The Great Divide, and how we heal it..

As long as people are polarized around their own strident beliefs, and their views are reinforced daily...hourly on the radio and TV, there can be no rapprochement.

In the "olden days", BOTH parties actually did have the best interests of the country at heart.Their ways of achieving that were different, but they did not demonize their "opponents". When an opponent won an election, the candidates would shake hands, and their supporters would either celebrate or commiserate. They did not retreat and plot vengeance. The losers just vowed to try harder next time, and they went on with their lives.

What changed??

We DID. Money drives everything. Politicians know that they must pay the piper, if they are to ever get the massive sums needed to continually campaign for office.

Corporations, and their rich owners have the money, and they buy or rent the legislators to see to it that they are never held accountable for ANYTHING..

They dole out jobs, as they HAVE to, but they (the corporations) have no FEELING for their employees. The employees might as well be blocks of wood. Employees' sole purpose for being is to generate MONEY for everyone but themselves..

Politicians, more than anyone, know how to feather their own nests, and the public be damned..

Every so often there are a few politicians who truly try to expose the "game", and they are met with derision, attacks, and are driven from office if at all possible.,

The public would GO NUTS if they ever got a good look behind the curtain, so this is where the media helps out.. They fill our heads with fluff, and keep us ignorant, but well-entertained..
They help the politicians and corporations (who happen to OWN them) by NOT reporting the important things that we all need to know. They delight in stirring the pot. By keeping the 50% of the public on opposite sides of the other 50% , at all times, on every issue, they have carefully divided us, so that a unified voice is impossible...on ANYTHING..

If a girl in Ohio has an abortion, it does not impact a family in Missouri one teensy bit.

If two guys want to marry each other in San Francisco, it has ZERO impact on a farmer in Arkansas.

If every single person in Idaho owns 3 Uzis, a family in Maine is not impacted one iota.

If Every single member of Texarkana attends church for 3 hours a day,every day, that fact has no bearing on a family living in Florida.

The media wants us to think that each and every one of these examples is the MOST IMPORTANT THING ON EARTH, and everyone MUST have an opinion on them, and they MUST elect officials based on those issues.

They have trained us all to have incredibly short attention spans, so when they feel we have had "too much", they can always toss out Michael Jackson, Kobe Bryant, Martha Stewart, Scott Peterson, or the latest "blonde-woman/girl-in-distress". When that gets tiresome, we can tune in to see the latest shark attack, or bears in hot tubs, or water skiing squirrels.

They know that we are not "up to" handling the stuff that really would change our lives..

If we are the "people" in that "...of the people, by the people, and for the people..." thing , we are certainly not acting like it. We HIRE these bozos to do OUR business, and yet we are the most lenient "employers" on the planet.

We let them lie to us
We let them steal from us
We let them have primo health care, while we grovel for ours
We let them come and go as they please, whether or not they have done their work
We let them send our sons & daughters to die in foreign wars
(Their sons and daughters go to Harvard & Yale, while ours go to Fallujah & Kandahar)
We let them do the bidding of people who would do US harm
We let them set their own wages, and give them the power to hold ours down

Why do they get away with it?? Because we let them.. They know that we can never agree on enough issues to unify against their behavior.

Our only hope is for the Fairness Doctrine to be reinstated, and stridently enforced. It has taken 20-30 years to reach the place we occupy, and it will not be a fast turnaround, but eventually, people WILL get used to seeing BOTH sides again. It will ruffle feathers at first, but in the long run, it's our only hope.

There can still be "biased" reporting, and "slanted" journalism. Those are not bad in and of themselves. The difference would be that they would have to either identify themselves as such, OR provide EQUAL opposing views, right next to theirs..

People who hold opposing opinions are not necessarily "evil", and people with whom you agree, are not necessarily "good".. We just need to start hearing many voices again..

The internet is good, but it cannot be all we have to counterbalance the corporate media..

