This is the way the Republic ends?

Let's review some of the events of this extraordinary week, in which serious threats to American democracy were revealed. They bear a striking resemblance to the growing evidence of the climate crisis. Both conclusions come from data accruing over time, suddenly exploding in terms of quantity and threat, so quickly that it is difficult keeping up with each revelation.

What's going on politically now can be summarized in this way: if this is not an ongoing campaign to establish a dictatorship, we are headed there anyway.There were two sets of revelations. The first pertains to controlling dissent through intimidation, harrassment, disinformation and spying, though the major issue of civil liberties and the important issue of wasted resources applied to the wrong problem are also involved.

Mid-week it was revealed that the Pentagon has been spying on the activities of various antiwar groups, including Quakers, and designating their lawful and constitutionally protected activities---especially protests against deceptive military recruiting-- as terrorist threats.Late in the week there were reports of repeated instances of spying on hundreds and probably thousands of individuals within the U.S. authorized by the White House---but not by any law.

These revelations created a furor in Congress, and added to other civil liberties concerns, and concerns about government gone wild and going after the wrong targets while neglecting quite obviously necessary matters to protect the public (like ensuring that first responders can communicate), led to the U.S. Senate refusing to renew and extend the Patriot Act. The Act extends provisions that allow for unwarranted intrusions, and mask them in secrecy.

The political firestorm resulting from these revelations forced the White House to gamble on becoming highly aggressive. Yes, said the President in a radio address Saturday, I authorized the spying, to protect the American people, and if you are against it, or against the Patriot Act, then you are making it easy for terrorists to strike again.It's a ploy that worked before. However, when put in context of related news this week and earlier, it may be the most important moment so far in Bushcorps attempt to overrride democracy and accelerate its own reign of terror against political dissent and opposition. If American public opinion doesn't continue to bang away at Bush's credibility, this will be a Republic we can't keep, after barely a wimper.

These were only the most publicized of such revelations. Proposals to reorganize Homeland Security to perform domestic spying and to use Transportation Department operatives to spy on Americans in the transit system were exposed by E Pluribus Media.

In addition to the abuses to peace groups revealed this week, there was the story of a college student who was visited by federal agents because he requested Mao's Little Red Book through an interlibrary loan system for a political science paper.

Such acts of government terrorism are familiar to anyone who was part of various movements in the 1960s---for peace, Civil Rights or Native American rights, for example--as well as to anyone familiar with the Red-Baiting 50s. Computers and the Internet add a new patina, as well as new ease for tracking and intrusion.

Whether by evil intent or simply misguided priorities, once the bureaucracies involved get these marching orders, abuses are automatic and fully predictable. Spying is done, reports are generated because the more threats, the more funding, and the more power.

All of this, plus earlier proposals for giving the military more power domestically, is only possible if Americans are both cowardly and stupid enough to fall for the fear mongering again.

There is however a new and even more insidious element to this undermining of democracy, if not blatant attempt to establish a one-party dictatorship. This is the activity that could shake this nation to its foundations: the growing evidence that the sanctity of voting has been violated, that voting results have been falsified, and that the result has been the election of George Bush as president, in 2000 if not also in 2004. And the continuing operations and plans to make this secret theft of democracy permanent.

The GAO report last month was sobering---so sobering, that the mainstream media is in major denial. The collection of evidence of vote-tampering, etc. continues, last week centering on the issue of electronic voting machines, specifically those of Diebold.After years of accusations, fragmentary and anecdotal evidence, including the views of insiders, a test was conducted last week in Florida which conclusively proved that a hacker could manipulate Diebold machines from a remote location to change the votes, and it would be undetected.

Not only the results of the test but its pattern convinced a Florida election official to conclude that votes in his county were changed in the 2000 election, enough to change the outcome in the state and then in the nation. Diebold protested the test itself, but not the facts of the test's outcome.In 2004 Diebold's president guaranteed that Bush would win the election.

Last week it was widely publicized that Diebold is being sued by some of its own stockholders for withholding information from them, including the vulnerabilties of its voting machines. Not as widely reported, while Diebold was competing in several states to install their machines for future elections, their officials continued making contributions to Republican politicians, even after these contributions were supposedly halted.

That Republicans continue to plan staying in office by manipulating elections was made clear by the Bush nomination to the Federal Elections Commission of a man notorious for concocting and carrying out voter suppression schemes, including the haphazard listing of Florida felons in 2000 that robbed thousands of legitimate voters of their voting rights.

These machines are still scheduled to be used in the 2006 elections in a number of states, some of which succumbed to Diebold and Republican pressure last week to approve them. Except for Democrats on the Congressional Black Caucus, and Senator Kerry's quiet observation that he lost every single precinct in New Mexico that used touch-screen voting machines, regardless of whether it was a Republican or Democratic area, the political consequences of a loss of public confidence in the vote has perhaps made Democrats very hesitant to strongly raise this issue.
They have reason to be afraid, for a crisis of confidence could be exploited by Bushcorps, to install the dictatorship it seems to be preparing on all fronts.