Mark Crispin Miller: Stolen Elections Explain Radical Agenda

Synopsis and commentary by Ronald Bleier



In early September 2006 Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of culture and communications at New York University, the author of Fooled Again: How the Right Stole 2004 Election & Why They’ll Steal the Next One Too (2005), spoke briefly as part of a presentation conducted by the World Can’t Wait organization in connection with their October 5 day of protest.


Miller began by asserting that the government of George W. Bush has never been elected, that they have come to office through stolen elections. He explained that they have to steal elections because their agenda is so extreme that they wouldn’t be in power otherwise. Gerrymandering upheld by the Supreme Court has facilitated their election fraud. They don’t fear electoral defeat.


Miller explained that their electoral strategy as determined by Karl Rove is to have Republicans keep repeating the election year mantra of:

War and Terrorism,

War and Terrorism,

War and Terrorism.

According to Miller, this is not because Rove thinks such repetition will make people vote for them, but is simply to give the media talking points in order to provide the necessary cover story for the day after.


Miller asserted that whatever the Democrats do, it won’t matter. They might have the best electoral strategy in the world, and they will still lose because “these people have no exit strategy.” Despite the current talk of a Democratic victory in November, the Karl Rove team will not allow a Democratic victory.


“Understand this,” Miller continued: they (the Bush administration) “are not incompetent.” Incompetence was not the reason for the kind of response we saw in Katrina. As for Iraq, “the way this war was handled, it’s not about incompetence.”


“At holding power,” Miller continued, “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer, They’re extremely good, they’ve done a great job.”


That’s why the terrorists get along with Bush and Cheney; Osama Bin Laden and the other terrorists share with them an apocalyptic world view. Such a view is profoundly un-American, Miller said towards the close of his brief remarks.

***


Commentary

It was heartening to find one public intellectual at last make the obvious and totally ignored connection between the Bush/Rove control of the election process and their radical, unpopular and destructive agenda.


The connection between stolen elections and their radical agenda is regularly ignored both in the mainstream media and in the Left and, progressive media, despite growing public awareness and massive evidence of voter fraud in every election cycle since at least 2000. Typical of mass media coverage is a front page story in the New York Times (9.28.06) headlined: “Democrats Cite New Hope In Bid to Retake Senate,” ignoring the implications of election fraud.


Anecdotally, when I’ve raised this issue with friends, I’ve had several offers to bet that the Democrats will win at least one house of Congress. Unfortunately I’ve sworn off betting. (Much of this was written before the front page efflorescence of the Mark Foley scandal which could change things. Are all bets off? I don't know. Even at this late hour, a month before the election, I can’t imagine Karl Rove letting November 2006 slip away from him without a fight.)

A perfect example of the way the mainstream media ignore the implications of election fraud on foreign and domestic policy is the New York Times’s editorial, “Rushing Off a Cliff” (9.28.06) expressing horror at Senate approval of the Military Commissions Act which gave President Bush everything he wanted. The Times editorial writers could have been channeling Karl Rove as they repeatedly insisted that the purpose of this bill was to intimidate and clobber the Democrats in the upcoming November elections. Once again the Times ignored evidence that the Bush administration act as if they are not worried about the electoral process.


The NYT can fulminate as it did in its “Rushing off a Cliff” editorial about Bush’s “ghastly ideas about terrorism,” but they ignore their own responsibility in joining the silence of the Democratic party about the illegitimacy of the last two presidential elections and many state wide elections going back to at least 1998.


Incompetence or policy goals
On the issue of whether or not the response to Katrina and the Iraq disaster can be put down to incompetence, had Miller been given more time he might have made the case that the administration’s response to Katrina and the continued immiseration and eviction of tens of thousands of its poorest and minority citizens was precisely what the Bush administration intended and successfully fought to ensure.

In the case of Iraq, given more time, Miller might have pointed out the Bush clique intended the current tragedy and dysfunction that Iraq is today. For one thing, the ongoing nightmare makes it impossible for Iraq to play its former role as a leading adversary of Israeli hegemony. The current Iraqi disarray also contributes to the instability and chaos in the area favored by Washington in its pursuit of a permanent war agenda.



In addition, pouring $8 billion a month into the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq fits nicely into their radical right wing program of “starving the beast,” i.e., the Federal treasury, of funds that might go toward social spending.

One can’t help but wonder about a political culture where only political outsiders like Mark Crispin Miller make the obvious connection between our eviscerated voting process and a radical agenda, intentionally far more destructive than any previous American government. Apparently this is what Miller had in mind when he insisted that the current regime is very good “at stifling dissent, at making the world a more dangerous place, at hastening Judgment Day, bringing the apocalypse a little closer.”


For a video of Miller’s remarks click on the following url:

http://www.worldcantwait.net/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=2905&Itemid=223


See also Miller’s excellent blog: www.markcrispinmiller.blogspot.com

For an important follow up see Miller's recent article for the Washington Spectator, “The Elephant in the Polling Booth,” (October 2006)

www.washingtonspectator.com/articles/20061001elephant_3.cfm


Here Miller asserts:

That Bush/Cheney stole their "re-election" is not a "theory" but a fact that has by now been proved beyond the shadow of a doubt. The case was made, first, by the House Judiciary Committee—or rather by its Democratic members, who conducted a meticulous inquiry into the debacle in Ohio. (The Republicans boycotted the investigation, and obstructed it.) Its findings were released on January 5, 2005, in the so-called Conyers Report, after Rep. John Conyers (D-MI), the committee's ranking Democrat. The Republicans attacked it, and the press and leading Democrats ignored it; yet that report was sound, its major findings wholly accurate.