Discussion Worthy Article: Should The Left Ignore The 'Stolen Election'

by Bertell Ollman

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=90&ItemID=7110

Should The Left Ignore The 'Stolen Election'

by Bertell Ollman; January 26, 2005

In the course of his very rich article, "The Non-Election of 2004" (Z Magazine, Jan., 2005), Noam Chomsky sought to minimize the importance of the fact that the 2004 presidential election was stolen. And if there is still any doubt in the anti-Bush camp that this past election was stolen, it is - in my view - chiefly because most opinion formers (including writers in the "New York Times", the "Nation" and the "Village Voice") have (mis)understood "stealing" on the model of robbing a bank, where someone has to catch the winning candidate piling boxes of unopened ballots into the back of his pick-up truck before one can say it has occurred. Stealing an election, however, is more like stacking a deck of cards where a devious sleight of hand ensures that the same party wins every time.



The relevant question, then, is whether the well publicized scandals over electronic voting, the numerous problems people had in registering and casting their ballots, the irregularities in counting votes, the politically biased actions of the secretaries of state in the key states of Florida and Ohio, the unwillingness of Republican politicians at all levels of government to address these problems over the last four years, the huge discrepancies between the "official" vote count and usually reliable exit polls, and the fact that practically all of the admitted incidents of blocked, lost, changed, and added votes favored Bush - the question is whether all this constitutes a "stacking of the political deck". If so, there should be no doubt in anybody's mind that the country that likes to bill itself as "the world's foremost democracy" has just gone through a stolen election.



For there to be a stolen election, however, or at least one that deserves to be taken seriously as such, there would have to have been a "real election". And this is what Chomsky says did not happen. While ignoring the often progressive views of the public, the two major political parties together with their public relations and media allies orchestrated a campaign based on lies, distortions, photo ops, trivialities and assorted feel-good slogans. In such a contest, whoever won it is clear that the public could only lose. That does not mean that Chomsky did not see that a victory by one or the other candidate would have some different consequences, but this does not compensate for the completely manipulated and undemocratic character of the entire electoral process. Moreover, most people are broadly aware that the elections are not serious affairs and therefore do not take them very seriously, which is why there has been so little public outrage at the possibility that the election was stolen, both now and in 2000. According to this view, the task of radicals is to explain why there was no real election and to protest that, and not to get sidetracked into relatively trivial debates over the tampering of ballots on election day (which seems to take for granted that a real election did occur).
<snip>

Second, apart from those who voted for Bush, and to the extent that people are aware of the facts listed at the start of this piece, there is widespread if still diffuse and largely repressed anger over the stolen election. Many students, in particular, were extremely upset to witness what the democracy that gets touted every day in class comes down to in actual practice. Chomsky claims just the opposite, that apart from a relatively small group of intellectuals, most of Bush's victims - who know that neither party really represents their views - have responded to his hold-up with a "yawn". To the extent this is so, I believe it is mainly a media induced yawn. If people's thinking and feeling leading up to the vote were so affected by the media, why would their reaction after the vote reflect that influence any less? And once the votes were in, practically the entire media (including some progressive voices) did everything they could to dismiss or trivialize all the so-called "irregularities". This apparent indifference also arose from the refusal of Demoratics Party leaders to countenance mass protests, the obscene rapidity with which Kerry accepted his loss (in part, no doubt, to avoid the social instability associated with such protests), and the removal of all the issues in contention to the courts, where - as we saw in 2000 - political problems are transmuted into legal ones, and the only popular participation allowed is rising when the judge enters the courtroom. A lot that appears like indifference, therefore, is really the other side of a frustration that comes from a media imposed uncertainty regarding what happened and not knowing what to do about it.<snip>

A lot of the "blame" for acceptance/indifference is placed on the media.

Or is it powerlessness? Did Kerry realize this? All the recounting in the world could not overcome keeping people from the polls in the first place, tearing up Dem registrations, voter roll purges, etc., for example.

but the media is able to expose this and to give it legs if it wanted to do so.

--that "ours must be a politics of DELIGITIMIZATION that seeks to undermine whatever is left of people's faith in American elections...."
ie. so we can rebuild. I think this is very much in line with our thinking and our goals in this forum. Many here seem to understand the magnitude of the task and how the effort must be made to investigate and reconstruct the election process.

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last paragraphs:

"The stacked deck of cards with which the government forces us all to play the game of politics goes far beyond the many frauds that emerged on election day, and encompasses all that politicians do after they get elected (which includes preparing the ground - socially and psychologically as well as politically - for the next fraudulent election). It also makes our elections - once people's attention is drawn and their anger aroused by the outright theft of our highest office - an ideal prism for seeing American democracy as a capitalist class democracy, run BY that class (and the few outsiders they hire to help them out) and FOR that class. For the rest of us, living in a democracy most take to be OF the people, politics can only be a series of false hopes and tragic deceptions.

Bush's stolen election is but the tip of the iceberg, but it is the tip that is now showing, and tens of millions of people can see it, many for the first time, and they are raging (if still too silently) about it. The Left must be part of this protest and accompanying debate, widening and deepening both - making the connections, making the connections - however we can. And don't forget the Ukraine. Rather than trying "to restore voters faith in elections", and rather than playing down the dispute over Bush's victory as missing the main point, our's must be a POLITICS OF DELIGITIMATION that seeks to undermine whatever's left of people's faith in American elections in order to help build a real democracy that is OF, BY and FOR all the people." (end)

who says we shouldn't make a big deal about the stolen election, is being unpatriotic

is trying to say that it's part of the bigger picture. Not that he doesn't see stolen elctions as important, but that he doesn't think we have "real" elections anyway--that they are "manipulated and undemocratic" to begin with. The article wasn't very clear about Chomsky's position and I think it obscures the good points the article makes otherwise.
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from the article:

"That does not mean that Chomsky did not see that a victory by one or the other candidate would have some different consequences, but this does not compensate for the completely manipulated and undemocratic character of the entire electoral process. Moreover, most people are broadly aware that the elections are not serious affairs and therefore do not take them very seriously, which is why there has been so little public outrage at the possibility that the election was stolen, both now and in 2000."
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link from Chomsky's earlier article Jan 5 explaining his position.
http://zmagsite.zmag.org/Jan2005/chomsky0105.html

I'm not trying to promote Chomsky's position, just saying that I don't think it's so at odds with our work on immediqate election investigation/reform at it appears on the surface. He seems to think it's all part of the big rearrangement needed.

they make paper ballots, hand counted the law of the land in this country immediatly.

and suppression of minorities that still hasn't been publicized or dealt with to the extent that I think it should. Here's lots of cases of all of these in over 20 states.
http://www.flcv.com/ussumall.html

BE THE BUSH OPPOSITION;24/7

(in case you know someone who might need a reason why -- shown them this http://www.zonaeuropa.com/01467.htm )