An Interesting Read About Why Societies Collapse

“This came from the NYT via www.truthout.org. It's a little bit long but worth the time. In the end it tells us why we should help the victims of natural disasters. This is not a fuego thread. If you wanna read it, fine. If you don't that's okay too. To me it's just a pertinent read.


"The Ends of the World as We Know Them
By Jared Diamond
The New York Times

Saturday 01 January 2005

Los Angeles - New Year's weekend traditionally is a time for us to reflect, and to make resolutions based on our reflections. In this fresh year, with the United States seemingly at the height of its power and at the start of a new presidential term, Americans are increasingly concerned and divided about where we are going. How long can America remain ascendant? Where will we stand 10 years from now, or even next year?

Such questions seem especially appropriate this year. History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly. That shouldn't come as much of a surprise: peak power usually means peak population, peak needs, and hence peak vulnerability. What can be learned from history that could help us avoid joining the ranks of those who declined swiftly? We must expect the answers to be complex, because historical reality is complex: while some societies did indeed collapse spectacularly, others have managed to thrive for thousands of years without major reversal.

When it comes to historical collapses, five groups of interacting factors have been especially important: the damage that people have inflicted on their environment; climate change; enemies; changes in friendly trading partners; and the society's political, economic and social responses to these shifts. That's not to say that all five causes play a role in every case. Instead, think of this as a useful checklist of factors that should be examined, but whose relative importance varies from case to case.

For instance, in the collapse of the Polynesian society on Easter Island three centuries ago, environmental problems were dominant, and climate change, enemies and trade were insignificant; however, the latter three factors played big roles in the disappearance of the medieval Norse colonies on Greenland. Let's consider two examples of declines stemming from different mixes of causes: the falls of classic Maya civilization and of Polynesian settlements on the Pitcairn Islands.

Maya Native Americans of the Yucatan Peninsula and adjacent parts of Central America developed the New World's most advanced civilization before Columbus. They were innovators in writing, astronomy, architecture and art. From local origins around 2,500 years ago, Maya societies rose especially after the year A.D. 250, reaching peaks of population and sophistication in the late 8th century.

Thereafter, societies in the most densely populated areas of the southern Yucatan underwent a steep political and cultural collapse: between 760 and 910, kings were overthrown, large areas were abandoned, and at least 90 percent of the population disappeared, leaving cities to become overgrown by jungle. The last known date recorded on a Maya monument by their so-called Long Count calendar corresponds to the year 909. What happened?

A major factor was environmental degradation by people: deforestation, soil erosion and water management problems, all of which resulted in less food. Those problems were exacerbated by droughts, which may have been partly caused by humans themselves through deforestation. Chronic warfare made matters worse, as more and more people fought over less and less land and resources.

Why weren't these problems obvious to the Maya kings, who could surely see their forests vanishing and their hills becoming eroded? Part of the reason was that the kings were able to insulate themselves from problems afflicting the rest of society. By extracting wealth from commoners, they could remain well fed while everyone else was slowly starving.

What's more, the kings were preoccupied with their own power struggles. They had to concentrate on fighting one another and keeping up their images through ostentatious displays of wealth. By insulating themselves in the short run from the problems of society, the elite merely bought themselves the privilege of being among the last to starve.

Whereas Maya societies were undone by problems of their own making, Polynesian societies on Pitcairn and Henderson Islands in the tropical Pacific Ocean were undone largely by other people's mistakes. Pitcairn, the uninhabited island settled in 1790 by the H.M.S. Bounty mutineers, had actually been populated by Polynesians 800 years earlier. That society, which left behind temple platforms, stone and shell tools and huge garbage piles of fish and bird and turtle bones as evidence of its existence, survived for several centuries and then vanished. Why?

In many respects, Pitcairn and Henderson are tropical paradises, rich in some food sources and essential raw materials. Pitcairn is home to Southeast Polynesia's largest quarry of stone suited for making adzes, while Henderson has the region's largest breeding seabird colony and its only nesting beach for sea turtles. Yet the islanders depended on imports from Mangareva Island, hundreds of miles away, for canoes, crops, livestock and oyster shells for making tools.