The corporate media/politicians/regulatory agencies have created the Franken-media-monster we live with today, and it's up to them to control that monster.

It's time for the bullshit to stop, and for the people we send to DC, to realize that they are our employees, not our masters.. We have needs, as a nation, those needs have been overlooked for far too long.

How can this be done?

The Mega-money MUST be stripped away from campaigning. It is disgusting to know that HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of dollars are spent every few years, to elect a person to a $400K a year job, when there are kids sharing desks, and pencils...when there are teachers who are taking pay-cuts , just to keep their jobs...when there are people who have worked 40 years, only to discover that their pension is kaput.

Real campaign finance must be accomplished, regardless of how annoyed the corporations get.
Public financing of campaigns , with free equal time is the only solution.
Corporate Lobbying should be a felony
Single item legislation would eliminate pork.

It won't be easy, but once congress realizes that they work for US, and the media is supposed to keep tabs ON them, and not be compromised BY them, things might start to work again, and maybe the angry feelings would subside..

We all have more in common with each other, than we realize, and if we were all less stressed, perhaps we could manage to get along again..

Or maybe not.

Could we outlaw TV ads? That would be a huge start in getting the cost of these elections down. Then public financing and free tv time for the candidate to speak only.

And how to heal the divide? I vote Mama T gives the Inaugural and tells the country to just MYOB and do something good for their neighbor.

that would be a "potluck" style, with the money that would have been spent, used to build a school or some homeless shelters, or just about ANYTHING but a series of parties for super-rich people..

and I am with you on the commercials..

In MY perfect world, the viable candidates would have access to say an hour a day for 6-8 weeks to state their case.. NO trashing of the opponents.. Tell us what YOU want to do..not how horrible you think the other person's ideas are.. I'll decide that for myself, thank you..

The campaigns could have money for phone callers, and posters, & office stuff, but NO TV ads..

It's a vicious cycle.. They must take bribes from corporations, so they can turn around and hire other corporations to make ads, so they can buy airtime on corporate media.. It's just a big circle, with the corporations getting their own money back in the end, and the rest of us getting the bill :(

you said it,if we win the work begins if we loose the work begins again.

nominate it for the front page seconded.

I agree and I think your ideas are good.

I would note that I don't think WE let THEM do anything. THEY manufacture the consent that WE give then them. It just looks like we decide anything at this point.

So, add a move towards democratizing media and divest the media conglomerates, and I am in! Too much media in two few hands is like too much power in two few hands, as Bush has clearly proven.

"No Corporation or collection of agencies shall have the rights
of an individual person"

The end of corporate personhood would ripple across the whole
society correcting the imbalances you've brought up. Mass media
free speech would become public right, campaign finance would not
be a free speech right to abuse by corporates, and on and on that
civil society would be returned to the voters... the disenfranchised
citizen.

Hey.. Is it getting cold in Scotland yet?? You have fairly mild winters though, don't you??

We actually had rain here.. and everyone knows "..It never rains in Southern California..."..:)

... and a slight breeze. The climate is sorta like coastal
NoCal, seldomly does it hit freezing, and mostly the winter coming
will be 50's.... I've become like a sheep with my collection of
fleeces, and i hardly notice.

I remember the california rain... intense... intense... like the
people.. :-)

You gotta think like those bastards. We now know the enemy. When they are in power they don't give a sh*t about the other side (us).

Burn down their villages and salt their field (figuratively speaking), rape and pillage them (figuratively speaking) as they have us. Let them know how it feels.

the dirty tricks that are a staple of the republican party, will never be embraced by the democratic party.. We are first and foremost, a party of fairness..

I agree that things must change, but we cannot become them, in our desire to change things..

:)

once Bush is out we can start the healing. I live in brainwashed Right-wing country and some of them are coming around. Good people get it right. We just have to do our part to change hearts.


Vinnie
http://www.vinnievin.com