If you want a symbol of everything that is wrong with American politics, the media, the Clintons, and the Democratic Party, go no further than this brief article about Ruport Murdoch’s decision to hold a fundraiser for Hillary Clinton. Here’s the money quote:
One media lobbyist said: “Murdoch will be for the Republicans but he is also smart enough to know that the Republicans might not win. At some level, whether nationally or in New York, Hillary is the future and what savvy businessman would not want to put a line of interest in someone who will be the future?”
Nevermind the vast-right wing consipiracy, never mind that the Murdoch’s New York Post savaged Hillary when she ran for the Senate:
A poll from the Post’s website during the campaign identified her as the sixth “most evil” person of the millennium, ahead of Benito Mussolini and Vlad the Impaler. Her husband ranked second.
Hillary is willing to take out a line of credit with Murdoch, on the what? Off hopes she might not get gang-raped by his media empire in her next run for office?
Maybe Murdoch is worried that a President Hillary will take some revenge and crack down on Murdoch’s media consolidation, or refuse all his news outlets access to the White House. He has his reasons to pay tribute. Hillary has no reason, no legitimate reason to accept Murdoch’s money or his assistance in raising money. The guy only became an American citizen so he could legally buy up our media and provide us all with family friendly programming like Married…with Children and Cops.
Murdoch gets respect from elites like the Clintons because he has been successful, because he makes a lot money, and because he has a lot of power. It’s a big game to these people. Murdoch slimes the Clintons with every lie, slur, and slander in the book, and they turn our around and go to his parties, invite him to speak at their parties, have him set up a big fundraiser for them.
I don’t have any respect for this behavior.
Fox News actively misinforms the electorate. Here’s what Jefferson had to say about liberty and a misinformed electorate.
“Convinced that the people are the only safe depositories of their own liberty, and that they are not safe unless enlightened to a certain degree, I have looked on our present state of liberty as a short-lived possession unless the mass of the people could be informed to a certain degree.” –Thomas Jefferson to Littleton Waller Tazewell, 1805.
Murdoch’s news outlets do not inform, they disinform and misinform. If you want to know why George W. Bush has succeeded in chipping away at our ‘present state of liberty’, look no further than Murdoch. Hell, Bush couldn’t have even been elected without Murdoch.
The Clinton’s ought to know this and they ought to have nothing to do with a man who has gotten rich and powerful peddling lowbrow, lowest common demominator entertainment, hypocritical moralism, and by introducing plain distortion and lies into mainstream journalism.
But they are buddying up to him. That’s all you need to know, to know that the Clinton’s think they’re royalty now. They’ve gone over to the dark side. They think they’re entitled. They can’t see the little people anymore. Too much time in the corridors of power. It’s disgusting to watch.
Howie Kurtz’s CNN show is doing a segment on “Media’s liberal tilt?” His only guest? Hugh Hewitt. I wonder which side they’re going to come down on….
America’s most trusted member of the media is Rush Limbaugh, by the way, according to Hugh. Wasn’t that one of the signs of the apocalypse?
This what I think is going on. The dems have a lot of potential to win the next few election cycles becasue of the incompetence of the Bush Admin. and the Repub controlled Congress. The powerful but smart conservatives see this, and they also see how the dems in their blind, principleless frenzy to retake power, will back even social conservatives like Bob Casey and Harry Reid. Therefore the conservatives are trying to get the “correct” right-of-center type dems to get the nodd in order to cover all their bases.
It all goes back to the lack of writing down INVIOLATE principles for the party/movement and standing to these. Being dumb and blind seldom leads to enlightenment or freedom or long term success.
In my plain common sense view of all of this, it goes far beyond any political partys position, way down to the root issue of pervasive corruption amd breakdown of the entire political process. It speaks to the overall breakdown of basic values and principles we claim to hold dear: things like honesty, integrity, justice, and the concept of serving the common good of all.
Instead of valuing community, collaboration and consenses building, we embrace competition as the ONLY way to win the prizes, accumulation of individual wealth and status as the main if not only measure of “personal sucess” and political power is reserved for those who are rich enough to purchase it, and willing to sell off whatever thier real values and principles are to the highest bidder.
Is it even possible anymore, I ask, for a truly honest and ethical leader to remain that way in this corrupt a system, even if they COULD amass enough wealth to get elected. Personally, I don’t see how. You play the game, or you don’t get to stay, as far as I can tell.
We just may have deteriorated, as a principled society, past the point where any truly ethical human “leader” could prevail long enough to turn this all around.
Wealth, and the power it can purchase, in the hands of enough people without principles, driven by greed and addiction to power, seems to have a choke hold on democracy in my view. I am coming to beleive there can be no reasonable hope for enough change from the top down, to substantially change things..at least not in the forseeable future.
Change, and any true return to the principles stated when this county was formed, I believe will come from the bottom up, not the top down, and is unlikely to come through a terminally corrupt political system.
I think it will begin in my guts, and in your guts, and the individual changes we eventually choose to make in our individual lifestyles. I think it will grow as each of us becomes willing to stop and truly examine our lives, and our own deeply held values, and decide that these must now dictate our choices of how we spend our very precious, finite life energies.
I rejoice whenever I see a materially “sucessful” person decide to step off the gerbil wheel that was literally squeezing the life out of them, to re- create thier lives to truly match their own deeply held values. That takes a LOT of courage. Yet in the words of one former CEO I know, who now is a middle school teacher who lives in a modest house with his very happy family, “I am finally my own man.”
We may not be able to change the system as it has become, but we DO have the choice of how we each wish to live our lives.
Personally, the pleasure I feel everytime I climb into my ten year old, perfectly reliable vehicle, knowing it is paid for, gets good mileage, and is costing me only 50 bucks a month for insurance..far outweighs the pleasure I used to get climbing into my fancy new cars, for which I would have to sell my soul to an exploitive employer for several years to pay for.
Each to his/her own of course. It is all about knowing that we are choosing our own way, not blindly following someone elses idea of how we should be living.
Power always lies with the people. It’s a simple matter of remembering this, and choosing to use it consciously.
Time will tell whether we can do anything to change this, but one thing is clear to me. Hillary is not the candidate of the netroots.
is the American Tony Blair.