[Newspoetry] using election magic

[DL Emerick]

Voting Machines Giving Florida New Headache
By Abby Goodnough --  The New York Times
Saturday 13 October 2007 -- http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101307G.shtml

WHY YOUR VOTE DOESN'T COUNT?
They couldn't count paper ballots fast enough,
not to make the news go fast enough,
on that magical evening we call "election night",
where news travels as the speed of light,
where counting technology remains antiquated,
though they've tried decades of mechanisms,
both mechanical and electrical.

HOW IS AN 'ELECTION NIGHT' MAGICAL?
One emerges out of many,
as the many are personified,
This ONE is given all power,
both ultimate and absolute,
so Bushies and other authoritarians think.

(Well, 'thinking' is not what they do,
Nor what they want you to do --
but strong belief in believing --
for they act as the faithful ever do,
without regard for the facts, certainly,
and quite contrary to the facts, as well:
the truth is always to be put out there,
not home-spun, but manufactured woven lies.)

Strangely, election night has no election?

The only permitted event is counting, honestly,
not some underhanded manipulating of the count,
some act of predetermination and predestination,
to guarantee a certain winner to the nation,
regardless of how the people vote.

It's all magic, black magic, black-box magic.

INFORMATION HIDING?
One constant idea of any vote,
in the idea of representation itself,
is the principle of information hiding,
for that is what every representation accomplishes.

An election creates a representation:
it hides many fine and exquisite details
(the so-called and much disparaged chaos of reality).
It also enlarges others,
perhaps beyond all reason,
universalizes and valorizes them, too,
imposing them upon consciousness,
upon society, upon you.

IS POWER INFORMATION HIDING?
Yes -- that's its true spirit --
Or its inevitable tendency and omni-effect.

AM I THE AUTHOR OF THESE THOUGHTS?
If thoughts have such an anchor in time,
as a source that inspired them,
inseminated them, or impregnated me.
Was I fucked by Derrida?  Perhaps.
Mind-fucking produces infantile thoughts,
but someday they may grow old and even up.

PERHAPS, IT WAS A GANG-BANG?
Well, Wittgenstein did not say,
"The map is not the territory"?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Korzybski
AK said it, so they say, so they say,
if 15,000,00 Google hits can't be wrong?

I did not go out and count the Google's gorge;
I made no sample nor held any election.

I wanted to talk about truth.

THE TRUTH IS NOT ITS REPRESENTATIONS.
(Didn't Kant just say that?  Anyone?)
The thing is not its representations;
The thing is the thing-in-itself --
All representations cause some loss,
some sacrifice for every abstraction.)

<<The formula of words has power over us:
"The 'X' is not the 'what-is-given-as-X'";
The masquerade is a masquerade.
My quotation marks function in many ways,
sometimes pointing to previous speech
and sometimes naming the unsayable,
as a matter of personal convenience:
my convenience at your inconvenience, perhaps,
if we do not come together, on a thought.>>

HOW COULD PHILOSOPHY HELP ELECTIONS?
What's the use of it?
Aye, there's the rub,
Practical people stick to 'uses' --
They ask "how is this 'thing' used'", --
Or "how am I used when I use this name for the 'thing'"?
All magic has such two-sidedness.
Usages may be intended,
But they may be using you, instead or as well, or worse.
Like white magic, black magic is invisible, unperceived.
You may be used, trapped in the vacuum of words,
lost in your thoughts.
(Poets say this better, or Lewis Carroll said it'.
The cutting block of meaning is a knife too sharp."

WHAT 'USES' DO YOU MAKE OF AN ELECTION?
Our answers tell us how to count votes,
if we agree upon "what counts as an 'answer'".