|
...hackable, fraud prone voting machines with high service costs, from Bush's buddies at Diebold and ES&S, reminds me of the Firestone Rubber Company war against public transportation in Los Angeles many decades ago. The red car trolleys were thrown away, the tracks they ran on, which extended from downtown to the beach cities, were ripped out, and Los Angeles was committed to transportation by private automobiles, whose costs would eventually skyrocket in astonishing ways--including the cost of slaughtering over 100,000 Iraqis and taking over their country to control their oil--while billions of dollars in public funds were required to construct the L.A. freeway system. Other hidden costs that fell on ordinary people include the ever increasing costs of owning a car and filling it with gasoline, the health and ecological costs of city smog, the cost of car insurance, the cost in lives lost to fast driving, the psychological costs of stressful commutes, the destruction of communities to make way for more cars and more freeways, and the construction of urban and suburban landscapes to benefit cars and not people--creating horrible living conditions for many that include alienation in the suburbs, lack of access to nature in the inner city, lack of community, and lack of security and an increase in crime for all.
All this because Firestone wanted to sell more tires.
It's easy to despair over what we might term human folly. But humans are also learning machines. Born to learn. And we do seem to progress over time. And the very ability to think such a thought as how one might despair over the Firestone Rubber Company's destruction of the red car system indicates that many of us have a special brain function devoted to getting the human race out of trouble when we hit a cul de sac in our evolutionary development.
The destruction of the red car public transportation system in L.A. was not the fault of most humans, but rather of a small category of humans who are driven by greed, and whom the rest of us have not yet learned how to stop from making extremely bad decisions for the rest of us. Ask almost any human being, would you rather live in a concrete jungle gassed with smog, or in a sweet little cottage, whether urban or rural, surrounded with trees and flowers and flowing water and an unpolluted view of the starry sky at night, with friendly neighbors all around, and everything you need within a short walk or trolley ride, most would answer the latter, and also most would wish the more beautiful and human lifestyle for everyone.
But how to prevent the greedy from creating the concrete jungle gassed with smog, and forcing everyone but themselves and their rich friends to live in those conditions, eluded us, in the case of early Los Angeles city planning, despite our living in a democracy. However, democratic processes came into play later, with attempts to clean up the air, lower the speed limit, mitigate some of the impacts of freeways on communities, create safer cars, and with the building of an actual underground train system in L.A. (recently).
Now they want to count our votes electronically with secret, proprietary software controlled by companies with close ties to the Bush Oil Cartel. And those of us who are able to think about this with wisdom and historical perspective--or who even just know about it (not many do)--are faced with a blitzkrieg of raw power not unlike Firestone's political power in L.A. in the 1940s and 1950s. It is the height of human folly to permit these people to control our votes. How could we have permitted this to happen? How could we be contemplating giving them yet more of a lock on our elections?
As I said, it's easy to despair--but we must not despair, even if we can't stop it. At the least, we can plant seeds that will help future Americans and Californians one day reclaim their democracy, just as Angelenos and other Americans have had to struggle for cleaner air, safer cars, public transportation and other mitigations, such as parks and open space.
At the most, we may once and for all expose the greedy and the ways they engineer bad decisions for the rest of us, and find our way toward a democratic means to control what has become global corporate power, with "Firestones" crawling all over the earth and profiting the few at the expense of everything and everyone else. The evils of predatory capitalism have never been so evident--but no one has found a satisfactory solution for balancing the positive aspects of industry and trade with higher human values of equality, justice, fairness, democracy, and spiritual and physical health for all. Many have tried, particularly over the last century, with bloody revolution after bloody revolution. No one has succeeded.
There are some positive signs worldwide of a global trend toward democracy and justice--in spite of the Bush Cartel's every effort to the contrary--and a general desire to join together to save our planetary environment and promote peace--again, despite the horrible behavior of the Bush Oil Cartel, the arms dealers and other criminal syndicates.
As Americans, we are in a unique position to reign in the "Firestones" of the present day. That's WHY they want to control our voting system. (Control via political campaign contributions and media monopolies wasn't enough for them!) In a way, this is heartening--or it's heartening to be aware of it. Our vote is extremely valuable. Maybe that is the seed that we will be able to plant: Our vote is extremely valuable. We've taken it for granted. Not any more.
As for finding a way to get our corporate rulers off our backs, and off the backs of others, and of Mother Earth, and finding the best way to do this--peacefully and permanently--we are a very creative people, born of the revolutionary spirit of 1776, and as human beings, born to learn. We will find a way, and I'm sure that our movement for transparent elections is the first step on that path.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
