Letters to the Editor
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@RowdyGuy
How do we make what happens in DC "real" to the Average Joe/Jane?
Longer hours, less pay, no insurance, no job, etc... Is that not already "real"?
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Indifference to evil may be generational
Another possible cause of indifference in the face of the barbarism which is being exhibited at the highest levels: the sixties generation have taken the levers of power in society. Entering maturity at the time of Watergate, the Phoenix program, My Lai, and the assassinations of the Kennedys and King, baby boomers may be more cynical than other generations, with an "it's all been done before" attitude. Coupled with a tendency to relativism (as expressed, for example, in post modern philosophy, New Age religion, and the sociopathic shenanigans of Carl Rove), boomers as a whole seem to lack a working moral compass, or at least sufficient outrage to act on one. Whether they were once hippies or conservatives, and are now Democrats or Republicans (or private citizens, for that matter) boomers don't behave like serious custodians of civilization. Their collective indifference to immorality is as much a part of their legacy as peace, love and civil rights, and it may be that their passing is the only thing that can reverse the damage their enabling has done in recent years.
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Baldie McEagle
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.
So can we still have any impact on these mega corporations? Or are we just by-products anymore?
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Total and complete horse. shit. Exactly.
Total and complete...
One ray of hope
If Hilary Clinton is elected, Congressional oversight and limited executive power will come back into fashion in January '09. That will undo a smidgeon of damage.
I kid. I think the Repubs will suddenly think limited executive power is a good idea. I have a feeling Clinton will suddenly see its merits.
But I don't think Clinton will be elected, so it's all just fun and games anyway.
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Just ice, please
I'd like to toss out one more idea on grassroots action that I think has the potential to have an impact on the corporatists while at the same time allowing for dissemination of information in an entirely viral manner.
Various boycotts have been proposed, but I think the major problem lies in getting the word out beyond the small band of true believers and making it something with which large numbers of people can both identify and comply.
I propose a boycott of soft drinks. This has the added benefit, of course, of improving the diets of many people. The idea is, when ordering a meal or snack of any type, and when asked what you would like to drink, reply:
"Just ice, please".
Conflating "just ice" with the need for "justice" is a simple wordplay that I think could be as powerful as the "Petraeus" to "Betrayus" gambit. It has the added benefit of being less assailable by the Right, and even has the undertow that everyone knows that they would be more healthy if they cut back on the soft drinks. This could create great traction for the idea while also stimulating real conversation on a national level about the injustices that have been allowed to fester for so long.
Imagine the impact of a 10 or 15% decline in soft drink consumption. Imagine large warehouses full of unsold bottles. Imagine railroad cars full of high fructose corn syrup overwhelming the corn processors.
The reasoning goes like this. I am going to insist on "Just ice" until our country achieves justice. I will not consume soft drinks while our country tortures, eavesdrops, denies habeas corpus, conducts unjust wars, denies health coverage to the poor and places the rights of corporations above the rights of individuals.
I can see information spreading through a website, viral videos, t-shirts, flyers and even graffiti.
What will you have to drink?
Just ice, please.
What?
Justice.
What?
Just ice, maybe with a little water. -
Americans' Choice
Americans have now been publicly informed that the US is a terrorist state, and that its government and agents commit programmed, willful and deliberate terror in our names. We can no longer hide behind euphemisms for torture or have any doubt that our country is not being governed by the Constitution.
We have a choice to make:
Impeach.
Call a Constitutional Convention and restore government under the limits of the Constitution.
-OR-
Continue to aid and abet torture with the acknowledgment that the US is the most powerful terrorist state on the planet.
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It's rather late in this thread
to expect anyone to actually read this comment, but what the hey. Charles Wright Mills published The Power Elite in 1956, and even then he was writing about corporate dominance of 'real' decision-making; the congruence of corporations, the 'political directorate', and the military establishment; secrecy and opacity in the making of 'real' decisions; and the essentially inhumane quality of the power elite.
