CHCH News - Fakin' It

"He who votes decides nothing; he who counts the votes decides everything."

--Josef Stalin

"Nixon always insisted that others, including President Eisenhower, encouraged him to dispute the outcome but that he refused. A challenge, he told others, would cause a 'constitutional crisis,' hurt America in the eyes of the world, and 'tear the country apart.' "

--David Greenberg, Slate

Any way you slice it, this Presidential election has hit a new nadir of non-discourse. Mudslinging has long been a staple of American policies, at least since the televised empty suits began to focus on the horse race over issues. Launching offal, in the manner of primates on Monkey Island, was a quick, albeit temporary way to skew the race in favor of one or the other candidate.

Would that it had only stopped there.

The accusations of favoritismvis a vis National Guard billets and of alcohol and drug abuse in pre-recorded time were just opening acts, a repeat performance. Charges of LIES! and BUSH KNEW! left many of us blinking in amazement. We who remembered what was said about Saddam; who remembered how the 1993 WTC bombing was handled; who heard the incredulous explanation of TWA Flight 800 found this Administration's candor refreshing. The same figures who dutifully expounded on the unfolding risk of Saddam's Iraq - and who obviously hadn't given much thought to what they had been briefed on - now were quick to charge the President, a different President than the one who had once waxed bellicose, with irrational lust for war.

It got worse, of course. Halliburton, a unique contract-service company specializing in logistics and oil-extraction engineering, became a demonic talisman to the Left - it was as if Halliburton was trying to be the Hunt Brothers of the oil industry. Every move the Administration made was somehow tied to both oil and Halliburton - a move involving some contortions and quite a bit of rope. Halliburton was sinister for emergent no-bid contracts - and never mind the mechanics of LOGCAP. Never mind that Halliburton, owning the blueprints to Iraqi installations, was uniquely qualified. Never mind that only the French firm Schlumberger could offer comparable service - and the French had not only opposed our effort, but also were conspiring with UN officials for Oil-For-Food monies.

Then we moved to the outright lies. The forged memos. The dishonest testimony of Ben Barnes - who neglected to examine his own story carefully enough to realize that he was not in office to help at the time the "help" was to have been extended. The charges of "cuts" in programs - which were merely cuts in increases from what was requested. The unproven claims of high civilian casualties in Iraq - and the insistence that it's because of a lack of planning to "Win the Peace."

Whatever that means.

Then the mother of all lies - the draft. What draft? you ask. Yes, what draft indeed. Democratic operatives on the floor of the House tried to push through a bill authorizing a reinstution of Selective Service - and it went over like flatulence in church. Didn't matter - such a splendid strategy wasn't to be deterred by a momentary setback. Well-placed "Talking Points" abounded, about Bush's "secret plan" to reinstitute the draft - by January 15. Pseudo-analyses of military manning strength purported to show why a draft would be inevitable, due to Bush's insane rush to war with peace-loving Iraq. No one knows if it'll prove an effective attack, but it's reasonable to assume that voters who believe in John Kerry's "secret plan" without hearing a bit of it, will also believe in a dirty, dark "secret plan" to reactivate the draft - against the will of Congress.

But all of this, the smears, the lies, the secret plans that never were...all of this pales next to the Democratic ace-in-the-hole. The nuclear option - the poison pill, the win-at-any-price plan.

The disruption of America's system of elections.

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Democracy cannot exist in a police state. Nor is an election controlled by a central state apparatus a free election. And an open election cannot occur in a state of chaos - where either the government or a faction allowed to work freely, wreaks disorder and sows distrust and spreads disinformation.

Volunteers using the money from a foreign-born currency speculator have been busy registering deceased, relocated, and fictitious persons in contested regions. Lawyers using perversions of Constitutional guarantees are planning strategies, staging trouble squads to challenge local practices - even before tabulation begins.

All this has become public knowledge - and apparently that is just fine with whatever forces are setting the stage. It's less important to actually disrupt the election, than it is to cast doubt - de-legitimize the winner, who by most indications will be the incumbent President.

