If Kostunica had won a clear plurality in Yugoslavia and a province run by Milosevic's brother had reversed exit polls, amid complaints of fraud, to give Milosevic the electoral victory, what would we call that result?

How long would it take Jimmy Carter and troops in blue helmets to show up?

The Yugoslavian people had enough commitment to democracy to demonstrate against the denial of their popular will. It seems that the least the American people can do is demand that there be a re-vote in Florida, not just a superficial recount.

So far Jesse Jackson, some African-Americans and a few elderly Jewish women in West Palm Beach are standing up for democracy in the United States. They need more support.

Pretty quickly, the media pundit class will demand that the Democrats step aside and that the country accept the will of the Bush family. Already, NBC's Tim Russert said in an interview with Tom Brokaw that the Democrats will look like whiners if they don't accept a Bush victory, after the recount and tabulation of absentee ballots.

The media has given only passing notice to the fact that George W. Bush will be the first popular-vote loser to claim the White House in more than a century. That his brother Jeb governs the state that reversed the clear preference expressed by voters in exit polls makes the story even more remarkable.

As Americans, do we demand more of Yugoslavia than we demand of ourselves?

Robert Parry
consortnew@aol.com
www.consortiumnews.com

This election shows very clearly that the two-party system and electoral college are stupid. The states of the former confederacy and the others that voted for Dubya should finally secede and form a Union of Socially Conservative States. Because those states that resisted his charms are non-contiguous, they should each declare a separate country with a new name that describes its character- California could be renamed Wine and Traffic Land, for example, Maine could be called Land of Quaint Speech, and Massachusetts could be the Land of Poorly Managed Professional Sports. I think the fact that no wars have been fought on American soil since the 1860's has resulted in lack of immediacy in our political dialogue. Perhaps some breakaway republic action would give us a good kick in the ass.

Matt Webster
mza@disinfo.net
www.disinfo.com

This is just another serving of bread and circuses, except in the form of a food fight. But, while the field judge goes back to the sidelines to review the instant replay, I will say this: Gore will win, and it will take a class-action suit to make it happen. Pat Buchanan just said on TV there's no way those geriatrics in Palm Beach, Florida, would have voted for him since, after all, he knew he "never had a chance" in that part of the country and didn't spend a dime, or any time, marketing himself to those voters. When overturned by a judge, that should be enough to maintain the liberalization of the continent. Which is what I think's more apparent, based on the returns. Look at the map. It's the Bible Belt and the Louisiana Purchase, the analog frontier, versus the media centers of Babylon on the East and Left Coasts. Why? I suspect 10 years of wired life from the big bandwidths of such places as Boston, New York, Silicon, Seattle, has something to do with it. They say political dot-coms don't have any influence. That's true. But the free-flowing intelligentsia in every conceivable orifice from these places has liberated us, finally, from the Puritanical cage of the Moral Majority and post-Reaganism. It will take a twin Jihad of Presidential and Congressional gag orders and privacy legislation to shut it down. After all, the horse has left the barn, and viral, free-flowing information anarchy continues as a living, breathing fugitive. Meanwhile, the real power we are unable to address, the corporate nation state and world devourer, continues to roll.