Let's suppose, for the sake of argument, that GOP attacks on ACORN were true. Let's suppose that:
- The fraudelent registrations turned in by ACORN workers (who ACORN subsequently fired) and that were flagged by ACORN as suspicious were actually produced intentionally by ACORN, for the purposes of producing bogus registrations that would then be used to cast illegal votes; and
- ACORN actually had an organized scheme to get folks registered under the names of famous athletes (rather than totally obscure semi-pro players, or even Little Leaguers), and to get four or five people all registered under the same name, rather than under four or five different names, as a clever way of not calling attention to its nefarious plans to corrupt the election process; and
- ACORN also had arranged to get a few thousand people nationwide to risk felony convictions for voting illegally, even though this had never been done before in the history of America. Say they managed to get 5,000 people to cast illegal ballots--roughly two to three orders of magnitude more than the total number of illegal acts of voting prosecuted since 2000.
Let us further suppose that this was all thoroughly investigated, but none of this became public knowledge through the media. Which would the GOP rather have?
(A) All the 5,000 illegal ballots were thrown out.
(B) All the 1.3 million legal, low- and moderate-income voters--60-70% minority--who ACORN registered were thrown out.
So, (A) 5,000 votes, or (B) 1,300,000 votes. Which is the GOP really concerned about?
And conversely, why in the world would ACORN try to get a few thousand people to vote illegaly, and undermine all the hard work it did to register 1.3 million new voters?
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| It only takes a moment's reflection on all the above to realize that the charges made against ACORN are utterly and totally nonsensical. Unless....
Unless all the above is only the tip of the iceberg. And that, of course, is precisely the nameless dread that the conservative/GOP noise machine and the McCain campaign are trying to tap into. It's the very same sort of dread that the Federalists tapped into in 1798 when they passed the Alien and Sedition Acts, and when they embraced the myth of the Bavarian Illuminati in the wake of their utter defeat in the election of 1800, the first realigning election in American history.
The Bavarian Illuminati had been a secret society--for a combination of two reasons: First, Bavaria was not the sort of place where one just up and established a Royal Society. It was not Britain. Second, there was already a tradition of secret societies where those interested in knowledge outside the purview of the Church could gather. Since an open society was likely to draw unwanted attention, enmity in high circles, and eventual suppression, the secret society model was chosen instead.
Wikipedia explains:
This movement was founded on May 1, 1776, in Ingolstadt (Upper Bavaria), by Jesuit-taught Adam Weishaupt (d. 1830),[2] who was the first lay professor of canon law at the University of Ingolstadt.[3] The movement was made up of freethinkers, as an offshoot of the Enlightenment[4], which some amateur historians believe was a conspiracy to infiltrate and overthrow the governments of many European states.[5][6].[unreliable source?] The group's adherents were given the name "Illuminati", although they called themselves "Perfectibilists". The group has also been called the Illuminati Order and the Bavarian Illuminati, and the movement itself has been referred to as Illuminism (after illuminism). In 1777, Karl Theodor, Elector Palatine, succeeded as ruler of Bavaria. He was a proponent of Enlightened Despotism and in 1784, his government banned all secret societies, including the Illuminati.
While it was not legally allowed to operate, many influential intellectuals and progressive politicians counted themselves as members, including Ferdinand of Brunswick and the diplomat Xavier von Zwack.[7] Xavier von Zwack was also the number two man in the operation and was caught with much of the group's documentation when his home was searched. The Illuminati's members pledged obedience to their superiors, and were divided into three main classes, each with several degrees.[8] The order had its branches in most countries of the European continent; it reportedly had around 2,000 members over the span of 10 years.[9] The scheme had its attraction for literary men, such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and Johann Gottfried Herder, and even for the reigning dukes of Gotha and Weimar. Internal rupture and panic over succession preceded its downfall, which was effected by The Secular Edict made by the Bavarian government in 1785.
Although they had been disbanded for some time, several apologists for the overthrown French monarchy and aristocracy latched onto the Bavarian Illuminati and blamed them for the French Revolution. It was not incredibly bad misrule that lead the French people to revolt, in this fantasy version of history, but instead it was a shadow elite of atheist intellectuals bent on world domination who tricked the people into turning on their God-annointed hereditary leaders. (Sound familiar?)
Although centered in Bavaria, the Illuminati did have corresponding memebers scattered across Europe, so there was at least a thin reed of plausibility underlying the wild fantasy. However, even this was utterly missing when it came to America. Nonetheless, after their defeat in 1800, the Federalists were desperate, and for a time belief that the Illuminati were behind their political downfall was widespread. And so it was that in America, as well as Europe, belief in the Bavarian Illuminati became the template for modern rightwing conspiricism.
The very fact that there was no evidence of their existence was taken as proof of it: only such a thoroughly diabolical and endlessly powerful organizaiton could keep virtually all evidence of its existence so well hidden from view!
And so it is with ACORN's massive voter fraud in the conspiratorial fantasies of the GOP and the conservative movement of today. With all the power of the federal government at their hands, they were utterly unable to uncover any evidence of massive voter fraud. (In fact, they could hardly find more than a hundred cases of registration fraud, fewer than ACORN itself had uncovered as it fired workers who turned in bogus registrations.)
In the rational world, such a failure to turn up any evidence of a massive conspiracy would be taken as fairly conclusive proof that no such conspiracy existed. But what fun is that? |
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