This was originally written as a reply to Booman’s fine recent post, What Are We Trying to Do?
I too am trying to figure out what we are trying to do here in West Left Blogistan, and have some further thoughts about what he said in that post.
The reply grew (as is often the case with me), and I now present it as a stand-alone post.
Read on if you so desire.
Booman…you have a fine analytical mind.
Right on point.
And:
Anyone that doesn’t get that does seem to be missing the point, or selling out.
I personally am not sure that the Democratic Party CAN be changed. Too much money pulling the other way.
But since there has arisen no other viable party (I think that Dean blew it, unfortunately. He made his decision to stay inside with the best of intentions…and a not inconsiderable amount of success so far…but we will not see the real results of that decision until a few years have passed.), the Dems are the only shot that we have to challenge “the broader foreign policy consensus in Washington. ..the anti-universal health care consensus…[and] some of the myths that sustain an imperial foreign policy and a top-down domestic policy.”
But…given that strategic choice, tactically you are absolutely right.
Let us pray.
And then…let us work.
You also write:
The media is not the only culprit in the rise of Bushism. Another problem has been the unexamined assumptions of American foreign policy.
Again…right on the money.
Only thing? As I tried to illustrate in my last post (Bread and Circuses. Media. Its name Is Legion. Some Chomsky As Well.) and as Noam Chomsky has SO well described in so many of his pieces, “the media” is the REASON that so many assumptions in American policies of ALL types are so often unexamined in terms of the broad, voting public.
For example (From that post linked above, quoting a Chomsky interview. Emphasis mine.):
Chomsky: Oh they’re there. There’s a constant stream of abuse and attack by the government and therefore the media, who are almost reflexively against Venezuela. For several reasons. Venezuela is independent. It’s diversifying its exports to a limited extent, instead of just being dependent on exports to the United States. And it’s initiating moves toward Latin American integration and independence. It’s what they call a Bolivarian alternative and the United States doesn’t like any of that.
This again is defiance of U.S. policies going back to the Monroe Doctrine. There’s now a standard interpretation of this trend in Latin America, another kind of party line. Latin America is all moving to the left, from Venezuela to Argentina with rare exceptions, but there’s a good left and a bad left. The good left is Garcia and Lula, and then there’s the bad left which is Chavez, Morales, maybe Correa. And that’s the split.
In order to maintain that position, it’s necessary to resort to some fancy footwork. For example, it’s necessary not to report the fact that when Lula was re-elected in October, his foreign trip and one of his first acts was to visit Caracas to support Chavez and his electoral campaign and to dedicate a joint Venezuelan-Brazilian project on the Orinoco River, to talk about new projects and so on. It’s necessary not to report the fact that a couple of weeks later in Cochabamba, Bolivia, which is the heart of the bad guys, there was a meeting of all South American leaders. There had been bad blood between Chavez and Garcia, but it was apparently patched up. They laid plans for pretty constructive South American integration, but that just doesn’t fit the U.S. agenda. So it wasn’t reported.
—snip—
You can’t mention Hezbollah in the U.S. media without putting in the context of “Iranian-supported Hezbollah.” That’s its name. Its name is Iranian-supported Hezbollah. It gets Iranian support. But you can mention Israel without saying US-supported Israel. So this is more tacit propaganda. The idea that Hezbollah is acting as an agent of Iran is very dubious. It’s not accepted by specialists on Iran or specialists on Hezbollah. But it’s the party line. Or sometimes you can put in Syria, i.e. “Syrian-supported Hezbollah,” but since Syria is of less interest now you have to emphasize Iranian support.
The media IS Job One.
Without that job being accomplished to some degree …a concerted attack on media lying and spin, both from the point of blog truth-telling AND by some sort of NEWSTRIKE!!!-like boycott…then all we will get is Plan A Lite, DemocRatpublicans in power instead of simple Ratpubs.
Which might perhaps be WORSE, because there goes another 5 or 6 years before the voting public begins to awaken from its most recent hypnotically induced trance state.
However…,take the swinging pocket watch or rotating spiral OUT OF THE HANDS OF THE HYPNOTISTS…take their tools away or at least make them less effective…and then you have a shot.
A shot at awakening enough people to have a real effect on electoral politics.
I said it several years ago when I first entered the blog lists, spear in hand, and I continue to say it now despite very little practical success at assembling some sort of organization or real power.
OPPOSITION TO THE CORPORATE MEDIA IS JOB ONE!!!
THERE is where the key to this whole puzzle lies.
Again…
Let us pray.
And then let us get to work.
Peace…
AG
P.S. The sideline stuff? Suffering, meta-bullshit, co-opting on the level of dKos?
FUGGEDABOUDIT!!!
Casualties of war.
Deserters.
Shell shock.
The results of enemy infiltration.
This is a WAR.
Incidental losses are going to happen.
But…
The old man was right.
As above, so below.
This IS war, and the adversaries are the same as they were then.
It is just being fought on a different level.
As Churchill also said:
Yup.
Or, as another great Englishman once said:
(Lord Buckley, the founder of contemporary socio-political comedy to whom all political comedians from Lenny Bruce right through Lewis Black and Margaret Cho owe their whole schtick.)
Have fun…
AG