Reply #20: See my post...

[Peace Patriot]

at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x114823

We need to pay attention to, and anticipate, just what phrases, sound bites, half-assed studies, non-factual arguments, hit and run tactics, and the whole bag of propaganda tricks that will be thrown against the overwhelming evidence of election fraud.

I actually feel some compassion for those who can't face this reality--and throw stupid arguments against it. It's hard thing to face that our democracy is hanging by a thread, and that we must act now to save it, or it's gone. Democracy's finest hour--the marvelous repudiation of Bush Inc. that occurred on Nov. 2--has been stolen from us. And it's a pisser to have to go back down to the bottom of the mountain and start pushing that boulder back up again, like Sisyphus.

Back to square one: They own the voting machinery. They had means, motive and opportunity, and they took it. It's as plain as day. And now, we're not just fighting for a fair and just country, we're back fighting for the right to vote!

It's as if 1776 didn't happen (and for black citizens, 1965).

But to put it in a more positive light: We were born to--or consciously chose--the great heritage of American democracy. It has fallen to us to try to save it, in what looks to be its final hour. Our right to vote is first and fundamental, and we must salvage it--by trying to overturn this election; and by focused, state by state efforts to achieve, a) paper trail; b) open source code (Congress isn't going to do this!).

This is a collective burden that history has placed on all living Americans--but especially on those of us who have been the first to see and understand it. We are like the very first organizers of the American Revolution, who saw what most others could not see: that fundamental rights were at issue, and that those fundamental rights must be asserted.

Once people understand what happened to their right to vote--that it is now in the total control of far rightwing Republican partisans--they are fully with us. They get it. They suspected all it along. They KNOW who they and their family members including their disaffected Republican uncles, and most of their neighbors, and all their co-workers, including people who had never voted before, voted for in this election!

So our task is, not to argue with wingers or serial naysayers (except to anticipate their line of baloney), but to get the word out to Kerry voters. Every one of them that I communicate with wants to know, "What can I do?" Because they KNOW deep down already that this election was crap.