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Driving American Politics Underground by Chris Hedges, Truthdig, 9/7/14. "Politics, if we take politics to mean the shaping and discussion of issues, concerns and laws that foster the common good, is no longer the business of our traditional political institutions. These institutions, including the two major political parties, the courts and the press, are not democratic. They are used to crush any vestiges of civic life that calls, as a traditional democracy does, on its citizens to share among all its members the benefits, sacrifices and risks of a nation... L "Pundits and news celebrities on the airwaves engage in fevered speculation about whether the wife of a former president will run for office—and this after the mediocre son of another president spent eight years in the White House. This is not politics. It is gossip... "They are about eradicating civil liberties and justifying endless war and state violence. The chatter about death panels, abortion, gay rights, guns and undocumented children crossing the border is not politics. It is manipulation by the power elites of emotion, hate and fear to divert us from seeing our own powerlessness. "Politics in the hands of the corporate state is anti-politics. It is designed to denigrate and destroy the values that make a liberal democracy and political participation possible. It is a cynical form of mass control. Corporate money has replaced the vote. Dissent is silenced or ignored. Political parties are Punch and Judy shows funded by corporate puppeteers. Universities, once the epicenter of social change, are corporate headquarters, flush with corporate money, government contracts and foundation grants. The commercial press, whose primary task is attracting advertising dollars, has become an arm of the entertainment industry. It offers news as vaudeville... "The call by the Climate Justice Alliance for a week of direct action, Sept. 17 through 24 (http://www.beyondthemarch.org/)—coinciding with the gathering of world leaders at the United Nations summit—is politics. The coordinated activities during the same week known as Flood Wall Street (http://floodwallstreet.net/) are politics. The campaign by fast food workers for a livable wage (http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2014/09/04/345825903/across-the-country-fast-food-workers-rally-for-15-an-hour-pay) is politics. The effort to block the Keystone XL pipeline (http://www.tarsandsblockade.org/) is politics. The building of local food initiatives is politics. And there are many others. We must seek them out. We must embrace these groups to relearn what it means to be citizens and to participate in democracy. We must discredit and disrupt the system of faux politics that characterizes the corporate state. If we engage as citizens, rather than as spectators, if we reclaim politics, we might have a chance."
Fact Check Holding Politicians Accountable "I have been saying for the last thousand years that the United States has only one party--the property party. It's the party of big corporations, the party of money. It has two right wings; one is Democratic and the other is Republican" (David Barsamian. "Gore Vidal." The Progressive, August 2006: 36).
"The American political system, as conditioned by corporate cash, the corporate press and legal obstructions to independent candidacies, is designed to eliminate any threat to business as usual" (Alexander cockburn. "Against Dullness: The Campaigns So Far." The Nation, Jan. 21, 2008: 9).
If you really want to get irritated about corruption in Congress, next time you're sitting next to a baby with colic in the back row of a Southwest Airlines flight out of Midland, struggling to open a lousy bag of peanuts, imagine your trusty congressman and staff sipping champagne with some high-powered lobbyist on a private jet over the Rockies. They're doing it more often than you think. Your public servants in Congress and their staffs accepted nearly $50 million worth of free trips between January 200o and June 2005... "It is also important because these trips--and the unfettered access that they represent--offer lobbyists time to persuade members of Congress to support special interests. The Texas delegation, in particular, rarely seems to turn down an opportunity to travel. Texas congressmen, Senators, and their staffs took 1.773 trips that cost access-seekers $3.7 million" ("First-Class Action." Texas Observer, June 16, 2006: 4).
"Never ascribe to malice that which is adequately explained by incompetence" (Napoleon).
"Politics is not just the activity of politicians; it is a democratic people's chief means of making basic decisions about its future" (Jonathan Schell. "Politicizing the War." The Nation, June 14, 2004: 10).
