|
This forum helped me maintain my faith in the American people. I've always felt, deep down, that most ordinary Americans have good hearts and a lot of common sense. I will never forget that nearly 60% of Americans opposed the Bush invasion of Iraq right up to the invasion, despite all the lies and relentless propaganda. Either they opposed the war altogther (most) or they felt that the U.N. was the rightful forum for deciding if an invasion was necessary. This opposition to the war only stumbled for the few months of the invasion itself, obviously for fear of harming soldiers on the battlefield, then shot right back up. Today, opposition to the Iraq war still stands at almost 60%.
They didn't buy the crap. And we've seen that consistently in opinion polls over a long period of time--unprecedented disapproval of Bush, and disapproval of all major Bush policies, foreign and domestic, up in the 60% to 70% range in recent polls. 63% of Americans disapprove of torture UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES (Feb. '05). These are great, generous, deep-thinking people.
Still, it concerned me, prior to the election, with so much disinformation in the news monopoly press, that Americans might fall for the Swiftboat Liars and the numerous phony "terrorist alerts," and the relentless rightwing noise on TV--or that some would sit on their hands because Kerry wasn't sufficiently anti-war or populist--or that the tremendous grass roots voter reg and GOTV efforts would be overwhelmed by the Bush-Cheney money machine...or...or...
And, for a couple of hours on election night, it seemed like that had happened. I didn't know that the TV networks had altered the exit poll data, which showed a Kerry win all day--that they had actually doctored the exit polls, late in the day, to fit the official result. I did know something about electronic voting, and by midnight on 11/2 was convinced that something was very wrong.
But it wasn't until I found DU that I began to understand WHAT was wrong (that they'd actually changed the exit poll numbers, for instance). And I soon learned the whole of it.
The people in whom I had always had faith--the American people--had come through! They voted to oust Bush--and did so very likely by a landslide.
So finding out just how the will of the majority of Americans was thwarted that night--studying all the various reports at DU, and helping to figure it out the details--has bolstered my faith in the intelligence, good hearts and common sense of the American people. They DID see past all the lies and propaganda, and voted to get our progressive country back. There is no rightwing trend at all. It's all a P.R. myth! Yeah, there are rightwingers and fascists and crazy pro-war Christians, but they are the minority, as they always have been.
What Americans DIDN'T know is that their election system itself had been so seriously compromised, by private rightwing electronic voting machine companies getting control of the vote count, they no longer had the right to oust the Bush Cartel. Their votes didn't count. Nor did they know how many major violations of the Voting Rights Act were taking place (that the U.S. Attorney General was failing to enforce the law). They were sort of stuck in the mindset of a decade ago--that the election system failed in '00, but that it's generally okay, and will generally reflect majority sentiment. They have been very poorly informed about HAVA, haven't realized what an extremely corrupting influence it has been, and they are mostly not aware of the dangers of electronic voting (and who controls it).
I feel for them--especially for the first time voters, also for those who stood out in the rain for 10 hours in the hope that their perserverance would help change things for the better, for those who worked so hard on the grass roots efforts, and for Kerry voters everywhere (Democrat, Republican or other), who don't know what happened that day.
To me, it was a great relief to find out that my faith in the American people was justified. Yeah, the bastards stole another election. (What do you expect from the Bush Cartel? I mean, really....) But I still live in a progressive country--a country in which the population, the most propagandized population since Stalinest Russia, IS TRYING HARD, IS THINKING FOR ITSELF, and still believes in justice, tolerance, generosity, democracy and peace.
That's what's important. I would have found it much harder if I had concluded that the majority had voted for Bush. I don't think they did. I think the evidence is overwhelming that they didn't. That, to me, is very heartening.
Our task is not to ween a delusional population from brainwashing, nor to "reach" rightwingers; our task is to reach the progressive majority, inform them of what happened, and help us all find our way back to democracy and majority rule.
How do you inform people who are in denial (i.e., some of those progressives)? I think we have to realize, first of all, that a lot of people rely on the news monopolies as a sort of conduit to the nation--it helps them feel that they belong to the nation, to a larger community. (Many folks are without neighborhood and family communities these days.) Many know that a lot of it is B.S. They may know of specific lies that have been promulgated (such as Iraq WMDs). But they still rely on these news monopolies as a general concept--and maybe moreso after 9/11 (such a great trauma, for most of us via TV). Despite evidence to the contrary, they still believe that they are more or less getting reality from those news sources. They are not aware of the staggering lie that the news monopolies told them about the exit polls.
It's going to be hard for them to break this dependence on the TV news (and for some, the monopoly printed press). With an illegitimate government, and a completely unreliable national news establishment, who are we? Are we a nation? All our cracks begin to show, often on racial lines. There is no one, and nothing, holding us together.
So they cling to the TV news out of emotional and psychological necessity. And those news sources will never admit what they did to the American people on 11/2, and what they have been doing since then: blackholing this tremendously important story. And the Democrats--in fear for their careers and possibly their lives (fearful of the Bush Cartel's power)--are blinding themselves to the truth, or shutting up about it, or are corrupt and collusive.
Some are falling prey to the notion "if it's not in the news, it isn't real." This is due to their over-dependence on the news as the focusing lens of "the nation."
It's a very, very difficult problem, but not nearly as difficult as trying to sway Bush Koolaid drinkers. I think we can safely write the latter off. They are a minority of repressive people who have been with us since time immemorial. They can never succeed in a real democracy (where there is freedom of thought, and an honest voting system). Their over-representation in Congress right now is quite scary. But it's not the Koolaid drinkers or their fascist Congress people that we have to convince. They cannot be convinced. It's the OTHERS that we have to be concerned with. The disenfranchised majority.
It took a year on Iraq WMDs, for that 100% lie to be exposed. And even before it was fully exposed, Americans didn't buy it as an excuse for invasion. And the more extreme the Bush Cartel gets, the more open the deniers will be to an explanation of the huge discrepancy between American views in all opinion polls, and what the news monopolies told them happened on 11/2.
It's only been six months. Six months!
Have faith, my friends! Have faith in the American people, and in our democratic ideals! Work on it however you can. Never give up.
For every elderly black voter who stood out in the rain for 10 hours; for every poor person who overcame god knows what obstacles to get to the polls; for the millions of young people who voted for hope and for change, in their very first vote; for all the non-voters who overcame their skepticism this time, and voted; for all those who had faith and keep faith in democracy, I honor you and I pledge my help in restoring our progressive country.
And for those here at DU--including you, marions ghost, whose posts I always look forward to reading, and always enjoy--my profound thanks to all this incredible collective effort.
|
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
