We won't know democracy died from suspended elections -- fake elections are dictator-approved worldwide.
When elections aren't real they are (1) like casinos: you win enough to stay addicted, (2) politicians don't listen, (3) incumbents have 97% or higher re-election rates, (4) the public isn't informed, (5) the government is surprisingly bold sometimes, (6) more exceptions to red tape of asking for warrants (7) the public accepts the rationale of totalitarians "nothing to fear if nothing to hide", and (8) unpopular wars continue, to save face. Only "Face" limits power at all.
The evil genius here is in making elections inscrutable via electonic technology so that people end up quibbling about important details with their partisan foes (but details nonetheless on a relative level), enough academics naturally are quite available to honestly opine the evidence ambiguous in their opinion (showing themselves smarter than all of us for seeing the other side and not getting in any way excited), and peaceful Americans detest the "partisanship" that is an inevitable part of post-election disputes because all election losers are partisans of one stripe or another, seeking to dislodge another different partisan. This confounding of elections happened through the government's "solution" advertised as the response to the problem of the ambiguous evidence in few but very frustrating Floridian chads. That "solution" was to totally *eliminate* that evidence with e-voting funded by feds. Is moving from ambiguous evidence to zero evidence an improvement in election protection?
I suppose we can just say those silly guv'mint Wabbits stole our democracy, so that we'll never know if we have one for sure again.
I don't always idealize our Founders, but I'm convinced that it's important to realize that the Founders would never have treated a government action like this as a mild provocation, or a subject only of internet blog debate.
At the end of the day, the big picture here is that some Machiavelli is laughing at the stupid Americans fighting each other instead of him, proud of his genius using necessarily ambiguous evidence to confuse, getting professionals to unwittingly protect him because there's "no proof" but they don't even know what proof would be, so they won't find it. If Machiavelli isn't real today, how long is it said to be before political power vacuums get filled up?
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Secret power is absolute power used against defenseless Americans who can't see what hit them.
You know it, I know it. But if we, for example, get stuck on the actual identity of "Machiavelli", it may be too late for democracy, though we may all be fine. Tyrants need docile subjects, and lots of them, capable of tolerating those 8 conditions of societies with fake elections, six paragraphs above.
Paul R. Lehto
lehtolawyer@gmail.com
425-4221387 (cell)
When elections aren't real they are (1) like casinos: you win enough to stay addicted, (2) politicians don't listen, (3) incumbents have 97% or higher re-election rates, (4) the public isn't informed, (5) the government is surprisingly bold sometimes, (6) more exceptions to red tape of asking for warrants (7) the public accepts the rationale of totalitarians "nothing to fear if nothing to hide", and (8) unpopular wars continue, to save face. Only "Face" limits power at all.
The evil genius here is in making elections inscrutable via electonic technology so that people end up quibbling about important details with their partisan foes (but details nonetheless on a relative level), enough academics naturally are quite available to honestly opine the evidence ambiguous in their opinion (showing themselves smarter than all of us for seeing the other side and not getting in any way excited), and peaceful Americans detest the "partisanship" that is an inevitable part of post-election disputes because all election losers are partisans of one stripe or another, seeking to dislodge another different partisan. This confounding of elections happened through the government's "solution" advertised as the response to the problem of the ambiguous evidence in few but very frustrating Floridian chads. That "solution" was to totally *eliminate* that evidence with e-voting funded by feds. Is moving from ambiguous evidence to zero evidence an improvement in election protection?
I suppose we can just say those silly guv'mint Wabbits stole our democracy, so that we'll never know if we have one for sure again.
I don't always idealize our Founders, but I'm convinced that it's important to realize that the Founders would never have treated a government action like this as a mild provocation, or a subject only of internet blog debate.
At the end of the day, the big picture here is that some Machiavelli is laughing at the stupid Americans fighting each other instead of him, proud of his genius using necessarily ambiguous evidence to confuse, getting professionals to unwittingly protect him because there's "no proof" but they don't even know what proof would be, so they won't find it. If Machiavelli isn't real today, how long is it said to be before political power vacuums get filled up?
Power corrupts.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Secret power is absolute power used against defenseless Americans who can't see what hit them.
You know it, I know it. But if we, for example, get stuck on the actual identity of "Machiavelli", it may be too late for democracy, though we may all be fine. Tyrants need docile subjects, and lots of them, capable of tolerating those 8 conditions of societies with fake elections, six paragraphs above.
Paul R. Lehto
lehtolawyer@gmail.com
425-4221387 (cell)
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