"Let me introduce myself. Since 1993, I've run the Congressional Accountability Project, which opposes corruption in Congress. It hasn't been easy. I'll bet you understand. "After thirteen years, I can't honestly claim any victories. Sure, some powerful members of Congress were embarrassed by front-page scandal stories. But it didn't do much good. Congress passed no major anti-corruption reforms. Here's why: Although both Republican and Democrats are happy to hurl accusations at one another, neither has any real interest in reducing corruption in Congress. "Even now, in the middle of the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal, which may be the worst political scandal since Watergate, both parties are hoping that nobody notices when they pass sham reform and call it a triumph... "In Washington, Republicans are the party of the corporations and their trade associations. Anti-corruption reforms threaten corporations because they reduce the influence of money in politics. If money can't buy legislative action, then corporations won't get what they want. Lobbying reforms also cut into those lovely perks that members of Congress crave... "Amazingly, when the Democrats announced their ethics plan, it was almost as tame as the Republicans'... "Democrats haven't changed much since then. They have the power to file ethics complaints to trigger investigations of Republican corruption. But they don't. Here's a dirty secret: House Minority Leader Nancy Pilosi basically prohibits her Democrats from filing ethics complaints against Republicans--even powerful ones. In other words, Pelosi protects Republicans from investigations of corruption, influence-peddling, and abuse of power. "Why does Pelosi act as the Republicans' angel of mercy? If Democrats filed ethics complaints, Republicans would, too. The likely result of such an "ethics war": Corruption would be exposed, members from both parties would be embarrassed, and a few might lose their seats in Congress. There might even be an indictment or two. Maybe someone would go to jail. Sounds great. But it's intolerable to both parties... "...in September 1997, they passed "reforms" (I called them the Corrupt Politicians' Protection Act) that made it impossible for citizens to file ethics complaints in the House. The "reforms" created a climate in Congress where corruption is increasingly possible--exactly what both parties wanted" (Gary Ruskin. "No Housecleaning." The Progressive, May, 2006: 22-24).
"FDR dedicated the New Deal to "freedom from fear." He believed that government's role was not to provide handouts to the poor, but to provide a certain minimum level of security against the everyday catastrophes that ruin people's lives. "It is this minimum level of economic security that George Bush and modern movement conservatives want to abolish. In fact, it's the point of Bush's "ownership society": if everyone owns their own Social Security account, owns their own healthcare account, and owns their own college accounts, then the government no longer provides security against disaster. If you make a mistake, or if the market makes a mistake, you're screwed. "This is likely to be the eventual downfall of modern conservatism. Human beings have a deep desire for a certain minimum level of stability and security in their lives, and eventually they'll rebel against a party that refuses to acknowledge this. Life today is so much better than it was in the 30s that people have forgotten the basic New Deal ethos that made it that way. But if conservatives have their way, it won't be much longer before they start remembering" (Kevin Drum, http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/, 8/11/04).
"We presumably elect members of Congress to look out for the interests of the American citizen, to protect and uphold the Constitution. Here we have the executive trampling on the legislature and on the judiciary, and it is up to the Congress to correct that condition. Because that is a fouling of the constitutional form of government... "We also need an awakening on the part of large numbers of people, both Democrat and Republican, of a political consciousness that has been dormant for the better part of the last thirty years. We have to change the notion that politics isn't important, that what's important is the economy and money, and that politicians serve at the pleasure of their corporate sponsors. They might as well be hired accordion players at a hospitality tent at a golf tournament. "I graduated from Yale in the 1950s, and the word "public" was still a good word. The Public meant public health, public service, public school, commonwealth. And "private" suggested greed, selfishness, and so on. Those words have been turned around. That was the great triumph of the Reagan Revolution. By the time we hit the end of the Reagan Administration, "public" had become a dirty word, a synonym for slum, poor school, incompetent government, all things destructive. And "private" had become glorious: private club, private trout stream, private airplane. "I know the ethos of the American oligarchy of which young Bush is a servant. It was a tempting subject for discussion and commentary. He's an agent of the selfish greed that usually overtakes a fat and stupid oligarchy. Aristotle makes this point in his Politics. He has a circle. At one point you have an oligarchy, and it becomes rancid with its own wealth and stupidity. That in turn gives way to tyranny. Then, after a period of time, syranny turns into anarchy, and out of that comes some form of democracy, which then deteriates into oligarchy, and you go around the circle again" (Ruth Conniff. "Lewis Lapham." The Progressive, May, 2006: 31-34).
