( – promoted by buhdydharma )
Don’t be distracted by the ‘circus’ as Nightprowlkitty put’s it.
The sad fact is that the Presidential campaign extravaganza is a fraudulent exercise staged for a gullible public.
In this country we are fed a continuous stream of bullshit from cradle to grave. We are all brainwashed to believe our nation is the greatest nation on earth…no matter what. This programming is so powerful that most of us are (seemingly) incapable of questioning it deeply.
Every day I see wingnuts with ‘I’m proud to be an American’ magnets or bumper stickers on their cars. They can’t tell you what it is they’re so fucking proud of, but they’ll fight you at the drop of a hat for questioning it. Our cultural programming is amazing stuff. It’s like branded ignorance. USA brand stupidity.
Study: Bushies Lied 935 Times to Sell Iraq Invasion
By Charles Lewis and Mark Reading-Smith, The Center for Public Integrity. Posted January 24, 2008.Bush and his top officials waged a campaign of misinformation about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Continued at Alternet
We have been duped all our lives. Some people eventually wake up to it and some don’t. Others awaken in matters of degree.
Most of us, however enlightened we may be, have not cleared all of the bullshit out of our heads. Most of us suffer from residual crap. That’s certainly true of anyone who has any faith left in our politics or our government. Those folks have not yet caught the reality train – even if they do count themselves as members of the reality-based community.
Certainly anyone who thinks that electing that ever-elusive ‘better Democrat’ is going to change anything substantial has a rude awakening in their future. How many times does Lucy have to yank away the football before they get it?
“They are not your friends!”
Mike Stark
I find myself quoting Mike Stark frequently these days. Few have said it better. We have been sold out by our politicians. Period. No one with half-a-brain who’s been paying attention can deny it.
The various candidate factions in the netroots have (however predictably) gotten very heated of late about the primaries and caucuses and all the other freak shows. But please be reminded that these spectacles are in truth little more than distractions. Just Paris ‘n Britney on steroids for grown-ups. Look at the shiny bauble while I steal all your shit.
The Fraud of Bushenomics: They’re Looting the Country
By Larry Beinhart, AlterNet. Posted January 19, 2008.The voodoo economics the Bushies have sold America obscure their systematic fleecing of the nation’s public wealth.
Continued at Alternet
We’re up against something even more evil and insidious than the Bush administration. We’re up against the Military Industrial Congressional Media Complex, the outfit that pulls Bushco’s chain, and it’s a much more serious matter than the freak show they’ve turned our politics into. It’s not a joke, it’s not a conspiracy theory, and it’s not a crackpot proposition. It’s the gut-wrenching truth of our present circumstances.
The Corrupting Power of Military-Industrial Complex
By Jeffrey Klein and Paolo Pontoniere, New America Media. Posted November 2, 2006.Recent kickback scandals involving Rep. Curt Weldon prove that Congress would do well to remember President Eisenhower’s warning against “unwarranted influence.”
Editor’s Note: When President Eisenhower warned in his Farewell Address of the dangers of growing, unchecked power in America, he originally described a “military-congressional-industrial complex,” but dropped “congressional” in later drafts of the speech. He was right the first time, the writers say. Jeffrey Klein, a founding editor of Mother Jones, this summer received a Loeb, journalism’s top award for business reporting. Paolo Pontoniere is a New America Media European commentator.
continued at Alternet
Don’t be distracted by what appears to be true on the surface or what is commonly thought to be true. The conventional wisdom is always wrong. But it’s just too easy to think in old familiar ways. We have to get beneath the surface distractions and stare the beast in the face to have any hope of coming to grips with it. And the beast is fascism and it is backed by the MICMC…and it’s purely a question of profit and greed. National security has nothing to do with it. Hell they even have to invent the bad guys like the commies and the ‘terrorists’. They made it all up. It’s all bullshit.
The very real MICMC has succeeded in making a lot of people believe the circus is what’s real…but come on. You have to really want to believe that after all we’ve been through to believe it at all.
We need to put the Presidential race in perspective by recognizing it for what it is: theater for the gullible public. None of the candidates will change anything for the better. Whoever we elect, things are just going to get worse.
Give Them Death: Three Leading Democratic Candidates Support Capital Punishment
By Liliana Segura, AlterNet. Posted January 25, 2008.Opposing the death penalty used to distinguish Democrats from Republicans. Now, across party lines, death is just another day at the office.
Continued at >Alternet
Senate Poised to Capitulate to Cheney’s Fear-Mongering
By Marjorie Cohn, AlterNet. Posted January 25, 2008.With its vote on the FISA bill yesterday, Congress looks ready to sacrifice liberty for security. Again.
Continued at Alternet
We are continuously sold out left and right. Our heroes are few.
