Today's Feature Story:
By: Cernig - Crooks and Liars
In an op-ed at Murdoch’s London Times, associate editor Anatole Kalestsky writes that America must give the Republicans “a good kicking” to reassert the most important facet of democracy - not just to elect good governance but to get rid of bad governance. It’s an op-ed that is highly critical of the Democratic party’s choice - Murdoch’s UK papers preferred Clinton - and of Dem tactics to date. But it really gets the message across on McCain and the GOP.
Whether or not Mr McCain would continue the policies of President Bush (and much of the evidence suggests that his would be a Bush presidency on steroids), he would keep in power the coalition of interests that the Republican Party represents: the energy and military-industrial lobbies, the religious conservatives, the anti-environment interests and the neoconservative think-tanks. These groups - which have gained enormous influence, both financially and intellectually, under President Bush - are as responsible for the blunders of the Bush Administration as Mr Bush himself, arguably more so, given the President’s notorious lack of interest in the details of any of his own policies.
If a Republican is again elected president, these same centres of power will continue to dominate Washington. However many wars they encouraged, however high the price of oil rose, however many tax dollars were redistributed in their favour, the neoconservatives and Pentagon contractors and religious fundamentalists and oil and Wall Street lobbies would conclude that there would be no political price to pay for failure. They would be justified in concluding that there is no longer any democratic check on their ambitions.
It is only by ejecting the Republicans from the White House that American voters can send the message that they are still in charge of their country and that gross government incompetence will not go unpunished. Accountability - not personality or rhetoric or colour or age or gender - should be the overriding issue in this election.
That’s exactly right - and it’s great to see Bill Clinton, Biden and Kerry all do so very effectively rather than trying to keep the brand pristine. (Even the Right is admitting they did good - albeit with weasel words.) I’m a bit of an outside observer on US elections, being a “furriner’ and all, and it has disappointed me until now that the Dem campaign after the primaries had seemed rather flat. That’s changed, and while the Dems are still sticking to the moral high ground by not descending to the kind of lies and smears of McCain’s campaign, they’re now obviously in no mood to let the Republicans have the field to themselves. As my pal Kyle Moore writes, if the Dems had pulled out these kinds of performances four years ago the Dems would be working on Kerry’s re-election. More of this, please.
By Paul Craig Roberts - Jeff Rense
Thinking about the massive failure of the US media to report truthfully is sobering. The United States, bristling with nuclear weapons and pursuing a policy of world hegemony, has a population that is kept in the dark--indeed brainwashed--about the most important and most dangerous events of our time.
The power of the Israel Lobby is an important component of keeping Americans in the dark. Recently I watched a documentary that demonstrates the control that the Israel Lobby exercises over Americans' view of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The documentary is available here: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article14055.htm
As a result of the US media's one-sided coverage, few Americans are aware that for decades Israel has been ethnically cleansing Palestinians from their homes and lands under protection of America's veto in the United Nations. Instead, the dispossessed Palestinians are portrayed as mindless terrorists who attack innocent Israel.
If one reads Israeli newspapers, such as Haaretz, or publications from Israeli organizations, such as the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions, one gets a radically different view of the situation than the propagandistic version delivered by US media and evangelical pulpits.
Most Americans know of the 2000 attack by Muslim terrorists on the USS Cole in Aden harbor that resulted in 17 dead and 39 wounded American sailors. But few have heard of Israel's 1967 attack on the USS Liberty that left 34 American sailors dead and 174 wounded. Pressured by the Israel Lobby, President Johnson ordered Admiral McCain, father of the Republican presidential nominee, to cover up the attack. To this day there never has been a congressional investigation.
The failure of the American media is again evident in the coverage of the Georgian-Russian conflict. The US media presented the conflict as a Russian invasion of Georgia, whereas in actual fact the American and Israeli trained and equipped Georgian military launched a sneak attack to kill and to drive the Russian population out of South Ossetia, a separatist province.