"McCarthyism is loose on our land again, pushed not by one deranged, malicious senator, but by a self-righteous, slow-witted president who is under the wing of such maniacal, anti-democratic ideologues as Cheney, Rumsfield, and Ashcroft" (Jim Hightower, The Texas Observer, 6/6/03). "No man is justified in doing evil on grounds of expediency" (Theodore Roosevelt). "Consultants are to democracy what lawyers are to justice: opportunistic manipulators, conniving and unprincipled, devoted to winning at all costs... Pandering is their line of work. They drive up the cost of campaigns even as they drive down the quality" (Denison, Dave. "Pandering." The Nation, 8/1/03, 6). "To announce that there must be no criticism of the president, or that we are to stand by the president right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." ---Theodore Roosevelt "... lobbyists bribery of state legislators... handouts of special-interest money is.. carefully obscured.. "...lobbyists in 41 state capitals reported spending $889 million to wine, dine and influence state legislators in 2003... "The top five states reporting lobbyist spending in 2003 were California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, and Minnesota... Texas had 1,673 [lobbyists]... "..most reporters don't spend much, if any, time investigating the lobbyists... can have a big impact, yet... didn't make any "news" that we saw. "Neither did the indirect confessions of journalistic guilt published last month... The Pew survey of 547 reporters and editors... gave poor grades to the coverage offered by the types of media that serve most Americans... "More than half of the national media people... agreed that the press treatment of President Bush has been insufficiently probing and critical" ("The Electoral College Is Seen By Many As the Deplorable College." Washington Spectator, June 15, 2004: 1-4).
"...the Democrats have an image problem. "Today, there is a growing misperception, fostered by right-wing political and religious leaders, that those who espouse progressive views are inherently antireligious"" (Eyal Press. "Closing the 'Religion Gap'." The Nation, Aug.30, 2004: 11).
"In American politics, who controls the states controls the nation. The right understands this, and for a generation has waged an unrelenting war to take over state government in America. It has substantially succeeded, in large part because it hasn't faced any serious progressive countereffort... "...we progressives... haven't built an infrastructure for progressive state electoral politics and government. And so we can't, and don't, recruit and train thousands of progressives to run for state office, provide them with state-specific platforms to run on, help them in implementing those platforms once in office, and coordinate all this across states for mutual gain... "Progressive reluctance to develop such a strategy is in some ways understandable... we are in a sort of collective denial that "the era of big government is over"... "...we're missing an enormous political opportunity in the states, which today are the most natural sites of progressive growth... With real government power in the states, progressives could demonstrate that our ideas actually work -- that a government run in our way is more efficient and accountable... delivers higher living standards.... the idea of states as "laboratories of democracy"... "In no state are there functional majorities of self-consciously progressive elected officials, working together off a visible, coherent program of progressive economic, social and political reform, linked systematically to outside progressive forces... "...states do by far the largest share of governing in America. They write most law and give content to even more through interpretation and administration.... "States are also arbiters of the most fundamental transaction in democratic politics: the electoral transfer of power. States control elections, all elections, more or less from top to bottom... So far as democratic fundamentals go, it's hard to get more basic than this. And even for those who care only about national politics, this gives a clear reason to care about state ones... "As Texas's Tom Delay has recently shown us... legislative redistricting gives states effective power over the Congress. As we learned in Florida in 2000, and may learn again in a few weeks' time, state-controlled voting procedures can even choose the President. "About thirty years ago, the Republican right decided to take over the states... What Republican are doing... Along with the redistricting scams... they are constitutionalizing restrictions on state spending, cutting social services of all kinds, acting hostile to labor, privatizing an ever wider range of state functions, pushing punitive criminal justice, rolling back privacy rights to the benefit of banks and insurance companies, avoiding the health insurance crisis, limiting medical and product liability, freezing state minimum wages, limiting consumer protections, cutting funding to public schools, dolloping out ever more expansive tax breaks to business and playing the red meat game (gay marriage, concealed weapons, etc.).... if Republican leadership continues to gain in the states... States will become more perfect pictures of inequality, market governance and business cronyism... "Essentially what's needed is a partial equivalent of what is already provided on the other side by the right, a shared capacity to win elections and govern. We need the capacity to continually map the election terrain within states... We need a massively scaled-up capacity to recruit, train and place reliable progressives, ideally recruited from our own ranks, as candidates for those races. We need a clearinghouse on model legislation and administrative practice, and supports to elected officials prepared to move them (talking points, examples of success elsewhere, expert support, etc.)... "The problem is that bulding capacity in the states is a long-term project, requiring substantial if not humongous amounts of money spent over several electoral cycles, to improve the fortunes of a large number of largely unknown down-ballot candidates and officeholders" (Joel Rogers. "Devolve This!" The Nation, Aug. 30, 2004: 20-28).
