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to this relentless, 24/7 fascist propaganda. Because it is the key to everything. It is the key to what's really gone wrong--which is disenfranchisement of the peace-minded, justice-minded American majority, in such an obvious way, it isn't even funny--but is, nevertheless, the blackest of the black holes in the "news": Trade secret, proprietary programming code, owned and controlled by far rightwing, Bushite Republican corporations (Diebold, ES&S and Sequoia), infested in our voting system, all over the country, with virtually no audit/recount controls, during the 02-04 period.
This is the chief means by which the Corporate Rulers achieved a Congress that has escalated, and given billions more of our money, to the war on Iraq, in the teeth of a seventy percent antiwar majority in the country, to which the elections in 06 were mysteriously impervious. It is how Bush-Cheney retained power, in 04, after starting this disastrous war, torturing prisoners and looting our treasury. (Ohio was extra--the main fraud was with the voting machines, nationwide.)
I've been following many polls--issue polls, approval polls--by both corporate media and independent pollsters--since late 2002, and you would be amazed at what they tell you: Feb 03, eve of the invasion of Iraq--fifty-six percent of the American people opposed it. 56%! (NYT poll; other polls 54-55%). 54-56% is a significant majority. It would be a landslide in a presidential election (and believe me it was). And it was in anticipation of that number getting even bigger--up to today's staggering, unprecedented 60+ to 70% anti-war majority--that trade secret vote counting was implemented, in the same month--Oct 02--as the Iraq War Resolution.
I would put the onus of the fascist coup that we have suffered on the following phenomena or entities, in this order:
1. Trade secret, proprietary vote counting, with virtually no audit/recount controls--with the code owned and controlled by private, rightwing, Bushite corporations. Disenfranchisement of the American majority.
2. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies. (The malignancy that Gore Vidal speaks of.) Creating a plausible narrative for false fascist victories--to sow confusion, to demoralize, to prevent rebellion.
3. Our Democratic Party leaders, who permitted--nay, fostered--the takeover of our election system by private, rightwing Bushite corporations and their trade secret code. Horrible betrayal of their constituents and of all Americans.
And, of course, the criminals George Bush, Dick Cheney, Karl Rove, Donald Rumsfeld, Alberto Gonzales, et al, and the global corporate predators for whom they work--the direct perpetrators of the coup--are the presumed top of the list.
Now, it is true that, with a vigilant press, "trade secret" vote counting could never have occurred. A free press is essential to defeating any such fascist/corporate scheme. But I am thinking of strategy. There is nothing we can do to bust up these corporate news monopolies, and reopen our political life to wide spectrum discourse and useful public discussion, until we rid ourselves of "trade secret" vote counting, and restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. The fascists will blockade our every effort to restore a free press--or to achieve any other desperately needed reform--at the ballot box, with their new, unprecedented, secret power over the results of our elections.
And since the Diebold II Congress is absolutely collusive on maintaining rightwing corporate control of our voting system, we have to get rid of this system at the state/local level, where ordinary people still have some influence.
And I wish to God that brilliant, perceptive leftist writers and public figures like Gore Vidal would help us with this! And I'm afraid that may be a kind of intellectual elitism--I see it Chomsky and others--whereby they simply can't believe in the People, and, just like the corporate news media, are ignoring the People--and their obvious, documented, rejection of this fascist junta--in poll after poll and poll, since late 2002 (when I started reviewing them)--on every issue, on every major Bushite policy, foreign and domestic. Torturing prisoners? Protecting Social Security? Women's rights? Bush's profligate spending and looting? The war on Iraq? You name it. 60% to 90% leftist/progressive majorities.
This is amazing. It means that the People have not been fooled. All they get is propaganda, brainwashing and psyops, from every direction in the corporate news monopolies. And they haven't bought it!
And, as a matter of fact, the same thing is true in South America--near total fascist control of the media--yet the people there have elected one leftist (majorityist) government after another--in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Uruguay and Nicaragua. The difference between us and them is not the corporate media. It is transparent vote counting. For instance, in Venezuela, they have electronic voting, but it is an open source code system--anyone may review the code by which the votes are tabulated--and they handcount a whopping 55% of the votes, as a check on machine fraud. We have trade secret code vote counting, by rightwing corporations, with many states counting zero votes, as a check on machine fraud, and the best states doing only 1% (miserably inadequate in a "trade secret" code system). The media are venomous fascists, in South America (even worse than here). But the votes are COUNTED--really counted (--the result of long hard work by local civic groups and social movements, the Carter Center, the OAS and EU election monitoring groups).
So, Mr. Vidal, if you are reading this, PLEASE understand that the American people have been disenfranchised, and their will has been thwarted, and they need help penetrating this black hole in the news as to how it was done--a tremendous crime committed by the War Party, and kept well under the radar of the American people so that its impact has become almost impossible to reverse--which is where we are now. Almost impossible. But not totally impossible. We need help now to restore transparent vote counting, and, until we have accomplished this, all reform is blockaded--and all the correctives of a democratic system are disabled.
There is a big peoples' movement, all over the country, working hard on this matter--at the state/local level. It doesn't have national glamor--but it is how this coup can be reversed. It's how they did it in South America--from the ground up. These citizen groups and activists need support. They need the problem to be exposed. They need help pressuring local officials--who are, as often as not, corrupt, collusive Democrats. This is it. It is the end of American democracy, or the beginning of renewal. It all rests on the sovereign power of our votes, which has been usurped.
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