Russian peacekeepers, together with Georgian ones, had been stationed in South Ossetia since the early 1990s. On orders from Mikheil Saakashvili, the American puppet "president" of Georgia, the Georgian peacekeepers turned their weapons on the unsuspecting Russian peacekeepers and murdered them.
This action by Saakashvili, elected with money from the neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy, an election-rigging tool of US hegemony, was a war crime. In truth, the Russians should have hung Saakashvili, as he is far more guilty than was Saddam Hussein. But it is Russia, not Saakashvili, that the US media has demonized.
Americans have become perfect subjects for George Orwell's Big Brother. They sit stupidly in front of the TV news or the New York Times or Washington Post and absorb the lies fed to them. What is wrong with Americans? Why do they put up with it? Are Americans the nation of sheep that Judge Andrew P. Napolitano says they are? Americans flaunt "freedom and democracy" and live under a Ministry of Propaganda.
Two decades ago, President Reagan reached agreement with Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev to end the dangerous cold war. But every one of Reagan's successors has sought to pick a new fight with Russia. In violation of the agreement, NATO has been taken to Russia's borders, and the US is determined to put former constituent parts of Russia herself into NATO. In an effort to neutralize Russia's nuclear deterrent and compromise her independence, the US is putting anti-ballistic missile bases on Russia's borders.
The gratuitously aggressive US military policy toward Russia will lead to nuclear war. I am confident that if Americans elect John McCain, or the Republicans steal another presidential election, there will be nuclear war in the second decade of the 21st century. The neocon lies, propaganda, macho flag-waving, and use of US foreign policy in the interests of a few military-security firms, oil companies, and Israel are all leading in that direction.
The November election is perhaps the last chance to avoid nuclear war. But the opportunity might already have been missed. The Republicans have chosen as their candidate one of the most ignorant warmongers alive. The Democrats' choice was between one of the most divisive women in America and a man of mixed race with a funny name. Considering American's taste for war, the Democratic candidate could fail to defeat the GOP war candidate.
Many Americans will vote against Obama because he is black. Why does mixed ancestry confer the black label? If America's population was predominantly black, would Obama be considered white?
Race and propaganda are more likely to determine the outcome of the November election than any awareness or consideration of real issues by voters.
The real issues are suffocated by the media. The American middle class is being destroyed by jobs offshoring and work visas for foreigners, while the incomes of the super rich are soaring. The US dollar's reserve currency status is eroded. The US is massively in debt at home and abroad. Health insurance is unaffordable for the vast majority of the population. Injured veterans are being nickeled and dimed, while Halliburton's profits escalate. Americans are losing their homes, while the US government bails out banks. Wars with Iran, Russia, and China are being planned in order to secure US hegemony.
Americans no longer have a government that is for the people and by the people. They have a government for and by special interests and an insane ideology.
But Americans have war, which lets them take out all their frustrations, resentments, and disappointments on "Muslim terrorists" and "Russian aggressors." Few Americans are disturbed that 1.25 million Iraqis and an unknown number of Afghans have died as a result of American invasions based on Bush regime lies and deceptions. Even Americans, like Senator Biden, Obama's selection for vice president, who understand that the wars are based on lies, still want the US to win. So, it was all a mistake and a deception, but let's win anyway and keep on killing.
I know people who still complain that the US did not nuke North Vietnam. When I ask why Vietnam should have been nuked, they reply, "if we had nuked them we would have won."
What would America have won? The answer is world loathing and the loss of the cold war.
For many Americans, war is like a sports contest in which they take vicarious pleasure and cheer on their side to victory. Millions of Americans are still bitter that "the liberal media" and war protesters caused America to lose the Vietnam war, and they are determined that this won't happen again. These Americans have no realization that there was no more reason for the US to be fighting in Vietnam 40 years ago than to be fighting today in Iraq and Afghanistan or tomorrow in Iran.