Why so many people get their fundamental economic interests wrong... "What in the world-gone-to-hell is wrong with the American people? If the corporate and political leadership of the Republican party is as corrupt and inept as it seems to be, how pathetic are American voters for putting all three branches of government in the control of the GOP?... "Why so many people are acting against their fundamental interests is "the preeminent question of our times," according to Frank. It is "the all-American dysfunction""... "His answer to that "preeminent question of our times" seems to be that a lot of people are deluded. Deranged. Played for suckers" (Dave Denison. "What's the Matter With Us?" Texas Observer, 8/13/04: 10-11, 40).
"...The pattern of corruption is a very old one, well-known to the Founders of this nation, who had carefully studied the example of Rome: A powerful republic gives birth to an empire, which in turn destroys the republic. The emperor who rules by force abroad develops a taste for ruling his own people in the same manner. "The [Bush] Administration's across-the-board hostility to the constraints of law, domestic and international, is not accidental. The constitutional structure that is the backbone of the republic is a stumbling block to the empire. The republic requires a single standard, to which all are subject -- the law. But the empire requires a double standard -- one set of regulations for others, and another set, or none, for the imperial ruler. In the imperial conception, "law" is a set of rules dictated by the ruler for everyone else to obey. In this conception, other countries are not permitted weapons of mass destruction, but the United States may have them (and use them to stop the others from getting them). Other countries' troops must obey the Geneva Conventions, but the United States is exempt. Other countries must wage war only defensively; the United States may do so pre-emptively" (Jonathan Schell. "Empire Without Law." The Nation, May 31, 2004: 7).
"Off the radar of all pundits is a little-known, least-selling 2002 study that may very well best describe what the 2004 presidential electorate is thinking -- or isn't. In The U.S. and the Wealth of Nations authors Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen conclude that, for complex reasons, the average brainpower of a nation ultimately determines its economic strength. The citizens of China, Japan and Korea have been shown to have a higher average IQ than Americans. The analysts' breakdown of our various states reveals the status of American minds in 2000. "With an IQ of 100 being the average, the top seven states were: Connecticut (113), Massachusetts and New Jersey (111), New York (109), Rhode Island (107), Hawaii (106), and Maryland (105). All voted for Gore. The bottom seven states were: Mississippi (85), Utah and Idaho (87), South Carolina and Wyoming (89), South Dakota (90), and Oklahoma (90). They all voted for Bush" ("Political Cookbooks." Washington Spectator, Sep. 1, 2004: 3).
"...we have only one political party in the United States, the Property Party, with two right wings, Republican and Democrat... citizens find it difficult at election time to tell the parties apart... The Republicans are often more doctrinaire than the Democrats, who are willing to make small -- very small -- adjustments where the poor and black are concerned while giving aid and comfort to the anti-imperialists" (Gore Vidal. "State of the Union, 2004." The Nation, Sep. 13, 2004: 23-29).
"Time for another Gooberhead Award... [to] the honchos of NBC, CBS, and ABC. These media barons decreed that this year's national political conventions were worthy of only one hour of prime-time coverage... The corporate arbiters of our public airwaves deem it more important to broadcast re-runs of sit-coms than to cover our nation's quadrennial rituals of democracy. The honchos say that the conventions are scripted events that are not "something we need to cover on the broadcast television network"... ""Dan Rather of CBS... refers to them as "money-raising, lobbyist-hunting-ground infomercial"... "It would be great TV to have investigative reporters poke their cameras into the exclusive watering holes where corporate lobbyists are.. blatantly buying our government. Second is the astonishing police crackdown against ordinary citizens who dare to protest at these conventions. Like a Third World dictatorship, our government now routinely uses massive and abusive force to shut down democratic expression, and it's time for the media to expose it" (Jim Hightower. "How Newsworthy Can You Get?" Texas Observer, 9/10/04: 15).
"American voters' capacity for self-delusion will not diminish after the election. It is as easy to delude yourself about what a President is doing as to delude yourself about what a candidate will do if elected" ("Letters." The Nation, Sep. 20, 2004: 2).
