Democracy, American Style (2)

Democracy, American Style (Part Two)
November 28, 2000

Hail to the Thief

On Sunday, the Florida State announced George W Bush the winner of its 25 Electoral College Votes in Presidential Election confirming his 43rd presidency in the United States.
The trouble is that few people, especially around the world, believe George has earned his presidency in fair, honest, and rightful manner, no matter politics run in Machiavellian fashion in one way or another.
There does not seem to have a façade of democracy in the US election, that majority in people’s will does not guarantee the outcome of its will manifested rightfully and surrenders to the whims of a pack of mandarins and judges who were appointed through the strict guideline of party loyalty.

There are some historical facts that this election result defies the principles of democracy:
1. Gore won more popular votes than Bush by over 330,000 margin nationwide.
2. Gore won over 50 million votes only the second US presidential candidate ever to reach that figure; Ronal Reagan won 54,455,000 votes in his re-election bid in 1984.
3. Gore won over 50 million votes the first candidate to garner it as a non-incumbent president; Ronald Reagan received 43,901,000 votes in his first run for Presidency as a California Governor, fewer than 6 million votes Gore got.
4. Gore’s tally exceeded the 1988 vote counts of 47,946,000, which elected then-Vice President George H.W. Bush to the White House, by more than 2 million votes.
5. Gore surpassed margins gained by the landslide victories of past incumbent presidents: Lyndon Johnson’s 42,825,000 votes in 1964 and Richard Nixon’s 46,740,000 in 1972.
6. Gore got more votes than his boss Bill Clinton: 44,908,000 in 1992 and 45,590,000 in 1996

Gore becomes the first popular-vote winner to have lost the Presidency since Grover Cleveland in 1888 got more votes than Benjamin Harrison but lost in the Electoral College, and Gore lost the swing votes of 25 Florida votes in a paper-thin margin of 537 votes, 0.0000895 percent of 6 million votes cast by Floridians.
Considering that every poll has the margin of error, 4 percent, winning the presidency within the error margin would surely make George a booby prize winner, being humbled, squeamish, and extremely nauseated in his muddy puddle
However, cocky George has a gall to stand in front of TV camera, reading the statement from a TelePrompTer that democracy worked perfectly by electing him a president, and he has shown his ruthlessness sending his gasping running mate Dick Cheney to the press conference for public relation, who was released from the heart surgery only couples of days ago. (Dick panted, gurgled and sweated profusely in a live broadcast, and George must have pissed his pant in fear of Dick might faint in front of cameras.)

Governor Malaprop did not have the luxury of making his notorious malapropism in live press conference and took no questions from the unruly pack of reporters hastily retreating to the backroom. (His last malapropism so far was: “They misunderestimated me” at Bentonville, Arkansas on November 6. Please refers to my article: Gov. Malaprop goes to the White House).
When the putative leader of the world democracy could not speak his own language in proper grammatical context (he even combines the plural noun with singular verb, such as our priorities is…or our families is…), the whole world judge Americans making fool of themselves electing an intellectual void to the presidency.
Americans have been lecturing the world on the greatness, fairness, and transparency of their system, sending observers and military polices around the globe to dictate a democracy of American style, a worthy of banana republic, and people begin to wonder about the fate of “free world” under an airhead leadership of the unipolar super power.

As widely predicted, Americans have to legitimize, glamorize, and revitalize their limping democracy through the “civilized” process of judicial adjudication, where nine jurists sit and decide who the tenant of the White House is, and Americans are proud of their tentative but final arbiters as a group of fair, enlightened, and judicious jurists before the Second Coming of their God.

But, Wait a minute.

Who are these nine jurists and how did they get swivel-leather-chairs on the bench? Would their judgement naturally, legally, or whatever have better, lofty, or right credentials than other jurists, scholars, or Tom, Dick and Harry?
Considering nine votes make or break the will of people, would the nine votes make better choice than 100 million votes?
Is there any margin of error in jurists’ decision, if, as usual, the judgement were done by 5 to 4 votes?
What is the difference between the military government of Haiti that was run by a self-appointed junta of several generals and colonels and the “democratic” government of USA that was awarded, legitimized, sanctioned by the nine jurists who were appointed through the scrutiny and consideration of the same system?
Could the will of people have been manifested amply, rightly, and transparently by the nine jurists?

In ancient Athens in Greece where democracy flourished, people gathered in the public square to debate, argue, and decide their fates directly by vote of majority, and this is the essence and beauty of democracy that the representative democracy can hardly attain its goal.
Some apologists may argue that the judicial adjudication is the second best after the God’s will and democracy can not be deferred indefinitely and expediency is necessary to save the Republic…a superb logic of American myopia. (In US prisons, Americans hold their compatriots of over two millions spending $30,000 per person per annum, while it costs only one-third to rehabilitate them, majority of convicts are non-violent drug addicts.)
For non-American denizens on the earth, it doesn’t matter who the winner is, because he would treat the rest of the globe as if he were an absentee landlord, exploit, destroy, and maim the atmosphere for own sake, as if he lives on the other planet.