GORE: Ultimately the guarantor of our freedoms are the people. And these kinds of outrages, a president saying that he has the right turn George Washington’s 200-plus year prohibition against torture and torture anyone he wants with his assistants gathering in the basement of the White House – according to recent revelations – personally reviewing the kinds of torture techniques being used prisoner by prisoner, its obscene.
As usual, Al Gore is right.
Unfortunately, The People have a few obstacles in their way.
Such as a Congress that is …(Editors note: long, expletive laden description of Congress deleted for space reasons)….ineffective. So ineffective as a matter of fact, that in his post on Dkos yesterday Senator Kerry in effect said that we have more power than he does….
And, when it comes to getting coverage on television, I really think you are selling your own power short. My going on the television and shoe-horning a 5 second mention of this into an interview – especially when the interviewer wants the interview to be on something else – doesn’t really change the nature of coverage. And I could hold press conferences until I’m blue in the face and it won’t get more coverage if the news networks don’t want to cover it. In the end, the main pressure the networks feel is from you. It was satisfying for me to go on MSNBC and tell them they had to get over asking about Wright all the time, but what can really bring real change is when you make folks like CNN realize that you didn’t want to hear any more about it. Activism works.
When you push on your end, and I push on mine, we can make sure everyone knows that we all demand answers to this. We need to keep up the clamor in every way we can.
….he is saying, by my interpretation, that it is the press that holds the ultimate power at this stage of our democracy. That it is the biggest obstacle facing We The People in taking back our country.
