by El Zorro Viejo (aka; Jim)

It's my turn to comment upon the recent disaster. What we watched was, I think, a three-fold process which combined the religious conservative right with fear and character assassination. For the last element, if one is a politician, one needs to be able to deal with character assassination. Obviously, George Bush dealt with the attacks on his character; John Kerry should have done the same, but he didn't-more on this later. The major issues identified by exit polls were 1)Morality (which is a code word for homophobic gay bashing, misogynistic attack upon women and flat headed rejection of science, or, anti-gay marriage, pro-life, anti-stem cell research), and 2)terrorism.

Again, to take on the latter, it appears that a significant number of Americans see George Bush as being more capable of keeping them and their children safe from terrorists than Mr. Kerry would be. I don't know where they get this idea. Especially since it was Mr. Bush who has mired us in the war in Iraq where those ladies sons and daughters are being killed at an increasing rate. Mr. Bush, by-the-way, lied about the weapons-of-mass-destruction which were not even remotely close to being developed by the Iraquis. He had a personal vendetta against Saddam, and he used his office to pursue it. To my mind, that is an impeachable offense. Mr. Cheney, and lets not pussy-foot around this, is equally culpable in this deception and is equally, in-my-opinion, a candidate for impeachment.

No, the big thing this election points out is that there are two very distinct world views prevalent in this country. The problem is that they are not really compatible with each other. In fact, for either to be an accurate reflection of reality, the other has to be wrong. One of those world views sees abortion as an abomination because it involves the taking of a potential human life. However, this same world view feels it is alright to take innocent human life by bombing cities, towns and villages of a competing religious system. I am appalled that these people who scream so loudly against abortion in this country have no qualms about killing children (who are already born) in Moslem countries. This rank hypocrasy sticks in my craw and makes almost everything they profess suspect.

There is something else that bothers me about this election. This was an extremely important election, and we proved that by coming out in about 120 million strong to vote. However, the population of this country is now somewhat over 270 million. Take away those ineligible to vote by reason of age or citizenship, and there are still at least as many potential voters who did not vote as actual voters who voted for either candidate. I think it is about time that we make voting mandatory for all citizens 18 years of age or older who are of "sound" mind. If you are on the tax rolls and are not a resident alien (or illegal immigrant) and you do not vote, we should tack 10% surtax onto your next four federal income tax returns. Now I know this will never happen because it is not in the interest of either party to promote something like this. (BTW, it would be easy to implement this: just have a PIN pad at each registration station. When you sign in and the polling place worker gives you your ticket, before you take your ticket/ballot, you punch your SSN into the PIN pad. Then you go vote, anonymously, and you're done. We punch in PIN numbers every day out in the real world. There is no reason such a system would not be feasible.) Anyhow, with 100% of the eligible voters actually voting (and a blank ballot is still a vote...it is just a vote of "present") we would, for the first time, get a truly accurate political picture of the American citizenry.

Now think about this for a minute. Most people who don't vote, stay away from the polls because it is too much trouble to do something that "probably doesn't mean anything anyhow...". However, if they have a sufficient reason (say avoiding a 10% surcharge on their Federal Income Tax for the next four years) they'll make the effort to get their ballot. And, once having gone to that much effort, I think we'd see 70 to 80% of these people would actually vote. To go along with this, I think we need to follow Florida's lead and open the polls for more than one day. I'd like to see the Presidential election spread out over a week, at least. No numbers could be reported until after the last day of polling so early voters could not influence those showing up later in the week.

Ah...it is late and I have a small person arriving in the morning...gotta quit now. More on this later.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License. ©El Zorro Viejo 2002-2005