Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your Brain
Neural Gourmet Archives | Feed Your BrainThe Rubicon is a river that flows through northern Italy. There is disagreement as to where the Rubicon actually flows or is located, but that's not really the point of what I'm writing about. Historically speaking, the Rubicon was considered a border and Roman law prohibited armies from crossing it. Julius Caesar did just that and famously stated "alea iacta est"--the die is cast. Presently, the Rubicon and speaking of crossing the Rubicon has taken on a connotation much to the tone of what Caesar said: namely, passing the point of no return.
In recent years, many of my liberal and progressive friends have often asked in a rhetorical fashion "How long will it take us to recover from this administration?” - as if to express a sense of frustration and worry for our collective futures. Normally I would just nod my head and agree with their general sentiment. Lately, however, I've found myself thinking on this question in a very serious fashion.
Typically I am not beholden to conspiracy theories. But for my part, I do not think it is a wildly unreasonable claim to make that the election in 2000 were rigged or "stolen", as it were. The voting irregularities in predominately low-SES districts1, the purging of mostly blacks from voter rolls courtesy of Database Technologies2,1,3, Katherine Harris' conflicts of interest4, protests against the recount that were actually comprised of Republican aides5, and voter intimidation6 have all been very well documented. It has also been documented that, if a recount was allowed to continue or if absentee ballots that shouldn't have been counted were left out, Gore would have taken Florida and subsequently ascended to the presidency. It simply is not "sour grapes", as some conservatives frequently state. I think it is a far more unreasonable claim that the intent of the voter was honored in Florida, given the evidence that is available to us.
Now information is coming out regarding the elections in 2004 and irregularities that may have taken place in the battleground state of Ohio.8 Perhaps the principle worry that I have has to do with electronic voting machines. These machines have been shown, over and over again, to be fundamentally flawed with respect to security.9 Additionally, such machines offer no physical trail with which a sound recount can be conducted. The companies that manufacture these machines (i.e. Diebold) are heavy Republican campaign contributors and the ex-CEO of Diebold (Walden O’Dell) committed to give votes to Bush in 2004. I said that I, typically, am not beholden to conspiracy theories. But, the more information that keeps coming out, the more that deja-vu sets in.
It is a truism of our country that an administration will act with a degree of secrecy from the American public. I think that such secrecy is not only beneficial, but absolutely necessary in certain circumstances in the interest of the public good. However, this is a very fine line and can be easily carried too far. The current administration acts with a level of secrecy that, plainly speaking, has been unheard of for any previous occupant of the Oval Office.7 Commissions have been stonewalled. Independent investigations have been barred. Laws supporting open information access have been undermined. From Guantanamo to Enron to the 9.11 commission, the refrain is that we do not need to know. From illegal detention of American citizens on American soil (notably, Jose Padilla) without due process, to widespread domestic espionage of our phone conversations to recent revelations of government-sanctioned financial data mining, the feeling is that our privacy is being invaded and our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms stripped from us. When one person’s civil liberties are trampled upon, all of our civil liberties are trampled upon as such instances set a precedent for further governmental abuses of power. My friends, many such precedents have been set.
The Rubicon is no longer just a river in Italy. There is an American Rubicon as well. I do not know how fast it’s current flows. I do not know where it is, nor do I know how wide and deep it runs. I do know that, on one side, there is open and honest political discourse, mutual respect, courage to face the uncertain, and a resolve to honor the spirit on which this country was founded. On the other there is sabotaged and hamstrung discourse, divisiveness, a state of constant fear, and a false sense of security.
On good days, I think we’re only waist deep in the water. On bad days, I fear we’ve crossed the American Rubicon. I fear we’ve crossed it on apathy, fear, hatred, and the backs of some 2,518 of our brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, and friends who have selflessly given their lives at the behest of our administration. I fear we’ve crossed it on political non-issues like gay marriage and abortion. I fear we’ve crossed it on eschewing the global community and tarnishing our image as the greatest nation on earth. I fear we’ve crossed it on the tattered remnants of our constitution, our freedoms, and our values.
At the beginning of this entry is a question – “How long will it take us to recover from this administration?” This question makes a vast assumption. Namely, it makes the assumption of the possibility. It makes the assumption that we can recover, but it will take time. As much as it pains me, I think we ought to ask whether or not such a task is even possible.
Sources
1 Taylor, Q. Voting Irregularities in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Election Univ. of Washington. http://faculty.washington.edu/qtaylor/documents/US_Civ_Rights_Com_Rprt_Voting_Irreg_2000_FL_Election.htm
2 Wikipedia - Database Technologies
3 U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Status Report on Probe of Election Practices in Florida During the 2000 Presidential Elections. http://www.usccr.gov/pubs/vote2000/florida.htm
4 CBS News. 2001. Katherine Harris’ ‘W’ Files. http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2001/08/08/politics/main305435.shtml
5 Parry, Robert. 2002. Bush’s Conspiracy to Riot. Consortium News. http://www.consortiumnews.com/2002/080502a.html
6 Mackay, N. 2004. New investigation uncovers more racism, voter intimidation and faulty poll machines. Sunday Herald. http://www.sundayherald.com/45159.
7 Rep. Henry Waxman. 2004. Secrecy in the Bush Administration. Committee on Government Reform. http://www.democrats.reform.house.gov/features/secrecy_report/pdf/pdf_secrecy_report.pdf.
8 Wikipedia - 2004 U.S. Presidential Election Controversy
9 Tadayoshi, K. et. al. 2004. Analysis of an Electronic Voting System. IEEE Symposium on Security and Privacy 2004. http://avirubin.com/vote.pdf
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Maybe it's a little bit of both?
