COVER -> American Dreams
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The response to that proposition, presented to the elderly citizens of Palm Beach by the camp of Governor George W. Bush, is that almost 20,000 of them losing their right to vote is sad, but "...nobody complained about the ballot before the election."
I understand this reasoning. It's like a place we now call "Deadman's Curve." There is no reason to change the traffic patterns there because nobody complained before all those kids died.
So it stands to reason that those elderly (and predominantly Jewish) voters in Palm Beach, Florida, should just keep quiet and count themselves among the losers in this Presidential election. They should just "gracefully" go away. Their votes don't count anywhere near as much as those of a couple of thousand of Florida residents overseas who have historically voted for the Republican party. I understand this reasoning.
Next, count among the losers of this recent election those trying to maintain the myth that the popular vote matters in Presidential contests. Where were these people during high school Civics classes? Were they asleep when it was explained that our federal system is based on having electors decide the Presidency, not the people?
I hate to clue people like that in at this late date, but I guess it's my duty as a journalist.
Hey! Get a clue! Our Constitution was framed with the idea that the mob --- meaning you, Joe and Jean Sixpack --- are too unwashed and unsophisticated to comprehend the depth of issues involved in choosing a national leader. With this precept in mind, The Framers decided to create a buffer against your unbridled and uninformed enthusiasm such that party-line insiders could always trump your choices... especially if those choices were bad for big landowners during the eighteenth century, factory owners in the nineteenth century, or multinational corporate shareholders today.
I am not saying that The Framers could foresee multinational corporations. I am saying that The Framers were big landowners who had an inherent distrust of government "by the people." They had a vested interested in government of, by and for the Powers-That-Be.
Hell, most of the people during the time the Constitution was framed hated The Framers as much as they did the British. Remember Shay's Rebellion, among other popular uprisings against our earliest national government?
It was in the best interests of The Framers of the US Constitution (read the monied class) to keep the rank-and-file as powerless as possible if they were to protect their own interests. So they did. Period.
During the earliest days of this "Republic," you could only have a say in national government if you were
- White
- Owned property
- Male
In other words, a "strict constructionist" could argue that most Americans today should still be ineligible to vote in our elections. That's why it was so hard for Blacks and women to get the vote.
A mammoth loser in this election was the US Information Agency (USIA) which broadcasts our propaganda abroad to places like the former Yugoslavia, the Ivory Coast, et alia, via "Radio Free Europe" and other organs.
G21 noted two weeks ago that Mother Jones magazine (MJ) has advocated bringing in international monitors for US elections. What a prescient thought!
MJ did so based on the exclusion of alternative party candidates from our Presidential debates, but This Writer feels that the election results evidence that a larger issue was missed: that American elections remain all about money, just money, and are thus a sham and a fraud. American elections no more represent "democracy" than a sow's ear resembles anything close to a silk purse.
Whether the Bush or Gore camp prevail in this imbroglio is less important than how much the American people will have lost bragging rights to being a "bastion of democracy" in the world. The veil is being torn away from the eyes of those few people who believed USIA propaganda even as you read this.
Finally, we come to the argument that this election should be decided quickly "for the good of the country." The contention here is that someone should concede the election because our democracy is so fragile that it could not safely endure an extreme test of fairness. (Oops! Did I just write that last phrase, "it could not endure an extreme test of fairness?" My bad! My honesty is showing!)
This argument --- which is rapidly becoming an oft-repeated drumbeat in Mouthpiece Media circles --- is such a straw man that I fully expect the Wicked Witch of the West to appear at any moment and set it on fire, cackling wildly. It is most certainly the most novel variation on "Ignore that man behind the curtain" This Writer has seen in decades.
Let's look at it piece by piece:
- America touts itself as the world's foremost and strongest democracy. BUT, according to this argument, it is actually so fragile that testing its fairness and revealing its inadequacies would lead to a national crisis. Uh-huh.
- It is in the best interests of the country, therefore, that making a quick decision and glossing over the details of how the electoral process works, even if unfairly, become Standard Operating Procedure.
- Elections have been disputed and probably unfair in the past, so it is in the best interests of the country that they continue to be so into perpetuity.
- America should be fully able to hold the rest of the nations of the world to electoral standards which it would NEVER, ever, accept for itself.
- The American people are so dumb and powerless that they can be fully expected to buy this specious argument.
Uh-huh. I can understand this reasoning.
So as we, the American people, wait to be informed of who our next national leader is --- based on the august wisdom of Floridians --- you know who the biggest losers in this election are: us.