Intelligent US Voters Lost More Than An Election

I wish it were as simple as being just an election lost. We, being that other half of American voters who are more prone to thinking and research and common sense, would despair for a time, but we'd soon be back to everyday life. We're resilient that way. But we lost so much more than an election on November 2, 2004.

Anyone who has paid even gratuitous attention to the increasing number of election anomolies being discovered every day can have no doubt that this election was a sloppy, mismanaged, and unacceptable mess. That's my way of being diplomatic - otherwise, I'd just call the election what it really was: an outright theft of democracy.

What else can you call it when the past two presidential elections have had more questionable results, and done more to disenfranchise American voters, than any other elections in our history? When votes are cast for one candidate, but counted for the other, and votes go uncounted, and thousands of votes from non-existent voters go to one candidate, and the electronic voting system can easily be compromised from the comfort of your own home, and voting machines don't even have an audit trail to verify results, we no longer have a democratic process in this country every four years. We have a vote auction, with votes going to the highest bidder.

It is so blatantly arrogant and hypocritical for an American government to have the audacity to destroy another country under the pretense of "spreading democracy", when this same government can't even ensure that our own democratic system will work on the most critical day of the year. We've had almost 230 years to perfect our brand of democracy, and this is the best we can do? What kind of democracy should Iraqis expect from us? That's a rhetorical question, of course, as democracy was never the reason for destroying Iraq.

I wonder if the religious voters who are so jubilant over their influence on this election even realize what they've done. Are they aware that there is a bill being considered now to grant God more power than the U.S. Supreme Court? This bill probably sounds like a wonderful idea to these religious voters, but the Founding Fathers (many of whom were religious) are turning in their graves. When drawing the blueprint for this country 230 years ago, they made absolutely sure that government and religion would remain seperate. It has always been a cornerstone of what America represented to the world - freedom.

Yet, as these voters wave flags and proclaim their fervor to "let freedom ring", they elect someone who promises to do his best to undermine freedom in our own country, as he did with the so-called "Patriot" Act. As these same religious voters enthusiastically warn that other more tolerant religions encourage a prophetic doomsday "New World Order", this is exactly what George W. Bush has been pursuing for four years. Do religious voters even see the contradiction? Granted, they believe that the world is 6000 years old, and that fossils are planted by a spooky boogieman named Satan to deceive people (like those blasphemous scientists do), but voting for Bush?

We lost a lot more than an election on November 2, but the fight to make the 2004 election results credible is only the beginning. If there is to be a return of anything resembling "democracy" in this country, there is a long and difficult fight ahead. The small group of people in power today are not going to simply give it up over a matter of conscience. They didn't gain this power overnight, and they didn't gain it only after the 2000 election; it's been an arduous labor of patience. It just took this long to dumb-down enough Americans to make it work - and it's working. Just as power wasn't achieved overnight, taking that power back will require some real work, too.

This country was founded on the principle of being of the people, by the people, and for the people. Instead, what we have today are sheeple - a mindless herd of followers, blindly obeying whatever the Master tells them. But all hope has not vanished completely. Collectively, we organized a massive voter turnout for our 2004 election, we continue to educate countless numbers of people who never before had taken any interest in politics, and we witnessed a huge grassroots initiative via the internet to expose the lies, corruption, and deceipt of this administration. We can be a democracy again, but it will take a lot of work, a lot of time, and a lot of courage in this era of Nazi-style "homeland security" which is hellbent on silencing free thinkers and free speech.

Yes, we've had a lot more than two elections stolen from us over the past four years - but, as they say, "Winners never quit, and quitters never win". Or, if you prefer classic rock groups like Bachman Turner Overdrive, we have this to say to Bush and his mindless groupies: "You ain't seen nothin' yet".

Steven A. Hass Editor Newzmaniac.com
desert_vet@msn.com

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