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Election Results Challenge Our Faith in America and Its People by LILIAN FRIEDBERG Like
most urban intellectuals, I have been profoundly disturbed by the turns
taken in the USA—in the fields of education, the economy, jobs, the
environment, social security, health care, the loss of civil liberties
and, not least of all, foreign policy. Like
most of us on the left, I was confident that we would turn the tide by
voting the current administration out of office on November 2, 2004. I
had faith in logic; faith in the democratic process, faith in the
American people. And I still do--but only because I do not believe this
election was “fair and square.” Rather, I believe Bev Harris, Greg
Palast and millions of others whose “beliefs” rest on logic and
statistical probability. The most recent W.-Cheney fiat simply does not
make sense; not unless you “believe” that fifty million Americans
are stupid enough to have ignored the stark realities of “life in
these United States.” Believing that Americans are stupid has long
been a favorite pastime of the international community and the domestic
intelligentsia. For most people, it’s more comforting to believe that
the American people are stupid than it is to believe a handful of crooks
just put Richard Nixon to shame with a sham election conducted in the
world’s “greatest democracy.” The very suggestion that a few
heavy-handed, fiscally well-endowed and well-connected individuals may
have participated in a felonious assault on democracy by manufacturing
and manipulating electronic voting systems in favor of their patron is
perhaps more disturbing than the notion that the results of this
election are “legitimate”. And yet, this much is clear: this level
of criminal behavior is entirely consistent with the logic
of the current administration. The
notion of an honest election is predicated on the belief that most
Americans are either ignorant, indifferent or complete idiots. Call it
denial, call it wishful thinking on my part, but, as an American
citizen, it’s harder for me to believe that 60 million Americans are
out of touch enough to have put Bush back in office than it is to
believe a medium-sized bushel of crooks has stolen the election. The
election was declared a done deal before a thorough investigation had
been conducted into allegations of voter fraud, and it isn’t really
over until the electoral college is seated on December 12. The
mainstream media is suppressing the “votergate” story that is
spreading like wildfire on the internet; where it is getting coverage,
the charges are being dismissed as “internet conspiracy theories.”
Is this the “urban legend du jour” or might many millions of people
be “on to” something? I
am “reality-based” enough to believe that perhaps 40 million hapless
souls were bamboozled by a President who pretends to be a “man of the
people,” a “populist” whose egregious language skills endear him
to anyone who’s ever experienced the anxiety of having to pass a
standardized language, geography, math or civics test in the public
school system in this country, but who nevertheless struts around in
$3,000 suits meticulously hand-sewn by an Italian tailor in Washington,
and who is in reality a millionaire oil-magnate. The Bush-Cheney Machine
has perfected the art of propaganda and probably succeeded in persuading
40 million voters. But the difference between 40 and 60 million is
significant, especially when, according to the preliminary results, the
discrepancy involves about 3.5 million. Millions believe the results are
rigged: that alone must be cause for extensive investigation, if not a
total annulment of the election and a call for a “re-run”.
If,
as one theory in circulation would have it, the farm folk are simply
stricken by the same fear fueled faith in the Führer pathology that
drove millions of Germans and Austrians to fall in line behind Hitler,
then perhaps my friend Esther is correct in saying, “We are doomed.”
But
my logic, my belief and my faith in the “goodness” of the American
people tells me that no one with a shred of compassion who is remotely
aware of the impact our current foreign and domestic policies are having
on real people living real lives could so much as consider continuing on
the country’s current path. Far too many people in this country have
been stricken, directly or indirectly, by the continuous stream of “surgical
strikes” to the domestic sphere. My logic, my belief and my faith tell
me that most Americans are compassionate people and the suffering these
surgical strikes have wrought on the American people—across the board—cannot
have been “trumped” by the so-called “value” issues; if this is
not the case, the American people are not stupid, they are morally
bankrupt. In other words, if W.-Cheney won the election “fair and
square,” the “political capital” the machine now intends to spend
is moral bankruptcy going by the name of the “value-added vote”.
That seems to be the stark reality that the press is afraid to face. My
extensive experience in “faith-based” communities is that they are
anything but indifferent to the suffering of others. Poverty has been a
major concern of every Christian I have ever known. Maybe I know the
wrong kind of Christians, but my experience in these communities ranges
from fundamentalist evangelical denominations to Protestant, Catholic
and Episcopalian—and none of them could have been said to have been
indifferent to poverty and privation. I am myself profoundly religious
and firmly believe in the power of prayer, and I believe my God always
sides with the poor, not with oil-magnates and millionaires. Against
this backdrop, the results of the election do not make sense. Let’s
forget about mounting evidence, forget the dismissals of “votergate”
as an “internet conspiracy theory,” the fact is that millions upon
millions of people do not believe the results. That alone is enough to
merit a thorough investigation and, since the electronic system has
rendered recounts obsolete, a new election. Lilian Friedberg friedberg@chidjembe.com is a writer, translator, editor and performing artist from Chicago, IL. She recently completed her PhD in Germanic Studies at the University of Illinois. Her work has appeared in such venues as American Indian Quarterly, African Studies Quarterly, German Quarterly, New German Critique, Denver Quarterly, Chicago Review, Transition and various other venues. She recently co-edited, with Sander Gilman, a volume of selected essays by German Jewish journalist Henryk Broder, (A Jew in the New Germany, Univ. of Illinois Press). Friedberg is artistic director of the Chicago Djembe Project, an arts organization dedicated to respect and cooperation across cultures and genders through the African djembe drum tradition. WWW.Chidjembe.com NEW!! Add your comments below |
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