The divided United States (Ad for The Great Divide, a book by John Sperling):
- Conservative: The South, the Great Plains, the Mountain West and Appalachia
- Conservative: 35% of the population and 50 senators.
- Conservative: Subsidized extraction industries, agriculture, oil, gas, coal and forestry and majority of military installations
- Conservative: pays 29% of federal taxes
- Conservative: From 1991 to 2001, received $800 billion more in goods, services and cash from Washington than it paid in taxes.
- Conservatives: Nobel Laureates in science and economics: 23
The divided United States (Ad for The Great Divide, a book by John Sperling):
- Conservative: The South, the Great Plains, the Mountain West and Appalachia
- Conservative: 35% of the population and 50 senators.
- Conservative: Subsidized extraction industries, agriculture, oil, gas, coal and forestry and majority of military installations
- Conservative: pays 29% of federal taxes
- Conservative: From 1991 to 2001, received $800 billion more in goods, services and cash from Washington than it paid in taxes.
- Conservatives: Nobel Laureates in science and economics: 23
"A pre-election study by the conservative Cato Institute... concluded that voters were largely uninformed about both the candidates and the partisan issues, and they had "little incentive to gain more political knowledge." The result: "A large political-knowledge underclass of "know nothings," constitutes from 25 to 35 percent of the American public" (Ben A. Franklin, ed. "For the Democrats, Happy Days Aren't Here Again and May Be Far Away." Washington Spectator, Jan. 1, 2005: 1).
"In American Notes, a fascinating book on his tour of American, [Charles] Dickens wrote that he found Congress full of "despicable trickery," "under-handed tamperings," and "cowardly attacks upon opponents, with scurrilous newspapers for shields."... "At the House of Representatives, Dickens wrote, he saw "aidings and abettings of every bad inclination in the popular mind, and artful suppressions of all good influences... In a word, dishonest faction in its most depraved and most unblushing form stared out from every corner of the crowded hall"" (Ben A. Franklin, ed. "For the Democrats, Happy Days Aren't Here Again and May Be Far Away." Washington Spectator, Jan. 1, 2005: 3).
"We may never reach a consensus on just what it was about George W. Bush that led so many millions of Americans to ignore his Administration's dishonesty, incompetence, ideological fanaticism and corruption and vote for the guy... "...like it or not, the perception of "strength" is the sine qua non of American politics. As Bill Clinton famously observed, it is politically safer to be perceived to be "strong and wrong" rather than weak and right" (Eric Alterman. "Big Ideas Need Sharp Elbows." The Nation, Dec. 27, 2004: 10).
"Political candidates are three times more likely to have a mental disorder of some sort than the general public" (http://www.gullible.info/, 3/5/05). "...myths...end up hurting us badly... MYTH #1: The truth will set us free. If we just tell people the facts... But we know from cognitive science that people do not think like that. People think in frames... If the facts do not fit a frame, the frame stays and the facts bounce off... "Concepts are not things that can be changed just by someone telling us a fact... for us to make sense of them, they have to fit what is already in the synapses of the brain. Otherwise facts... are not heard, or they are not accepted as facts... Then we label the fact as irrational, crazy, or stupid... Example: "Saying "the president lied when he started this war" puts the truth out there--but for many people it just bounces off. A huge number of people in the country still believe that Saddam Hussein was behind September 11. There are people who will believe this because it fits their understanding of the world. It fits their worldview... They believe this--in spite of the report by the 9/11 Commission. It is not that they are stupid. They have a frame and they only accept facts that fit that frame" (18)... MYTH #2: "It is irrational to go against your self-interest... Modern economic theory and foreign policy are set up on the basis of that assumption... "...cognitive scientists... have shown that people do not really think that way... "People do not necessarily vote in their self-interest. They vote their identity. They vote their values. They vote for who they identify with" (19). MYTH #3: "...political campaigns are marketing campaigns where the candidate is the product... This leads to the conclusion that polling should determine which issues a candidate should run on... "It does not work... the Republicans... real practice, and the real reason for their success, is this: They say what they idealistically believe... they talk to their base using the frames of their base" (20)... "Clinton figured out how to handle this problem. He stole the other side's language... He did what he wanted to do, only he took their language and used their words to describe it. It made them very mad. Very smart