Obama, if elected, is no guarantee against nuclear war. Obama has shown that he is as much under the Israel Lobby's thumb as McCain. Obama's foreign affairs advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, is not a neocon, but he was born in Warsaw, Poland, and has the Pole's animosity toward Russia. The Bush administration has already changed US war doctrine to permit preemptive nuclear attack. With the US government determined to ring Russia with puppet states and military bases, war is inevitable.
Presidential appointees face confirmation in the Senate. Any of Obama's appointees who might be out of step with plans for US and Israeli hegemony could expect opposition from large corporations and the Israel Lobby. There is no assurance that an Obama administration would not be positioned on "the issues" by the same special interests that have positioned the Bush administration.
Americans are filled with hubris, not with knowledge. They have no awareness of the calamity that their government's pursuit of hegemony is bringing to themselves and to life on earth.
Stephen Pizzo - News for Real
I’ve spent a lot of time of late mulling what I think are the most important questions of our time.
- How the hell did we get to place where two successful draft -dodgers were able defeat their opponent, a decorated combat veteran, with the thinest tissue of lies?
- How is it that Americans were convinced to launch an unprovoked war against a third-world nation run by a tinhorn tyrant?
- How is it that Americans passively submitted to a tax scheme that enriched the already rich, gutted the national treasury and burdened the nation with such back breaking debt our children’s children will still be paying it off.
- How is that America’s working class voters were brought to believe that their best interests would be served by a class of politicians historically associated with Robber Barons of old?
- How is that the America that coined the phrase “Don’t Tread on Me,” so passively agreed to new legislation allowing massive intrusions into their private lives, in the name of “national security/”
At least some answers — I believe the most important answers — can be found in a book written during the Reagan presidency by media scholar, Neil Postman, in his book,”Amusing Ourselves to Death.” (Special thanks to reader George Piter for sending me his spare copy!)
I am not going to waste your time with my ramblings. I strongly suggest you go to Amazon.com and pick up a copy of the book and read it. In lieu of that, I have cherry-picked some of Postman’s most salient points. Understanding what Postman is saying here is key to understanding everything that’s happened over the past two decades and what’s happening right now.
This may well be, the most important thing you read this year. (Emphasis mine)
Amusing Ourselves to Death
by Neil Postman, 1985
“When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.” (Postman)
We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn’t, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of themselves. The roots of liberal democracy had held. Wherever else the terror had happened, we, at least, had not been visited by Orwellian nightmares.
But we had forgotten that alongside Orwell’s dark vision, there was another - slightly older, slightly less well known, equally chilling: Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Contrary to common belief even among the educated, Huxley and Orwell did not prophesy the same thing. Orwell warns that we will be overcome by an externally imposed oppression.
But in Huxley’s vision, no Big Brother is required to deprive people of their autonomy, maturity and history. As he saw it, people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture.
Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumble-puppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions”.
In 1984, Huxley added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us. This book is about the possibility that Huxley, not Orwell, was right.
(Selected excerpts follow)
Television has become, so to speak, the background radiation of the social and intellectual universe, the all-but-imperceptible residue of the electronic big bang of a century past, so familiar and so thoroughly integrated with American culture that we no longer hear its faint hissing in the background or see the flickering grey light. This, in turn, means that its epistemology goes largely unnoticed. And the peek-a-boo world it has constructed around us no longer seems even strange.
There is no more disturbing consequence of the electronic and graphic revolution than this: that the world as given to us through television seems natural, not bizarre. For the loss of the sense of the strange is a sign of adjustment, and the extent to which we have adjusted is a measure of the extent to which we have changed.
Our culture’s adjustment to the epistemology of television is by now almost complete; we have so thoroughly accepted its definitions of truth, knowledge and reality that irrelevance seems to us to be filled with import, and incoherence seems eminently sane… (when in fact) television’s conversations promote incoherence and triviality … and that television speaks in only one persistent voice — the voice of entertainment.
Television, in other words, is transforming our culture into one vast arena for show business. It is entirely possible, of course, that in the end we shall find that delightful, and decide we like it just fine. This is exactly what Aldous Huxley feared was coming, fifty years ago.
