Someone recently asked me how I got so involved in politics…what was the catalyzing event? For me, the event was the impeachment of Bill Clinton. That whole process opened my eyes about the nature of the forces arrayed against us. And I include the media in those forces. The most surreal and revealing moment of the Clinton impeachment was Kenneth Starr’s testimony before the House Judiciary Committee, where he revealed that he had turned up nothing in his Whitewater investigation. How was that possible? I had been reading Whitewater articles in the New York Times for six years. Surely, some of it must have been true. But, no. Whitewater was nothing but a sustained smear campaign against a sitting President by the ‘paper of record’.
That was merely a precursor of the Judy Miller/William Safire fiasco. People like Real History Lisa and Jerry Policoff have known the true nature of the New York Times and Washington Post for decades, and they have documented their manipulation. The fact that the right-wing constantly derides the Grey Lady as unreliable and liberal only serves to make the New York Times more insidious. They seem to be on our side until something truly vital comes up. And then they take the side of the powers that be.
If we are about to invade Cuba, they’ll cover that up. If we are about to invade Panama, they’ll go along with the demonization of Manual Noriega. If we are in need of evidence that Saddam Hussein is sitting on a pile of deadly weapons, they’ll provide it. They’ll even let Bill Safire link Mohammed Atta to Iraq for months on end in column after column, and never do a correction. They’ll help cover up the Plame investigation, and hold the NSA story until after the election. The New York Times is not on our side.
It requires a paradigm shift to even see this possibility. Once you realize that even the liberal media will attack a Democratic president for years with bogus charges, and will provide fake evidence to justify the imperial ambitions of a Republican president, while covering up evidence of his crimes…you realize the magnitude of the enemy we face. The mere fact that you suddenly own this wisdom places you outside the mainstream. It becomes difficult to communicate with people that do not understand what you know to be the truth.
People will point out that the New York Times endorsed Clinton and Gore and Kerry. They’ll have examples of the Times being unfair to Republicans. How do you make them understand that that is all beside the point. You may convince a few people, but you will never convince enough: do not trust the (liberal) media on the really important stuff.
As for the Republicans, they did not just oppose Bill Clinton. They set out to destroy him. They tried to destroy Bill Clinton, not because he was a baby boomer, or a draft dodger, or a philanderer. They tried to destroy him because he was attempting to provide universal health care. People like Richard Mellon Scaife could not abide that kind of socialism. So, they enlisted the religious right to go after Bill Clinton. They attacked the person, which disguised their opposition to the policy.
There will always be more poor people than rich people. And rich people will always want to protect their wealth from large wealth redistribution programs. To do this, the wealthy need to find unwealthy allies that will vote with them. Today’s GOP finds these allies among the socially conservative, the hyper religious, the anti-gay, the racists, people with resentments against Washington insiders, or against coastal and intellectual elites.
By appealing to the worst in people they empower the worst in people. They empower the denial of global warming, the denial of evolution, the stifling of scientific inquiry, they weaponize ignorance (to borrow sbj’s phrase). They reduce the acceptance of gays, and they perpetuate crippling racial stereotypes.
They literally make people more stupid, more hateful, and more dangerous.
Defeating this pervasive evil is incredibly difficult, and it is only going to get more difficult as the fundamentalists continue to outbreed the reality-based community (worldwide).
We are locked into a battle not only against al-qaeda, but against our own fundamentalists…fundamentalists that are crucially important to the moneyed interests because they alone can provide the majorities that will stem populist economic policies.
And these moneyed interests have their paws not only in the New York Times and the Republican Party, but in the Democratic Party as well. And if a third party rose up, they would corrupt that party as well.
The only way we make headwind in this situation is by taking over the Democratic Party from below, by financing the Party, and eventually by passing legislation for publicly financed elections. We also need to grow the non-corporate media by any means available to us. And we have to be vigilant. Ever vigilant.
A lot of the old-timers, people that have been fighting for 40 years, are frustrated and beaten down. That’s understandable. We have been losing this battle for 40 years. The defeat is becoming manifest. But, by studying how the Republicans carried out their revolution, and by being better at using modern technology, we can carry out our own revolution.
This fight will never be won. There will always be people opposing social justice, there will always be religious fundamentalists, and they will always find reasons to make alliances against ordinary folks. But, we can remake the Democratic Party, and we can do it from below. We need to become delegates, we need to get involved locally, elect progressives to state offices. We need to grow our media. At first, we will be seen as far outside the mainstream, and as unelectable. That is how the John Birchers started out. Now they run the world.