The I-Word is Gaining Ground

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=45006

In 1998, House Majority Whip Tom DeLay, currently under indictment on corruption charges, proclaimed: "This nation sits at a crossroads. One direction points to the higher road of the rule of law...The other road is the path of least resistance" in which "we pitch the law completely overboard when the mood fits us... close our eyes to the potential lawbreaking...and tear an unfixable hole in our legal system." That arbiter of moral politics was incensed about the possibility of Bill Clinton escaping unpunished for his "crimes."

Fast forward to December 2005. Not one official in the entire Bush Administration has been fired or indicted, not to mention impeached, for the shedding of American blood in Iraq or for the shredding of our Constitution at home. As Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter put it--hours after the New York Times reported that Bush had authorized NSA wiretapping of US citizens without judicial warrants--this President has committed a real transgression that "goes beyond sex, corruption and political intrigue to big issues like security versus liberty and the reasonable bounds of presidential power."

In the last months, several organizations, including AfterDowningStreet, Impeach Central and ImpeachPAC.org, have formed to urge Bush's impeachment. But until very recently, their views were virtually absent in the so-called "liberal" MSM, and could only be found on the Internet and in street protests.

But the times they are a' changin'. The I-word has moved from the marginal to the mainstream--although columnists like Charles "torture-is-fine-by-me" Krauthammer would like us to believe that "only the most brazen and reckless and partisan" could support the idea. In fact, as Michelle Goldberg reports in Salon, "in the past few days, impeachment "has become a topic of considered discussion among constitutional scholars and experts (including a few Republicans), former intelligence officers, and even a few politicians." Even a moderately liberal columnist like Newsweek's Alter sounds like The Nation, observing: "We're seeing clearly now that Bush thought 9/11 gave him license to act like a dictator."

As Editor & Publisher recently reported, the idea of impeaching Bush has entered the mainstream media's circulatory system--with each day producing more op-eds and articles on the subject. Joining the chorus on Christmas Eve, conservative business magazine Barron's published a lengthy editorial excoriating the president for committing a potentially impeachable offense. "If we don't discuss the program and lack of authority of it," wrote Barron's editorial page editor Thomas Donlan, "we are meeting the enemy--in the mirror."

cont'd...

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/edcut?bid=7&pid=45006

IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!
IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!
IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!
IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!
IMPEACH THE BASTARDS!!!!!!!!!!

on Clinton's morals, I fall on the floor in a fit of hysterical laughter. What a tool!

I could list them all here, but I haven't got that much time.

Every time we talk about something serious they bring up a bunch of bullshit to distract the American
people. It is going to be our job to keep the pressure on the MSM and our elected officials. If it takes going to the streets and shutting down the bnormal way of things...so be it.

It wouldn't be the first time civil disobedience accomplished an important struggle. Our struggle this time is for our very immediate civil rights. Let us call for impeachment each and every day til the drumbeat is deafening and answered!!!

Just the opposite has occurred. The I-word has moved from the real mainstream--the great American progressive majority--into the marginal war profiteering corporate news monopolies, who don't even come close to representing the "mainstream" in this country, and who promulgate the views of a rightwing minority way out of proportion to their numbers.

The narrow spectrum, rightwing, war profiteering corporate news monopolies have won pretty much the whole battle by convincing us, the majority, that we are the minority--an illusion that we perpetuate every time we use the word "mainstream" to describe their fascist propaganda.

One could accurately say that they WANT to be "the mainstream"--that is, they want very much to brainwash the majority into believing that tax cuts for the rich, de-regulation, harm to the poor and the working class, unjust war, militarism, trillion dollar deficits, and so on, are good for us, or at the least, they want to convince us that these are majority views. They have NOT succeeded in brainwashing the majority--for all their effort--except in the latter respect. We, the individual members of the progressive majority often feel isolated and alone--like "I'm the only one"--and continue to use the narrow spectrum, rightwing news monopolies as a touchstone for what is real and what is true of other Americans.

It's kind of weird, because the news monopolies' own polls tell them otherwise. 58% of the American people opposed the Iraq war before the invasion, for instance. Feb. '03. Across the board in all polls. 58%! They just disregarded this huge opposition to Bush's war and proceeded with the propaganda. How many DUers and other leftists realize that nearly 60% of Americans opposed the Iraq war that early? I'll bet not many do--because we're all much too plugged into this propaganda machine that is trying to tell us otherwise--a machine that conjures a sort of magical "mandate" for Bush, out of thin air, no matter what he does, and despite what the numbers say about what Americans really think.

63% of Americans oppose torture "under any circumstances." May '04. Yet these polls--which show a great progressive American majority that disagrees with every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic, way up in the 60% to 70% range-- get buried in the "newsstream" and rarely if ever discussed or analyzed. And nothing happens. No outrage in the media, when the Bush junta violates yet another American or international law, or revered principle. No media calls for Bush/Cheney impeachment. Unjust, illegal war, based on lies. Tens of thousands of innocent people slaughtered. Torture. Rendition. Secret prisons in eastern Europe. Bush writing his own laws. No-bid contracts for the Vice President's company. Billions "lost" in Iraq. More tax cuts for the rich. Letting China get hold of our massively built up debt. Slave labor in the military (repeated tours--including for Nat'l Guard). It just goes on and on and on, with the great American majority disagreeing with each new crime, and the war profiteering corporate news monopolies just shining it on, pretending that Bush has some sort of "mandate" to violate everything we hold dear and to break the law.

