"LET
US IN!"
It
all started with what Paul Gigot calls the "bourgeois riot"
in Dade County, Florida, where the election canvassing board
(1 Democrat, 2 independents) decided not to do a recount in
spite of heavy pressure from the Gore-istas. This action reversed
the canvassers earlier decision – taken after the Florida
Supreme Court ruling imposing a November 26 deadline –
to violate Florida law by counting only the disputed ballots
(the law demands a total recount). The key point was that
they resolved to do this out of the public eye, holed up in
a back room of the Dade County administration building. Florida
law requires public access. If this election was going to
be stolen, then the dirty deed had to be done under cover
of darkness. As Chris Matthews reported on MSNBC's Hardball,
the Dade County Democrats were never all that enthusiastic
about a recount, and only agreed to conduct one with great
reluctance. The position of the board of canvassers had been
equivocal from the beginning: they shifted their stance at
least once before finally deciding to do a partial recount
in virtual seclusion. This was too much for the Republicans,
who rose up and conducted a sit-in at the Dade County election
offices, shouting and pounding on the door, all the while
chanting: "Stop the election fraud!" and "Let us in!
Let us in!"
MORONS,
OXY AND OTHERWISE
The
storm of protest that followed was remarkable as a political
and ideological bellwether, a look inside the evolving mentality
of our era's dominant ideology, authoritarian liberalism –
an oxymoron for a moronic age. After assuring us that both
he and Al Gore want only to ensure a result that "honors our
Constitution" and admonishing us that "the time for electioneering
is long past," Joe Lieberman sonorously
intoned that
"I
am deeply disappointed by reports of orchestrated demonstrations
on Wednesday inside a state building, a government building,
in Miami-Dade County, not just to express a point of view,
but to disrupt and halt the counting of ballots. These demonstrations
were clearly designed to intimidate and to prevent a simple
count of votes from going forward. Shortly afterwards, one
of the commissioners said, and I quote, 'We would be up there
now counting,' end quote, if it weren't for those objections.
He then joined his colleagues in deciding to give up the effort
to count the ballots altogether. This is a time to honor the
rule of law, not surrender to the rule of the mob."
ORCHESTRA
WITHOUT A CONDUCTOR
What,
exactly, is the meaning of the word "orchestrated" as a modifier
in this regard? Every demonstration is orchestrated,
by someone, or some core group of people. To allow only unorchestrated
demonstrations would be somewhat disingenuous, to say the
least. ABC
News flat-out declared that the Dade County protests and
anti-coup protests throughout Florida were the work of "paid
Republican operatives" operating out of a mobile home. The
New York Times attributed the turnout to the influence
of Cuban-American Radio Mambi. As usual, the liberal media
completely missed the real story, which is that a good part
of the national reaction to the Gore coup was indeed spontaneous,
entirely unconnected to the regular Republican party apparatus,
and was organized largely over the Internet by a virtual community
of conservative and libertarian activists. It is, in large
part, due to the cyber-activist angle of this story that the
Old Media missed it.
UNDER
THE RADAR
These
guys hate the Internet, they hate conservatives, and could
care less that a virtual community of right-wing activists
is burgeoning in cyberspace. FreeRepublic.com
has over 25,000 registered users, and the numbers are
climbing: if lazy reporters had only bothered to do a little
research, they would have discovered that the Florida protests
were publicized and organized
over the Internet by conservative activists and, in their
conception and execution, were as close to the ideal of "spontaneity"
as it is possible to get. Not only in Florida, but all over
the nation, tens of thousands of protesters are rallying against
the Gore coup, and the core organizers and activists were
not RNC "paid operatives" but entirely (and sadly) unpaid
"Freepers" (as the denizens of FreeRepublic.com call themselves),
a coalition of Internet-connected independent activists operating
beneath the radar of both the media and the Democrats. (Or
do I repeat myself?) The influence of FreeRepublic activists
on the protests was clearly visible with the omnipresence
of the by-now-famous "Sore-Loserman"
logo designed by the talented Freeper, "Registered," and now
featured on the front page
of FreeRepublic.com. Downloaded by thousands of Freepers
and sympathizers all over the country, the "Sore-Loserman"
graphic is emblematic of the rising fight-back against the
coup-plotters and their media shills.
A
LIKELY STORY
Speaking
of media shills, the New York Times informs that "several
people were trampled, punched or kicked when protesters tried
to rush the doors outside the office of the Miami-Dade supervisors
of elections" and that "Sheriff's deputies restored order."
This is cited by Lieberman as proof that the protesters were
a "violent mob." But the Times report does not say
who was kicked and punched: isn't it just as likely
that it was largely the protesters themselves who bore the
brunt of the bruises, especially if deputies were deployed
to "restore order"? In any case, no one was arrested, although
there were plenty of officers on the scene, and the omnipresent
TV cameras recorded no violence of any kind – only the
local Democratic party chairman being chased down the hall
by security guards and deputies, when it was discovered that
he had made off with what was thought to be a ballot. (It
turned out to have been a sample ballot, but who, at this
point, wouldn't believe that he was up to no good?)