technique... "[The Republicans] use Orwellian language precisely when they have to: when they are weak, when they cannot just come out and say what they mean. Imagine if they came out supporting a "Dirty Skies Bill" or a "Forest Destruction Bill" or a "Kill Public Education" bill. They would lose... "Orwellian language points to weakness... it is a guide to where they are vulnerable. They do not use it everywhere. It is very important to notice this, and use their weakness to your advantage" (22)... Example of "tax relief," a frame which implies that taxes are bad and that anyone who relieves us of them is good... "What is taxation? Taxation is what you pay to live in a civilized country--what you pay to have democracy and opportunity, and what you pay to use the infrastructure paid for by previous taxpayers: the highway system, the Internet, the entire scientific establishment, the medical establishment, the communications system, the airline system. All are paid for by taxpayers" (24)... "Imagine this [information] running over and over [as an ad] for years. Eventually, the frame would be established: Taxes are wise investments in the future" (25)... "[Liberals] need to talk about values... talk about every issue from the perspective of our values, not theirs" (George Lakoff. Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: 25)
Eleven Things Progressives Can Do 1. "Recognize what conservatives have done right... What they have done right is to successfully frame the issues from their perspective. 2. "Remember... if you keep their language and their framing and just argue against it, you lose because you are reinforcing their frame. 3. "Just speaking truth to power doesn't work. You need to frame the truths effectively from your perspective. 4. "...use the language of values... 5. "...understand where conservatives are coming from... Be able to explain why they believe what they believe. Try to predict what they will say. 6. "...think strategically, across issue areas. Think in terms of large moral goals, not in terms of program for their own sake... 7. "Form progressive slippery slope initiatives... 8. "...remember that voters vote their identity and their values... 9. "...unite! And cooperate!... start thinking and talking from shared progressive values... 10. "... be proactive... Practice reframing, every day, on every issue... Use YOUR frames, not their frames. Use them because they fit the values you believe in... 11. "Don't move to the right. Rightward movement hurts in two ways. It alienates the progressive base and it helps conservatives by activating their model in swing voters" (George Lakoff. Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: 33-34).
"As far as elections are concerned, the most powerful forms of identification are with values and corresponding cultural stereotypes" (39)... "...adopt[ing] some right-wing values [is] a self-defeating strategy. Conservatives have been winning elections without moving to the left [by using] a powerful cultural stereotype" (43)... Some examples of changing frames. First see the family stereotypes above... Progressive Values "How do progressive values differ from traditional American values? "Progressive values ARE traditional American values. "We are proud of the victories for equality and against hierarchy: the emnancipation of the slaves, women's suffrage, the union movement, the integration of the armed forces, the civil rights movement, the woman's movement, the environmental movement, and the gay rights movement. "We are proud of FDR's conception of government "for the people" and his rally for hope against fear. "We are proud of the Marshall Plan, which helped to erase the notion of "enemies." "We are proud of John Kennedy's call to public service, of Martin Luther King's insistence on nonviolence in the face of brutality, of Cesar Chavez's ability to bring pride and organization to the worst treated of workers. "Progressive thought is as American as apple pie. Progressives want political equality, good public schools, healthy children, care for the aged, police protection, family farms, air you can breathe, water you can drink, fish in our streams, forests you can hike in, sognbirds and frogs, livable cities, ethical businesses, journalists who tell the truth, music and dance, poetry and art, and jobs that pay a living wage to everyone who works" (110). Gay Marriage "The radical right uses gay marriage... Gay for the right connotes a wild, deviant, sexually irresponsible lifestyle. That's why the right prefers gay marriage to same-sex marriage... "Progressives need to reclaim the moral high ground... there is a simple response for someone who says, "I don't think gays should be able to marry. Do you?" The response is: "I believe in equal rights, period. I don't think the state should be in the business of telling people who they can or can't marry. Marriage is about love and commitment, and denying lovers the right to marry is a violation of human dignity"" (George Lakoff. Don't Think of an Elephant! Know Your Values and Frame the Debate: 50)...
