Another excellent article

Charles Cutter

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Suicide by Ballot By Charles Cutter (www.cuttersway.com) Nov 4, 2004, 16:21

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Police officers are familiar with the phenomenon whereby an individual - through despair, desperation, and/or insanity - orchestrates an event that forces the police to end their life. The technical term is "victim precipitated homicide."

The police call it "suicide by cop."

Examining the results of the presidential race, we’re now faced with an electorate - motivated by a combination of fear, hatred, and religious/cultural intolerance - that seek to destroy the very heart of our democracy through the voting booth.

Let’s call it "suicide by ballot."

Fifty-nine million Americans - a slight but sufficient majority - will not have the luxury to claim retroactive ignorance in the years to come. George W. Bush, in his first term as president, showed us his vision of America - where capitalism means corporate welfare and unbridled greed, where U.S. soldiers are handmaidens to Halliburton, where the anti-abortion candidate slaughters Iraqi children. With another term in office - coupled with Republican gains in the House and Senate, and the attendant freedom to replace retiring Supreme Court justices with radical activists - America’s dark fate has been sealed for decades to come.

It’s the will of the slim majority. As New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman writes, the Bush supporters "don’t just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don’t just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is."

Who are these people?

They support the separation of church and state in matters of taxation, but believe we should have Christian prayers and the Ten Commandments in public schools and courtrooms. They believe in God and Jesus and a blissful afterlife in Heaven, but are irrationally afraid of facing death in a terrorist attack.

They believe the government has no business keeping track of gun purchases, but it’s okay for the Justice Department to monitor your medical history and check your library interests, to search your house without your knowledge. They argue for "less government interference" in people’s lives, while simultaneously arguing that women should be legally forced to endure a full-term pregnancy, and that gay Americans should be denied their civil rights.

Indeed, homophobia runs rampant throughout this country and is a major issue among Mr. Bush’s constituency. On Tuesday, proposed state constitutional amendments banning same-sex marriages passed overwhelmingly everywhere they appeared on the ballot. Nine of these states voted in favor of Mr. Bush, while in the other two - Oregon and Michigan - the measures passed, but with significantly smaller margins of victory.

The key state was Ohio, where Mr. Bush’s slim majority - which put him over the top electorally - may well have been the result of the anti-gay measure. It’s been credited with the strong Republican turnout in the areas of the state dominated by evangelical Christians.

The so-called "cultural divide" may, in fact, be unbridgeable.

A Kerry campaign worker in West Virginia, working door-to-door, reported an encounter with a six year old girl. Upon seeing the "Kerry for President" literature, the child said, "He’s the man that kills babies," a reference to Mr. Kerry’s pro-choice stance. Obviously indoctrinated by her parents, this illustrates the enormity of the challenge: How do you reason with people who embrace both Mr. Bush’s pro-life rhetoric and his "bring-it-on" bloodlust?

In Ray Bradbury’s prescient short story, "A Sound of Thunder," several time travelers take a trip to the age of dinosaurs. They depart just after a presidential election, celebrating the loss of an extreme right-wing candidate: "’If Deutscher had gotten in, we’d have the worst kind of dictatorship. There’s an anti-everything man for you, a militarist…anti-human, anti-intellectual…’" While in the past, one man inadvertently steps on an insect, setting forth a chain of events over millions of years. When the men return to the present, they find an altered world, an America leaning toward fascism. Asking who won the election, they’re told, "’You know damn well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not that damn weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts, by God!"

Mr. Bradbury suggests that humanity’s core of decency is a fragile thing, that seemingly minor events create opportunities for catastrophic change.

In his story, it all begins with the death of an insect.

Specifically, a butterfly.

In Palm Beach County, Florida, in 2000, candidate Pat Buchanan received an unexpected 3,407 votes. Even he admitted it was a mistake, the result of a confusing ballot; most of the votes were obviously intended for Al Gore.

Those votes were far more than needed to tip the election away from George W. Bush.

And this would have meant no war with Iraq, which would have meant thousands of people still living who have since been brutally killed. It’s reasonable to speculate that we would have seen the capture or killing of Osama bin Laden. Certainly - barring the Iraq war and Mr. Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy - we would not be facing record budget deficits as far as the eye can see.

All resulting from a clumsy ballot layout.

Specifically, the infamous "butterfly" ballot.

A seemingly small thing, but the impact is immeasurable - and it’s only starting.

And it didn’t take millions of years.

 

© Copyright 2002, 2003, 2004 by Magic City Morning Star

1:37:05 PM    

The best summary of what happened I've read yet......