I was born in 1945, and I have known people who were jailed for essentially no reason; people who were beaten in jail; people who have been given terrible jail sentences for essentially nothing (other than political action); and people who were killed for political positions back in the 50s and 60s. We had COINTELPRO and police 'Red Squads'. We had provocateurs. My best friend from Austin had his car shot full of holes on his way back from a GI coffee house near Fort Hood. We had arrests for felony Conspiracy - to demonstrate, among other things.
Out of that we gained enough political and media allies to prosecute Watergate, create Freedom of Information and various other sunshine laws, get the CIA out of domestic surveillance, and get the FBI mostly out of political suppression activities.
Now the cycle has turned back to the extreme (I hope) on the other end again. Let us not be so frustrated as to despair. It is largely a matter of spreading the word, fighting the good fight, modelling the better behavior, and organizing. I think that we're doing all of that, and we just need to keep on keeping on.
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Tom 70
Food for thought
Glenn, a couple of months back you scolded some of your readers for their apparent hopelessness and sense of surrender, and, although a few of us thought that was unfair, you made some good points about how destructive that pessimism can be. Yet it wouldn't be hard to read your posts over the past couple of months collectively as pretty hopeless themselves.
You raise some important and complicated points that are probably addressed best in a post rather than in a comment. But since many people here have written about the same topic today, allow me to make a few points:
It's interesting that you're suggesting that I'm being excessively defeatist when most of the criticisms I hear these days about what I write is that I'm not defeatist enough. Usually the claim is made that I'm too optimistic, too naive, too unwilling to accept that All Is Lost, too pollyanna-ish about the prospects for remedying these problems short of some major revolution (not necessarily violent, just some sort of massive anti-system change).
I see what I do here as somewhat of a balancing act. My first obligation is to write what I think is true. I can't be a cheerleader or try to encourage people to see things as better than they are if I don't believe that. The first obligation I feel in every post is to write what see I as I really see it, independent of the consequences.
At the same time, I do think defeatism is a pervasive problem, and many people are too willing to give in to feelings of resignation before defeat is really sealed. There are a lot of reasons why people want to succumb to that temptation (I'll leave those to the side for now). When I first started blogging, I was most surprised by how intense and widespread it was -- no matter what I would write, there would invariably be numerous people coming to proclaim that none of it mattered because Karl Rove controlled the voting machines and they would never lose an election.
I am a huge believer in the fact that any systems constructed by human beings can be changed and torn down and replaced by other human beings. That makes defeatism inherently unwarranted.
And I am an equally passionate believer in the system of government the Founders created. Their principal objective was to find a way to bestow it with enough core strength and endurance so that it could outlast even the most corrupted and tyrannical political factions in control. Our history has shown just how resillient that system is, and when in doubt, I'll err on the side of keeping faith in the ability of that system -- to provide solutions by working within it. I think our political system has earned the benefit of that doubt.
At the same time, you are absolutely right that over the past couple months, my view of these matters is changing. How could it not? When you watch what is supposed to be the "opposition party" prove that their only real interest is to be as accommodationist as possible -- even when being oppositional would cost them nothing, even when it would benefit them -- one begins to realize that the hurdles are much greater than merely changing the Democratic Party some in order to make it a real alternative. The whole system seems to be rotting at its core, and the Democratic Party -- in general, with some exceptions -- is but a branch of that rotting system.
Of course that increases the frustration and cynicism level, but at least for me, it hasn't crossed into the type of defeatism -- or at least resignation over the prospects of doing anything about it within the system -- that many commenters in this thread and, increasingly, many others are urging.
I think there is, as you point out, a danger in allowing that frustration to spill into slothful defeatism. I am conscious of that and try to avoid it. There is, however, also a danger is pretending that things are better than they are, that solutions that seem hopeless are actually viable.
Ultimately, I believe in the power of persuasion. A way can always be found to change how people think. That's what I devote myself to, and it's unlikely that I'll ever reach the point where I believe that continuing to do that is hopeless.