The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining….Television is our culture’s principal mode of knowing about itself.
TV news has no intention of suggesting that any story has any implications, for that would require viewers to continue to think about it when it is done and therefore obstruct their attending to the next story … Newscasters do not pause to grimace or shiver when they speak their prefaces or epilogs to the film clips. Indeed, many newscasters do not appear to grasp the meaning of what they are saying, and some hold to a fixed and ingratiating enthusiasm as they report on earthquakes, mass killings and other disasters. Viewers would be quite disconcerted by any show of concern or terror on the part of newscasters. Viewers, after all, are partners with the newscasters in the “Now . . . this” culture, and they expect the newscaster to play out his or her role as a character who is marginally serious but who stays well clear of authentic understanding.
Whereas we expect books and even other media (such as film) to maintain a consistency of tone and a continuity of content, we have no such expectation of television, and especially television news. We have become so accustomed to its discontinuities that we are no longer struck dumb, as any sane person would be, by a newscaster who having just reported that a nuclear war is inevitable goes on to say that he will be right 5, back after this word from Burger King; who says, in other words, “Now . . . this.”
One can hardly overestimate the damage that such juxtapositions do to our sense of the world as a serious place. The damage is especially massive to youthful viewers who depend so much on television for their clues as to how to respond to the world. In watching television news, they, more than any other segment of the audience, are drawn into an epistemology based on the assumption that all reports of cruelty and death are greatly exaggerated and, in any case, not to be taken seriously or responded to sanely.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anti-communication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
For those who think I am here guilty of hyperbole, I offer the following description of television news by Robert MacNeil, executive editor and co-anchor of the “MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour.
“The idea, he writes, “is to keep everything brief, not to strain the attention of anyone but instead to provide constant stimulation through variety, novelty, action, and movement. You are required . . . to pay attention to no concept, no character, and no problem for more than a few seconds at a time.” He goes on to say that the assumptions controlling a news show are “that bite-sized is best, that complexity must be avoided, that nuances are dispensable, that qualifications impede the simple message, that visual stimulation is a substitute for thought, and that verbal precision is an anachronism.”
The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world. I say this in the face of the popular conceit that television (news), as a window to the world, has made Americans exceedingly well informed. Much depends here, of course, on what is meant by being informed. I will pass over the now tiresome polls that tell us that, at any given moment, 70 percent of our citizens do not know who is the Secretary of State or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. Let us consider, instead, the case of Iran during the drama that was called the “Iranian Hostage Crisis.” I don’t suppose there has been a story in years that received more continuous attention from television. We may assume, then, that Americans know most of what there is to know about this unhappy event.
And now, I put these questions to you: Would it be an exaggeration to say that not one American in a hundred knows what language the Iranians speak? Or what the word “Ayatollah” means or implies? Or knows any details of the tenets of Iranian religious beliefs? Or the main outlines of their political history? Or knows who the Shah was, and where he came from?
Nonetheless, everyone had an opinion about this event, for in America everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up. But these are opinions of a quite different order from eighteenth- or nineteenth-century opinions. It is probably more accurate to call them emotions rather than opinions, which would account for the fact that they change from week to week, as the pollsters tell us.
What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB.
Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that television news deliberately aims to deprive Americans of a coherent, contextual understanding of their world. I mean to say that when news is packaged as entertainment, that is the inevitable result. And in saying that the television news show entertains but does not inform, I am saying something far more serious than that we are being deprived of authentic information.
I am saying we are losing our sense of what it means to be well informed. Ignorance is always correctable. But what shall we do if we take ignorance to be knowledge?
Here is a startling example of how this process bedevils us. A New York Times article is headlined on February 15, 1983:
Reagan misstatements getting less attention
(The article begins in the following way:)
“President Reagan’s aides used to become visibly alarmed at suggestions that he had given mangled and perhaps misleading accounts of his policies or of current events in general. That doesn’t seem to happen much anymore. Indeed, the President continues to make debatable assertions of fact but news accounts do not deal with them as extensively as they once did. In the view of White House officials, the declining news coverage mirrors a decline in interest by the general public.”
