You know what sucks?

Politics.

Especially election-year politics.

*Especially* election-year politics at the ass-end of an eight-year intimidation/terror/disinformation campaign waged by White House officials, their GOP allies in congress who until fairly recently had majority power starting back in 1994, and all aided and abbetted by an alphabet-soup cadre of major TV news outlets that gleefully haul water for the whole show.

In the immediate aftermath of 9/11, CNN's viewership went up by 500%. 500%. Anyone in their advertising wing who didn't see big dollars coming from that number probably got fired for gross stupidity (but quickly got themselves another gig helping Doug Feith assemble Colin Powell's multimedia slide-show in time for his February 2003 dog-and-liar show before the UN...just a guess).

Ghostly green "war" footage put butts in the seats like voodoo magic back in '90-'91...you remember, back when CNN sold out to the DoD and allowed 100% of their coverage to be managed by the Pentagon, all for the good of the country and stuff. War sells, and after 9/11, those media boys realized that fear combined with war really really sells, and keeps the viewership glued to the screen.

All sorts of opportunities presented themselves; cable TV news combined with talk radio was the foundation for an information-delivery infrastructure beyond anything the world had seen before. TV networks delivered the fearful imagery, talk-radio stations repeated the lies ad infinitum, and fishwrap newspapers ran forty-point headlines screaming of impending disaster, doing so in every American city and day after day...

...and because every network, radio station and printing press involved was/is owned by a small cadre of massive corporations whose myriad subsidiaries are interweaved and co-dependent, maintaining seamless message discipline was all too easy...and never mind those great daily faxes from the RNC and DoD, offering helpful hints on content and some juicy jolting buzzwords on the side.

This broad-spectrum penetration into the mind, emotion and voting behavior of the general public stands as the single most comprehensive act of national manipulation ever seen in the history of the universe. You remember the hits, right? Plastic sheeting and duct tape, don't want the evidence to be a mushroom cloud, fight them there so we don't have to fight them here, terror alert after terror alert, they're gonna bomb the Brooklyn Bridge or the Statue of Liberty, orange orange orange, be afraid again today, lather rinse repeat.

As a bonus, such a constant and unrelenting blitzkrieg of fear and anxiety begat a spiritual and emotional malaise within the populace, which of course could be relieved by a trip to the mall to buy shit they didn't need, anything to fill the empty place where their self-determination and coherent reasoning once was, before it all got chased away by the daily drumbeat of dread. Mr. Bush said it himself, during his first major televised speech after 9/11 (not counting the chicken-ass bullshit bombs he dropped while on the run over Kansas, that is).

"Go," said Bush, "shop."

CNN's viewership went up 500%. That's a lot of people watching a lot of commercials peddling a lot of stuff. Go shop indeed.

So here we are, swimming in this informational sewer, and yet we're shocked, shocked when the politicians we support go sideways on us and get in line behind shit like that FISA bill; behind shit like telcom immunity; behind shit-ass judicial nominees like Roberts and Alito; behind tyrannical shit like the Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act and the Military Commissions Act; behind shit like the abolition of habeas corpus and the mainstreaming of torture.

I mean shit like the entire apparatus of the Federal government and justice system allowing the imprisonment of an American citizen from Chicago named Jose Padilla, without access to legal counsel or the chance to confront his accusers, for six years and counting. See, Padilla was the first test case for Cheney & Co., their bunny on the dog track that allowed them to see how far they could push the laws they chafed under, and when nobody told them to stop, they now are emboldened enough to brazenly slap subpoenas aside, because if nobody stopped them from erasing an American citizen by fiat back then, why should they care about the stupid goddam Constitution now?

It sucks, but that's where we are. If you've heard the name of a politician, count on that politician having signed on the dotted line an oath to preserve, protect, defend and enrich the paymasters by way of deregulation sprees, tax cuts, and of course, an eternal river of tax revenues poured into the preparation for and fighting of wars...which is, and has always been, the biggest big-money bonanza to be found anywhere.

Five years and counting in Iraq, and some powerful people have gotten P-A-I-D every day of those years...Humvees cost money, as do bullets, and uniforms, tires, tank treads, helicopters, C-RATs, tents, boots, plasma, body armor, fuel, rifles, grenades, mortars, helmets, missiles, barbed wire, concrete walls, troop bunks, medicines, fighter jets, sundry spare parts, and of course, body bags. Every time one of these items needs to be replaced, it puts money into the pockets of the companies that built that information-delivery infrastructure in the first place.

They run shit. If you've heard of a politician, that politician works for them. Period, end of file.

So we have to win ten more elections, for openers, to make a dent in this situation. We have to overcome the insensate biases and irrational fears within an electorate that votes with poision in their minds, poison that has been deeply injected by a media machine whose reach we cannot match...and we have to overcome the politicians who swim in those fetid waters...and vote for them, damnably...and overcome the system itself, which has been hard-wired in favor of the bastards with the blockbusting bank accounts filled with our money...for openers.

It sucks.

