Divided and Conquered America: How Indepent Media Undermines Mass Movements For Meaningful Change

[stockholmer]

http://ampedstatus.org/divided-and-conquered-america-how-independent-media-undermines-mass-movements-for-meaningful-change/

"After much research you realize that there are very few people who know our current system of power well enough to critique it in a meaningful and effective way. There are very few people who are brave and courageous enough to boldly speak their hard-earned truth to power. Once you understand how the powerful function to divide and conquer us, you break free from the groupthink partisanship that is pivotal in preventing any meaningful mass movements for structural change. It is at this point that you learn to appreciate the all-too rare “truth-tellers.” It doesn’t matter what their individual political leanings are — most often they defy any pre-existing ideology. Ultimately, you respect the fact that they are exposing the deeper and more meaningful truths that are necessary for critical thinking and the evolution of your own perspective. In this regard, Chris Hedges is one of our leading truth-tellers. He courageously refuses to be pinned down into a partisan cage. He most often comes from a progressive perspective, but he has no hesitation in exposing the destructive role the Democratic party and “liberal establishment” play in our demise.......


snip

Here are two brief quotes from Hedges http://www.truthdig.com/report/category/hedges/ that I would like to call attention to:

“The longer we believe in the fiction that we are included in the corporate power structure, the more easily corporations pillage the country without the threat of rebellion. Those who know the truth are crushed. Those who do not are lied to. Those who consume and perpetuate the lies – including the liberal institutions of the press… and the Democratic Party – abet our disempowerment.” {full source} http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/recognizing_the_language_of_tyranny_20110206/a

“The liberal class… prefers comfort and privilege to justice, truth and confrontation. Its guiding ideological stance is determined by what is most expedient to the careers of its members. It refuses to challenge, in a meaningful way, the decaying structures of democracy or the ascendancy of the corporate state…. Those who expose this moral cowardice and collaboration with corporate power are always ruthlessly thrust aside. The liberal class is incapable of reforming itself. It does not hold within its ranks the rebels and iconoclasts who have the moral or physical courage to defy the corporate state and power elite.” {full source} http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_prophets_like_cornel_west_make_liberal_sell-outs_attack_20110523/

While Hedges correctly criticizes the “liberal class” and Democratic Party, which all-too effectively push aside our most important truth-tellers and movements for change, I would like to point out an aspect of Hedges’ critique that I believe is overlooked and discuss a more subtle method of suppression: the role of so-called “independent” media. This is where an important lesson is to be learned........................


snip

[napoleon_in_rags]

1. Empowerment Narrative

' their editorial framing is most often “Republicans bad, Democrats good.” '

Its a great truth of the universe that 'united we stand, divided we fall'. But what do we stand for?

Those who stand united will take power while the others fall, while the others are divided and conquered. When people are unhappy with the status quo from those in power, they will become united themselves in opposition, until they take power. When people become alienated from this movement, the new united power, they will go to the opposition of them, usually the old party. So the two party system is like shit, it just happens naturally. Its massively futile.

My critique of many media outlets is their lack of truly empowering narrative for the people watching them. Entangling us in this futility, in shock games and fear. What we need is those voices that actually give us power, the power to make change as individuals in the world, rather than as robo-voices for any political party. Really that's good advice in terms of any cause too... Give me a small crack team of thinking people against an army of zombies any day.

[Peace Patriot]

2. He doesn't mention 'TRADE SECRET' vote counting-the common ground for all Americans.

Here's how he describes the issues that could unite us (outside of the partisan divide):

I’ve learned from experience that you can unite people across the political spectrum on the core issues that are at the root of the crisis we are in – those key issues being: campaign finance, lobbying, the revolving door, breaking up the banks and the concentration of media ownership. These are the key systemic issues that we must focus on and can rally around together. There are many other issues that are important, but until these core common ground issues are solved we will ultimately find our other efforts to be futile.