This report is not so much a news story as a story about the news, and our recent history suggests that it is not about Ronald Reagan’s charm. It is about how news is defined, and I believe the story would be quite astonishing to both civil libertarians and tyrants of an earlier time.
Walter Lippmann, for example, wrote in 1920: “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.” For all of his pessimism about the possibilities of restoring an eighteenth- and nineteenth-century level of public discourse, Lippmann assumed, as did Thomas Jefferson before him, that with a well-trained press functioning as a lie-detector, the public’s interest in a President’s mangling of the truth would be piqued, in both senses of that word. Given the means to detect lies, he believed, the public could not be indifferent to their consequences.
But that (New York Times) story refutes his assumption. The reporters who cover the White House are ready and able to expose lies, and thus create the grounds for informed and indignant opinion. But apparently the public declines to take an interest. To press reports of White House dissembling, the public has replied with Queen Victoria’s famous line: “We are not amused.”
However, here the words mean something the Queen did not have in mind. They mean that what is not amusing does not compel their attention. Perhaps if the President’s lies could be demonstrated by pictures and accompanied by music the public would raise a curious eyebrow. If a movie, like All the President’s Men, could be made from his misleading accounts of government policy, if there were a break-in of some sort or sinister characters laundering money, attention would quite likely be paid. We do well to remember that President Nixon did not begin to come undone until his lies were given a theatrical setting at the Watergate hearings. But we do not have anything like that here. Apparently, all President Reagan does is say things that are not entirely true. And there’s nothing, entertaining in that.
We are by now so thoroughly adjusted to the “Now . . . this” world of news-a world of fragments, where events stand alone, stripped of any connection to the past, or to the future, or to other events-that all assumptions of coherence have vanished. And so, perforce, has contradiction. In the context of no context, so to speak, it simply disappears. And in its absence, what possible interest could there be in a list of what the President says now and what he said then? It is merely a rehash of old news, and there is nothing interesting or entertaining in that. The only thing to be amused about is the bafflement of reporters at the public’s indifference.
There is an irony in the fact that the very group that has taken the world apart should, on trying to piece it together again, be surprised that no one notices much, or cares. For all his perspicacity, George Orwell would have been stymied by this situation; there is nothing “Orwellian” about it. The President does not have the press under his thumb. The New York Times and The Washington Post are not Pravda; the Associated Press is not Tass. And there is no Newspeak here.
Lies have not been defined as truth nor truth as lies. All that has happened is that the public has adjusted to incoherence and been amused into indifference. Which is why Aldous Huxley would not in the least be surprised by the story. Indeed, he prophesied its coming. He believed that it is far more likely that the Western democracies will dance and dream themselves into oblivion than march into it’ single file and manacled.
Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcoticized by technological diversions. Although Huxley did not specify that television would be our main line to the drug, he would have no difficulty accepting Robert MacNeil’s observation that “Television is the soma of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.” Big Brother turns out to be Howdy Doody.
And so, we move rapidly into an information environment which may rightly be called trivial pursuit As the game of that name uses facts as a source of amusement, so do our sources of news. It has been demonstrated many times that a culture can survive misinformation and false opinion. It has not yet been demonstrated whether a culture can survive if it takes the measure of the world in twenty-two minutes. Or if the value of its news is determined by the number of laughs it provides.
We ought also to look to Huxley, not Orwell, to understand the threat that television (news) and other forms of imagery pose to the foundation of liberal democracy-namely, to freedom of information. Orwell quite reasonably supposed that the state, through naked suppression, would control the flow of information, particularly by the banning of books. In this prophecy, Orwell had history strongly on his side…Thus, Orwell envisioned that ( 1 ) government control over (2) printed matter posed a serious threat for Western democracies. He was wrong on both counts. (He was, of course, right on both counts insofar as Russia, China and other pre-electronic cultures are concerned.)
