I have ZERO confidence that my ballot is being counted correct by the machines tabulating the ballots. I have ZERO confidence that there are not boxes full of pre-marked ballots waiting in someone’s trunk to be produced if the tally starts going the wrong way. I have ZERO confidence that there is any way to audit the vote totals and confirm that they are a reasonable reflection of the intent of the ballots the voters filled out. I have ZERO confidence that only legally permissible voters are casting ballots. I have ZERO confidence that only legal voters ballots are counted.
So why do I vote? Just doing my part in making the margin of victory larger than the margin of fraud. If the nation ever has to resort to the fourth box of democracy, I can sleep comfortably at night knowing I did my level best to use the first three effectively, and the bastards had it coming.
Rolf
October 25, 2016
Comment to Quote of the day—Bob Woodward
[I have nothing to add.—Joe]
That seems fairly reasonable.
The bastards have it coming anyway though, of course. And let’s be very clear about this; by bastards I mean authoritarians, the ones standing in the way of human liberty as understood by the American founders. The usurpers.
A common criminal does not get a free pass for having to failed to completely and totally achieve his goals. If a street gang tries to take over a town, they’re not let off because they only managed to take over half the town. A bank robber does not get a free pass because his plan to rob six banks resulted in the partially successful robbery of only one.
The attempt to take over a whole country should carry a vastly more severe penalty than the attempt to rob a bank or take over a city. Whether they FULLY succeed or not has nothing to do with the severity of the crime.
Also it is clear that the bastards actually want us to punch back.
They are at this time pretty confident, and, looking only at the surface of things, they should be. No one’s come close to stopping them in the more than one hundred years of the Progressive movement. As a result of that, they now pretty much own all the infrastructure already.
By the way; my vote can never count. That is because I favor liberty, and liberty has not been on the ballot so far as I can remember. If I’m only being given choices between varying degrees, or flavors, of anti-constitutional anti-Americanism, then all of my votes, for all my life, were stolen before I was born.
If there were an option on every ballot for “Liberty”, which would by definition reject everything else, and everyone else, on practically every ballot, I wonder; how often would it win elections if elections were free of fraud? And if we’re not being given that choice, then every election is, by definition, a fraud.
“If they can get us asking the wrong questions, then they don’t have to worry about the answers”. I saw that someplace, but I don’t remember where. It works wonderfully on ballots though, doesn’t it? If they can get us fighting and obsessing over the candidates and initiatives, all of which further their authoritarian goals, then they won’t have to mess with the ballots during the election. Make sure Liberty doesn’t make it on the ballot in the first place, and Liberty has lost the election before a single vote is cast.
Let us argue over the nature of our slave masters then, and with passion!
The problem, at least part of it, is that many people actually don’t favor liberty. They want easy living. they want free stuff. They want welfare. They are cargo-cultists that do not want, like, or understand what a unique thing a high-trust, long time-preference, liberty-oriented nation is. They only see the fruits of such a thing, and think it will magically continue even if they do nothing to help it, and much to harm it. They are like fleas thinking the dog will live forever, regardless of how many flees there are. It’s just magic.
It’s hard to get my brain around the way some people think. It’s like they are space-aliens. I think this vox day /stefan molyneux interview lays out the weirdness of the left-wing mindset fairly well, talking about the r/k reproductive strategies and the consequences of such.
Meanwhile, a 5-time deported illegal immigrant causes a 61 million dollar forest fire because of “sanctuary city” laws in CA.
Not everyone believes in the rule of law, and they think open borders are a good thing. I think we need a more public democracy, with open ballots. People that vote in favor of something have to pay for it. Cast a ballot with your name and finger-prints for or against “sanctuary laws”. You will share the bill for any problems or costs associated with illegal immigrants if you favor such a law. It might cut down on the stupid a bit.
These things, and the left mindset you mentioned above, did not happen willy nilly. They didn’t grow up to this level all out of an up-swelling of grass roots activity. They have been actively fomented over generations, and it’s been accelerated over the last eight years. There are people behind it. Mostly those people are Democrats and their media cronies, and the communist public education unions. Community organizers.
As a society we’ve stood by and watched it happening, chalking it up, in a shameful state of denial, to “stupidity” and “incompetence” and so on. We’ve been fools.
No, young Grasshopper; the leftist movement knows exactly what it’s doing. They’re decades ahead of us. We’re the idiots and the incompetents. We’re so damned stupid we keep trying to convince them that they’re wrong! We’re like the rape victim pleading with the rapist; “But what you’re doing is immoral!” He laughs out loud, with great pleasure, hearing us say dumb shit like that. It proves we’re utterly unwilling to face the reality of the situation, and as such we’re not even close to the point where we face the decision to do anything about it.
These Hillary scandals for example; that fact that she’s a confirmed criminal? The only reason anyone on the left will be made uncomfortable about that is because it might harm her chances. If it weren’t being discussed every day, and they knew about it and we didn’t, they’d love her for it. She’s getting away with it, and THAT’S the attraction!
I’ve said many times in many different ways for several years now; both sides (and there are only two) in this conflict see themselves as yearning for freedom. One wants the freedom from wrong, to do right, and the other side wants the freedom from right, to do wrong. Hillary is being “free” and her supporters, if anything, are jealous. They want to be just as “free” as Hillary. They want the period of rage and plunder that’s been promised to them by their masters.
It’s no different than a petty street gang, but it’s on a national scale. My point is that street gangs and authoritarian government systems both need to recruit, and we’ve lived through generations of recruiting programs. We’ve paid for them.
But don’t fall for the program that’s designed to make you feel alone, or in a pathetic minority. We’ve been over this subject before. It’s one of the standard tricks. And don’t forget the concept of the three percent. One man can make a difference for the better, for that matter.
So don’t obsess on the numbers at all. We don’t know the numbers, for one thing, because we’re being lied to constantly, and the numbers don’t much matter anyway.
There is no third thing. Either our government is duly elected OR there has been an unlawful subversion of the constitution, we have witnessed an overthrow America, and we are at war. You can either face it or wait for the war to catch you from behind. There is no third way.
Pretty much, but I wonder if we’re talking about the same war. Mainly the war is in, and over, our minds. Yours and mine. That’s the territory that’s being contested. Our country’s borders, for example, are but allegories of such, the symptoms of the disease (dis ease).
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