To avoid cynicism in this time of hope, I wanted to wait until after the election/holidays to respond to a recent story about a class at South Seattle Community College on the U.S. electoral process. A SSCC administrator decided to offer the course after seeing a young Russian student, a newly sworn-in citizen, roll her eyes at congratulations that she could now vote. Our local representative, State Senator Joe McDermott, volunteered to teach the class, to teach how democracy works better in our country than in others. Do you mean, Joe, how 538 privileged people in the Electoral College elect our president (whereas the Russian president is elected by a majority of the popular vote), or how sometimes nine people in the Supreme Court elect the president, or how "October Surprises" manipulate voters, or how elections are bought with political money and negative ads, or how competing parties are excluded from the presidential debates, or how electronic voting machines outright steal elections, as in Ohio in 2004 (http://www.rollingstone.com/news/story/10432334/was_the_2004_election_stolen)? Sixteen years ago, after renewing my driver's license, I asked a black man in front of me why he didn't at the same time take the opportunity to register to vote. "The system is rigged," he said and walked away. That we so often disregard the experience of people of other genders, ages, or ethnicities, or from other countries, is unfortunate. Our narrow perspective enables cynics to be right.

Still, on November 4, democracy triumphed, and after two great speeches the whole world breathed a sigh of relief. But I don't believe we're out of the woods yet, and I'm not celebrating until Inauguration Day. Senator McDermott suggested that readers broaden their media sources, and I have since learned about National Security Presidential Directive 51, signed in 2007, that would authorize the "Continuity of Government" (martial law) in case of national emergency, according to the White House website (http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/05/20070509-12.html). I worry this directive is an invitation to any "element" that has benefited from the current administration to initiate a national emergency so as to ensure the "continuity of government." It doesn't bode well that, with utter arrogance or intentional provocation, we're shooting inside four different countries right now and threatening a fifth. One of them, Pakistan, is an unstable nuclear power vowing to protect its sovereignty "at all cost." How long before we get hit, hard? And will it be before Inauguration Day? Why was a U.S. army unit activated last October to prepare for "civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios" inside the United States (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2008/09/army_homeland_090708w/)? And why is a Halliburton subsidiary building internment-type detention centers "to house people after a natural disaster or for new programs that require additional detention space" (http://www.commondreams.org/views06/1004-35.htm)?

Elections are not a gentleman's game - not in this empire, not given the stakes. I am suggesting we be prepared for a continuation of the coups of disasters that have dictated policy in the last eight years. I'll be glad to be wrong on this one.

Steve Richmond

Puget Ridge