Dennis Kucinich - A Kitty Genovese for Our Time

arendt

(1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore

Thu Jan-17-08 12:35 PM
Original message

Dennis Kucinich - A Kitty Genovese for Our Time

Edited on Thu Jan-17-08 12:41 PM by arendt

Kitty Genovese (July 7, 1935— March 13, 1964)...was a New York City woman who was stabbed to death near her home in the Kew Gardens section of Queens, New York. The circumstances of her murder and the apparent reaction of her neighbors... prompted investigation into the psychological phenomenon that became known as the bystander effect...

..the public view of the story crystallized around a quote...from an unidentified neighbor who saw part of the attack but deliberated, before finally getting another neighbor to call the police: "I didn't want to get involved." Other reports...stated that one man turned up his radio so that he would not hear Genovese's screams...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitty_genovese

I am ashamed of myself. The media is mugging Dennis Kucinich to death, but I am a bystander. Its not that I can't hear him fighting his assailant with impeachment resolutions and recounts. Its not that I don't think the Constitution and the political process are being trampled on. Its not that "I was not a progressive, so I did nothing". (Niemoller reference).

In November, I wrote:

What you need to know is that the middle and working classes have lost an organized national leadership. We are reduced to voting for individual candidates on their individual merits. And for me, merit is telling the truth about what is really happening in America."

If I really meant that, I should be out there screaming for justice, or at least sending money to Dennis for the NH recount and writing poison pen letters to NBC. But, I'm not.

The only answer I can find is that I simply don't think the man's approach has a chance. Its clear to me that the system is so corrupt that someone like Dennis is going to get his head beaten in, and then people will step over his corpse - even fellow Democratic candidates who should stand up for him. If an un-bought Democrat became president, he ought to make Dennis Attorney General. But, that is another fantasy.

If you want to know why even the best of those candidates is silent, you have to at least acknowledge that the Military-Intelligence-Prison-Media Complex has way too much power in this country. But, that elephant in the living room is too big to tackle in an essay. So, I will let someone with far better credentials than me give an anecdotal explanation of our Constitutional-bystander-ism.

Roger Morris is a former foreign service officer and has also served on Presidents Lyndon Johnson’s and Richard Nixon’s National Security Council senior staff. He resigned, however, over the invasion of Cambodia. In a July 7, 2007 interview with Scoop, he said:

"It’s a huge shadow world. And the reason it’s come into existence is that it’s occupied a vacuum. There’s no one on the other side to even look at it. The average Congressman, even a newly empowered Democratic committee chairman in the House or the Senate, looks at all of this with a sense of being overwhelmed and not even knowing where to begin, so massive is the enormity they face.

I remember an old movie...called Sands of Iwo Jima with John Wayne. Very famous movie...And at one point the nervous young Marines are gathered around John Wayne on the ship. This is the night before they land the next day and they say: Gee Sarge, what have the Japanese got out on that island out there? And he says: Well I don’t know boys, but they’ve had 40 years to put it there. And the camera pans back to these worried faces.

It makes the point that we always have to remember about the National Security Establishment. This thing hasn’t happened overnight. It didn’t just happen in the George W. Bush administration. This is a product of a very long, convoluted, very well financed, in some respects well planned and in other respects entirely spontaneous and almost random development of a process which is now HUGE. It’s now vast.

http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0707/S00058.htm

In light of the above, I must say I have a great deal of respect for Rep. Kucinich. He fights like there is no tomorrow (which there isn't). He knows what he is up against, and he doesn't flinch. His fundamental appeal is that he tells the truth, when the whole media and campaign environment is a shitstorm of disinformation, manipulation, warmongering, and fundamentalims of all sorts. Some days, I want to join him in an honorable suicidal charge into the machine guns. But, for now, I have too much to lose and the probability of success is too low to risk everything.

However, at the rate this country is going, I will be up for that charge sooner than I had hoped. In the words of Mike Whitney, America has become "a culture of violence and corruption". I leave you with words that even Dennis might hesitate to say, not because they are false, but because they are an indictment of our whole country:

The United States is not a beacon of hope or a light unto the world. It is a menace and a growing threat to survival on earth. America's political and military belligerence is just an extension of a domineering economic system which serves the sole interests of the rich and powerful.

- Mike Whitney

God Bless Dennis Kucinich, and FSM help me, for I am weak.

(Note: I have not endorsed any Democratic candidate to date, and I am not a supporter of DK.)