in the White House, twice. I have said the same thing many times, but there are two sides to this coin.
What the Republicans have done over the past 6 years, (but really they've been honing their technique for decades,) was to use for political purposes psychological warfare against the people of the United States, to throw them into such a state of constant alarm that many of them simply caved under the pressure and gave them their grudging support.
With the help of right-wing media mouthpieces like Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and O'Reilly, people who otherwise would have used their own senses to make up their minds, were herded like frightened sheep into the voting booths in 2004, and followed the instructions of the "authorities". Let's hold these people accountable, too. They're the real ones who are to blame.
There needs to be a line between media and state, like there supposedly is between church and state, for the sake of both entities, and for us all as well.
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Yes
Gary,
This is exactly what I've been thinking today, as my partner and I go through our voter guides and try to be responsible citizens and understand the issues that we'll vote on tomorrow...but in the back of my mind is that horrible feeling that never really went away from two years ago, when the election results came in and it seemed like we'd entered a Twilight Zone episode.
No, I didn't get over the reelection of Bush either. It's like something died in me -- faith in my fellow countrymen? The sad thing is we've already made plans to visit British Columbia this spring, investigating the possibility of moving there.
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Nov. 7, 2000
... was the most tragic event in decades. 9-11? Bad. But more -- tens of thousands more -- have died since because of what the voters, media and Supreme Court did to Al Gore in 2000. I'll never forget that night, watching Nightline with Karl Rove and Karen Hughes, and thinking, "Everything we have aspired to will now die." Texas Republicans were taking over. It was like seeing death approaching. I'll never get over it, regardless of what happens tomorrow and in 2008.
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Act Like a Patriot
Without a doubt, this year's mid-term election will change the our lives. As Gary points out, it could mark the beginning of a change in course that could rescue the nation. The profound loyalty, the sincere love of country that was nearly universal among the political class in previous generations will either reassert itself starting Tuesday or slip away quitely within our lifetime.
With apologies to our neighbors to the south, we are rapidly approaching a state of Mexican Democracy. We could continue to have regularly scheduled elections, with one party holding power for 75 years at a stretch. We could evolve into a society where corrupt business groups, drug cartels, powerful aristocratic families and criminal gangs all work closely with various government bodies to insure that power and money remain in cooperative hands.
All that we need for this to happen here is a supportive or even just compliant, news media and a citizenry unwilling to risk effective patriotic civil disobedience.
Thank God, that could never happen.
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I couldn't have said it better myself.
I couldn't have said it better myself. So I won't. Thanks for the clarity and honesty.
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The Rule of the Wise Has Been Cancelled
IF we, the sane people, come out on top tomorrow (or however long it takes to tabulate the votes, as this is looking more and more like Egypt than the USA in terms of our ability to conduct an election)we will be facing a rebuilding job of on the order of the Reconstruction era, except that we will hopefully do a better job than the carpetbaggers did on the south. Otherwise it is looking much the same.
We have been beseiged by ignorance and fear - mostly fear - for over five years now, and the apparent idiot-in-chief may not be as dumb as he looks, because he sure knows how to exploit the fear factor. When did this cease to be "..the home of the brave", let alone "..the land of the free"? Bravery is invested in The Few, the young lives which are put on the line to be sacrificed so that we, the morons here at home, can suckle at the teat of security as the Death Dwarf continues to pretend Gabriel is about to loose The Blast that will end life as we know it, all the while having accomplished that neat little trick himself, by simply tapping into the primal dread that has sapped America of its inherent and once greatest strength: its fearlessness.
We could take a page or two from the Brits, at least in this regard (we've taken too many already from their book on imperialism). When the bombs actually do go off over there, everyone looks around, counts heads, then gets back down to business. I was there a week after the successful public transportation suicide bombings, and during the second, attempted-but-failed ones. Most of us share some of that gene pool. What the hell has happened to us?
If the scoundrels aren't thrown out (regardless of what Democrats may or may not be capable of doing in the aftermath, at least it would be some some sort of justice served) it will be for one reason alone: we are a bunch of frightened, neurotic, cringeing morons who are afraid of picking up a dead bird, let alone the bogeyman created by the real Master of Puppets here, the Living Brain-dead President and his friends who we have continued to allow ourselves to be spooked by. The Big Issue isn't the war, it isn't our borders, it isn't even close to the economy, stupid: it is precisely what Kamiya politely posits: We are afraid of our own shadow, and so we are by NO means the nation we once read about in history class, that we stood up and saluted the flag for, nor that about 3000 of our children (not to mention tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis) have died for. We aren't even worth their sacrifice, which should be the first reason on the arm-long list of reasons why we should quit this idiot's war right now and start to look at ourselves - and each other - with a very jaundiced, very embarrassed eye.
It's time to come out from under the goddam bed.