Unfortunately for the inhabitants of Pitcairn and Henderson, their Mangarevan trading partner collapsed for reasons similar to those underlying the Maya decline: deforestation, erosion and warfare. Deprived of essential imports in a Polynesian equivalent of the 1973 oil crisis, the Pitcairn and Henderson societies declined until everybody had died or fled.

The Maya and the Henderson and Pitcairn Islanders are not alone, of course. Over the centuries, many other societies have declined, collapsed or died out. Famous victims include the Anasazi in the American Southwest, who abandoned their cities in the 12th century because of environmental problems and climate change, and the Greenland Norse, who disappeared in the 15th century because of all five interacting factors on the checklist. There were also the ancient Fertile Crescent societies, the Khmer at Angkor Wat, the Moche society of Peru - the list goes on.

But before we let ourselves get depressed, we should also remember that there is another long list of cultures that have managed to prosper for lengthy periods of time. Societies in Japan, Tonga, Tikopia, the New Guinea Highlands and Central and Northwest Europe, for example, have all found ways to sustain themselves. What separates the lost cultures from those that survived? Why did the Maya fail and the shogun succeed?

Half of the answer involves environmental differences: geography deals worse cards to some societies than to others. Many of the societies that collapsed had the misfortune to occupy dry, cold or otherwise fragile environments, while many of the long-term survivors enjoyed more robust and fertile surroundings. But it's not the case that a congenial environment guarantees success: some societies (like the Maya) managed to ruin lush environments, while other societies - like the Incas, the Inuit, Icelanders and desert Australian Aborigines -have managed to carry on in some of the earth's most daunting environments.

The other half of the answer involves differences in a society's responses to problems. Ninth-century New Guinea Highland villagers, 16th-century German landowners, and the Tokugawa shoguns of 17th-century Japan all recognized the deforestation spreading around them and solved the problem, either by developing scientific reforestation (Japan and Germany) or by transplanting tree seedlings (New Guinea). Conversely, the Maya, Mangarevans and Easter Islanders failed to address their forestry problems and so collapsed.

Consider Japan. In the 1600's, the country faced its own crisis of deforestation, paradoxically brought on by the peace and prosperity following the Tokugawa shoguns' military triumph that ended 150 years of civil war. The subsequent explosion of Japan's population and economy set off rampant logging for construction of palaces and cities, and for fuel and fertilizer.

The shoguns responded with both negative and positive measures. They reduced wood consumption by turning to light-timbered construction, to fuel-efficient stoves and heaters, and to coal as a source of energy. At the same time, they increased wood production by developing and carefully managing plantation forests. Both the shoguns and the Japanese peasants took a long-term view: the former expected to pass on their power to their children, and the latter expected to pass on their land. In addition, Japan's isolation at the time made it obvious that the country would have to depend on its own resources and couldn't meet its needs by pillaging other countries. Today, despite having the highest human population density of any large developed country, Japan is more than 70 percent forested.

There is a similar story from Iceland. When the island was first settled by the Norse around 870, its light volcanic soils presented colonists with unfamiliar challenges. They proceeded to cut down trees and stock sheep as if they were still in Norway, with its robust soils. Significant erosion ensued, carrying half of Iceland's topsoil into the ocean within a century or two. Icelanders became the poorest people in Europe. But they gradually learned from their mistakes, over time instituting stocking limits on sheep and other strict controls, and establishing an entire government department charged with landscape management. Today, Iceland boasts the sixth-highest per-capita income in the world.

What lessons can we draw from history? The most straightforward: take environmental problems seriously. They destroyed societies in the past, and they are even more likely to do so now. If 6,000 Polynesians with stone tools were able to destroy Mangareva Island, consider what six billion people with metal tools and bulldozers are doing today. Moreover, while the Maya collapse affected just a few neighboring societies in Central America, globalization now means that any society's problems have the potential to affect anyone else. Just think how crises in Somalia, Afghanistan and Iraq have shaped the United States today.