And maybe there's nothing to recover to? Maybe it's just the continuous evolution of our society, human society really?
As you know, I do not think there is sufficient evidence to support the charge of a stolen election in 2004. Certainly not based on exit polls. I'm going to cut and paste something that I wrote here and refined elsewhere, so this is not entirely directed at you. Also, please understand that I do not think of you or any of our regulars as conspiracists.
There are problems with the elections in this country. There are problems with the electronic voting machines being provided by Diebold and other vendors.
Gerrymandering + Vote Suppression + Faulty Machines + Ill-defined Procedures & Protocols = Structurally Unsound Elections
- Gerrymandering is widely understood to be rampant and it acts as an incumbency protection mechanism. It is the equivalent of the candidates choosing their voters.
- Vote Suppression refers to everything from voter intimidation to voter roll purges to inadequate allocation of voting machines to switching polling places without adequate notice and more.
- The machines are faulty. The software is horribly written, buggy and insecure. The machines are insecure. Touch screens have been misaligned, and memory cards have failed or had pre-existing data on them. Further the machines in many districts still do not allow for transparent and auditable elections, and worst of all perhaps is that the source code is proprietary which means the public is unable to verify the software being run on the machines.
- Ill-defined procedures and protocols refers to amateurism and inadequate means for dealing with recounts and audits at the local level. It can also mean poor procedures for handling the voting machines (i.e. allowing employees to take them home) or running tests.
All of these are documented, demonstrable and provable problems that exist with our election system currently. Not every district has every problem, some have none and the problems are not always a result of corruption or incompetemce. But any one of these problems should give voters cause for concern and enough districts have at least one of these problems that if the case were presented factually and without hysterics that any sane person would conclude that election reform is a topic that needs to be addressed.
These should be enough for anyone.
Is the couching of your concerns in almost millennialist terms (precipice). Why do you think reform is impossible, and if it is then what do you think the outcome will be? If the rubicon has been crossed, to use your metaphor, do you see any way of, if not reverting back to an earlier idealized time with respect to government, then effecting change in government short of bloody revolution?
of a point of no return is too simplistic when talking about something as complex as our government.
But I want you to step out on a limb with me, tng - if only for a moment. For the sake of argument, let's say the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. Lets say that the electronic voting machines are not an attempt to streamline the electron process, but to control it. Let's say that this administration's modus operandi of black ops policies is not a misguided attempt to combat terror, but to roll back civil liberties on American citizens. If the preceeding claims are true, then I believe that in some profound sense, we've already crossed the American Rubicon. I think that because those in power, ever since 9.11, have been solidifying their power. They've been building walls around themselves and digging the moats. It's a bid to make themselves unchallengeable. We won't be able to fight with our votes, because they won't matter anymore: they're already bought and paid for. Sure, we can make noise in protest: but how long will it take before we are labeled enemies of the state? If it ever does come to that, then it may very well be the only recourse available to us is bloody revolution with fighting in the streets.
I'm not saying that's the state of affairs - but my humble opinion is that we're headed in that direction. Reform may be possible. Not total reform, mind you. The damage, in large part, has been done. It has left an indellible stain on our nation's spirit that neither time nor a resurgence of active democratic participation will wash away. Our values, our rights, and our collective dignity have all been compromised without our consent.
That's my optimistic estimation.
Worst case scenario is a picture-perfect dystopia. I think an interesting lesson can be learned from North Korean ex-pats. I saw an interview with one on CNN who fled to China. She said that she always believed the rest of the outside world were the beggars and that life in NK was paradise. When she escaped, she realized the exact opposite was true. Travel restriction. Government control of the media. Misinformation and propoganda controls. I don't think it is outside of the realm of possibilities.
Now, please, tell me I am being irrational. I don't want to be right - I want to be mistaken on this count.
I've never said that I believe the electronic voting machines are an attempt to streamline the process. I think some people believe this, but I don't. I think it's greed and kickbacks, pure and simple.
If things are as bad as you are positing, then there is the last recourse -- violent revolution.
On this you are being irrational, you're expressing millenarian fears.
As far as the voting machines go, at this current stage there's too many people involved still. Unless you believe the individual machines and the precinct tabulators are so thoroughly rigged as to completely misrepresent the vote then you have to contend with all the people involved in the elections process. Is every single person in a position of authority a dedicated member of the conspiracy? A willing dupe? Because if they weren't and the machines were rigged, somebody would crack and talk.
But, let's assume the machines are rigged. You wouldn't want the fix to be obvious. You couldn't just convert every D vote into an R vote. You couldn't even flip a fixed percentage of votes. Those two things would show up in the stats. Unless, of course, you believe the pollsters and all the statisticians are in on it too. So that leaves rigging the machines to slyly adjust themselves to be within nominal margins. Well, that would require that the machines all talk to each other so they know which districts to shortchange and which to over-credit. We know they're not doing that yet. Also, you have to account for the large number of variations of machines, software and tabulators. They're not all on even the same computing platform. And you'd have to account for how they could talk to each other. AFAIK, most do not even have ethernet connections, and you'd notice if your voting machine was plugged into a phone line. If they had WiFi, you can bet some geek would detect that and hack the vote in his/her district just to prove the point.
So I can not concede your fears about the voting machines.
You would need to elaborate on the damage you believe has occurred for me to gage whether or not I thought it was irreversible.
And please don't mistake me for a pollyanna. I believe there are deep structural issues that we're going to have to dig ourselves out of and it's going to take time. There are sociocultural issues too, such as the problem with religious fundamentalism, but I believe that has been exasperated in part by the far right and if we take care of the radicalizing element (get the far right out of office) then we can start dealing with fundamentalism at home -- and maybe abroad too.
