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profiteering corporate news monopoly propaganda machine. It's been harder for them to do so, than, say, the indigenous in southern Mexico, or the vast poor of Venezuela, whose corporate news monopolies are just like ours, and even openly supported the 2002 violent military coup attempt against Hugo Chavez. The people just IGNORED these insane "news" dogs. Tens of thousands of Venezuelans poured into the streets, during that coup attempt, demanding return of their elected president and reopening of their National Assembly. They DIDN'T BELIEVE what their corporate news monopolies were saying.
And that is happening here, too. It actually began happening a ways back, when FIFTY-SIX PERCENT of the American people opposed the Iraq War, BEFORE the invasion (Feb. '03). That would be a landslide in a presidential election. 56% is A LOT. They just didn't believe Bush. They TUNED OUT all that intense propaganda--even with formerly reputable organizations like the NYT pushing the war--and made up their own minds that the facts did not justify a war.
It's also happening on the election fraud/election reform. Ordinary people are way ahead of the corporate "news" media on this. Word of mouth--and our modern day "Committees of Correspondence," the internet--are succeeding in creating a virtual community of concerned citizens, that parallels/replicates the people-to-people information systems among the indigenous and the poor in Mexico, Venezuela, Bolivia and other places. One of the evidences that this is happening here is the huge Absentee Ballot vote in the recent midterms. The AB vote has been on the increase in proportion to the cancerous spread of these insecure, hackable, electronic voting machines--amidst a near total blackout in the "news" on this vital matter. And we saw some dramatic increases this time, with just a little more news making it into the establishment press--it was 50% of the vote in the entire state of California, with big increases all over the nation. What this tells me is that people are onto the electronic voting scam--and they've done it virtually on their own, with no help from the corporate news monopolies--and they are trying to find a way around the rigged electronics, by voting with an Absentee Ballot.
Notice how quiet the media has been about this? I think I'm one of about five people in the country who was paying attention to the AB vote. People don't realize what happened. It was a huge rebellion--a boycott, a protest. And if we can only get this big constituency of discontented and distrustful voters mobilized, we can force election reform NOW, at the LOCAL level, by insisting that AB votes be handcounted and the results posted BEFORE any electronics are involved. I think this is doable, and may be the only way to get real election reform (a paper ballot system BY DEFAULT). Diane Feinstein--the other face of California feminine politics--heads the Senate committee on elections, and I think she will gut or block any serious reform of the election system.
But anyway, to get back to Pelosi and our rightwing, fascist corporate news monopolies: I think we have a much savvier public now than we did during the Clinton years. Bush has done us that favor, in a way. His lies were so egregious--and the parroting of his lies by the corporate news monopolies was so obvious--that people don't trust those news monopolies any more, just like they don't trust the voting system any more. They tune it out. In fact, whatever they hear or read from these untrustworthy sources, many just figure automatically that the opposite is true. So, who knows?--their ragging on Pelosi may be to her benefit.
Propaganda only works for a time. The human mind hungers for truth and reality. And the human mind WILL start translating propaganda into its opposite, when the propaganda starts getting tiresome. I have personal experience of this, having been raised in rather rightwing Catholic schools. After a while, I realized that, whatever they said, the opposite was probably true. I think this is what's happening to the American electorate.
This is not to say that these corporate news monopolies are not dangerous--and that they shouldn't be fought tooth and nail. Item no. 1 on my list, after throwing Diebold/E&S and other election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor,' is busting the news monopolies. (Boy, do they need it! Bust 'em down to one TV station or one newspaper per CEO--or less.) But, right now, I think we should put more energy into getting real information to the people (for instance, via the internet and listserves)--and to correcting and commenting on the corporate garbage--than I would put into trying to get the corporate entities off their rightwing "talking points." They are the tools--the propaganda organs--of the war profiteers and the corporate fascists. They are not going to change--and that is very much to their peril. They are stiff and unchangeable. That's what corporations become--with monopolies, and power, and control, and immense wealth. They become ossified (--just like the Catholic Church!). They think their brainwashing techniques will keep working. But, more than this, they insist on it--because, like kings and queens gone bad, they are suffering from hubris. How dare anyone challenge them? Like the Red Queen, in "Alice in Wonderland," they WILL paint the white roses red. They don't care if the roses die. Their POWER to DICTATE the parameters of the nation's political debate has gone to their heads. They have lost any creative edge they might once have had.
Clinton was a curious case. He was really a corporate tool in many ways, himself. The outsourcing of jobs began with Clinton, not with Bush--for instance. The bad trade deals--and the broken promises about labor and environmental protections--were Clinton's. The destruction of the welfare system, while putting nothing in its place to help the exploited and downtrodden poor, was Clinton's handiwork.
And so, the rightwing assault on Clinton is odd, and a little hard to figure out. He gave them much of what they wanted, except war. That's part of it. Well, and multiple tax cuts for the super-rich WITH war, and a $10 TRILLION deficit--to be paid for by the poor. (I noticed the tax cuts for the rich bothered Clinton--I heard him say recently that HE should be paying more taxes.) My guess: Clinton, for all his "free trade" promulgation, actually had/has some more socially responsible intentions. Universal health care, for one. And maybe that's what Kenneth Starr, Grand Inquisitor, was all about--to insure that global corporate piggery would not be tempered by ANY concessions to, or help for, workers and the poor--or protections for our poor, dying planet. It would be a total, unmitigated, global pigfest.