Other lessons involve failures of group decision-making. There are many reasons why past societies made bad decisions, and thereby failed to solve or even to perceive the problems that would eventually destroy them. One reason involves conflicts of interest, whereby one group within a society (for instance, the pig farmers who caused the worst erosion in medieval Greenland and Iceland) can profit by engaging in practices that damage the rest of society. Another is the pursuit of short-term gains at the expense of long-term survival, as when fishermen overfish the stocks on which their livelihoods ultimately depend.

History also teaches us two deeper lessons about what separates successful societies from those heading toward failure. A society contains a built-in blueprint for failure if the elite insulates itself from the consequences of its actions. That's why Maya kings, Norse Greenlanders and Easter Island chiefs made choices that eventually undermined their societies. They themselves did not begin to feel deprived until they had irreversibly destroyed their landscape.

Could this happen in the United States? It's a thought that often occurs to me here in Los Angeles, when I drive by gated communities, guarded by private security patrols, and filled with people who drink bottled water, depend on private pensions, and send their children to private schools. By doing these things, they lose the motivation to support the police force, the municipal water supply, Social Security and public schools. If conditions deteriorate too much for poorer people, gates will not keep the rioters out. Rioters eventually burned the palaces of Maya kings and tore down the statues of Easter Island chiefs; they have also already threatened wealthy districts in Los Angeles twice in recent decades.

In contrast, the elite in 17th-century Japan, as in modern Scandinavia and the Netherlands, could not ignore or insulate themselves from broad societal problems. For instance, the Dutch upper class for hundreds of years has been unable to insulate itself from the Netherlands' water management problems for a simple reason: the rich live in the same drained lands below sea level as the poor. If the dikes and pumps keeping out the sea fail, the well-off Dutch know that they will drown along with everybody else, which is precisely what happened during the floods of 1953.

The other deep lesson involves a willingness to re-examine long-held core values, when conditions change and those values no longer make sense. The medieval Greenland Norse lacked such a willingness: they continued to view themselves as transplanted Norwegian pastoralists, and to despise the Inuit as pagan hunters, even after Norway stopped sending trading ships and the climate had grown too cold for a pastoral existence. They died off as a result, leaving Greenland to the Inuit. On the other hand, the British in the 1950's faced up to the need for a painful reappraisal of their former status as rulers of a world empire set apart from Europe. They are now finding a different avenue to wealth and power, as part of a united Europe.

In this New Year, we Americans have our own painful reappraisals to face. Historically, we viewed the United States as a land of unlimited plenty, and so we practiced unrestrained consumerism, but that's no longer viable in a world of finite resources. We can't continue to deplete our own resources as well as those of much of the rest of the world.

Historically, oceans protected us from external threats; we stepped back from our isolationism only temporarily during the crises of two world wars. Now, technology and global interconnectedness have robbed us of our protection. In recent years, we have responded to foreign threats largely by seeking short-term military solutions at the last minute.

But how long can we keep this up? Though we are the richest nation on earth, there's simply no way we can afford (or muster the troops) to intervene in the dozens of countries where emerging threats lurk - particularly when each intervention these days can cost more than $100 billion and require more than 100,000 troops.

A genuine reappraisal would require us to recognize that it will be far less expensive and far more effective to address the underlying problems of public health, population and environment that ultimately cause threats to us to emerge in poor countries. In the past, we have regarded foreign aid as either charity or as buying support; now, it's an act of self-interest to preserve our own economy and protect American lives.

Do we have cause for hope? Many of my friends are pessimistic when they contemplate the world's growing population and human demands colliding with shrinking resources. But I draw hope from the knowledge that humanity's biggest problems today are ones entirely of our own making. Asteroids hurtling at us beyond our control don't figure high on our list of imminent dangers. To save ourselves, we don't need new technology: we just need the political will to face up to our problems of population and the environment.

