The Betrayal of America

On a whim, I picked-up Vincent Bugliosi's The Betrayal of America to re-read it. It's interesting, given all that's happened since bush II was installed, to read about this first crime.

I was posting on the Znet Sustainer's Forum at the time I first read it, and I collected some "conservative" opinions on Bush vs Gore, and a review of Bugliosi's book in the National Review, or New Republic, (I forget which).

The two defences of the SCOTUS decision were pretty thin. One was a windy sermon about how the Supreme Court justices just have to be of upright character, given their office. The NR review spent a lot of time excoriating Bugliosi for not being more eloquent and for being so "angry" (over the trivial belief that the SCOTUS had installed an incompetent as President of the United States against the will of the people), and then went into some legal arguments that are way over my head. If you want to pay money to Znet, you can probably get in and find them. They're there. I do try to listen to every viewpoint.

But checking out the customer reviews on Amazon.com, I do have to point out this sort of dreck:

"A confused and muddled attempt to revise history. The author doesn't present arguments and supporting facts, he presents rants. Footnotes and citations are at best confused, and at worst non-existent. This book should be about one third the length it is - it is full of inappropriate filler."

and ...

"This book is truly bad. It has no index, it is poorly written it is utterly unedited, it has no logic, it is ad hominum, and it consistantly fails to offer either fact or argument to support its claims.

First the editing problems. It has three chapters. After each chapter it has "footnotes." However the "footnotes" are additions to the text which have been added to the text but not edited into the text. It seems that that a decision was made to rush it to market without a final edit. The book is absurd.

Of the three chapters, the first two are totally empty. Only in the third chapter does the author discussion the issues in the case. The book is based on a 22 page article written for The Nation Magazine. When it was expanded into book length no content was added just filler.

The author's manner of arguing is to simply repeat isclaims over and over again confusing repetition with argument. The book has the feel of a closing argument aimed at a very unintelligent jury. The core of the arguement is that on election day in Florida in 2000 more voters wanted to vote for Gore than for Bush and that because of the butterly ballot some 6,000 of them were confused and voted for Pat Buchanan by accident. No evidence is produced to support this contention. Rather Bugloisi repeats and repeats and repeats himself and calls names and names and names and rants and rants and, did I say he repeats himself?"

The first reviewer "the author doesn't present arguments or supporting facts" is demolished by the other review that I've quoted. You might not agree with him, you might even think he's stupid, but Bugliosi quite clearly attempts to present an argument supported by facts. The fundamental dishonesty of this first bushlover is therefore exposed and I've no need to do anymore than mention it.

The second reviewer is almost as worthless: "The core of the arguement is that on election day in Florida in 2000 more voters wanted to vote for Gore than for Bush and that because of the butterly ballot some 6,000 of them were confused and voted for Pat Buchanan by accident."

Actually, shithead, that isn't the core of the argument. The core of the argument is that the Supreme Court's 5-4 decision based on the "Equal Protection" clause was flimsy in the extreme and that the unsigned decision and the bizarre attempts to provide precedents for this, and the SCOTUS's insistence that their decision not apply in other cases, shows that the majority was aware of this.

There's more in that second review, but seeing as how this person can't follow a simple argument, I don't have any faith in any of her further claims.

Once more, life is short, and this crime has already been done and followed by further ones. I could read more about "conservative" counter-arguments, but as with so many other cases, I'm sure it would be time wasted giving due process to weak lies and screeds.