In most countries, when the person who receives the most votes is screwed out of its highest office by a pro-military, pro-corporate cabal, the streets overflow with popular outrage. This is how it always happens: cronies installed in high places invent laws on the fly to justify their desired result; everyone is watching; and the streets erupt.

Media elites are now reassuring America that polls say 75% of us think Bush's ascendancy to the White House was legitimate. Hello? Do the math; that's the 50% of people who didn't vote, and therefore apparently don't care who wins, plus the 25% who voted for Bush. Everyone who voted for Gore thinks the process was corrupt. That's as many people as usually elect the President. That's enough people for a legitimate popular insurrection.

But this time, strikingly, everybody watched, but nobody cared. For the last month, local Democrats and their allies repeatedly begged for demonstrations at Westlake Park or the Federal Court House; invariably, a couple of dozen people would show up.

Where were the 50 million Gore voters? Where were all the anti-Nader Democrats that were bleating so loudly that a Bush regime would be an apocalyptic nightmare?

Well, for one thing, they're not used to demonstrating; for the last eight years it's been their policies (Yugoslavia, Colombia, welfare reform, salvage logging, and, of course, WTO--among others) that drove people to the streets. For another, they're under illusions that our Third World brethren aren't, regarding the inviolability of elections and The Law. They never could quite bring themselves to believe that it'd be so brazenly stolen.

Thirdly, they probably thought resistance was futile. Mythology aside, America is, along with China (which at least had a popular revolution 50 years ago), probably the least democratic country in the world, in the sense of citizens being complacent and lethargic when they're victimized by some or another abuse of power. You could almost see America's shoulders shrugging.

Most importantly, the vehemently (as opposed to reluctantly) pro-Gore folks were powerful, noisy, and well-funded, and scared the hell out of a lot of people, but were only a tiny minority with a not very convincing case. More people were enthusiastic about Bush than were enthusiastic about Gore, and more people by far--unlike most countries--didn't even vote.

Ultimately, most Americans don't care passionately about which oligarchs work overtime to grease the extraction of labor and wealth from us By Any Means Necessary. If Al Gore had ever in his long, privileged, obsequious career demanded justice, or decried abuses of power, or even taken a risk, then perhaps others would have been willing to do the same for him. He didn't, they didn't, and the streets of this Third World country with First World consumer debt--a country founded by a popular revolt against King George--remained remarkably quiet.