Dennis Kucinich’s Fight to Bring Credibility to the Democratic Party
By Chris Hedges, Philadelphia Inquirer. Posted January 19, 2008.The resilient 2008 candidate attacks the “inside game between competing corporate interests” in U.S. politics.
Continued at Alternet
The Democrats, though I have long been one, inspire me with no confidence and no hope. I said everything I had to say about the leading Democratic candidates in my diary, A Gentle Reminder, and it isn’t flattering…but it is true. I hope you’ll go read that diary if you haven’t already.
Don’t let these lightweight two-bit grifters come between us. They are none of them worth it. They’re all lying bastards, establishment tools and lackeys of the MICMC.
The almost certain ascendancy of the Democrats will mean only a friendlier face on the same corporate fascism we have come to know and love. So get the fuck over it.
We have serious work to do, and even if our cause is already lost it is nevertheless incumbent upon us to fight the evil bastards who are killing our nation. We need to ignore the circus and press for impeachment. The circus is a foolish distraction after all, while justice, on the contrary, really matters.
Of all the pressing issues that we face, from ending the abomination in Iraq, ameliorating the oncoming disaster of global warming, banning torture worldwide, restoring the Constitution, or repairing our devastated economy in some sustainable way, none are more important than removing Bush and company from power ASAP and restoring democracy to America – for if we fail at that we’ll fail at everything that follows.
This is no time for politics as usual. This is the time when the American people need to rise as one and demand impeachment and criminal prosecution for every culpable member of our government. A failure to do so will amount to national suicide. It’ll be the end of America.
This is America’s last gasp. Let’s take a chance and do the right thing.
Impeach the criminal rat bastards and do it NOW!
With special thanks to Alternet for all you do.
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…that anyone who wants to be a cop should be disqualified from being a cop (I’m an ex-cop) and anyone who wants to run for president should immediately be declared to be ineligible.
Prima facie evidence of unsuitability for the position.
But then I have always spoken from the position of being someone who could never be elected for any public office for far too many reasons.
Precisely 100% correct. Bravo.
I agree: Impeach them one and all.
Well said.
Who did that incredibly great graphic at the beginning, that board game thingy? I love that!
So sick of those shiny baubles and more than once I’ve been sucked in — it’s a constant struggle to stay clear of the distractions and I don’t always succeed.
Essays like this keep me trying tho. Thanks.
we would benefit if we STOPPED making it all about them… the candidates and the military industrial complex and yadda yadda yadda
and start making it about what we want and how to get what we want. we have this tool now… we have a wide reach now. it’s a new town square. we better use it before they take it away. and they will. sooner or later.
this is a great way to organize a movement. now to find it… the movement. the thing which we love. it will never come from what we hate. or fear. or from that which sucks our hope.
we have to talk/write/march/organize around that which we love and how we can stop them from doing any further harm.
real. doable. things. we can do. to stop them.
the BINGO card is genius.
Is there a possibility that all of us on this political board could meet up in real life face to face. We have soon much to discuss outside of the NSA monitors or the time delays and format limits of the medium itself.
Are we in fact in a positon to affect change and how do we do it.
Or if not how do we prepare the maximum amount of people for the Apocalypse.
How long until the net is shut down or controlled in such a manner that conversations like this are not going to be allowed to continue? I think it was edgar that wised me up to the ability to track and store what is here. Extrapolating from there, is it too much of a leap to say that they can control what goes out on the net? A content filter would be very easy it seems to me.
Going back to a comment I made a while back, marine single side band radios might be the best way to assure a continuing conversation. They are less expensive than regular ham radios and a whole lot more portable.
So it breaks down to looking for desirable alternatives to their reality. It might be able to get past the key word monitoring they have in place if everything said was something positive and productive. I am not going all goody two shoes here, just looking for a way to continue the conversation. And the conversation really is about how this mess can be made better.
One experiences what one focuses on, and I don’t want to go back to the grey bar hotel, but I know also that I’m in it for what ever breath is in me.
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Author
or choke it until we can’t use it. They’re dying to do so.
You hit my “guts” and exactly how I feel and think about the whole GD mess, as I’m sure you did others as well.
IMPEACHMENT, to me, is an imperative. It is the only way we can begin to level the playing field.
One thing we could all start doing, as has been suggested, is just stop “buying” into it. So we could stop watching the major media TV programs (I don’t watch them, anyway). Another way might be to check your 401ks, IRA’s, money markets, see exactly what they’re comprised of — if some of it or any of it goes to any of the conglomerates that are controlling, pull it and put it into something else, or CD’s.
I keep trying to think of all kinds of things we could collectively do. One thing that troubles me is that this Adm. has cared nothing at all about spending money that isn’t there, how can we be assured that that will not continue as well? As it is, they will walk away completely untarnished financially, in fact, well-rewarded financially, while the rest of us are left with a financial burden that will cost, not just in dollars, us, the American people, not them.
