Letters to the Editor
The Voice of Reason
Published Letters: 391 Editor's Choice: 41
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Not very impressed
[Read the article: American revolutionary]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'd like to express my disappointment that the trick of announcing your running mate the day after the Democrat candidate's big speech, so you can bump him out of the news cycle and dominate it for the weekend, not only works in main stream media outlets, but works right here on Salon.com. An easy manipulation.
I don't give Barak Obama much credit for his speech. I found it uninspired and full of the typical platitudes that most candidate's pronounce. He's not going to raise your taxes, he's looking to get us all jobs... whatever. I don't see much in the way of a turn towards real truths. I see a turn towards a different version of the tale.
Instead of addressing our historical hypocracies and failings in our foreign policies over decades, he perpetrates the myth that our troubles begin with Bush, overlooking our proxy wars, overt wars of aggression over the span of decades and many presidents.
Instead of addressing how a military industrial complex, and an energy complex collude to determine our politics, legislation, and foreign policy, he perpetrates the myth that our problems are limited to the middle east oil, and the problem is generated by this mythical "other," the middle east oil cartel. News: our corporations own the middle east oil and our market makers manipulate it's price on the world markets. We are in a constant battle with other powers: France, Great Britain, China, Russia etc... for access to that resource.
Instead of speaking truths about our "national morality," and admitting that Bush didn't invent the concept of black sites or prisoner torture (we've been torturing prisoners since WWII and used to electrocute Viet Cong prisoners, and throw them out of helicopters...), he'll continue the myth that somehow we are above all that.
Instead of speaking truths about the disparity between real haves and have-nots, he'll paint a picture of the economy being the problem of a middle class with which he empathizes. I'm in the poverty class. My democrat representative Jane Harman is worth 3 billion dollars. Everyone on that stage in the convention, and half the convention goers were worth at least 1 million dollars.
Instead of calling it like it is on wars of aggression, he'll continue the myth that Iraq is the "bad" and "mismanaged" war, and Afghanistan is the "good" war we have been distracted from. We haven't even begun to experience the fallout from both wars. We fought the soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s and we had planes crashing into our buildings 20 years later. Or doesn't anyone want to know about that? Let's take the myth for its example. According to Obama, the Iraq war is a distraction. Ergo, if there were no Iraq war... then our war in Afghanistan would be completely fine. News: We are bogged down in a quagmire in Afghanistan that will be difficult to extricate ourselves from. We didn't route the "enemy" and finding Osama bin Laden is not any type of solution.
I could go on and on, naming all the elephants that no one running for office in this country is willing to address. If I were to express my dissent with the party outside its convention I would probably end up in jail like the ABC reporter, or in jail and clubbed like the protesters, or sidelined like Glenn Greenwald.
A rousing speech full of nothing. A new paint job on more of the same. My objective as a democrat is not to win the contest, it is to achieve more democracy. You want to connect with me as a voter? Express one truth. That is all I ask. The flag pin... the country music... all a bunch of bullshit like the content of his speech. Everyone worked to a fevered peak, and the nut is metaphorically busted right on the stage with the streamers. Then you sober up a bit, wipe yourself off, and start asking yourself who is this person lying next to you in bed. He sure did tell me what I wanted to hear.
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Rove
[Read the article: List of books Palin wanted banned is fake]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]The right obviously circulates this known fabrication, in the same way they circulated the forged national guard papers that brought down Dan Rather. Most on the right don't mind the idea of banning books. The left gets all up at arms about this fake list. The list is exposed as an obvious fake and everything that comes after from the media is suspect.
I feel like I'm trapped in some repeating version of history. Instead of "ground hogs day" we'll call it "election day." Same stuff every 4 years, and every 4 years the "progressives" act as if they are seeing it for the first time.
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Manufactured images
[Read the article: The dominatrix]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]To go with manufactured intellect. I've always been against the practice here of composite images. You know who else does composite images? Weekly World News. Bat Boy.
Pathetic.