still angry?

a) our choices are all poor ones, so of course we're going to complain.

b) we do not live in a democracy. we live in a representative democracy, or a republic. democracy, on this scale, is nearly impossible. furthermore, democracy is mob rule. it is truly majority rules. thus, if 51% of voters wanted everyone to wear clown pants, then everyone would have to wear clown pants. if your religion prohibited you from wearing clown pants, or if you just simply didn't feel like wearing clown pants, too bad, the majority has spoken.

or

what, you don't want to have an abortion? that's too bad, because the majority just decided that no one under twenty can have children, so if they get pregnant they have to abort it.

in america we have a constitution that protects certain rights and freedoms, and in the process protects minorities against the whims of the majority. it protects people with different viewpoints, it protects people from unreasonable search and seizure, it establishes a system by which people vote democratically for representatives, and have their vote diluted by an electoral college for president, which in theory is a masterful arrangement of checks and balances. don't blame our form of government for the corruption rampant in the present system. don't blame the constitution for the failure of people to respect it. the system may be broken, but that is a political problem, not the fault of the founding fathers.

as i was saying last night, people are concerned about their own personal problems, their own personal space, and not concerned enough with the public good. and the people who are concerned about the public good are determined to force their views on others. so those of us who want to be left alone aren't willing to push that stance on others, while those of us who want to control everyone else are, well, trying to control everyone else. whose fault is it gwbutthead is president? yours. mine. it is the fault of everyone who voted for him. it is the fault of everyone who didn't vote but could have voted against him. it is the fault of everyone who doesn't stand up and speak out, who doesn't fight oppression, who doesn't do anything about the current state of affairs in our country. why is america collapsing? why is it falling? because no one reads history and no one does anything about it. read about the fall of the roman empire. see the parallels between that and our present situation. this fall can be avoided, america can recover, but not if ignorant people vote and run the country, and not if intelligent people are too cynical and apathetic to do anything about it. you have to believe in the system for it to work. you have to approach your idealism naively, or you'll never be able to pursue it to its necessary end. if you can't do this, you will forever be repressed. you will forever be a failure.

just as i am.

you will be shot

WILL THIS ELECTION BRING A BRIGHTER DAY OR THE END OF AMERICAN DEMOCRACY

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If there were ever a more urgent reason to replace each and every member of Congress virtually without exception, one need only look at the breathtaking new martial law powers granted to the Bush administration this month. It has always been a sacred tenet of our Democracy that the U.S. military should not be deployed AGAINST American citizens. But literally in the dead of night and almost without comment, an amendment to the Insurrection Act was slipped into the just passed Defense Authorization bill stating, and get this:

"the President may employ the armed forces, including the National Guard in Federal service, to restore public order and enforce the laws of the United States when . . . the President determines that domestic violence has occurred"

So let's just say for example that the electronic election results in 8 days are so far out of line with pre-election and exit polling data so as to defy credulity. And let's just say that people organized massive peaceful protests of the theft of their elections. And let's just say that the Bush administration provoked "police" riots, or even had their own provocateurs commit violent acts so as to justify a military crackdown. Voila . . . now you have American soldiers shooting at otherwise peaceful political protesters. And you thought Kent State was a party!

And if you don't think that could ever happen, then why the hell have they pushed for such changes, which are now the law of the land?

The whole concept of the president as an unaccountable determiner, or "decider", insulated from any kind of oversight by Congress or the Courts has been the hallmark of the Cheney/Bush executive coup, which just keeps steamrollering along while our presumptive protectors in Congress are asleep at the switch, or cowering in their cloakrooms.

Shame on each and every member of Congress who allowed this to happen with hardly as much as peep or a whimper. Shame on them for their lack of diligence and lack of oversight. Shame, shame, shame on Democrats as well as Republicans. Are there any, any at all worth keeping, who will actually fight for the people and their rights? The list of keepers must now be short indeed.