There is no alternative.

is a very apt characterization!

It's been sold on a no-bid contract. Since having to leave the work force 14 years ago because of disabilities, I have tried to find things to fill my time. One of those 'fillers' has been politics. It happened about the time Bill Clinton was finishing his first term. I was so incensed at my co-workers for belittling Bill and Hillary with their incessant hate talk, I really started picking up on all the hate on our airwaves -- not so much on radio (never listened to an a.m. station in my life) and then on the scene came FUX news and their gang of hate mongers. We really need an outlet for 'real' news -- I mean one that's accessible to all. I listen to Democracy Now and read everything I can get my hands on, but most Americans are not only too lazy to search for truth, they just plain don't have the time (or won't make the time) so all they hear is propaganda fed to them by their corporate masters. We're all slaves in this country and for those who think they're not, you're deluding yourself.

propaganda works on more than just freepers

Being on the board of Wal-Mart for 9 years, being a partner of the union-busting Rose law firm, being clearly on the record for supporting outsourcing of middle-class jobs to India (co-creating a "friends of India" senate caucus), lobbying in support of NAFTA as 1st lady, etc. Her lies about Bosnia, etc. Those are facts, not propaganda.

criticizing is fine - treating them like trash was NOT

Fox News is a parody. The rest of them are a chilling realization of 1984.

The republicans control the media and it is one of the biggest problems for this country.

The fox is in charge of the henhouse.

The Treasury is drained and the republican media screeches "it must be the Democrat's fault!"

we shut off the money spigot for these people. And as they spend their money on life's necessities such as jewelry with huge eye-popping million dollar stones, a yacht in every ocean and the gulf, mansions in each of their favorite locations complete with multi-car garages filled with whichever luxury cars they prefer, closets full of clothes that they never wear, their bank account goes down and eventually they lose power over our electoral process. A lot of Americans are angry about being in Iraq, even some republicans have had enough.

:eyes:


OCTOBER 5

Your boys gonna break .500 this year?

Hang on...which team do you root for again? Seems to change so often. I need flash cards to keep up. ;)

:P

:toast:

P.S. What the fuck are you doing up at 3:42am? Is Sacramento *that* interesting?

And no, it's not *that* interesting.

But I had a late night.

;)

You ate sand?

We ate sand.

:P

I've been studying the disinformation and I am watching as they slowly reintroduce the standard Rethug and M$M approach to election campaigns - fear.

http://www.chatterstream.com /

"What does this mean for the presumptive Democratic nominee? Talking heads will chatter about candidates' typical dance to the left or right for the primaries and the pivot back to the center for the general; the difference this election is that the base's anger is more easily and efficiently expressed and organized through the Internet. Although online news cycles - and memories - are short and this wave of outrage will subside, there are long-term implications: a few more of these disputes could begin to suppress the netroots' enthusiasm for helping Obama confront the coming onslaught of GOP attacks. And it can create a side story that Obama doesn't need in an election that will prove tougher than many Democrats expect.

It's also worth noting the internal process for these types of candidate statements and positions. Though one could argue that it should have been, it's doubtful that this was some great reckoning for Obama involving hours of deep reflection on our fundamental rights. If Obama saw the FISA statement at all, it was probably for a quick sign-off. The statement was likely drafted in his senate office in coordination with the Democratic leadership and reviewed by his campaign policy team. Perhaps there was a warning or two moved up the chain of command from his web team, who monitor online chatter and were aware of the growing dismay in the blogosphere, as well as some angry calls into his senate office and campaign headquarters.

...

There are still many unresolved questions about the relative influence, if any, of the progressive blogosphere on the Obama campaign. It may be that alienating progressives helps with moderates and independents, and perhaps progressive bloggers must get on the train or watch it go by, but those who underestimate the power of the netroots often pay the price."

When I was working for Kucinich back in 2004, we had the netroots wired to work for us six ways to Sunday. We had awesome email chains. We could organize a rally or a GOTV drive without picking up a single phone. We won every online poll by huge margins.

We never got above 5% in any state primary I can remember (maybe we got 8% in Alaska, but that was because Kerry wasn't running anymore after having nailed down the nomination fourteen billion weeks beforehand).

That was '04. Maybe things are different now, tighter, more muscular. The November numbers will tell the tale. Is there any correlation in any state between netroots activity and higher Democratic voter turnout? That'd be an effective metric.

Cheers.

non-stop. He reads the Weekly Standard, he LOVES Bill O'Reilly, etc.

My mom is dying a slow death from dementia so I'm going, period. My husband and I are gonna have to deal
with the noise. I'm starting to dread it.

One family dinner a couple of years ago my dad was waxing poetic about Dubya and I blurted out, "George Bush is a
lying piece of shit." I thought his jaw would hit the plate...he did shut up for a while.

I hope to avoid the subject for at least a little while. Sigh. :-(

A must-see documentary.

http://iraqforsale.org/

I think Comcrass has it in their list of freebie on-demand titles currently.

