Some of you who were around when I first started posting at DailyKos a little over two years ago may remember the ‘OPOL flame wars’ as kos himself put it. Many of my ideas provoked great animosity in the community. I was called every name under the sun, was threatened with banishment, and was the object of great wailing and gnashing of teeth. I was bitterly and enthusiastically criticized for saying things like:
The 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen
The war on terrorism is a bogus invention meant to justify war profiteering
The rise of the neocons amounted to a fascist coup
The democrats enabled the neocons and in some cases were complicit in their crimes
Our political system is broken and corrupt to the bone
Bush and Cheney should be impeached
The Bush administration committed war crimes
Our government is enslaved to the evil of the Military Industrial Complex
The American dream is just another lie
Our government has no intentions of ever leaving Iraq
After all that has transpired over the past two years, these ideas seem much less inflammatory today. A casual reading of DailyKos these days suggests that most kossacks now agree with many if not all of these statements. The hideous nature of our present reality can no longer be denied by thinking people. The horror we face has begun to sink in.
Naomi Wolf – Blackwater Fascism
The propaganda machine we are subjected to from cradle to grave in this country is a powerful force. We are taught that this is ‘the greatest country in the world’, though we are not told why. American exceptionalism is drilled into us incessantly until it becomes one of those core beliefs not subject to deep questioning. It is hard for us to face that we are NOT the good guys, NOT the land of the free and the home of the brave, not really even a democracy, just a pretend one. The real power in America is not the vote – it’s the buck.
America is Tyranny
In my view the time for action is nearly past. If we don’t act decisively and soon, all will be lost. More and better Democrats is not the answer, and the reason is because the system is so corrupt that it taints anyone who gets near it. What we so desperately need (IMHO) is radical reform of our government and political system. A good start would be mandated public financing, outlawing all but the most benign lobbying, and to make lying in the course of one’s official duties as an elected or appointed official, a major crime with severe penalties.
If we fail to do those things at a minimum, we will all die in due course of planetary neglect. The only question that remains, it seems to me, is do we fight back, or give up?
Everybody Knows