I also draw hope from a unique advantage that we enjoy. Unlike any previous society in history, our global society today is the first with the opportunity to learn from the mistakes of societies remote from us in space and in time. When the Maya and Mangarevans were cutting down their trees, there were no historians or archaeologists, no newspapers or television, to warn them of the consequences of their actions. We, on the other hand, have a detailed chronicle of human successes and failures at our disposal. Will we choose to use it?"

Jared Diamond, who won the 1998 Pulitzer Prize in general nonfiction for "Guns, Germs and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies," is the author of the forthcoming "Collapse: How Societies Choose or Fail to Succeed."
last edited: 1/02/05 8:34:47 AM”

“Very interesting and informative, SH. That chance of this not going fuego, if read, is slim, IMHO. Thanks for sharing.”

“Fuego”

“republicans are the reason why socieites collapse ; )”

“Socialist propaganda.”

“Ooops!

Wrong user account.”

“Very interesting read Sol. I don't know that I agree with all of the inferences, but it definately makes you think, which I believe is the intention.

Thanks again!”

“He makes some good points. IMHO, it's very easy to see why we're headed the wrong direction in the U.S. It's the pervasive attitude of "every man for himself", regardless of whether you're a greedy, self-centered business owner thinking only of profits, or, the union labor organizer demanding things of your employer that just aren't economically feasible.. again, greed.

But the BIGGEST problem is that neither group can talk with the other anymore... everyone seems to take an extreme position & is unwilling to consider the alternative perspective. Hence, gridlock, no decisions are made, no progress is made, and our problems just keep getting worse.”

“I like how he made out like saving for your own retirement instead of relying on SSI was a bad thing.”

“When our turn comes be it soon or far in the future I imagine historians will be the ones to tell about it--I doubt if many will know it is happening until it is over.”

“From the East to the West...Ancient Japan, China, Egypt, Greece, Italy, France, Germany, England....I might've missed a few...the U.S.A is next. Every culture raise and falls sometime.

As someone mentioned above....GREED is the main problem.”

“I'm not quite sure what to make of this article. I think it's just too broad to have much meaning.

Now, I'll make a broad statement of my own.

I think that we live in a nation that is rapidly centralizing.

Mom-and-pop businesses are being replaced by economies of scale. (Walmart, Home Depot)

National political battles are reaching down into local races. (Money, redistricting)

Educational standards are being nationalized. (No Child Left Behind, testing)

Sources of Information are being centralized. (Viacom owns all the rural billboards. Radio station ownership is limited to a handful.)

Databases collect demographic information and make broad decisions about quality of life in particular areas (No Barnes and Noble in Jackson, MI. Higher auto insurance rates in cities.)

I've always figured that the strength of our society has always been that decisions were made on the ground level and filtered up. This made us flexible and more sensitive to minute changes in society and the world.

I don't think that is as true anymore.”

“Thankyou, Solitary Hiker. I read the whole article and found it to be full of common sense observations.

It's a shame that we don't teach our children history. Not just dates and events; but history as inter-related, cause-and-effect, human progression.

If we taught history as a dynamic, living subject - perhaps we might be less inclined to forget the lessons of history.

Example; when the Allies occupied Japan after WW2, the occupation force relied on Japanese institutions and Imperial figurehead to keep the peace. The Allies did not go in and dismantle Japanese institutions - they preserved them and used the structures to reform the country.

Contrast that to Iraq; the occupation force dismantled the Iraqi military and police and re-built these institutions from ground-up.

Result; chaos and growing insurgencyas the new Iraqi army and police is unable to cope with the violence.

The occupation od Iraq has resulted in over 1,100 U.S. and over 100,000 Iraqi deaths.

The occupation of Japan, post-WW2, did not cost one single Allied soldier's life.

What's that old saying; those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Damn straight.”