MAY
YOU LIVE IN INTERESTING TIMES
Lieberman
is echoed by the frothy-mouthed Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-New York),
who blusters that "the whiff of fascism is in the air." But
what we're catching a whiff of is not fascism – at least,
not on the part of the protesters – but of a particularly
foul variety of sanctimonious bull-sh*t with positively evil-smelling
implications. What is afoot here is an attempt to stifle and
effectively discredit all protest against the Gore coup, both
before and after the fact. It is, furthermore, an attempt
to push such protest to the brink of legality. Them's strong
words, but the proof is that Lieberman and a group of Democratic
congressmen are demanding
a Justice Department investigation into the Miami-Dade
protest. These protests, we are told by Lieberman and his
amen corner, are "un-American." What's next, a revival of
the congressional Committee on Un-American Activities? Covert
operations to infiltrate, disrupt, and destroy anti-Gore protest
organizations, as in the days of the FBI's infamous Cointelpro
operation? At this point, you have to believe that they're
making provisions of some sort to keep power once they gain
the White House: a fantastic and utterly shocking charge,
but we are living, as my Chinese fortune cookie said the other
day, in interesting times.
THE
SOUND OF JACKBOOTS
Lieberman
complains that the Dade County board of election canvassers
had a change of heart and abandoned the recount in response
to "objections" – a curious word to use in this context.
Or, maybe, not so curious: In the world Gore and Lieberman
are building for us, objections to the edicts of our rulers
will be overruled as out of order if not violently impertinent.
This is the true face of America's illiberal liberals, once
the masks are off: authoritarianism, pure and simple. Lieberman's
outrageous characterization of the protesters as "violent"
defines speech and protest as acts of intimidation, clearly
part of a legal strategy by Democrats who plan on charging
that the "civil rights" of dimpled chads were being violated.
If this is how they are acting now, just imagine how the Gore-istas
will be once they get into power. I shudder at the very thought
of it, and you should too.
TESTIMONY
OF THE CANVASSERS
For
their part, the three canvassers who voted against the recount
deny being intimidated and insist that the reason for their
reversal was the logistics of complying with the Supreme Court-mandated
deadline of November 26. The Los Angeles Times reports
David Leahy, Miami's chief election official, as saying: "I
was not intimidated by that protest" because "I saw it for
what it was" – a justified protest against an unjust
and illegal decision to recount only a portion of the ballots
in secret.. "These were individuals who were downstairs as
observers, and they were unhappy with the board's decision
[to move]," said Leahy to the Times. "To me, that was
understandable, and the news media had the same concern. They
protested as well." Leahy denies that there was any real threat
to his office from the vocal crowd of protesters – although
one receptionist did run shrieking from her desk. "If I had
viewed it as an ugly mob trying to destroy something, I would
have been concerned," said Leahy, and the other canvassers
agree. That won't stop the major media from spreading lies,
smearing the protesters, and characterizing any and all opposition
to the Gore coup as coming from partisan Republicans led by
"paid operatives." However, if there is any justice in this
world, Leahy's testimony and that of the other canvassers
should settle the question once and for all.
YUGOSLAVIA
AND AMERICA: THE OMINOUS PARALLELS
The
parallels between the Yugoslav and American succession crises
are numerous, and instructive. Just as Milosevic and his supporters
sought to portray their "Federal Election Commission" as the
fountainhead of fair-mindedness, so the Democrats, with equal
credibility, have sought to portray their party-controlled
election canvassing boards in Broward and Palm Beach as models
of impartiality. The Yugoslav election commission used every
sort of bureaucratic maneuver to delay the final result, hoping
to wear down the opposition with a second round: in the US,
the Bushies have been similarly forced to fight a second round,
with Democrat chieftain William Daley declaring the day after
the election that "the campaign continues." When the Yugoslavs
had finally had enough of Milosevic's election fraud, and
went out into the streets, the state-controlled organs of
news and opinion went on the offensive, smearing the Yugoslav
Democratic Opposition as "terrorists," "thugs," "hooligans,"
and "paid operatives to the West" – a conspiracy theory
that, in form if not in its particulars, is strikingly reflected
in the Lieberman-Nadler-ABC thesis. Just as the Democrats
threaten to bring in Janet Reno and her Justice Department,
using the specter of legal action to crush legitimate protest,
so Milosevic employed a similarly ominous threat to crack
down on the Opposition, threatening to bring in the police,
the army, and certain extralegal units. It was only the collapse
of support for Milosevic in the military that made this option
impossible for the Serbian strongman. If I were Gore, and
managed to steal into the White House after suppressing the
votes of US soldiers stationed overseas, in a real crisis
– say, Republican "mobs" advancing on the White House
– I wouldn't count on the loyalty of the military as
a given. In any case, we can only hope that the parallels
with Yugoslavia will hold, and that in the end, Gore, like
Milosevic, will concede.
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