Letters to the Editor
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@OliverA et al
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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Bush is no Hitler
For a country to become fascist, two things are necessary:
1) The country must be ready (or ripe) for fascism
and
2) A leader must arise who is totalitarian, charismatic, and smart.
Bush, I'm sorry to say, is not that smart and charismatic.
However, we neocons must put everything else in place, as we wait for our leader to arise. People are ready and waiting.
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@antineocon
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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maybe it's too big...?
I didn't read every post in this topic, but perhaps because most "Average Joes and Janes" have everyday issues to deal with the idea of holding the government accountable is just too big of an idea to handle?
I mean, the average person is concerned with making ends meet; keeping their own family safe in increasingly dangerous cities; feeding and caring for themselves; working too many hours for too little pay, and struggling to make a decent living to be concerned with what's going on in what seems like a far away place like Washington DC. And of course, that's what the Beltway is counting on... keeping us too busy with our own struggles to see what they're doing and getting away with.
How do we make what happens in DC "real" to the Average Joe/Jane?
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Protesters with lawyers and health care
Baldie,
This reminds me of an acquaintance who claimed that it was ok for the rich to commit crimes (the point in discussion was a DUI), because they have the ability to pay to defend themselves and fix their mistakes. The poor, however, need to live lives of exemplary virtue else the suffer the consequences.
The scariest part was that he was serious.
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Yes, let's do something - write your Congressman and participate in a general strike
Hi, Friends - I haven't had a chance to read every post today, although I do most days. I am at work, and have spent my free moments writing letters to my senators and congressman, asking them to impeach. although I have little hope that the letters themselves will be persuasive. I do have the desire to put my name and address and identity on paper to let my government know that I am horrified by the report of the NYT. And yes, it is nothing that we didn't know before, we who have been reading all along. But it does provide an opportunity for collective, simultaneous outrage, which can be expressed all at once - something we can, as a people, focus on all at once so that our Congress gets a barrage of mail.
And please consider a General Strike on November 6. It will be ineffective unless everyone agrees on a date and participates then. I'm so grateful that I have Glenn and the contributors to this forum with whom to commiserate - but we must not just wait for the election - we have to fight now. Impeachment may not be possible, but they have to know who we are and that we all made a nonviolent attempt to end this barbarity.