Up to this point, I have been on deadline and I’ve let this slide. I am getting down my thoughts before I actually see some news on this election. I’m voting in one of the tightrope senate battles, so in this most important election of my lifetime, I’m also voting to directly influence the power structure of the U.S. Senate. If my vote is counted.
Which leads me to the thing that worries me most. That my vote will count. I have severe apprehensions about even going in. Virginia has legislated against a paper trail, and absentee voters at the county office still had to vote on a machine. What makes me hesitate is the possibility that my vote will actually be turned into a vote for the other side. I’d much rather my vote was thrown away than changed. Dismiss me as a conspiracy theorist if you will, but there is something worth thinking about here.
The military has for the first time in history begun to publicly break with its civilian leadership. Corporate interests are wed to the state. Tax cuts benefit the wealthiest, and that wealth is hoarded rather than used to generate more money. In fact, a large part of the redistributed wealth has come from abroad, adding national debt to the benefit of the few citizens. Mainstream media has been consolidated into the hands of a few. Lobbyists actively seek to put their masters’ competition out of business because they cannot compete on an open field (copyright and patent law immediately leap to mind). In so many ways, this Executive, Congress, and Supreme Court have been compared some of the most ruthless dictators and fascists in history. But let’s be fair. We’re not talking about Hitler and his charismatic cohort, or even the far-more efficient but lesser vilified Stalin.
We’re talking about the Gracchuses, the Mariusus, the Sullas, and ultimately, the Caesar, all of whom marched on Rome, or changed it in a fundamental by first changing the laws, then the constitution, until finally, a true emperor emerged and the republic was at an end. We’re talking about a similar class of people who are doing war on a government and its Constitution through legalism, by the slow release of damning information until its impact is less when the full truth is revealed, and by lying (if you think the way we treated prisoners in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib is not covered by the Geneva Conventions, go read them yourself sometime. It is explicit how nonuniformed combatants are to be treated), simply because they think it is their country to shape and change. If what I fear will happen comes to pass by the final tallied votes, this country is will no longer be holding the veneer of a republic, and it will finally and officially be an empire. And we should be ashamed of ourselves for letting it happen
I can only hope that if the Republicans (what irony) steal this election for the third time in a row that there is open revolution in the streets. That is, if we can actually get forward momentum to waddle up Constitution Avenue to take our country back after untangling ourselves from the wheels of our SUVs while holding a decaf, grande mochachino, our Razrs to our ears, and balancing designer dogs on one hip and Gameboy-wielding cannon fodder for this administration on the other.
Dac Nelson 