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We are dealing with a profoundly DISEMPOWERED public. They are not bamboozled. Look at the opinion polls! Huge disapproval of all major Bush policies, domestic and foreign, in the 60% to 70% range, and miserable Bush approval ratings since before the election. And look at the election itself--people voted to oust the Bush Cartel, quite likely by a landslide, despite all the B.S. they were getting from the news monopolies.
The majority cannot get its will enforced. THAT is the problem.
I think "bamboozled" might describe some people on the election fraud issue--but NOT on Iraq, Social Security or anything else. But this is a complex psychological matter, involving some of the voters, especially some of the most progressive voters, not being able to identify what the real problem is, and not being able to resist. Think of the battered wife syndrome: denial that the husband who beats her is an actor in the situation, believing she herself is the problem (she "causes" the beatings), not reacting to being beaten (believing that physical harm to herself is not the problem), and a consequent inability to resist or to oppose being beaten (by fleeing, and bringing charges).
Thus, the beatings can escalate to her death, because she cannot accept the truth of the situation--the most basic facts--and does not think she can change it. She may have tried to stop the beating in many different ways, none of them effective. She thinks that the situation--his power over her--is inevitable, is a given, and she cannot challenge that basic premise.
In other words, we're looking at a helplessness syndrome. So it's very, very, very difficult to get some people first of all to acknowledge what is happening with the election system, and then to do something about it. They have become too fatalistic. The ABUSED VOTER SYNDROME.
I've been thinking about this quite a lot, and, for a time, I believed that we were dealing with massive and quite literal brainwashing. And of course brainwashing is generally part of an abusive situation. But here we have a case where the brainwashing has not worked--incredibly. Opinion polls are overwhelmingly showing that most Americans oppose Bush and his policies, by very large percentages. Why aren't they doing something about it? Because one part of the brainwashing has worked, just this part--the message that you are powerless. (You voted. All your friends, family and co-workers voted. You did what you could. It didn't work. Now you are helpless.)
And, of course, part of feeling helpless is to altogether deny that you have been abused. If something so fundamental to your life as your marriage--your spouse, the father of your children, the person you fell in love with--is destroying you, it is extremely difficult to see out of that situation.
If something so fundamental as voting--the bedrock of our democracy, the foundation of our belief in ourselves as a people--is destroying us--this, too--like spousal abuse--is a situation that is extremely difficult to see out of.
The hopeful part is that a lot of women--and other battered people--ARE seeing out of it, are getting the message that the fundamental situation (of one person battering another) is wrong, and the situation of abuse must be changed. But it has taken a lot of time and education.
Now then. Consider this. Say this is a very rich couple, in which the husband is battering the wife. She brought a fortune with her, and her husband and members of his family have built a highly profitable business with it, and her family is heavily invested in it as well. And say it's a rightwing Christian media empire, pushing Christian marriage. A messy divorce would ruin everybody. So hubby and his family, and the battered wife's family, and all the couples' friends--who, of course, have been ignoring the many black eyes and other bruises--put enormous profit-motive pressure on the battered wife to "make her marriage work."
There you have the Democrats--who have bought into e-voting, with some of them being outright corrupt on that score, and some of them wanting the Christian marriage thing (war in the Middle East) to continue.
Is this crazy? Maybe a little bit. (I mean, Christian marriage=war in the Middle East? Har-har.) I just wanted to explore this problem of people knowing, in their gut, that something's very wrong--that Bush was not elected--yet feeling compelled to deny it, with the "helplessness syndrome" as the underlying reason why they feel so compelled. AND, why Democratic Party leaders would go along with Bush "Pioneers" counting all our votes in secret.
As with brainwashing, the cure is to encourage independent thinking (not to badger the brainwashed with your own opinions--gently, gently introduce facts). With the "helplessness syndrome," the cure is to encourage independent action (of a constructive kind).
As for the rich relatives who want "the marriage to work" because they are financially invested in it (many Democratic Party leaders and office holders), hard to figure what to do with them. But it is my hope that, through hard work on election reform at the local level, and through incremental victories toward a more and more transparent election system, we can change the Democratic Party and remove these corrupt and collusive leaders from power.
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