“This thread was not about Iraq. But since you brought it up I'll just say your analogy is flawed. You have to realize one thing about Japan and Iraq, both pre- and postwar.
>
The demographics of Japan and Iraq are very different. Japan was/is a homogeneous racial/ethnic culture with basically one unifying religion, Shintoism. Shintoism is ancestor worship but it is also a deep cultural respect for the ruling class. In prewar Japan the military/industrial class ruled the country. The emperor was considered divine.
>
When the United States defeated the Japanese we did several things (1) arrested and tried military leaders like Tojo but (2) left Herohito [who should have been tried as a war criminal] in place as a cultural icon but without any real power, (3) set up a new military leader, a "shogun" if you will, in the person of Gen. Douglas McArthur, (4) posted a large US military force inside the country at ALL strategic and military locations, and 5) last but not least, rooted out Japanese communists. Note that by August 1945 the Cold War had started in earnest. The physical location of Japan bottles up the Soviet Pacific fleet very nicely. You couldn't bottle up the Soviets with socialist agitation in occupied Japan. Of all the coutries that declared war on Japan, only the Untied States occupied the mainland. We did this to keep all other meddling countries out. We did things right. It was in the nature/culture of the Japanese people to go along with the superior culture (in their minds) that had defeated them. They did.
>
In Iraq it's a totally different ballgame. Iraq as a physical country is an artificial construct of the British and French after WWI. This "country" is comprised of four major ethnic groups; Shia, Sunni, Kurd, and Turkomen who should have never been lumped together in the first place. Although all the groups are Muslim they’re not quite the same. The Shia and Sunni have hated each other since the battle of Karbala. Karbala was the result of a Muslim religious dispute. That was 1300 years ago and they're still killing each other over it! They hold grudges. And the Shia, the Turkomen and the Sunni all hate the Kurds. Now the Sunnis with Saddam held the country together by intimidation but no one can say for sure that the Sunnis without Saddam could have kept the peace even with our help. Now if 18 months ago we had had the 350,000 troops on the ground that the honest people in the Pentagon said we needed, then we probably wouldn't be having this discussion because we could have possibly controlled all of Iraq without Sunni help. My opinion is that no matter what we could or didn't do civil war is a forgone conclusion. Right now to minimize our casualties US forces should just pull back into Kurdistan and let the Shias and Sunnis kill each other. Then we can go about setting up a stable government. But that is a topic for fuego. Let us leave it there.
last edited: 1/03/05 9:21:03 AM”

“truthout.org is one of my favorite sites. I actually came across this story while looking at a permaculture site- which referred me back to truthout! If we could just rebuild our soil, plant trees and clean up our water maybe GAIA has a chance.
buckfush.com is also got some funny cartoons.”

“You're essentially correct, Solitary Hiker - the demographics were quite different between Iraw and Japan. You also missed the vital difference that the populace in both Germany and Japan had been worn down by years of warfare, hardship, restrictions, rationing, etc.

In contrast, the defeat of the Iraqi army was quite rapid.

My point was that the allies did not learn from history and as you yourself pointed out; they preserved the imperial office in Japan.

In Iraq, they removed the security structures and re-built everything from scratch.

The lessons of post-war Germany and Japan should have been observed and exploited.

That is only one recent example.

As a species, it seems difficult - if nigh on impossible - for us to learn from history and other cultures and to avoid those mistakes.

The degradation to our environment is one mistake we are repeating. We are also screwing up politically.”

“Websites like this don't have a thing to do with societal collapse.”

“Why is Sol Hiker all about negativity?

Doomsday???”

“While I have a great deal of concerns about management of the country right now (particularly the financial aspects, in 2008 the annual interest expense for the deficit will exceed our total military expenditures) I would like to point out the article is inherently flawed.

The article says:

>>History warns us that when once-powerful societies collapse, they tend to do so quickly and unexpectedly.<<

This isn't actually true. Most societies do not collapse quickly. They usually collapse gradually over time. It took Rome 100s of years to collapse as an effective empire.

But, then again, you can't read too much into the fact that this article is wrong on this point. While it is a common belief that "history repeats itself", the fact of the matter is that it never repeats itself. Sometimes there are common threads, but new incarnations / changes are almost always different than historical things.

