For the millions of Americans who took time away from watching television and reading the big news about the President's new puppy, they will see it as the day that the democratic process was reviled by its own leadership, cast aside in favor of partisan posturing and ignored by the press. This date is the day we became a nation that "saw no evil, heard no evil but spoke only evil. "
January 6, 2005 the debate to uphold Americans' right to vote was belittled by Republicans and abandoned by Democrats. For a small majority of Americans, people like me, it will be this generations "aha" political moment. My earliest political memory is of the Watergate scandal and of the resignation Richard Nixon. The cynicism that gripped Americans led to an apathy among voters from which we have yet to recover. Less than 50% of our citizenry bother to vote and now that the Democrats have shown themselves all but unelectable I fear the numbers will grow even smaller...but will anyone care.
The media covered the story with no probative journalism in evidence and simply accepted the spin put out by the majority party, the Republicans. I have seen no editorial denouncement of the comments made by members of the House and Senate about their own constituents. Comments like "X-Files, conspiracy theorists, etc" designed to marginalize the very real concerns that many of their fellow citizens were in fact denied the right to vote on November 2, 2004. Even the simple act of putting an accurate face on the charges, if only to refute them, would have been better than their real and determined decision to ignore the story outright.
January 6, 2005 the debate to uphold Americans' right to vote was belittled by Republicans and abandoned by Democrats. For a small majority of Americans, people like me, it will be this generations "aha" political moment. My earliest political memory is of the Watergate scandal and of the resignation Richard Nixon. The cynicism that gripped Americans led to an apathy among voters from which we have yet to recover. Less than 50% of our citizenry bother to vote and now that the Democrats have shown themselves all but unelectable I fear the numbers will grow even smaller...but will anyone care.
While Hilary Clinton, John Kerry and Teddy Kennedy stood on the sidelines, only Senator Barbara Boxer had the strength of her convictions to stand up and ask "why". Why is it that the world's leading democracy cannot accurately and with confidence assure that the voting process is valid for all of its citizens. One Senator out of 44.
The media covered the story with no probative journalism in evidence and simply accepted the spin put out by the majority party, the Republicans. I have seen no editorial denouncement of the comments made by members of the House and Senate about their own constituents. Comments like "X-Files, conspiracy theorists, etc" designed to marginalize the very real concerns that many of their fellow citizens were in fact denied the right to vote on November 2, 2004. Even the simple act of putting an accurate face on the charges, if only to refute them, would have been better than their real and determined decision to ignore the story outright.
I cannot imagine what will happen over the next few years if we remain silent or if we speak out. It doesn't appear that anyone is listening!
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