Orwell was, in effect, addressing himself to a problem of the Age of Print-in fact, to the same problem addressed by the men who wrote the United States Constitution. The Constitution was composed at a time when most free men had access to their communities through a leaflet, a newspaper or the spoken word. They were quite well positioned to share their political idea-s with each other in forms and contexts over which they had competent control.
Therefore, their greatest worry was the possibility of government tyranny. The Bill of Rights is largely a prescription for preventing government from restricting the flow of information and ideas. But the Founding Fathers did not foresee that tyranny by government might be superseded by another sort of problem altogether, namely, the corporate state, which through television now controls the flow of public discourse in America. I raise no strong objection to this fact (at least not here) and have no intention of launching into a standard-brand complaint against the corporate state. I merely note the fact with apprehension..
Those who run television do not limit our access to information but in fact widen it. Our Ministry of Culture is Huxleyan, not Orwellian. It does everything possible to encourage us to watch continuously. But what we watch is a medium which presents information in a form that renders it simplistic, non-substantive, non-historical and non-contextual: that is to say information packaged as entertainment. In America, we are never denied the opportunity to amuse ourselves.
Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse. That is why tyrants have always relied, and still do, on censorship.
Censorship, after all, is the tribute tyrants pay to the assumption that a public knows the difference between serious discourse and entertainment-and cares. How delighted would be all the kings, czars and fuhrers of the past and commissars of the present to know that censorship is not a necessity when all political discourse takes the form of a jest.
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainment, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk: culture-death is a clear possibility.
By Bernard Weiner, The Crisis Papers - Smirking Chimp
The race between McCain and Obama is tighter than one would think should be the case. I needed some help in figuring out why, so I got a coded message to "Shallow Throat "-- the high-ranking GOP mole in the Bush Administration with whom I've consulted often.** We met under some shade trees at a public park in Alexandria.
"I'm confused by what's going on," I said to Shallow Throat, who was wearing a new wig and wraparounds. "Obama should be wiping the floor with McSame, but the race reminds me too much of 2000 and 2004: so close that Rove and his minions could once again steal it."
Shallow Throat smiled. "Don't get too nervous, Bernie. Your guy should win. McCain, a catastrophe waiting to happen, makes even the plutocrats nervous. They're doubling down by sending money Obama's way as well. He may not be their first choice, but he's not radical and they can live with him.
"Besides, what you're witnessing now, before Labor Day, is just the usual jockeying for position. Trying out themes and ideas and ads. See what works, what sticks. Trying to brand your opponent, etc.
"In a few weeks, the name of the game starts to shift: It'll be G.O.T.V. (Get Out the Vote) time, and here your Democrats should do gangbusters. The Republicans are fractured; the far-right ultraconservatives and many of the fundamentalists don't trust McCain; there's not the same kind of passion for the GOP candidate that energizes the Democratic legions that will be sending money to and walking the streets and making phone calls for Obama."
MAD-AS-HELL HILLARY SUPPORTERS
"You may be right," I countered, "but the Democrats have their own fissures and fractures. Many progressives, for example, think Obama's little more than a center-rightist, beholden to the same corporate interests they've fought for decades. Plus, many of Hillary Clinton's dedicated supporters have said they won't support Obama and may even vote for McCain or, at the very least, stay home."
"Don't go drinking that rightwing Kool-Aid, sonny," said ST. "Sure, there were and are hard feelings among many Hillary supporters, but a good share of those are frustrated voters, many of them women, who, once they examine McCain's positions on abortion rights, stem-cell research, health-care and the like, will never be able to vote for him. True, some women may sit out the 2008 campaign and not vote for or work for Obama, but not as many as you may think. (Will be interesting to see what Bill Clinton says at the convention, whether he goes all in for Obama or continues to foment trouble among his wife's supporters.)