It is obviously not easy to unite people on these core systemic issues and break through all the partisan noise when so many popular “independent” media outlets are primarily focused on the Democrat Vs Republican sideshow distraction. But if you’re serious about changing the corrupted system that we toil in, if you are ready to roll up your sleeves, if you prefer justice and truth over short-term comfort and privilege, you have to stop fighting yesterday’s war and evolve. Don’t fall into the same short-sighted thinking that plagues the super-wealthy and current politicians. The inability to look at the longer-term ramifications, in favor of short-term profits and comfort, ensures our continued decline. If we (99.5% of the population) can’t unite against the top economic 0.5% who control both political parties, our standard of living will continue on its downward spiral.

--from the OP (my emphasis)

--------------------------

Someone who tries to analyze the problems of the Tweedledee/Tweedeldum system we are caught in, and who leaves out the corporate takeover of the very counting of our votes, has not gone deep enough.

Thus, David DeGraw's "complaint" ultimately seems to me like a wrangle about funding, more than anything else. He certainly does identify an important problem--that many progressive sites serve that system and "frame" issues to curry votes and support for the Democratic Party, as if the Democratic Party is going to save us, and they do this because they are getting funding from wealthy Democrats or other such sources. I can't really speak to this problem, because I don't know anything about their funding, but it does certainly seem to be true that these sites "frame" political issues like the old Coca-Cola/7-Up "divide" (the Democrats are "the un-cola"--"Vote for the new and refreshing fizzy drink, not the old mud-colored fizzy drink!"). (Of course, fruit juice and water, which come direct from Nature weren't given as "choices"--until recently; now even water has been corporatized). And it seems reasonable that funding is the source of this problem, as he asserts. However, I'm a little uneasy with his claim of righteousness and virtue, as opposed to all these others with their "comfortable" funding. It, in fact, seems like throwback to me--way back to the original Protestant revolt against the corruption of the Catholic Church. But righteousness can also be tyrannical, as humanity soon learned about some of the Protestant sects and their obsession with "purity."

I tend to suspect that these sites' service to the Democratic Party--by "framing" issues to partisan advantage (rather than going to the root--the corruption of the Democratic Party leadership)--derives more from an unconscious, unthinking acceptance of the two-party tyranny, than from funding sources. DeGraw claims there has been censorship, and that may be true (and he mentions an instance of censorship of him, by a funder), but overall, what I sense in some of these sites is laziness of mind. But probably both are true: certain kinds of funding encourage laziness of mind ("don't bite the hand that feeds you" ) combined with the site's editors and preferred writers, failing, in the face of the appalling condition of our national political life and signs of collapse of our democracy, our society and our country. They really can't get their minds around it. It is too catastrophic--so they waste their own time and ours dwelling on the diabolical Republicans whose evil is not only intended to rip us apart but also to distract us.

How to pull Americans together, in this circumstance, to reform our country?

I think that absolutely nothing is going to work until we get rid of the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines. And this is also THE issue that can pull us together against the corporate takeover of everything, including our political leaders, our laws, the media, the war machine, the prisons machine, you name it.

'TRADE SECRET' voting counting was the FINAL coup d'etat, and until that final coup for controlling us and our country is peeled back, no reform is possible. Its intention was to prevent the natural corrective mechanism in a democracy from working properly, and that is exactly what it has done.

Here's the situation: One, private, far rightwing corporation--ES&S, which bought out Diebold--now controls 80% of the voting machines in this country. These machines are run on 'TRADE SECRET' programming code--code that the public is forbidden to review--with virtually no audit/recount controls. Half the states do NO AUDIT AT ALL of the election results that these machines spit out. The other half do only a miserably inadequate 1% audit (automatic comparison of machine totals to ballots). Vote counting has been PRIVATIZED.

Voting is THE most fundamental power of the people in a democracy. it is the very mechanism by which we transfer portions of our sovereignty as a people, temporarily, to our elected representatives. That very mechanism has been TAKEN OVER, by a private corporation with far rightwing connections that would make your hair stand on end.

Election fraud has been made easy, lightning fast and invisible.

One.

Private.

Far rightwing-connected.

Corporation.

'Counts'.

80% of our votes.

Using.

'TRADE SECRET' code.

With.

Virtually.

No.

Audit.

Controls.


