Letters to the Editor
Baldie McEagle
Published Letters: 992 Editor's Choice: 3
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@OliverA et al
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]It's hard to tell, from here, what it was that protected us from despotism in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s. The media have always been half corrupt, along with governments local and federal, and the corporations. My guesses are:
1) These corrupt forces have never been as aligned as they are now---rather, they used to balance one another through their natural interests. For example, if any corporate briber or governmental bribee was careless, the newspapers leaped to tear his throat out. They HAD too---it was their meat. Now they are closely aligned. Partly, they all have the same owners, due to changes in the laws and to the general rise in personal wealth since WW2.
To discern this, you'd need to examine what amount to secret histories of media-controlling legislation---secret, primarily because highly technical. Which leads to:
2) We've turned government over to technocrats. The reason is that the modern world has become very complicated. For example, again, our eyes glaze over (mine do) when we read about new products the banking and credit industries are now allowed to sell. But if Congress moved to allow usury and called it as such, the old repugnance would reawaken. Truism: If you can't summarize it in 2 lines of 2 and 3 syllables (hell, no, ...), then you can't fight it in the open political arena. The words "price gouging" still carry their old weight, so the price gougers carefully avoid the appearance of price gouging. Roll over and go back to sleep, John Q.
3) The traditional bases of opposition have been targeted and neutralized by the private propaganda machine. Here I speak of (a) the poor (whites) and (b) the libertarians. I submit that the voice of liberals---even liberals in the general, not lefty, sense---has declined in importance since even before Nixon and Vietnam. All along, it was primarily outrage from the right that kept the elites from raping the Constitution, and outrage from the poor (expressed at the polls) that kept the elites from raping the poor. Just a theory.
4) Media control has become a specialized science.
5) The Right has learned that science, and little else.
6) The public domain has been steadily eroded, so that it is now possible to imagine leagues of corporations nearly as rich as the federal government---certainly richer than many states. Propaganda (welfare mothers, entitlements, socialism, government-run health care, social security) has become internalized as myth. Few Americans expect much from the public sphere any more---we have been weaned off it and onto a fantasy of individualism that satisfies our desire to think of ourselves as "rich" or at least able to become rich or fake it. Contempt for government has never been more pervasive. Kids grow up thinking all they need to be adults is a credit card. This makes us hereditary serfs of the consumer-product corporations.
The result is an almost seamless weave of soft-authoritarian control of the public sphere, from Pentagon propaganda units to defense contractors running security cameras in public places to employers empowered to pull their employees' health insurance to universities becoming primarily research entities that process docile sheep for the job market on the side. A firewall between truly public speech---speech by citizens, media reports, and public opinion---and political effects is now in place. The two probably have less to do with one another now than at any point in our history.
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@antineocon
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]You're a coward because you let himself be stomped on by the cops? Please. You've done more than 99% of us have. I don't blame you if you decide to stay home from now on, and I don't think anyone else here will either.
Fighting the cops is for pissed-off kids. And monks. And the poor. And the desperate (if they can organize). And people with really good access to lawyers and health care.
Anybody know anyone who fits that description?
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@Fraud Guy
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]That's almost the definition of an aristocracy. The equestrian class apologizes with money; the serfs pay with their freedom.
It is astonishing that we could go from that tribal concept of law (blutgeld), to one in which all citizens are treated the same at least in theory, and then hear arguments for going back, "since that's how it works anyway."
Arguments that somehow abandon even the pretense that the rich should serve as models for the poor.
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@Rowdy Guy
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]How do we make what happens in DC "real" to the Average Joe/Jane?
Or the reverse.
Beats me. I can imagine that the end of federalism might do it, so that all politics go back to being truly local, instead of something done by professionals far away.
Big/federal government is difficult to get emotional about in the absence of an external or economic threat.
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@OliverA
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Good question. I have no idea what works to push back the corporations. However, I've heard stories of local opposition rolling them back on all sorts of fronts. They also are sensitive to bad publicity, up to a point. Even WalMart has had defeats.
Presumably that adds up to the possibility that even giants might back down from censorship activities and so on. Local governments might be persuaded to NOT give away the store to developers.
But are the defense companies sensitive to anything short of being hated by appropriations committees? Blackwater might prove to be an interesting test case. The administration loves them---they are powerful and arrogant and so blatantly evil they could have been invented for a first-person shooter. (Even their name is evil.)
If they can be ripped from the State Department's teat, I'd take that as a sign that there can be an end to all this.
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scooter
[Read the article: The latest revelations of lawbreaking, torture and extremism ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Scooter worked real hard on that post. Took him days to collect those little dried-grass figurines. Don't pick on him like that.
LEAVE SCOOTER ALOOOOOONE!!!!!!!!!