Taking Back America, The Salvation of America Must Come From a Progressive Vision
By Anthony Wade
May 30, 2005
This week will mark a conference in Washington D.C. held by the best progressive minds in America. There will be plenary sessions, book signings, and guest speakers. Such notable names as Howard Dean, Arianna Huffington, John Podesta and Jesse Jackson have signed up to discuss “our vision, unite our groups and train our campaign organizers.” There will be opportunities to converse about social security, homeland security, and the fallout from the nuclear option in the Senate. This represents a great start, a new beginning, and a fresh hope for all of us who sit by each day and watch in horror as a small group of ideologues have hijacked Christianity, our government, and our lives. The conference will end Friday and everyone will go home and hope that someone coordinates the vision that will be drafted for the progressive movement in this country. Unfortunately, that vision will be extremely short sighted if it does not focus on two main problems, election reform and media reform.
Reform is too nice a word to be honest. The current state of the media and the election system are beyond repair and need to be obliterated and rebuilt, not truly reformed. To say reform is to indicate there is something left redeemable and there clearly is not. That being said, when we look out upon the landscape of America today, why choose these two topics? Because without fixing them, the rest of the issues will NOT matter. As Joseph Stalin once pointed out, “The people who cast the votes decide nothing. The people who count the votes decide everything.” Indeed, and the people who count the votes in this country now work for pro-republican companies. Did you ever stop to ask yourself how a man who could not get an approval rating above 50%, managed to get nine million more votes? Social Security, Homeland Security, and Medicaid are irrelevant if we cannot trust the outcome of our elections. In addition to that, media is equally important because we live in a society with a sheep-mentality. While most progressives may get their news from blogs and the new media, the rest of America still get their news from television. The right has done a good job over the years, blathering about a liberal media bias, but the reality is that there is no such bias. In fact, there is a clear and unambiguous conservative media bias. Why is media so important? Because it is what will bring the truth to America. Without objectivity in the media and elections, any progressive vision is dead before it can even be born.
When most think about elections gone bad, they think about election 2000, where George Bush stole the legitimacy of the recount by having his cousin call the election for him from the Election Desk of Fox News, late on Election Night. It was essentially over then, as Al Gore was constantly fighting the image that he lost, when he had not. If you want to see true Election Day shenanigans however, look at Election 2004. There was a concerted effort by Republicans to suppress votes and steal the election in multiple states. Exit polling, used reliably for decades, suddenly became irrelevant under Bush. This is the same methodology that Bush used to dismiss the Ukrainian election as fraudulent. In America, however, it was dismissed out of hand as inaccurate. The best reason to date, for ridiculous, non-statistically possible swings between exit polling and final tallies, is that Bush voters must not have wanted to answer the eixt polls. I kid you not and the Corporate Media sold you on it. Besides this preposterous notion, most have moved on from Votergate 2004, of which I wrote at least 15 articles. I remember watching Election Night realizing that we were facing a Kerry presidency. I then watched in horror as Florida suddenly went for Bush. What made it so unbelievable is that before south Florida had weighed in, Bush was up just under 200,000 votes. I watched as it was related that as long as south Florida came in as it did in 2000, the Democrat would easily carry Florida. As the precincts reported in, Bush actually extended his lead and ended up gaining another 175,000 votes from south Florida. This is ridiculous on its face, but America swallowed it and turned their attention to Ohio, where greater fraud awaited. Kenneth Blackwell, a bitter republican partisan, and Secretary of State would soon make us all forget Katherine Harris. Ohio was stolen as well, and possibly more states and Bush went on to claim victory with a 45% approval rating and an alleged nine million more votes. As Don King would say, only in America.
The owner of Diebold, one of the pro-Republican voting machine companies, actually guaranteed he would deliver Ohio’s electoral votes to Bush a year earlier. Diebold and ESS are the two companies which control at least 80% of the machine tabulated votes in this country. They are run respectively, by two brothers who are clear partisan Republicans. This essentially means that 80% of all e-votes are counted by two brothers, who make no secret of the fact that they are biased politically. Finally, you add a complicit court system, which has refused to make paper trails mandatory, and you have a recipe for fixed votes across this nation. Without safe and objective elections, no progressive vision will matter. All it will be is screaming into the wind. We will all know what is right and watch each year as more and more elections are lost. Approval ratings will not matter any more and leaders, who know they have nothing to fear, will govern with impunity. I say this in the future tense, but the future most would agree, is present.
Media “reform” is crucial as well. The right wing has done a masterful, over decades, of building a massive media machine. I have written on this many times. It is multi-faceted and its main purpose is to generate propaganda, not news. It is the art of taking opinion, and turning it into news. It is the art of being repetitive. If you say something enough, it resonates. Look at the current situation in the world. Most Americans believe that Saddam Hussein had something to do with 911, when nothing could be further from the truth. Most believe that Al Gore said he invented the Internet, when he said no such thing. Most believe that Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were buddies, when they actually were diametrically opposed. Recently, we saw what I call the Corporate Media, report about how we caught the number 3 guy in al Qaeda. It was reported all over the news, in print, and on the talk show circuit for days. Then it was revealed that we did NOT catch the number 3 guy in al Qaeda, we caught their clerk (essentially). The connection for this story is obvious as right before this story broke, the Bushies were under intense pressure about the latest terrorism numbers which indicated that 2004 was the worst year in 19 years for terrorist activity. When the truth came out that we did not catch the number 3 guy, the media was silent. THAT is the Corporate Media in action. You will remember the lie, not the truth.
