WOO-HOO!; or Democracy is Saved; or Ending the Long Silence
It's not as if anyone is still reading this stagnant blog or cares what I write in it, but I must break my long silence to comment on the results of the U.S. elections yesterday.
Anyone who saw me in the Tower District last night already knows my immediate reaction to the election results, which was to scream like an alcoholic football fan. As I explained to my nonpolitical friend on the next barstool, "This is like the Superbowl for me, and my team just won."
My next thought (which I did not scream at the top of my lungs) was "Wow. Democracy really does work, after all."
It's difficult to trust that elections are still free and fair in the U.S.A. these days. Since the 2000 election, one has heard so much about shenanigans in vote counting and disenfranchising voters. Just before the election, Republican officials — notably Karl Rove — were saying that they were confident of a Republican victory, despite all the polls projecting a win for the Democrats. Some reporters were so impressed that they started to suggest that just maybe the Republicans would hold onto Congress.
I wondered where this Republican confidence came from, and I had dark suspicions. All day yesterday, I had a worry in the back of my mind that the Republicans would pull some kind of voter fraud stunt — possibly through hacked voting machines — and would blandly proclaim that, actually, the voters had demanded two more years of total Republican hegemony.
Fortunately, the world doesn't run by my paranoid fantasies.
My apologies to all two of my regular readers for my four months off the airwaves. Coming soon: the epic life saga that explains why I've been silent these four months, plus a new-look relaunch of the blog. Stay tuned.
Anyone who saw me in the Tower District last night already knows my immediate reaction to the election results, which was to scream like an alcoholic football fan. As I explained to my nonpolitical friend on the next barstool, "This is like the Superbowl for me, and my team just won."
My next thought (which I did not scream at the top of my lungs) was "Wow. Democracy really does work, after all."
It's difficult to trust that elections are still free and fair in the U.S.A. these days. Since the 2000 election, one has heard so much about shenanigans in vote counting and disenfranchising voters. Just before the election, Republican officials — notably Karl Rove — were saying that they were confident of a Republican victory, despite all the polls projecting a win for the Democrats. Some reporters were so impressed that they started to suggest that just maybe the Republicans would hold onto Congress.
I wondered where this Republican confidence came from, and I had dark suspicions. All day yesterday, I had a worry in the back of my mind that the Republicans would pull some kind of voter fraud stunt — possibly through hacked voting machines — and would blandly proclaim that, actually, the voters had demanded two more years of total Republican hegemony.
Fortunately, the world doesn't run by my paranoid fantasies.
My apologies to all two of my regular readers for my four months off the airwaves. Coming soon: the epic life saga that explains why I've been silent these four months, plus a new-look relaunch of the blog. Stay tuned.
posted by Jaguar Bennett at 12:33 PM
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