Hateful.

The hardest thing for an activist and advocate is to keep in mind two contradictory notions about social change. We have to win the next election, but winning that election will not address the overwhelming majority of problems that we absolutley must resolve if we are to survive as a democratic republic.

The "next" election always is upon us, and it always pits two candidates who are both creatures of the status quo. One will always be worse than the other, but it is always a challenge to find a positive way to look at the candidate that we need to win.

This time around, it is less bad than the last several election cycles, but there are many problems with the Obama candidacy. You have this chickenshit vote -- and many other issues as well. My pet peeve has to do with the speech he recently made to AIPAC, which promised war against Iran if other means do not prevent Iran from building a nuclear bomb. I really do appreciate the difference between Obama and the alternatives on that subject -- and I anticipate that the diplomatic and multilateral initiatives that President Obama will take will probably succeed in keeping Iran out of the nuclear club, without going to war.

But what the hell ever happened to deterrence and containment? This was the consensus national security policy of our country for 54 years and it successfully defeated the Soviet Union in the Cold War. We had a nuclear monopoly for a few years after Hiroshima, and many bloodthirsty cretins within our power structure regarded it as suicide and treason for us to sit idly by while first Russia and then China developed nuclear weapons. But in those days we did not start wars, because that is not the kind of people we were.

Despite the smashing success of our bipartisan policy of deterrence and containment, Bush and the neocons tossed it out the window in 2001 and replaced it with the doctrine of pre-emptive war -- the idea of conquering a country before it does anything hostile on the theory that it might make trouble later if it has the weaponry to do so. This was the logic of Tojo and Hitler -- and we hanged men for starting unprovoked war at Nuremberg. It is the primary reason for impeaching, convicting and incarcerating Bush and Cheney.

Not only is this policy of preemptive war simply evil, the experience of Iraq proves it to be incomparably stupid as well. Rather than using our supposedly infinite power to dictate the terms of the social and political order in the "defeated" Iraq, we are hopelessly enmeshed in a political morass that will probably lead to the eventual establishment of a more dangerous and unstable regime in that country.

Given all that -- the evil and the stupidity of preemption as national policy -- Barack Obama embraces it as if it made sense. Why? Because the mainstream media and political culture have accepted it as gospel that we dare not let the smoking gun turn out to be a mushroom cloud.


Yet I am going to vote for him, donate money to him and do what I can to help him win. Why? Because his election will improve things rather dramatically from what they are today. It will not even undo all the damage that Bush has done, but it will be better.



While looking at the next election and voting for a creature of the status quo, we have to keep in mind the bigger picture of just how well Organized Money has solidified its control over almost every aspect of our society. The corporate owned integrated information delivery system has a stranglehold on how most Americans get their view of the world -- and my nostalgia for deterrence and containment means absolutely nothing in 2008, a relic as quaint as the idea of Congress exercising oversight by compelling testimony by employees of the Federal Executive Branch under oath; as quaint as the idea that the Constitution applies to Guantanamo Bay; as quaint as the idea that the Government has no business reading my mail.

The tools of democracy are still intact. We can communicate with each other on the internet with greater reach and speed than ever before. We can organize ourselves to match the power of Organized Money -- and we are doing so.

But if we think that winning a single election will break the lock that Organized Moeny has on our political culture, we are dooming ourselves to defeat.


There are no final victories in politics. Fortunately, there are no final defeats either. The struggle over how we shall live goes on and on . . . .

and recommended

:kick:

I've been thinking a great deal about the people who have
"disappeared" into the prison system under the BFEE rule.

I am particularly haunted by a blip that came across
DU shortly after I joined in 2002.

I don't recall the woman's name, but I do recall the
situation. She was whisked away by some nefarious
security agents- it was reported that she was the sister of
someone in the the government intelligence agency.

I have always wondered who she was and what happened to her...

BHN

not about Lindh. Have you ever fired an AK-47? If you have you know that you will get some of the powder from firing it on your face. Later in the day should you lick your lips, you will taste it. One thing struck me about Lindh when he was first shown on TV. His face was black with powder. You only get that from firing an AK-47 and firing it alot. He was firing at our guys. I do not care how noble your intentions may be in your mind, you get in a firefight with our boys I will side with our boys each and every time.

we just need more actual public servants, and less of the whores in office now.

bhn

how does winning ten more elections with these same politicians "make a dent in this situation?"

:shrug:

spectatular analysis and discordant conconclusions.... as usual.

Ten elections? We can do that. I'll eat their pets, I don't care anymore.

(Okay, maybe just their goldfish. lol)

They break away for commercials during car chases too.

Great line.

We have to get the electorate to wake up to this challenge in a way that doesn't leave them feeling powerless; to have them choose this truth over the 1980's action movie fantasy being offered, like a powerful narcotic, by those in power as an alternative.
If we do this, it will be one of the greatest achievements of enlightenment over propaganda in human history.
To be honest, I don't know how it will be done. But I'll be damned if that's going to make me stop trying.