"In the [second] Bush inaugural, that moment came when the presidential motorcade headed down Pennsylvania Avenue enclosed in a phalanx of police vehicles. "It looked like a military occupation proceeding through a hostile city," snapped ABC's George Will. Only after the event did we learn just how martial it was. Along with 13,000 officers, secret commando units were at large in Washington, and sharpshooters with state-of-the-art assault weapons were stationed on rooftops along the parade route. The President was riding in an armored limo with bulletproof tires and, reportedly, an oxygen system that could be activated during a chemical attack. None of this showed on TV. In the new surveillance society, nothing is more important than maintaining the illusion of normalcy... Under the pomp and circumstance, one could glimpse the contours of the coming American security state. Political pageants are like that. They show the future disguised as the past" (Richard Goldstein. "Hail-to-the-Chief Show." The Nation, Feb. 14, 2005: 5-6).
"Rather than get drawn into the recent unseemly haggling, it would be a rather more honorable and even realistic approach for the left to attack the whole corrupt system of judicial selection, from top to bottom. What possible justification can there be for a system in which all federal judges are within the gift of state delegations of the Democratic and Republican parties? Let's have popular election of all judges. "The Senate, on the other hand, should abandon its comical pretensions to being a body reflecting any democratic mandate. Senators should be installed by some version of the phone-book approach. Probably the best method was the one obtaining at the former House of Lords, now destroyed by Tony Blair: incumbency by birthright, handed down the generations. Within not too many decades this simple method produced useful number of decent, independent-minded people. After Blair's "reforms," the place has become a quango, meaning a creature of the government of the day" (Alexander Cockburn. "There's Their Way or the Galloway." The Nation, Mar. 14, 2005: 13).
"...the Bush administration and the Republican Congress are well to the right of the country. Yet George W. Bush got himself re-elected, with an enlarged majority in both chambers of Congress. "Let's cut to the chase. The big reason is that the right is a movement, 30 years in the making. And a movement culture is a habitat that allows grass-roots activists, party professionals, and conviction politicians to function strategically as a smooth machine joined by a common ideology. "I knocked on a lot of doors in 2004," says Steve Rosenthal, who headed America Coming Together, the largest liberal voter-mobilization group. "If I heard it once, I heard it a thousand times: 'You may not agree with George Bush, but you know where he stands.'" Conviction evidently trumps vacillation... "The right's famed echo chamber now can "narrowcast" complementary messages to every major demographic group. "For conservative voters in Peoria," says Rob Stein of the Democracy Alliance, "there's something for everyone. The businessman gets it from The Wall Street Journal editorial page. The soccer mom has FOX News. The 24-year-old beer-drinking guy has Rush [Limbaugh]. The religious right can get the word from Pat Robertson"... "The country remains skeptical about most Republican policies... [it has been] documented, potentially liberal groups are demographically ascendant. There IS a latent liberal majority, IF liberals can once again learn to do politics... "Stein identifies 80 national right-wing think tanks now spending a total of $400 million to $600 million a year as developers and marketers of conservative ideaology on economics and foreign policy. Nearly half the money goes to media, message, and strategy. These think tanks are a milieu to mentor thousands of movement conservatives and hone ideas. The progressive counterparts, Stein calculates, are 19 national groups, with a total budget of about $75 million a year" (Robert Kuttner. "The Death and Life of American Liberalism." Prospect, June 2005: 16-19).
"Coming to Ottawa might also expose you to a parliamentary system that has a thing called question period every day, where those in the executive are held accountable by an opposition for their actions, and where demands for public debate on important topics such as missile defense can be made openly... "Your boss [Bush] did not avail himself of a similar opportunity to visit our House of Commons during his visit, fearing, it seems, that there might be some signs of dissent. He preferred to issue his diktat on missile defense in front of a highly controlled, preselected audience. "Such control-freak antics may work in the virtual one-party state that now prevails in Washington. But in Canada we have a residual belief that politicians should be subject to a few checks and balances, an idea that your country once espoused before the days of empire" (Lloyd Axworthy. "Open Letter to Condoleezza Rice." The Progressive, June 2005: 30-31).
"...moral, including religious, values are "best protected by a deep ethical commitment to the secular state." "Legislators need to be asking what the people want and not what God wants."" (Letters. The Nation, June 12, 2006: 2).
Branding""The water crisis never came up," Boynton tells me. "Part of the point of these campaigns is that issues are so simplified that fundamental issues don't get discussed.""It's precisely this focus on branding and bottom-line poll numbers that betrays the promise of democracy in Bolivia, just as it spells doom for it in the United States" (Ed Morales. "Branding in Bolivia." The Progressive, May, 2006: 36-37).
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