And they capped all this manipulation and illusion off, on election night 2004, by actually FALSIFYING their own exit polls (Kerry won) to the "fit" the "results" that were produced by Bushite corporations, who control the 'TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code in the new electronic voting systems, with virtually no audit/recount controls (Bush won). They DOCTORED their exit poll numbers--to reinforce the illusion of a Bush win, and to hide major evidence of election fraud from the American people.

To call this crime and fraudulence and lies and propaganda "mainstream" is not at all accurate. How about calling it the "mainstream wannabe news"? I like "war profiteering corporate news monopolies," as the most accurate, although it's a mouthful.

"The lapdog press" is another good one--although the element of monopoly, and also the corporate element, need mention, for a comprehensive description (a full description of what's wrong).

I haven't come up with an easy phrase to describe who and what they are. I just wish that WE, on the left (the majority!), would STOP REINFORCING their most important mind-control illusion--that they somehow represent and reflect the views of most Americans--by using this word "mainstream" to describe the highly manipulated tripe that is printed and broadcast at the behest of a few fatcat media owners and monopolists who have nothing but contempt for us and our democracy.

Can I get your thoughts on this? :-)

Just kidding. That should have its own thread, IMHO. Great points and I agree on all.

--then we will begin to understand what they do with things that migrate "up" from the real mainstream--the great progressive American majority that exists out here, in the real country, disempowered, demoralized, and, above all, DISENFRANCHISED--into their narrow little band of fascist news manipulators. They find a way to manipulate any such grass roots item so that nothing changes. For instance, the recent "defense" bill banned torture in one section of the bill, but permitted torture-tainted testimony in secret military tribunals in another. They hailed the first, and buried the second. And if anything comes of Spygate, it will likely end up codifying spying--legalizing it, where it had not been legal before. And this will remain true--that populist ideas and antiwar ideas never get anywhere, really; and that our rights will be continually eroded--even if the corporate war profiteers are forced by circumstance to impeach Bush. They might well decide that that is the best course for maintaining fascist rule. Consider this: Bush impeached but merely censured; Cheney impeached and removed; and a new fresh face put in as V-P to be Diebolded into office in '08. Also, merely stopping the president from deliberately and openly and defiantly breaking the law is not enough. FISA itself is an abomination--that the president or those acting in his name can freely spy on Americans and get a warrant AFTERWARD, in SECRET. Bush appoints the secret judges. Everything happens in a secret court, and is kept under "national security" seal. The potential for abuse is enormous, even if it's done legally.

They're pulling everything so far to the right--already way off the cliff of fascism--that a mere pullback to technical legality is considered progress. It is not progress.

The president can arrest, torture and spy upon us at will. That is what the Bush junta has asserted, and is doing. The Constitution is in tatters. We are UNDER FASCIST RULE--NOW. And mentions of "the I word" in his lapdog, war profiteering corporate news monopoly press is not going to undo the harm that has been done to the rule of law, even if Bush is impeached. We need to dismantle the "imperial presidency," clean house in the national security state, and completely re-tool the military into a truly defensive posture, that cannot be used again for fascist, imperialist wars. But that is not going to happen, even if they impeach Bush. I guarantee you that no presidential candidate, who is permitted to make a serious run, will disavow these powers--just as Kerry said NOTHING about torture in the 2004 campaign. I kept waiting for him to condemn it. He did not. Nor did he say anything about the illegal war; just that he would run it more efficiently.

I tend to think NOTHING will happen--unless we can recover our right to vote. Each new outrage of presidential crime will create titters in the press, and then that will be affirmed in some sneaky way, and they'll move on to the next. Someone has described this as the "slow boil of fascism" that happened in Germany under Hitler in the 1930s. One outrage followed another, as peoples' rights were curtailed, each one minimized and explained away by Hitler's controlled press, and each one having a legal veneer (just as Bush has tried to do, with his "time of war" justification)--until all rights are gone, and you are living in a fascist state, in which your neighbors can be 'disappeared' and either you don't notice, or you are too afraid to get involved.

If we can recover our right to vote--for which I think there is a narrowing window of opportunity--we can address these grave problems at the fundamental level that is necessary to correct them. And if we can't, then I think our democracy is over. The dream of American democracy will never die as long as people live who cherish freedom, and I think that will always be the case. But it will be very, very difficult to get it back.

Let's face it. We've lost the press. Long may the live. Our only hope is as you say. Ensuring our right to vote - a FAIR vote. Not one dictated to us by the Diebold's of America. We are going to have to take back the process from corporate America - those that run and own everything. And again I agree, it will be very, very difficult to get it back.

..i didnt know it were possible :)

Yours, mine and everyone else. :-)