Corporate media is massive in its scope. Think tanks draft policy papers which are picked up by talk radio, disseminated then to the talk show circuit, and eventually it ends up in print and on your evening news. The inherent bias is obvious in the story selection, guest selection, and slant the media takes. Recently, the Downing Street Memo was released, proving that George Bush fixed the intelligence in order to start this war. Have we heard about it at all? Do you see Chris Matthews playing Hardball about this fact which should lead to the impeachment of Bush? No, there is not even a whisper. There are spots on end about a runaway bride, but nothing about the smoking gun which proves George Bush is guilty of war crimes. How many segments on Michael Jackson do you have to sit through to hear about real news?
Also recently we saw the Newsweek fiasco. Newsweek mentioned in a blurb of a story that the Koran had been flushed in a toilet in Gitmo. Soon the Bushies are blaming riots in Afghanistan on this tiny story, made by a veteran reporter. Newsweek capitulates and backs off the story and the republican power base, smelling blood in the water, send in the Corporate Media. This was all you saw in the media for three straight days. Talking heads pontificating how horrible it is to not check and verify sources. Some demanding more action from Newsweek to undo the deaths that had reportedly occurred because of this one innocuous mention in a small article. The Pentagon spokesman, Larry Derita actually blamed deaths in Afghanistan on Newsweek, as opposed to the massive oppression we have laid on the Muslim world for the past three years. Guess what? It turns out that four days after it was revealed that the toilet story was true, reported on more than one other occasion in the past. The Red Cross actually stated they reported it to the Pentagon and it was corrected. When asked later if he should apologize, Derita was quoted as saying, “for what”. The Pentagon actually denies the Red Cross story, which lends even less credibility to the Pentagon. Now, where was the Corporate Media when it was discovered that Newsweek was right? Nowhere. That is millions of people in this country who only heard that Newsweek was wrong. They only heard that we caught the number 3 guy in al Qaeda. They NEVER have heard of the Downing Street Memo. That is a frightening concept to digest and represents the true challenge for progressive America. The fact of the matter is if George Bush shot someone to death tomorrow we stand a 50% chance that it will not even be reported. The other 50% chance is that the pundits will say that it shows why gun ownership is a good thing and turn it into an endorsement for the second amendment. The fact of the matter is if tomorrow Dick Cheney named Halliburton an official department of the government, we would stand a 50% chance it will not even be reported. The other 50% chance is that the Corporate Media will run pieces on how they were the only company with the ability to be a government department and scream “class warfare!” if anyone dared to speak against it. After all they will point out; Bush has a mandate handed to him in the stolen election, regardless of his horrendous approval ratings.
No America, the fact of the matter is if tomorrow we find out that a formerly classified report shows that our soldiers tortured to death a 122 pound taxi driver from Afghanistan by shackling him from a ceiling and beating his legs hundreds of times until his tissue became “pulpified”, we stand a 100% chance it will not be reported. How do I know this? Because the report is true and it was not covered. I had to write about it ( opednews.com ). Truthout had to write about it. There was no Hardball played with it. There was no coverage for Mr. Dilawar, beaten to death in your name. Another man was beaten to death at the same time and this past week the sentence for his murderer came down from his military trial. Three months in prison. Did you see the story anywhere in the Corporate Media? No and that is why the task facing the progressive movement is so daunting.
This week is a positive step in the right direction in progressive America. The majority of people in this country are willing to follow this vision despite what you are being told by the Corporate Media. The minority is in control. There will be many great minds gathering this week to discuss the future of this country and the republic upon which it was founded. They will speculate widely about many important topics, dear to the hearts of most of America. The packing of the courts with extremists is exceedingly important, but irrelevant if we cannot prevent another stolen election on 2006. The future of Social Security is enormously important but will be rendered meaningless if the media never reports on the Bush scheme, which actually seeks to dismantle the great program. The hijacking of Christianity by people who practice no palpable teachings of Christ will be but a footnote before the end of days, if the media is not willing to honestly ask how a man who claims the mantle of a culture of life can spend so much time killing so many people in God’s name.
I have been writing about these things for over a year now. I am but one voice in a cacophony of pain in this country. One intonation amongst millions who scream into the wind every day and try to let people know the simple and unvarnished truth. I am proudly Christian, and proudly progressive. As a Christian, I will keep speaking the truth of the loving grace of our Lord and Savior, but as a progressive, I am tired of screaming into the wind. The Progressive movement starts anew this week. It seeks to reformulate priorities and build alliances to confront the growing evil from this administration. There are hundreds of issues from which to choose to debate. There are hundreds of issues to reach agreement on this week. It must start with two however. Without significant media and election reform, the rest are simply irrelevant. Without addressing these two core issues, the Progressive movement will be but the smattering of a cadence descending toward silence. The unrelenting cacophony of voices that are growing weary of screaming into the wind at a world that has moved on and a country we barely recognize any more will simply start to fade.
___________
Anthony Wade, a contributing writer to opednews.com, is dedicated to educating the populace to the lies and abuses of the government. He is a 37-year-old independent writer from New York with political commentary articles seen on multiple websites. A Christian progressive and professional Rehabilitation Counselor working with the poor and disabled, Mr. Wade believes that you can have faith and hold elected officials accountable for lies and excess.
Anthony Wade’s Archive: opednews.com
Email Anthony: takebacktheus@yahoo.com
___________
opednews.com |
