Consensual Political Intercourse

[Mark]

Ever get the feeling that your government is screwing you? Legally, of course, that's something that it is not allowed to do unless you give your consent. Without your consent it isn't a consensual relationship and becomes rape. So my question is, did you give your consent or not?

"Of course not," my friends tell me indignantly. "Why would we consent to having our own jobs outsourced, our homes repossessed, our children's futures mortgaged to pay for wars based on lies, and allowing big corporations to poison our food?"

"I don't know why you'd consent to things like that," I tell them, "but I'm not so much concerned about your reasoning – I just want to know if you did or did not give your consent."

"No!" they answer angrily. "We did not consent!"

And I hear their echoes everywhere I go.

"We did not consent!" shout the peace activists.

"We did not consent!" scream the 9/11 Truthers.

"We did not consent!" holler the downsized and repossessed, young and old.

I hear them, but I'm not sure I'm buying it. If they didn't consent, how could things like this have happened? What if they actually had consented but are now ashamed of it and are trying to frame a perfectly innocent government for rape?

Now I'm not talking about implied consent, I'm talking about affirmative consent. Not just the failure to resist or to say no, but the act of saying, "Yes! I want it! Screw me! Take me for everything I've got! I'm yours!"

You see, our government may be aggressive abroad, but here at home it is not a rapist. It always asks you clearly and politely if you want to be screwed. And the process in which it asks is called the electoral system. Every four years our government asks us if we want to be screwed, and every four years we say yes. It even holds off-year elections every two years, and in most places citizens are asked to give their consent, at least to being screwed by state and local government, every year or several times a year.

"But we didn't say yes," people tell me. "We voted no!"

Ah, but we have secret vote counting in this country, so how can you prove that you said no? When votes are counted in secret is it the same as when intercourse takes place behind closed doors. It's your word against theirs and they say that you said yes.

"No," they tell me, "it so happens that the whole thing was caught on videotape and we can prove that we said no." And sure enough, there are CD ROMS with the poll tapes, the register books, and the actual ballots, proving that the citizens did not consent. But alas, the statute of limitations has run out and it is much too late to file charges now. "Why didn't you bring this evidence forward at the time?" I ask.

"Because it was withheld from us," they whine. "The government wouldn't let us have the proof until we'd spent years in court forcing them to release the records."

"You're telling me," I say, "that you had a few drinks with them, went up to their room, they asked you politely if you wanted to get screwed, and you said no, clearly and distinctly, but that they raped you anyway, and that when you tried to get the tapes to prove it, they wouldn't give them to you until it was too late for you to file charges?"

"Uh," they respond, "we thought that as long as there was a verifiable record of what happened, it would be perfectly safe."

If I hadn't seen the evidence with my own eyes, I don't think I'd believe that there had been any rape. People that dumb are so easily seduced that it isn't usually necessary to rape them. But I have seen the evidence and they were indeed raped.

In 2000 the people clearly said no, but the Supreme Court didn't consider the evidence (the vote count, the illegal voter purges, the voter suppression, and the rigged ballots and voting machines) to be admissible, so an unelected President was installed against the express will of the people. That's rape. But by the time the government released the evidence, it was too late to do anything about it.

In 2004 the people again clearly said no, but this time the government had become so adept at withholding the evidence that Supreme Court intervention wasn't necessary. Once again the evidence was withheld and the unelected President was installed for a second term. And once again by the time the people were able to prove they'd been raped, the statute of limitations had run out and the damage could not be repaired..

So now we are approaching the 2008 election. The same crooked elections officials are in control. The same secret vote counting machines will be used. Once more the government will ask you politely if you want to get screwed, and once more you will shmooze with them, have a few drinks together, and then go into their voting booth and say no. And once again you are going to get raped and be unable to prove it until it is much too late to do anything about it.

And yet people still berate me when I suggest that they not go to the polls this time.

"If we don't vote, we can't complain," they say.

What good does complaining do?

"If we don't vote, the bad guys will win," they tell me.

Did the good guys win when they did vote?

"It's our civic duty and responsibility to vote," they claim.

In rigged elections with secret vote counts? Give me a break!

"This time it might be different," they say.

Well, the first time somebody tells me that they've been raped, I'm inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. But I will ask how it happened and if it seems to me that they were engaging in risky behavior, I'll suggest that they be more careful in the future.

The second time that somebody tells me they've been raped, and they explain that it happened in the exact same way because they ignored my advice, I begin to feel that they are at least partially to blame themselves.

But when it happens a third time, I have no more sympathy. Unless you enjoyed it the first two times, you wouldn't allow it to happen a third time. That's not rape – that's consensual political intercourse, so don't come crying to me.