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November 4, 2004 OP-ED COLUMNIST Two Nations Under God By THOMAS L. FRIEDMAN ell, as Grandma used to say, at least I still have my health. ... I often begin writing columns by interviewing myself. I did that yesterday, asking myself this: Why didn't I feel totally depressed after George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis, or even when George W. Bush defeated Al Gore? Why did I wake up feeling deeply troubled yesterday? Answer: whatever differences I felt with the elder Bush were over what was the right policy. There was much he ultimately did that I ended up admiring. And when George W. Bush was elected four years ago on a platform of compassionate conservatism, after running from the middle, I assumed the same would be true with him. (Wrong.) But what troubled me yesterday was my feeling that this election was tipped because of an outpouring of support for George Bush by people who don't just favor different policies than I do - they favor a whole different kind of America. We don't just disagree on what America should be doing; we disagree on what America is. Is it a country that does not intrude into people's sexual preferences and the marriage unions they want to make? Is it a country that allows a woman to have control over her body? Is it a country where the line between church and state bequeathed to us by our Founding Fathers should be inviolate? Is it a country where religion doesn't trump science? And, most important, is it a country whose president mobilizes its deep moral energies to unite us - instead of dividing us from one another and from the world? At one level this election was about nothing. None of the real problems facing the nation were really discussed. But at another level, without warning, it actually became about everything. Partly that happened because so many Supreme Court seats are at stake, and partly because Mr. Bush's base is pushing so hard to legislate social issues and extend the boundaries of religion that it felt as if we were rewriting the Constitution, not electing a president. I felt as if I registered to vote, but when I showed up the Constitutional Convention broke out. The election results reaffirmed that. Despite an utterly incompetent war performance in Iraq and a stagnant economy, Mr. Bush held onto the same basic core of states that he won four years ago - as if nothing had happened. It seemed as if people were not voting on his performance. It seemed as if they were voting for what team they were on. This was not an election. This was station identification. I'd bet anything that if the election ballots hadn't had the names Bush and Kerry on them but simply asked instead, "Do you watch Fox TV or read The New York Times?" the Electoral College would have broken the exact same way. My problem with the Christian fundamentalists supporting Mr. Bush is not their spiritual energy or the fact that I am of a different faith. It is the way in which he and they have used that religious energy to promote divisions and intolerance at home and abroad. I respect that moral energy, but wish that Democrats could find a way to tap it for different ends. "The Democrats have ceded to Republicans a monopoly on the moral and spiritual sources of American politics," noted the Harvard University political theorist Michael J. Sandel. "They will not recover as a party until they again have candidates who can speak to those moral and spiritual yearnings - but turn them to progressive purposes in domestic policy and foreign affairs." I've always had a simple motto when it comes to politics: Never put yourself in a position where your party wins only if your country fails. This column will absolutely not be rooting for George Bush to fail so Democrats can make a comeback. If the Democrats make a comeback, it must not be by default, because the country has lapsed into a total mess, but because they have nominated a candidate who can win with a positive message that connects with America's heartland. Meanwhile, there is a lot of talk that Mr. Bush has a mandate for his far right policies. Yes, he does have a mandate, but he also has a date - a date with history. If Mr. Bush can salvage the war in Iraq, forge a solution for dealing with our entitlements crisis - which can be done only with a bipartisan approach and a more sane fiscal policy - upgrade America's competitiveness, prevent Iran from going nuclear and produce a solution for our energy crunch, history will say that he used his mandate to lead to great effect. If he pushes for still more tax cuts and fails to solve our real problems, his date with history will be a very unpleasant one - no matter what mandate he has. Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company | Home | Privacy Policy | Search | Corrections | RSS | Help | Back to Top

1:34:57 PM    

Stolen once again?

----- Original Message ----- From: "Jim Warren" To: "Jim Warren" Sent: Thursday, November 04, 2004 5:32 PM Subject: was "Florida" spelled "Ohio" and "New Mexico" this time?

> This article is apparently splattering all over the net. It makes > the case that it's Florida all over again -- complete with hanging > chads, highly partisan elections officials, etc. > > This former columnist for London's internationally known GUARDIAN > newspaper details how more than 247,000 votes were not counted in > Ohio, plus 18,000 or so in New Mexico -- stating that the vast > majority of them were in minority and poor communities where > Republican officials controlled the election systems. > > http://www.tompaine.com/articles/kerry_won.php > > Read it and decide if he -- and the nation's HONORABLE citizens -- have a case. > > --jim >
10:03:24 AM