It still comes back to IMPEACHMENT. That is the only way to make a dent. So, I think we need to be more forceful yet to that purpose.
and think “that was fun, but changed nothing”, and be alone and think “that was fun, but changed nothing”, and be a little down and think “that was fun, but changed nothing”, and think it was all just a bunch of words but nothing will happen unless we all get together physically, and think “that was fun, but changed nothing”.
And it won’t be true. It just changed the way we think, and from now on Nothing stays the same…
See what you’ve done, NL? 🙂
Short thought, my eye!
Oh, and Major Danby? Thanks, bud!
was right, and every year we get more and more evidence.
His one mistake was in believing that it would get better after it got much worse. Still no sign of the getting better.
is becoming more and more absurd, and more apparent. Party loyalty is is just gate keeping and fear mongering on a different level. Keep the status quo in or you’ll get the bad cop in again. I think that while the nation is brainwashed reality itself is getting in the way of the perception’s were feed, the media has gone into laughable hyper mode.
The latest absurdity bipartisan, of giving everyone 600 bucks to fix the economy is ludicrous. The lies are getting more and more absurd and the truth has a strange way of asserting itself on ones life. Impeachment will not happen anymore then we will get to pick the next puppet in chief. If it did then the complicity of all involved would become evident both legally and morally.
The way I see it is to prepare yourself for this freakin nightmare to go the way all evil empires go, by crumbling under their own weight, going so far that the world at large stops it, and continuing to fight within. More and more will see the light as their bubbles are burst by the reality they are forced to live with. The citizens of this country, the ones that support the Dream the vague middleclass, are becoming the latest victims of the shock doctrine. Misplaced fear of others will not hold up when you lose your bogus life style and are scrambling for food.
Obviously, America was not great at the end of the 18th century. Our smartest founder is credited with determining the fractional value of his fellow Americans–the darker ones count as 3/5ths of a man. Women don’t count for voting. All hail the great compromiser–and the great constitution.
My comment here is about more recent history–the collapse of the economy. You could date it at the time the media ridiculed Jimmy Carter for wanting to add a gas tax to fund alternative energy research. However, I believe the fatal blow was just after that faux pas, Reaganomics. The trickle down insanity and the end of government regulation. Yup, that sealed the deal. We got tricked–not trickled. We got raped while corporatists reaped all the gold.
We went from an economic powerhouse to a land of consumption. Sadly, chances are slim that we’re coming back. We live in a smaller planet, a dying planet, and our politicians have either no brains or no spine. Our financial institutions are owned overseas–and that’s where they’ll put what money we have left.
The US has always been a failure. We were one of the last countries to eliminate slavery–but we kept racism. We had the most natural resources–abused and exploited them–and now we have our hat in our hands to the oil potentates. I guess we were military successes–until WWII ended–not counting Grenada.
Our systems got by because of natural resources and geopolitical boundries. As the world shrinks and those resources disappear, we are being exposed–weaklings that happened to be in the right place at the right time. Time’s up. We have no politicians as moral or as smart as Carter–and if we did, we’d ridicule him/her (Kucinich). If you’re an optimist, you’re drinking dumb potion number 9.
I wish I had been on earlier to see this sooner…but I have been so depressed by what I have been reading that I couldn’t bear to read the blogs today.
Thanks for saying what I have been thinking…I am not alone.
Impeachment and removal of Bush and Chenry from office would bring us what — President Pelosi?
Didn’t you just say:
“Don’t let these lightweight two-bit grifters come between us. They are none of them worth it. They’re all lying bastards, establishment tools and lackeys of the MICMC.
“The almost certain ascendancy of the Democrats will mean only a friendlier face on the same corporate fascism we have come to know and love. So get the fuck over it.”
What, exactly is the point, then, of impeachment?
Thanks for this and many other great diaries, OPOL. My occupations (professor migrating upon retirement to organic farming) do not allow me much time to be anything but a Trusted Lurker here but there is one thing I would like to emphasize – as perhaps many comments that I have missed have already done. (Apologies to them!) Arguably the Military Industrial Congressional Media Complex reached a low point in the 1960’s and began a concerted effort then to regain the unquestioned upper hand that they have today. That’s 40 years or so, and they started out as the controlling faction with all the money and all the power. I am more than a bit skeptical about our movement landing any knockout punches any time soon although I have read many excellent suggestions, many ideas – such as impeachment – that would be excellent body blows. My point here is that we may be in for a decades long struggle to regain something that we maybe never had. I encourage those here to brace themselves for such a long and bitter struggle, and not to be discouraged by short term setbacks. We will achieve our goals, hopefully in my lifetime, but we need to continue to “Yell louder!” and louder and louder as our spiritual leader says. Thanks again!
It bears repeating again and again:
Thanks Opol.
We need to say this again and again, and we must act to restore our values, our country, our democracy.