Getting a Perspective on History

On this primary election day in Pennsylvania, my mind goes back to the past two Presidential elections and the shenanigans attending them. That there was foul play in both I am quite certain. And my readings tell me that it is unlikely we will have a clean election in 2008 either. Thus, while I very much respect the democratic process in principle, in practice what we have in the U.S. now is not democratic, nor is it much of a process.

And so, while I still believe it is important to vote, it is clear much more needs to be done than simply running candidates and having people show up at the polls. For starters, there must be free air time given to credible candidates. (And, especially early in the process, the meaning of the term "credible" needs to be expansive.) Next, corporations must be barred from participating in any way in the voting process. Third, our voting needs to be brought up to international standards, something which is not now the case.

We are now just beginning to get enough distance from the elections of 2000 and 2004 to begin to put things into perspective. It is important to do so in order to avoid being misled as the "election" of 2008 approaches. For several fine articles with details about the election of 2004 see the hyper-link below.

http://www.legitgov.org/coup_2004.html