Four Years Towards Totalitarianism: Thanks to You?

Posted on December 6, 2004 in Citizenship Liberals & Progressives

A Letter to the Red States has been circulating since November 4. It finally reached me here by way of my friend John Lettiere. Last to know, it affirms to me the most distressing thing about the post-election result: so many good, thoughtful people have lost faith in their country and their fellow Americans.

I’m not so sure that George W. Bush won the election. Greg Palast has amply documented how African Americans were systematically denied their right to vote in precincts all across Ohio and elsewhere. Yet we still hear pundits go on about how Kerry lost the election. I’d like to turn the tables on these and ask What makes you think that African Americans aren’t Americans? Why aren’t you fighting to get their votes counted in Ohio? You talk of respecting Dr. King, so why aren’t you hammering your fist on the table and saying Enough Apartheid in America! Count their votes!

I, for one, am tired of hearing about how Kerry failed to penetrate the thick skulls of about half the white Americans who voted. I want to know why you stubbornly refuse to look into the question of spoiled ballots. What am I concluding? That you want to see your fellow Americans as stupid and benighted. You want to hate them. You want those of us who believed enough in a fair election to go out in the period before and during the count to give up. I am tired of your elitism. I am tired of your failure to stand up for your fellow Americans whose votes went uncounted because they were African American or Latino. I suspect you of being every bit as racist as the reactionaries on the Right.

I do not blame the writer of the Letter to the Red States for feeling unhappy with the jimmied up election results because too many of you — mostly white liberals — went along with the cover story. That bloggers were to blame for the discrepancy between the exit polls and the actual result? Give me a break, folks! Alarm bells should have rung loudly when that happened, but you started blaming John Kerry, the red states, and everyone except the most likely culprits — the people running the election!

The same thing happened in the Ukraine and the Supreme Court of that country ruled that the election was invalid. This should be what happens here. It is true, all too true, that a part of the former Soviet Union is more on the top of things when it comes to freedom than us. Perhaps it is because of their legacy of oppression that they can see through the lies. Perhaps what America needs is a good ten years of totalitarianism for its people to see the light.

I count four years so far. And it may be thanks to you.