"The point is that progressive Democrats want to win this year, and in their hearts know that despite whatever reservations they may have about Obama, he's their guy this time out. For without the presidency, the possibility of passing liberal, let alone progressive, legislation goes down the tubes. The Dems will win big in the Congressional races, maybe even big enough to create a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, but if McCain were to reside in the White House, his veto-pen could cause untold damage to the Democratic agenda, and his picks for the Supreme Court would be disastrous for social progress. I'm not even mentioning his reckless fascination with war as a first-choice option. So virtually all progressive Democrats, even if they wish someone else were their candidate, will vote for Obama."
WHY IS McCAIN SO CLOSE?
"I sure hope you're right," I said. "But I'm still caught up in the politlcal puzzle: The Republican Party is so distrusted and disliked in the country, Bush's favorable ratings have been in the low-20s for a year or two, McCain is tied tightly to Bush's failed policies, and he's such a terrible campaigner, such a crotchety old dude who may even be approaching the outskirts of senile dementia -- given all this, how in hell is McCain doing so well in the national polls?"
"Come on, Bernie, you know at least part of the answer. In case you haven't noticed, there are a lot of folks out there, especially in the Republican Party, and especially in the states of the Old South, who won't vote for a black man, period. And in states like Florida, there are plenty of old Jews who've swallowed the dirty-tricks GOP email circulating widely that falsely proclaims that Obama is Muslim and anti-Israel. In both cases, as you can see, racism is still alive and well and living in America, even among some Democrats."
"But surely the percentage of those who think that way is no more than, say, 10% of the voting population. What's leading so many others to McCain's camp?"
Shallow Throat gave me a "you-dummy" look: "Wake up and smell the numbers, my friend. Ten per cent in Ohio and Pennsylvania and Virginia and Florida and Michigan and Indiana can give those important states to McCain. Plus, from where I see it, McCain comes into the election with a running start -- 25% of voters are fundamentalists, evangelicals, HardRight extremists -- so, right off the bat, he's got 35% of the vote in his pocket, more if our estimate of the 10%-racist vote is low, especially in specific states.
"Let's talk national numbers. In my rough estimation, Obama's got a built-in 40%, McCain's got a start-off base of 35%. So Rove is roughing up Obama right now, and it's working. McCain is within a point or two of Obama, which is right in Rove's wheelhouse. Even if he can't push McCain's numbers any higher, Rove can maneuver to manipulate close elections in key electoral states the same way he did it in the first two Bush races and in 2002 in Georgia and elsewhere: by cheating and theft.
"But, as I say, the key in November 2008 is G.O.T.V. With a large enough motivated turnout, and by running up enormous voting totals, the Democrats should be able to swamp any attempts at shady vote-tabulating -- even though the McCain campaign no doubt will try. They're already trying to purge hundreds of thousands of likely Democratic voters in various states; are requiring photo IDs from poor and minority voters; and no doubt will have their U.S. attorneys file phony 'voting fraud' charges against Dem voting-registration organizers. Plus, let us not forget that Republican-leaning corporations control the secret software inside the easiy-hackable voting machines and, more importantly, control the vote-tabulating software on Election Night -- and that there's considerable evidence that they've manipulated the totals in past elections.
"But in one sense, I think Rove sees the electoral handwriting on the wall, as he did in 2006 when the Democrats took back Congress. Even though he'd love to steal another one and put McCain into the White House, that may prove impossible and he may scale down his definition of victory as keeping the Dems from reaching a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, making sure there's a way for the Republicans to block Obama's policies from that chamber."
JOE BIDEN AS THE ATTACK DOG
"Do you think Rove can succeed?" I asked.
"I think he has a shot in the Senate," said Shallow Throat, chugging a Dos XX, "but if the Democratic campaign's Get Out the Vote drive is successful, Obama's coattails can help the Dems take the Senate big. And putting Biden on the ticket was a good move in that regard. Joe really knows how to get under McCain's skin, maybe even enough to provoke McCain into exploding into embarrassing tirades.
"I've heard a lot of negative murmuring from progressives about Biden as Obama's running mate," I said, "you know, 'yet another Establishment Democrat who voted for the Iraq war and accepts the premise of the U.S. as an interventionist superpower, and a 'liberal' senator who voted for the bankruptcy bill and for other issues unpopular with the Democratic base. Plus, he's too full of himself, shoots off his mouth too often, and doesn't bring a big state's electoral votes to the table'."
