Reposted from here.
Election day is only half over, and my desk is already flooded with stories and first-hand reports of voting irregularities. Voters in Pennsylvania are being harangued by GOP “poll watchers” to show ID, even though they absolutely do not have to, and a judge finally had to intervene. An election worker in Oregon was caught altering ballots so that they would show a straight-Republican ticket. Voters in South Florida are enduring historically long lines to vote. A lawsuit has been filed in Ohio to protest the “experimental” patch added to software in voting machines in dozens of counties.
In instance after instance, these actions are being taken by Republicans, from Secretaries of State and state legislatures at the top all the way down to “True the Vote” Tea Party footsoldiers looking to frighten people away from their polling places.
A part of me looks at all this and wonders, “What kind of fascist scumbag summons the gall to steal the right to vote from a fellow American?” But then it hits me: the root cause of all this is the fact that the GOP has, for many years now and especially since 9/11, pushed the idea that people who don’t agree with them are un-American and dangerous. For those who have swallowed this line of crap, the idea of actually stealing someone else’s right to vote becomes understandable. It’s a matter of National Security! These terrible un-Christian terrorists have to be stopped!
It’s fairly self-evident that if you have to cheat and scare people to win, your ideas lack merit…but the larger issue here is the kind of America that is being created. The Republican Party has made it a matter of survival to convince people, who are in every other way probably very good and decent types, that half the country, indeed their own neighbors, are swarming with The Enemy, and that Enemy does not deserve basic American rights like voting.
One hell of a whirlwind will be reaped if matters continue like this.
Exactly. If this keeps up, nothing will be done about climate change which threatens to destroy the Arctic Ocean ice cap by 2016, and release methane that will cause out-of-control global warming. Result may eventually be another Permian Extinction and the planet becoming like Venus.
On the other hand the peak oil situation will be exacerbated as the neocons from Bush's Administration decides to take out Iran, driving the price of oil into the ionosphere and crashing the global economy. In this case, the rest of the planet, even NATO in Europe, may decide that WE are the rogue nation that must be defeated in our time, lest the dark ages will descend upon humanity. And I don't even have to tell you what disasters that may ensue from THAT. You can use your reasoned imagination.