As to Iraq, well I am completely against the invasion because I have always felt it was an act of militant totalitarianism (the same kind of thing bin Laden did). It is always wrong to use violence to force beliefs on people. Usually the only times it works is when you kill all the people and none are left standing to question it.

But, I sat down, looked at the worst cases of retaliation from the horrendous things we are doing to those people, and the fact of the matter is that we don't really have that much to worry about in terms of real violence-based retaliation. Biological and chemical weapons against us can be problematic but unless they engineer some new super-bug, the effects are likely to be small and localized.

The larger issue of the detonation of a nuke within a U.S. city, well, it's not that big of a deal. To do really big damage you need a thermonuclear (stage 3+) weapon. These are extraordinarily difficult to build/acquire. The kind they are likely to get will be lucky if it can destroy .5 mile space with up to 4 mile diameter effect radius. While losing 10k-100k people will certainly be an issue, it's not the end of America.

The larger problems we have are of our own control, specifically: (1) deficits leading to insolvency and (2) panic/fear related to another attack like a nuke.

So if our society is to collapse, it will be because we behave like the Russians and can't balance our checkbook, or because we phreak out irrationally running around screaming, and some corrupt politician can pull of a military coup of the country.”

“TrailTurtle, that was a beautiful post.”

“I found turtle's post to be crap.

The United States has brought Democracy to literally a billion people. We did it with military might, technological innovation, fiscal sacrifice and humanity.

Doomsday theorists are misguided and small minded.”

“I suppose it depends on one's definition of 'Democracy' (it is very sad that such a simple concept has become so convoluted and twisted).

The best / most simple / most clean definition of Democracy I have ever found was Karl Popper's:

"I personally call the type of government that can be replaced without violence 'Democracy' and everything else 'Tyranny'."

The above is the definition I use when determining whether a given country is 'Democratic' or not.

Under that definition, America (while technically a Republic) is a Democracy, but the vast majority of countries we have 'brought Democracy too' are not in fact Democracies at all.

They have governments backed either by U.S. military aid, food aid, or by U.S. troops or some other coercive force exclusively such that a given party or ideology is maintained.

In those countries the people are not able to replace their U.S.-imposed government's without violence. They simply can't get rid of them by any action.

This is the case in the vast majority of countries that U.S. officials routinely label 'Democracies'. In Iraq, it matters not that there are elections, the Iraqi people will not be replacing Allawi and Negroponte without violence.

There are noteable exceptions to this. Pro-Bush people cite France and Germany, for instance, as "liberated Democracies" and I believe the people can (and do) routinely replace their adminsitration's without violence.

But there also horrific (and intentional) cases where we have actually replaced working Democracies in order to install tyrants that serve our interests. The most damaging example of this is when we overthrew democratically elected Mossadegh in Iran and installed the Shah in the country. We even flew The Shah in on U.S. helicopters after ousting Mossadegh, LOL.

When were were "liberating Kuwait" Bush Sr. promised these same kinds of reforms for Kuwait, but he instead re-installed the ruling Kuwaiti monarchy. Why? Well they were much more capable of providing long-term oil control.

There are cases where America has left functional democracies after military action, but in my read on history, we have installed and backed tyrants for economic purposes far more (and turned a blind eye to their human rights abuses).

And the flip-side of this is we all benefit. We gain access to low-cost goods made in sweat shops and we are able to consume endless quantities of oil.

Our lifestyle is made better because of the support of the dictatorships and tyrants.

We do need the oil (not immediately, but 10 years from now Iraq's oil will be immensely valuable on the order of $27 trillion).

I deny no reality on other side. It is very difficult problem. We are in fact trading the human rights of arabs to support our lifestyle as we have done many times in the past.

While there are many people who will simply stand up and say "this is all lies".

They need answer only a simple question for me.

Do you honestly believe that, if we are bringing true Democracy to arab countries, when they choose their leaders, they will all vote to give the oil to us? LOL.

That is the big problem.

If we give arabs Democracy, they are going to nationalize the oil to their benefit.

So long as we depend on oil, we will be the force working against Democracy in all oil-rich arab countries.

