Those of us on the left-leaning side of politics (or just the non-right side, in some cases) tend to think that the great unwashed aren't intellectually equipped to see through the muck kicked up by the John Gibsons, Ann Coulters, Melanie Morgans, Glenn Becks, and Bill O'Reillys of the right (and further enflamed by the Rupert Murdoch owned New York Post and Foxnews). Case in point, the media character-assasinating mob-hit on Barrack Obama by "some people" (stating he attended a madrassa as a child, he smokes, he had used drugs in the past, his middle name is Hussein, questioning his loyalty, Christianity, etc.) breathlessly worded as a psuedo-attack via Hillary Clinton and an attempt to get the mouth-breathers to reject him via kneejerk reaction, thinking he is the "Mesapotamian"Mohammaded Candidate".
I sometimes worry that we (as a nation of individuals) may lazy, busy, apathetic, or self-interested enough to not call BS on this kind of nonsense, and with the aiding-and-abetting by Big Media making the situation worse, the only remedy may be to give the people more bullsh*t, not less. Maybe if people saw the direction the Authoritarian Cultists and Christian Primitives want to take the country, they'd be less likely to buy into it.
If only we could tie the circumstances of Iraq and show how that mindset, those backdoor relationships, and that fractured, paranoid ideology directly led to the mistakes they've made, and how it affects all of us, and then further make the analogy back to domestic affairs, then maybe we could affect some real change. Maybe we need to talk less about national politics as though they happen on the big screen and instead talk about how they affect us, particularlly the middle-class, in a personal context? For example, how would the President's forthcoming State-of-the-Union Healthcare Reform suggestions help or hurt us? (I know I will be considering that).
I have hope, if nothing than by the decline of the importance of rightwing media. It must be painfull to have to endure the rantings from people who have been and will continue to be the American Wrong.
2 responses so far ↓
1 PoliticalCritic // Jan 22, 2007 at 11:13 am
I had hope until I realized Hillary Clinton was the frontrunner for the White House in 2008. She’s not as bad as George Bush (nobody is), but we must do better than another Clinton.
2 rzklkng // Jan 22, 2007 at 11:26 am
I don’t disagree. I suspect that Big Money wants McCain (Lieberman) and Clinton (Obama) as the President-Vice Presidential ticket. All of them are bought or compromised in one way or another, and least likely to substantively change the status quo. But if you are logical, and you project out where we are and what the future will look like, the status quo doesn’t work. None of it matters until the voters start paying attention and asking questions.
Hillary is the front runner for a handfull of reasons, and most of them due to electability. She has the largest war-chest (~$100m), she’s a woman, and her husband was Clinton. For Democratic activist, her support for the war is the proverbial straw, for pundits, the baggage from the Clinton years, and from the right noise machine, probably some sort of fear of a strong mommy suppressed hatred or fear of woman thing.
I’m not excited by ANY of the candidates everywhere on the political spectrum, and would prefer letting rich gazillionaires run for president (for now) and pay attention to Congress.
Leave a Comment