It started with the November 2000 rigged US presidential election and has just degenerated from there. I've not been alone in watching with horror as our country's government flipped the bird at international treaties designed to protect human rights and the environment, favoring military build-up and big oil instead. Many of us have been outraged by the unelected ones sabotaging chances for an independent investigation into 9/11, and disgusted by their ass-covering legal gyrations to prevent inquiry into their former shady business dealings, not to mention their equally shady bedding with oil interests once having seized political power.
But now it seems the coup from hell is complete. In midterm US Congressional elections in which only 40% of those citizens eligible bothered to vote, a full 95% percent of House races and 75% of Senate races were won by the candidates who spent the most money. This while, under the guise of "poll watching," Republican Party functionaries were posted at polling stations across the country on Election Day, harassing (mainly Democratic) working class and minority voters. This while, right before the voting, a beloved Democratic Senator who was locked in a close election contest died in a mysterious plane crash, exactly two years after another Democratic Senate candidate died in the same mysterious way. This while the same inaccurate lists of supposedly ineligible (mainly Democratic) voters which unfairly disenfranchised tens of thousands in the 2000 presidential race, were inexplicably used again in this election. This while much of the country voted via computer systems whose proprietary nature does not permit public scrutiny, and which by definition do not leave much in the way of physical evidence for each vote. The computer glitch in South Florida which almost deleted 103,000 votes is a case in point; what other votes could have been "lost" at the touch of a button, and to whose benefit?
But now it seems the coup from hell is complete. In midterm US Congressional elections in which only 40% of those citizens eligible bothered to vote, a full 95% percent of House races and 75% of Senate races were won by the candidates who spent the most money. This while, under the guise of "poll watching," Republican Party functionaries were posted at polling stations across the country on Election Day, harassing (mainly Democratic) working class and minority voters. This while, right before the voting, a beloved Democratic Senator who was locked in a close election contest died in a mysterious plane crash, exactly two years after another Democratic Senate candidate died in the same mysterious way. This while the same inaccurate lists of supposedly ineligible (mainly Democratic) voters which unfairly disenfranchised tens of thousands in the 2000 presidential race, were inexplicably used again in this election. This while much of the country voted via computer systems whose proprietary nature does not permit public scrutiny, and which by definition do not leave much in the way of physical evidence for each vote. The computer glitch in South Florida which almost deleted 103,000 votes is a case in point; what other votes could have been "lost" at the touch of a button, and to whose benefit?