This MIND-BOGGLING situation was brought about by the Anthrax Congress, in Oct. '02 (same month as the Iraq War Resolution) which appropriated $3.9 billion dollars to spread these election theft machines all over the USA, with absolutely no requirement of transparency and public review. Virtually all of our elected Democrats voted FOR this mindboggling assault on our democracy and have been "black-holing" the matter ever since--a simply jaw-dropping betrayal of their constituents and of democracy itself.

It is TABOO to talk about this in Democratic circles. And I think that DeGraw's failure to mention it is a result of that taboo--unconscious, I think, on his part, but reflective of his failure to go deep enough. He gets all tangled up discussing these progressive web sites' funding, and how unfair it is that he has been excluded, but he himself doesn't get the biggest betrayal of all, the singularly most important problem of all, and the very issue that can unite virtually all Americans: the demand for TRANSPARENT vote counting--vote counting that we can all see and understand; vote counting in the PUBLIC VENUE.

'TRADE SECRET' vote counting illustrates all our other problems--the corporate take-over--and IS the biggest problem of them all.

And you only have to look at this Scumbag Congress--or certain governors--to realize that these people don't represent the majority and were NOT elected!

Back when we still had transparent vote counting, we were able to mount a very decent Congress--a Congress that, for instance, forbade Ronald Reagan and his henchmen to conduct a war on Nicaragua, and when they did it anyway, Congress INVESTIGATED them, and even put some of his henchmen in jail. They didn't go far enough--and their failure to impeach Reagan was probably their first big betrayal of us--a sign of things to come--but they nevertheless behaved like representatives of the people are supposed to behave. They put a check on executive power. They forbade a war! And then they dug deep; they found out what was going on; they held hearings; they exposed the wrong-doing.

Yes, our power as a people to elect representatives who act in our interest has been steadily eroded over time, by many methods--increasing corporate/war profiteer influence over campaigns, directly with money; increasing corporate/war profiteer influence over campaigns and over elected officials by the corpo-fascist media monopolies; filthy corporate/war profiteer lobbying; filthy banksterism and all the rest.

But NEVER EVER has it been this bad. Never! We can't even elect a merely DECENT congress (let alone a good one). I do think Obama was elected but I also think that he was permitted to be elected, and that is the problem. Neither Obama, nor ANY elected official in this country, can prove that they were actually elected. Proof is gone. Transparency is gone. Public vote counting--that slow, VISIBLE process that makes fidding elections so difficult--is gone. Now it's easy. Election fraud is EASY--and no longer in our control.

And that, my friends, is an issue for all Americans. The bottom line of democracy.

Control over voting system decisions remains LOCAL. There is NO federal law requiring states and counties to use these election theft machines. This coup was entirely accomplished by corruption and filthy lobbying. Yes, it has corrupted local officials, but they are closer to us. They might even live down the street from you. If thousands of local people could be rallied to election official offices, demanding PUBLIC vote counting, they would have to yield. This is basic to America. It is like the black voting rights movement of the '60s. It is both denial of citizens' rights AND symbolic of the larger oppressive system.

The labor union members and others who rallied in Wisconsin had the right idea but the wrong issue--or rather a side issue. It's NEVER about money; it's about WHO HAS THE POWER over the money. They perceived this in a limited way, only as it relates to the rights, legal protections and power of labor. But they did not address WHO IS COUNTING THE VOTES? Who put this asshole in power as governor? Now they are relying on a system RUN BY ES&S/DIEBOLD WITH 'TRADE SECRET' CODE to correct the situation (recall elections), and who knows?--if the forces of darkness are smart, they will yield a little. And they've been pretty smart so far in how they have deployed this made-to-order election fraud system.

No, it will not solve all of our problems to restore transparent vote counting. It is baby step back to democracy. Think about it. If you can't even stand on your two feet and take that first step, you will never walk. That's where we're at. FIRST STEP. That's what they've done us--our own party leaders, the Pukes and their transglobal corporate masters. They've stripped us of the bottom line of democracy--the basis of all progress and reform.

[999998th word]

3. Kneecapped.