This is an impossibly difficult fact.”

“They need answer only a simple question for me.

Do you honestly believe that, if we are bringing true Democracy to arab countries, when they choose their leaders, they will all vote to give the oil to us? LOL
TrailTurtle
9:54:04 PM
1/03/05

No, they will sell the oil at market price and purchase goods with the profits.”

“>No, they will sell the oil at market price
>and purchase goods with the profits.

Agreed. Then why aren't we letting them choose their leaders? Why Allawi (been on the CIA payroll since Bush Sr.) and Negroponte?

The Iraqis and academics and educational people have put together 3 separate open election models. This included one 90 days after the invasion. The Iraqis wrote up a proposal to the governing council (puppet government version 2.0 at the time, we are up to 6.0) to register everyone in the country in one day. They presented this plan and according to NYT (and never denied by Bush admin) Bremer intercepted it and had it skuttled.

And for that matter, why does the "big election" that Bush is championing not include any of the Sr. posts, but only legislative posts?

How can someone call January an election if none of the decision makers are up for election? You do know that Negroponte has to sign-off on every candidate before they are allowed to run don't you? They also exclude any candidate who is "immorale" as defined by the U.S., LOL.

It's not 'Democracy' nor anything close to it by my definition. It's just meant to look like it for the benefit of the U.S. Our military may succeed in killing off the pro-democracy people in Iraq given enough time, but the effect will be just to turn it into Saudi Arabia where a given house/model is kept in power via some means.

And the next 9/11 will have Iraqis on the planes... for the FIRST time, LOL.”

“The election conspiracies happen in the United States, not other Democracies.”

“Where's Iraw?”

“Well, I was an official election monitor for 2004, and it is a fact the software in the machines could be changing peoples votes and no one would know. You can verify the totals counted reasonably well, but no idea if they are counting the people's votes the way they voted as it is simply unverifiable by any means. I do not approve of the existing voting machines.

Additionally it is a fact that in Florida rural GOP districts got twice as many voting machines (usually 6) compared to 3 on average in Dem districts and given the narrow window that Dems have to vote (usually before or after work) and allowed for voting this was a big issue. What is most astonishing is that it WASN'T illegal for Jeb to do it like this, so you can't criticize him for cheating. He was able to delay HAVA 2002 (Help America Vote Act) implementation in Florida until after the election.

Now, do I think fraud occurred in 2004 sufficient to change election?

I simply don't know.

I do know that there were an awful lot of REAL Bush supporters by empirical standards, so because of that I am inclined to think not. I also know that America is the most puritannical/religious industrialized country on the planet, and W. definitely won over the church people, so that is another empirical data point that says it wasn't fraud.

So I am inclined to think it wasn't.

But I do not believe America's existing electoral / voting process, as it stands today, with no verification mechanisms, and controlled by companies with political party ties is sufficiently transparent, and that should be a concern for all Americans regardless of party.

Whose to say the Dems can't just bribe the voting machine manufacturers and promise them $5B if they get elected?

Trust, but verify.

We are trusting, but not verifying.”

“Conspiracy theories, half truths and lies,

Oh My :-)”

“Conspiracy Theory: A theory for which no material evidence exists to show it to be false.”

“We are trusting, but not verifying.

Hey, the Dems agreed to all voting procedures just the same, it was fair going in, and besides, the Dems had countless thousands of lawyers stationed everywhere, swarming the place like flies on poop... hey, if you can't count on your own lawyers these days to verify, who CAN you trust? :Þ”

“Agreed. It is actually very concerning to me that the Dems did approve these machines.

I don't trust them either. ;)

None of us should. Hitler was a Democrat.

The only real responsibility all of us has as citizens is to continually cull bad government. If we shirk that responsibility, or become too disengaged from policy such that we are focused on vaporous specious concepts such as religion/gay-hate/patriotism, etc., then the ground is ripe for truly bad government to arise.

Fear the intentions of every politician that wraps himself in the flag. For he is hiding something behind it.”