Strategists have forfeited the Election in favor of whipping up discontent with the result - encourage large numbers of voters to reject the results of the election. And, the thinking goes, deny the President any kind of mandate.

This it will do. And more, much more.

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Our whole system, our whole culture, is based on trust. You call the cops and trust that they will come to your aid - and not mistreat you. You place a letter in the mail drop, and trust that the letter carrier will take it to its address. You send your kid to the public schools, and trust that he'll be educated - and not indoctrinated, and not molested or sexualized.

Here we have a scenario unfolding, where the electorate is told it cannot trust the electoral process or the election result. Vote-A-Matic cards cannot be trusted; and anyway, the ballots are confusing. Touch-screen machines are made by a company that gave money to the RNC (and their opponents, but that is not germane to the point). Paid voter-registration canvassers are found pulling Democratic names out of whole cloth. Or pulling Republican names out of their stacks.

Military ballots are not acceptable - they came too late or too early, and the tens of thousands of disenfranchised uniformed servicemen are "not statically important." Police on duty many blocks away from the polling place, are an intimidation to minority voters.

Asking a voter for identification is an unreasonable burden. Asking a voter to appear at the proper precinct is an unreasonable burden. Denying unregistered voters their vote is unreasonable - and separating "provisional" ballots from others is a form of discrimination.

And so on.

This scenario has been twisted so many ways that there's no way to satisfy suspicions thus generated. There are going to be factions harboring dark suspicions - that somehow their interests were disregarded in whatever marginal flaw was found.

So if the electoral process cannot be trusted, then how are we to choose our leaders?

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This cuts to the quick of the difference in philosophies, between "liberal" leaders of today and Libertarians and Conservatives. Liberals are somehow infused with the viewpoint that their ideas reflect unique insight - and that opponents don't see or understand that insight, that wisdom, because of inherent flaws. It may be a deficit in intelligence, or it may be inflexibility due to religious indoctrination - but conservatives somehow aren't able to "get it."

Thus starts a curious circular reasoning: Our ideas are unique and brilliant; we are brilliant for having them or believing in them; others who don't see the brilliance must be stupid - for not seeing the brilliance of it all.

This paves the way for resistance to non-liberal ideas, and leads to self-identified elitism. Following rapidly on that line of thought, is that the people need to be protected from their own deficiencies - that they should not be allowed to follow their own follies, their own mistaken understandings of government, of culture, of home and family and marriage and sex.

The importance of good, "liberal" ideals outweighs the importance of self-governance and self-determination by the proletariat.

And that explains the proliferation of "secret" plans; of the resistance to the idea of liberating peoples, in the Middle East and elsewhere; of the mockery directed at the concept of "spreading democracy." For "democracy" is something to pay lip service to in public; later to mock in cocktail-party circles.

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For all their hue and cry about "disenfranchisement" and about "making every vote count," it is "liberals" and their party which would deny choice - in land use and personal transport and home-heating comfort and recreation. From that attitude one can judge the sincerity of their outrage.

Elections are a nuisance. What is desired is a persuasive campaign, not a true choice. The ideal would be an endless series of rallies, Castro-style, affirming our wise and enlightened leadership by the principles of Secular Humanism and situational ethics.

The American system of elections, if this attack is carried through to fruition, is not likely to survive. Certainly not all Democrats desire this outcome, but doubtless many "liberals" do. Although it's probably paranoia to ascribe designs of Bolshevik revolution to these persons, they do, by all indications, want us to move from Government By the People toward some sort of Governance by Committee - a sort of Amerikan Politburo.

And that's where all this can lead. If we allow ourselves to be led there.

Right now it's disenfranchisement and unfairness and conspiracy which is Being Faked. But, if we're steered in this direction - if we allow ourselves to be led like cattle down the chute toward the elitists with the sledgehammers - we will find democracy redefined and ourselves on the meathooks.

And it will be our Constitutional Republic which will then be a "fake."

23 October 2004

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JustPassinThru is a locomotive engineman and former political-science student in the Great Lakes region, where he drives trains, worships cars, curses government - and now writes about all three.

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