Letters to the Editor
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God damn the Senate
and God damn Geo. Bush.
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@bystander, @RMP, @Kitt, @Anonymust
And, I suspect, it's uncertainty that constrains much of what the media reports - or, fails to report. Will anyone miss it, if we don't include it?
bystander
From the New York Times, this morning, comes some evidence that they are quite sure, and placing bets on George W. Bush to preserve their way of life:
Mr. Bush never sounds surer of himself than when the subject is Sept. 11, even when his critics argue that he has squandered the country’s moral authority, violated American and international law, and led the United States into the foolhardy distraction of Iraq.
[...]
The 9/11 candidate, Rudolph W. Giuliani of New York, may have dropped his bid for the White House. But the 9/11 presidency is far from over.
On the question of warrantless wiretapping, widely expanded after the Sept. 11 attacks, Mr. Bush is pushing to make permanent legislation that last year made a once-secret program legal, despite a storm of protest that has reverberated since 2005, when the program was disclosed.
Only a year ago, Iraq appeared to have deflated the president’s popularity and eroded his standing even among Republicans and the Pentagon’s generals. But Mr. Bush now appears to have laid a foundation to keep more than 130,000 American troops on the ground in a mission he has justified as part of a broader fight against terrorism, despite an overwhelming groundswell against an unpopular conflict.[...]
In each of these cases — the military tribunals, the wiretapping legislation, Iraq — the White House seems eager to lock in as many of the president’s policies as possible before he leaves office in 11 months. And as it looks ahead to the November elections, the White House seems to have concluded that each is politically sustainable and even favorable for a Republican candidate and Mr. Bush’s own legacy.
In 2004, the New York Times ran multiple lead editorials supporting restrictions on protests against the Republican Convention, on grounds that the grass in Central Park was too expensive to ruin with people exercising their right to free assembly. They withheld the NSA wiretapping story until after the elections on grounds that they didn't want to affect the outcome of the elections.
The media are populated by large corporations in the business of privately owning public information. They were beneficiaries of the Telecom Act of 1996 which the telecoms and the House Republicans wrote in part for them. They like close elections that sell Cialis and Nexium, where the candidates outdo themselves trying to raise money to buy precious minutes on their prime time venues, not lopsided landslide referenda on torture and corruption that come with threats that the courts will oversee corporate corruption. They want a whistleblower law to protect themselves from being jailed for protecting obstruction of justice by high government officials. They own exit polls capable of verifying free and fair election status and call it proprietary and confidential intellectual property. Disney's efforts to extend copyrights to 150 years were a blessing from heaven for them.
How did anybody really think they genuinely felt about corporate immunity from a law prohibiting a form of illegal trafficking in personal and private information?
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What have elephantmans suffered?
How does the human beings develop into elephantmans?
Who benefit from elephantmans?
How can elephantmans be released from rulers?
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sweet memories
1964 was my freshman year of high school. My memories of upheaval stretched from Selma (1965) through Watts (1965) into Newark (1967) MLK's and RFK's assassinations and the Democratic convention (1968) culminating in Kent State (1970). I checked the dates to be sure of the sequence. My memory was pretty strong as it turns out. Some things really do get burned in your brain. There may have been other events, but these are the ones that were fixed in time for me.
What adnoto wishes for, I don't think I'd want to relive. And, adnoto would probably say that's part of the problem. Too many of us who remember still alive. I am not convinced that it couldn't happen again, even if I hope it doesn't. But, when I think back, the images were blasted into everyone's life via the television and newspaper coverage, and some of them still live in my imagination. What I am less sure of, is the degree to which the publication of these images, and the accompanying reports, fed subsequent events.
There have been demonstrations in the past few years (immigration, the war in Iraq come to mind) which have received scant media attention. I feel like I really had to dig to find coverage, even if I knew it was happening. If I didn't know it was happening, could I have missed it altogether? I suppose Kitt is right. An event that could culminate in $40 mil worth of damage (Watts) would likely be reported. Undoubtedly, that was hyperbole on my part. But, I can't seem escape the feeling that the media carefully screens the playlist, not unlike a radio station responding to corporate programming.
I'm probably projecting my own uncertainty. Is the world closer and smaller? Or, is there a segmentation by which certain elements are kept as far apart from each other as the media can arrange?
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Der Elephuntertan
Der Untertan is the most famous novel by German author Heinrich Mann. It has been translated into English under the titles "Man of Straw," "The Patrioteer," and "The Loyal Subject" (translation by Helmut Peitsch). The title poses a problem for the non-German reader since there is no effective translation of the word 'Untertan' in the sense it was employed by Mann. The 'Subject' of the title conveys a sense of unthinking servility to the state.
Although the novel was completed in July 1914, shortly before the outbreak of World War I, it was not published until 1918 (by Kurt Wolff Verlag of Leipzig). After the war, the novel enjoyed considerable popularity, given its critiques of the ultra-nationalism of Wilhelmine Germany.
"Der Untertan" portrays the life of Diederich Hessling, a slavish and fanatical admirer of Kaiser Wilhelm II, as an archetype of nationalist Wilhelmine Germany. Hessling is unthinkingly obedient to authority and maintains a rigid dedication to the nationalist goals of the German state.
Throughout the novel, Hessling's inflexible ideals are often contradicted by his actions: he preaches bravery but is a coward; he is the strongest proponent of the military but seeks to be excused from his obligatory military service; his greatest political opponents are the revolutionary Social Democrats, yet he uses his influence to help send his hometown's SPD candidate to the Reichstag to defeat his Liberal competitors in business; he starts vicious rumors against the latter and then dissociates himself from them; he preaches and enforces Christian virtues upon others but lies, cheats, and regularly commits infidelity.
Diederich's ideals: blood and iron, and the might of opulent power, are exposed as hollowness and weakness. Diederich Hessling--the child (and later adult) who acts as an informer, the member of the Neo-Teuton student fraternity, the doctor of chemistry, the paper manufacturer, and eventually the most influential man in town--is a critical allegory depicting German society's increasing susceptibility to chauvinism, jingoism, ultra-nationalism, anti-Semitism, and proto-fascism. His character is often juxtaposed, in both words and appearance to another man of straw: Kaiser Wilhelm II. In one instance, Hessling's behavior and outward appearance move an observer to stammer, 'It almost seems to me...You look so very much like His ...' , meaning the Kaiser.
Mann uses the moral bankruptcy and shallow ridiculousness of Hessling's life to critique Wilhelmine German society generally. Like other novels of the period, such as Theodor Fontane's Effi Briest, or even his brother Thomas Mann's Buddenbrooks, the principal target is the hypocrisy of bourgeois society and the risk of social collapse in a nation of loyal 'Untertan' citizens.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Der_Untertan
http://www.litencyc.com/php/sworks.php?rec=true&UID=11420
If only you could learn to ignore Der Untertans the way you ignore the other trolls like Brightstar65, or even this person:
www.PublicCampaign.org, the Clean Elections people
Get the money out of the game.
-- Phoenix Woman
One can only conclude that it is more fun to bitch and moan and spar with straw men than to focus on the root of the problem. Dealing with the problem takes concentration and work and a willingness to think beyond ideology. You will never have privately funded public servants. Duh. If you get the money out of the game, then you might even manage to get satisfaction and faithful representation from a Republican or less than ideal Democrat. Just a thought.