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Edited on Wed Jul-09-08 01:38 PM by Peace Patriot
I do love Chomsky, but I sometimes think that academia and a full belly insulate him from the real world in some ways. It's a leftist intellectual prejudice that the American people are stupid, uninformed 'sheeple,' so when they show plain evidence of not being stupid or uninformed--such as the significant majority that opposed the Iraq War (and the overwhelming majority now)--the left doesn't credit this, and doesn't even notice it. If they did, it might lead them--as it led me--to investigate why this significant majority in 2004, and overwhelming majority in 2006, was NOT reflected in the elections and has not resulted in a change of policy. How CAN Bush/Cheney be so oblivious to the will of the overwhelming majority? How can a new Democratic Congress be so oblivious to it? If you look at the election system--even just a superficial look (at the 'TRADE SECRET' code thing, for instance)--you begin to realize that the mechanism for granting/acquiring power in the U.S. government is severely compromised. Basically, three corporations--all with close ties to the Republican Party and far rightwing causes--have seized direct control of the election system. If that had not been the case in 2004, the people would have thrown Bush/Cheney out. (I think the case for this is quite overwhelming.) And if that had happened, intellectuals like Chomsky would have had to credit the common sense, intelligence and good judgment of most of the American people. They don't look to the election system because they have this prejudice that most Americans are sheep. It's ironical, as to Chomsky, because he has done so much, himself, to make them NOT sheep. He is a great educator and writer.
To my mind, free and fair elections can solve almost any problem you could name, because I really believe that democracy produces collective wisdom. Our elections really started going haywire with the JFK and RFK assassinations, but they began losing ground as "free and fair" very quickly, starting with Reagan. Reagan was more of a corporate media coup than a matter of ballot box stuffing. It was the first total illusion presidency--an illusion spun by the increasingly powerful corporate 'news' monopolies. Christ, Reagan was directly complicit in the slaughter of TWO HUNDRED THOUSAND Mayan villagers in Guatemala, and an illegal war (forbidden by Congress) on Nicaragua, permitted his buds to loot the sacrosanct S&Ls, busted labor unions, re-wrote the tax code to favor the rich, began to dismantle the 'New Deal,' and started off his presidency with outright treason (negotiating arms for hostages with Iran--IRAN!--over President Jimmy Carter's head.) Reagan was the worst president the U.S. has ever had, before Bush II. The corporate media worshiped Reagan and destroyed his Democratic rivals. They literally sold Reagan like a toothpaste.
The Reagan era was also the beginning of the demise of the Democratic Party, as the party of the people--the party of the workers and the poor and the enlightened--and the defender of the rights and interests of the majority. Their failure to impeach Reagan over the Iran/Contra war (war on Nicaragua) was harbinger to their current, appalling failure to impeach Bush/Cheney for far, far worse crimes, including their naked assault on the Constitution.
By this era--the '00 election--the corporate media was freely creating and destroy candidacies. But it was still theoretically possible to run insurgent campaigns and win elections (especially with this new technology, the internet, coming along--with alternative news, and also fundraising and organizing capabilities). During the 2002 to 2004 period, the sovereign power of the people--to vote in real representatives of the people--was taken away. While the corporate 'news' monopolies were beginning to wane as an influence over what people think and how they vote (2003 to the present), peoples' votes were being rendered useless--became the 'TRADE SECRET' property of private, Bushite corporations.
There is truth to the notion of the American people being 'sheeple' during the Reagan era. They still had the power to vote, and could have thrown those fuckers out. On the other hand, they didn't have the internet. They were still enthrall to the awesome and dreadful illusion-making of the corporate media (which Chomsky so brilliantly analyzed--in "The Manufacture of Consent"). Now I think we have a different problem. The corporate 'news' monopolies are still a major problem. I would prioritize them, currently, as problem #2, as to the election system. A big problem, truly--but one that is being mitigated by the internet, and word of mouth (the increasing political consciousness and savvy of ordinary people). The rigged voting, though, is problem #1. We cannot even begin the process of reforming this country without transparent vote counting. Transparent vote counting may not yield, say, 100% reformers, as our representatives, but it will likely yield reps we can work with. People like Sens. Feingold and Obama should be much more common in Washington DC than they are. They should be the rule. And the FDRs and the Thomas Jeffersons should be the avantgarde. We don't have these yet (except for Kucinich and maybe one or two others whose names I don't know, because their work gets no 'news' coverage). Obama is no great reformer--but he seems reasonable and intelligent, and would likely agree to proposals for restoring total transparency to the election system, for instance. He himself ran an insurgent campaign in the primaries, and got his first edge in the caucuses (which are NOT COUNTED BY DIEBOLD & BRETHREN). The election theft corporations can EASILY steal his victory (even with a landslide), but I don't think they will. He is not that much of a threat to their fascist rule. And we might be able to work with him to get some fundamental reforms in place, such as vote counting that everyone can see and understand. And there are other dreadful things that the Bushites have done--such as suppression of black voters--that need to be undone, just to get us back to square one, pre-Reagan democracy, wherein the collective common sense, wisdom, intelligent and good will of the American people can begin to operate once again.
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