-----------------------
The Evidence:

Witness to a Crime: A Citizens' Audit of an American Election by Richard Hayes Phillips (Hardcover with CD ROM, Canterbury Press, March 2008)

How the GOP Stole America's 2004 Election & Is Rigging 2008 by Bob Fitrakis and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - Sep 21, 2005)

What Happened in Ohio: A Documentary Record of Theft and Fraud in the 2004 Election by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman

Did George W. Bush Steal America's 2004 Election? by Bob Fitrakis, Steve Rosenfeld, and Harvey Wasserman (Paperback - May 30, 2005)

Was the 2004 Presidential Election Stolen?: Exit Polls, Election Fraud, and the Official Count by Steve Freeman and Joel Bleifuss (Paperback - Jun 19, 2006)

HACKED! High Tech Election Theft in America - 11 Experts Expose the Truth by Abbe Waldman Delozier and Vickie Karp (Paperback - Sep 5, 2006)

Supreme Injustice: How the High Court Hijacked Election 2000 by Alan M. Dershowitz (Hardcover - 2001)

A Badly Flawed Election: Debating Bush V. Gore, the Supreme Court, and American Democracy by Ronald Dworkin (Hardcover - Sep 2002)


Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and The Decision That Made George W. Bush President by Renata Adler (Paperback - Jul 2004)

Fooled Again: The Real Case for Electoral Reform by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - Jun 2007)

Loser Take All: Election Fraud and The Subversion of Democracy, 20002008 by Mark Crispin Miller (Paperback - April 1, 2008)

Armed Madhouse: Who's Afraid of Osama Wolf?, The Best Legal Whorehouse in Texas, The Scheme to Steal Election '08, No Child's Behind Left, and Other Investigations by Greg Palast (Paperback - Apr, 2007)

[CW Christian]

9-13-08
Just signed up.

So I don't vote, and I preserve my personal integrity that, "I don't wish to be screwn, thank you very much". Therefore, I won't come crying to you if/when the election gets stolen again, but I'm not any better off am I? How will I be better off?

Besides spilling some blood, that's illegal, too, by the way--what do you advocate? What is that effective recourse to intercourse? How do we get from screwn to empowerment? And how does that happen before the raveners despoil all of this country?

[Mark]

Tyrannical governments hold elections so that they can claim to have been democratically elected and to have the support of the people.

It was an election boycott in South Africa that discredited the Apartheid regime, and led to the decriminalization of the ANC, the release from prison of Nelson Mandela, and the beginning of free, fair, open, honest elections in that country. Once it was clear that the government did not have the support of the people, governments like the U.S. had no further excuse for supporting the Apartheid regime, as it was clearly not a democratically elected government with the support of the people.

As long as people continue to vote, the elections can be stolen and the government can claim legitimacy. An election boycott is the only nonviolent way to delegitimize a tyrannical government that has been proven to be effective.

Glad to see you here, CW. Explore the site and you'll find much more about our government, how elections work, and reasons for an election boycott.

The raveners have already driven this country deeply into debt, and are responsible for things like torture, wars of aggression, the destruction of the environment, wrecking our economy, the loss of civil rights, and much more. We get to empowerment when we stop delegating our power and take it back.

Voting is delegating your power to others whom you cannot hold responsible. Click on "view all discussions" and you'll find a lot more articles. If you are interested in greater detail, you might want to also read The Prevailing Theory with all the included links.

Enjoy!

--Mark

[Mark]

Update:

Some have concluded that the solution is to gather the evidence and file lawsuits as quickly as possible after the election, perhaps even during or before the election.

Unfortunately that doesn't work. The Constitution, Article 1, Section 5, made Congress, not the courts, the sole judge of the elections, returns, and qualifications of its members. So as soon as a lawsuit is filed, Congress can swear a candidate into office and once they are sworn in, no matter how much indisputable evidence you have that they weren't elected, only Congress itself can remove them from office.

The President can't be sworn in until later, but challenges involving a Presidential election go directly to the Supreme Court, the people who stole the 2000 election. It would be foolish in the extreme to expect them to rule in an impartial nonpartisan manner. At the very least, they could refuse to hear the case or delay it until after the "President" has been sworn in, after which sole jurisdiction passes to Congress again.

[Hoop]

You could take a stand CW.
You'll need to be of the frame of mind where you have had enough, and have the courage to stand behind your convictions.. regardless of the repercussions.
Don't vote (obviously)
Stop paying the federal income tax on your wages, don't recognize them in any way.
They are an illusion that the ignorant (no offense intended) populace props up (legitimizes.)

[Mark]

I really should get around to updating this essay. There are a lot of people who think that the 2008 election was legitimate, even though the only two candidates on the ballot with any chance of winning the presidency were both pro-bailout and both in favor of increasing the defense budget.

Well, they're paying to their foolishness and will continue to pay. There's no need to rig the voting machines if you can ensure beforehand that the only candidates with a chance of winning have similar agendas with regard to fiscal policy. Whichever one wins, the American people get screwed again.

[David Sugar]

Voting in first past the post/winner take all electoral systems is even at it's "best" a rigged game to assure the best organized (as in so often best funded) minority is able to achieve a political monopoly. Not all electoral systems are necessarily as rigged, but all are actually undemocratic, for they are not about giving some voice to people but rather for empowering a political class.

To me the only model of democratic government that is actually possible to define as such is participatory democratic government, that is a government executed by the people (well, the people executing the government is often a necessity otherwise ;).

[joe rossini]

Osama, pardon, Obama is in Dresden, elections are nearing. My partner asks me, "duh, who should I vote for?"

My reply; IF you choose to participate in the elections, vote for the one that best represents your ideals.

I had to assit.

http://die-linke.de/politik/international/english_pages/

IF a party, then this party, today.

[Mark]

Elections aren't as bad in Germany as in the U.S., Rossi. You have hand-counted paper ballots with full citizen oversight of the counting process, and you have proportional representation.

[joe rossini]

...and you have full blown fascist idiots like Hesse's Minister President Roland Koch who would oh so love to make life much easier on everybody by installing the same kinda voting machines as our friends in America have. That recent Federal Court ruling is as temporary as a tree. Let's hope it turns out to be a big old oak.