They were also laying the groundwork for the mind-boggling combination of "christian values" with total piggery--as the false, corporate-created narrative for why normally sensible people would vote for unnecessary war, multiple tax cuts for the super-rich and a $10 TRILLION deficit. It started with this moralistic tone about Clinton. The hypocrisy was amazing. Clinton actually did pretty well through it all. I remember that his polls were never higher than when they were reviling him for getting a blow job. What the American people weren't very savvy about was the rightwing plans to steal elections. (Nor were they savvy about NAFTA--but that has changed as well.) This narrative as to why people would hand over the nation's treasury to Halliburton, Bechtel and assorted predators, or would vote to applaud the slaughter of one hundred thousand innocent people, or would vote for torture (when 63% of them oppose torture "under any circumstances"--May '04), got geared up and went into full force after 9/11. The notion that Christians just love to see children's bodies shattered by bombs "in order to keep us safe," that people want to be fleeced, that ordinary people have no ability to resist simplistic slogans (" you're either with us or agin us," "mission accomplished"), and that most Americans are bigots (anti-gay, anti-brown, anti-women)--and many other such insane and deceitful "memes"--became the "narrative" for explaining stolen elections. The 'christian' right--always a small minority in our society--was given a BIG TRUMPET, to make it SEEM like they are the majority. It fooled us for a while. In fact, it was the Corporate Rulers' only propaganda victory--convincing the rest of us that rightwing nuts were "winning" and that WE liberals, and believers in the Constitution, and sane, normal, generous, open-minded, tolerant people, were now in the minority. I don't think it was ever true. (And opinion polls over the last several years bear me out.) But Jesus dropping bombs on Baghdad was the nutso thing they wanted to "sell"--and we had early warning of just how crazy this "product" is, with the "Starr Chamber" proceedings against Clinton over a stained dress.
So my advice--re Pelosi (or other rightwing plots):
1. Election reform. Right now, we have two Bushite corporations "counting" most of our votes with TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code. You've all heard about Diebold. But do you know who initially funded its brethren corporation, ES&S? Rightwing billionaire Howard Ahmanson, who also gave one million dollars to the extremist 'christian' Chalcedon Foundation, which touts the death penalty for homosexuals (among other things). THAT's who is "counting" our votes under a veil of corporate secrecy! (No, no "conspiracy" here. Move along.) As we begin to reform this egregiously non-transparent voting system, we will begin to elect real representatives of the people, to add support to the good Democrats who have managed to make it into Congress, in onerous, very handicapped conditions. With real Democrats, truly representing the majority of Americans, it will cease to matter much what the rightwing is fulminating about. Our lives will begin to improve, and the benefits will be obvious! We can't make the composition of Congress any better right now--than what we got from the midterms (a great improvement, but still not adequate as to representing the interests of the majority)--but the threat that we can and will be electing even better reps in the future will influence the current office-holders--bolster up the good ones, get THEM to ignore the corporate/rightwing bullshit, and proceed with the PEOPLES' business.
2. Work from the margins! Most Americans exist in the margins. Their concerns have been ignored or trivialized--quite deliberately. So don't be thinking about the phony "mainstream", as sold to you by the corporate news monopolies. The real mainstream is the great progressive American majority, which has managed to survive this fascist onslought, and grievous disempowerment and disenfranchisement, and is still here. It never went away. But it has been shut out of power, and shut out the corporate-permitted political debate. People need information. They need hope. They need to realize that they are the majority. Educate, inform and motivate the PEOPLE, as the first priority--and only secondarily strike at the decrepit power of the corporate news monopolies. For instance, I think it's far more important to post a CRITICISM of a rightwing/corporate lie on the internet, than to write them a letter about it. Do both if you can. But the first priority is to inform and hearten the people who are the victims of 24/7 propaganda. The rightwing/corporate news monopolies are not likely to change. But the PEOPLE can and do change--and are the key to change--and many of them are hungry for real information. The American people are a lot savvier than people give them credit for. But there are some lies that still take hold--for instance, this persistent lie about Hugo Chavez (that he is "authoritarian") that we see time and again in the corporate news monopoly press. (What they are trying to hide from the American people is this great populist revolution that is occurring throughout South America, because it might give us some ideas here--for instance, that maybe oil profits should benefit the rest of us--should be used for schools and medical care for the poor? Got to kill THAT idea!) Inform and hearten the People first, and make sure they do get "ideas," and you thereby undermine the corporate propagandists. The corporate propagandists are NEVER going to inform the American people about this peaceful revolution in South America. WE have to. And, from us, on the internet, it spreads out--forcing open the political debate, and maybe even helping Nancy Pelosi to be bolder and to steel her spine against the corporate/rightwing's increasingly desperate attacks and all their same-sounding, pre-written "talking points."
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