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I Need a LOT More Vodka

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Goodness Gracious Meme

23:18 / 03.11.04

Thanks nesh, for reminding me about the feelings of helplessness and fear. Hmmm....

I guess what we can do is let ourselves have our reactions for now, but hold onto the need to do something about this for when we feel we've personally regrouped a little. Allow ourselves a bit of wallowing time, because hopefully it'll get stuff out that we won't carry forward...

For when we start to seriously think/work on what we can do to help those who are horrified by the state of their nation.

23:23 / 03.11.04

That's my story. I'd love to think it was all the fault of the Guardian's Clark County campaign . . . .

I suspect some of us would take at least a little perverse comfort from the notion that anyone in the UK could possibly affect US voting in any way, but I don't think it's so. As the lovely Amy Lame said at yesterday's ICA evening, anyone who reckons the US gives "two shits about what you guys think" is deluding themselves.

23:33 / 03.11.04

Yes, that was definitely a joke. No, this was all home-grown, solid, Midwestern bigotry that needed no help from you "limp-wristed Brits," as I'm sure most of my interlocutors would conceive of you. I'd just love to have some excuse for it, some way of making it less big and scary.

On a more detached, philosophical level, it was kind of amazing to just sit there and absorb all that hatred all day, all that spitefulness and arrogance and genuine ill-will.

A woman left the parking lot and drove past me, shooting darts at me with her eyes. I turned and said to my friend, "Lady, don't get in an accident staring at me, cause I'd hate to have to give CPR to someone who just voted for Bush."

But, you know, if she had gotten in an accident, I would have called the ambulance and done what I could to save her life. I don't really hate these people, in that way of wishing them personal harm anyway. But I'm pretty sure their Christian love stops before it reaches my door.

11:46 / 04.11.04

Sorry to hear you had to put up with that, Alas. Sounds horrid. I guess these things really bring all that latent hate to the surface.

I've been thinking about Wilhem Reich's "Mass Psychology of Facism" again - bit out of date but some good material on the appeal of authority figures and politics of fear. Someone told me they heard the comment "we don't like to change leaders when we're in a war" - bizarre. The only war is the one in Iraq, which someone not a million miles from the White House started. Logic and politics - forever disconnected.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:06 / 04.11.04

Also- the greater conflict, the War Against Terror, is by definition unending. Shrewd.

12:32 / 04.11.04

I saw a very funny antiBush bumper sticker: "Bush / Cheney '04: Don't Change Horsemen Mid- Apocalypse." I told my friend who sat with my for 6 hours about it, and she said, "Unfortunately, it's a little hard to tell whether that's for or against Bush . . ."

13:20 / 04.11.04

Nice one! Ambiguously creepy.

And just to prove my defensive assertions that not all Texans are rabid ditto-head homophobic Bush suuporters, here's a local publication's latest cover:

Austin Chronicle

Interesting take. Not so much with the subtle.

Ex

13:27 / 04.11.04

I don't know if it will stave off feelings of helplessness and dooom, but I would suggest any Barbeloids who haven't already done so join me in writing to their local MP and less local PM and demanding that the UK uncouple its foreign policy from the US.

That said, I'll be doing it over the weekend, as my vocabulary is suddenly overrun with unusable phrases like "warmongering shitbag".

Ex

13:35 / 04.11.04

Sorry, that should have said UK Barbeloids. I couldn't say what a similar beginner's level response would be in other countries; it may include ducking.

14:00 / 04.11.04

Austin's not really part of Texas. It just happens to be located there.

14:32 / 04.11.04

Point, actually. I think we're technically a California colony.

17:31 / 04.11.04

http://www.blackboxvoting.org/

http://www.rense.com/general59/steI.HTM

http://www.buzzflash.com/contributors/04/11/con04482.html

http://www.scoop.co.nz/mason/stories/HL0307/S00147.htm

http://www.counterbias.com/152.html

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/techpolicy/2004-11-03-evote-trouble_x.htm

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2004/11/3/53438/6175

http://bellaciao.org/en/article.php3?id_article=4116

http://www.votergate.tv/

http://www.invisibleballots.com/

inf: shit, tampering with votes is the least of it.
inf: whack user interface!
inf: my brother mark said that the machines in texas
inf: if you selected the democratic slate
inf: then went to the next screen and pressed return
inf: (which apparently was a thing that lots of people did)
inf: you cast your ballot for bush.
-----

Sekhmet, do you know anything about this?

17:42 / 04.11.04

Yep. There were some problems here with some of the wheel-type selector voting machines, although it's still not clear whether it was due to machine error or user error. I've seen reports of this for both straight-ticket Democrats and Republicans, actually.

I voted on one of these things, and I have to say it might very well have been user error. They're odd little devices. If you hit a straight ticket and then accidentally turned the wheel a miniscule amount - bumped it, even - it could easily change your selection for the first section, which was, of course, the presidential race. Or, if you voted a straight ticket and then clicked on a box which had already been selected, thinking you were verifying the vote, it would un-select it and leave you with no vote there at all.

Anyone who wasn't paying close attention or who wasn't knacky with electronics might easily have messed it up.

18:41 / 04.11.04

Are there going to be weird non-vote/cross-vote machinery stories for ever more in all elections stateside?

What is it with you people and the desire to use curiously confusing machinery to cast your votes with? Us Brits find that the humble piece of paper and the simple tool that shall henceforth be known as a pencil still work exceptionally well even after all these years.

Pick up paper.
Mark cross in box of slected candidate.
Put paper in ballot box.

Difficult surely for even the simplest of folk to get wrong.

Bollocksfuckarse by the way. Say goodbye to the right to choose and the Middle Eastern peace process.

Have you read The Misconceiver? You should. It'll show you the direction of your future.

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