"Biden's not everybody's cup of tea," said Shallow Throat, "but he's a dynamic campaigner, has a good sense of humor, a powerful biography, and balances out Obama's weaknesses in the experience/foreign-policy/national security areas. Plus he'd probably make a decent President, if it came to that. Again, most Democrats, despite whatever misgivings they may have about either Obama or Biden, will stick with the ticket all the way. It's their only shot."
"Who do you think McCain will counter with?" I asked.
"If he's dumb, he'll choose Mitt Romney -- two older, ultra-wealthy, extremist white guys, out of touch with the problems and desires of most of the country. If he's smart, he'll choose a woman, maybe Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas or, despite her own serious 'issues,' Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. With Rice, he would get a two-fer: black and female. Take that, Obama. Maybe even rub the Hillary supporters' still-smarting wound to the point where they'll stay away from the polls on Election Day."
OBAMA MUST START SCRAPPING
"Obama," I said, "seems so cerebral and nuanced in his approach to his opponent that I worry that he's about to do a Kerry -- turn off voters who really want someone who will put up a fight against the down-and-dirty campaign being waged by Rove for McCain, which has reached the scoundrel depths of questioning the patriotism of his opponent.
"Yep," said Shallow Throat. "That's where Rove wants to fight, since they're well-aware that Obama would win on the issues. So McCain is down there in the mud, even though at times he sure does look uncomfortable taking Rove's low-road approach. But the point is that McCain voluntarily is on that road, which makes him look desperate, mean-spirited, a typical ambitious politician who'll do anything to get elected -- a far cry from his somewhat independent 'maverick' reputation that attracted so many people to him years ago. The Obama campaign should start 'branding' McCain with that soiled image-- attacking, put McCain on the defensive -- and hammering McCain on energy, the economy and his affection for wars and confrontations.
"I think the professionals running the Obama campaign know that after the convention, the gloves have to come off and some bare-knuckles fighting has to take place. That's not Obama's style, but Biden's a master at it. Let Barack be Barack, and let Biden be Biden."
UNDOING THE CHENEY/BUSH DAMAGE
"You're a Republican," I said to Shallow Throat, "albeit a traditional moderate Republican. Why are you not supporting the GOP candidate?"
"I thought it was obvious by now," said ST. "My party is in the hands of dangerous extremists. And McCain, who once was a politician one could respect even when disagreeing with him, sold his soul to the devil a few years ago as he geared up for his final presidential race. He's nothing but ambition and seething anger at this stage. He's willing to walk all over the Constitution, foment wars (even against a nuclear-armed Russia, if it comes to that!), scuttle the economy, continue to let the treasury be looted by corporations, appoint HardRight extremists to the Supreme Court and appellate courts, etc. etc.
"In other words, CheneyBush would get a third term, and the country and the Constitution, after what we've been through the past eight years, cannot afford more gross misrule and unnecessary wars abroad. Like many traditional Republicans I know, I'll be voting for the Democrat this year, hoping Obama can start the process of undoing the damage and getting the country back on track.
"One last warning. None of my, and the Democrats', optimism will be realized unless the Obama campaign is ready to fight ferociously in the courts for the right of everyone to vote and to have their votes counted honestly. And there will be no victory unless the voting turnout for Obama is absolutely humongous. So you guys have a lot of work in front of you in the next two-and-a-half months. Go do it!"
And with that, Shallow Throat jogged out of the park, leaving me dazed but somewhat elevated in mood.#
**Go here ( www.crisispapers.org/weinerpubs.htm#shallow ) to read other conversations with the Shallow Throat character.
Bernard Weiner, Ph.D. in government & international relations, has taught at universities in California and Washington, worked as a writer/editor with the San Francisco Chronicle for two decades, and currently serves as co-editor of The Crisis Papers (www.crisispapers.org).
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