One of the most disturbing pieces of news I’ve read in a long time came from a poll about trust in news organizations. As Andy Barr, of Politico, reported on January 27, Fox is now the most trusted TV news network in the nation. That’s right, in a nationwide survey of 1,151 registered voters conducted by Public Policy Polling, the home of Hannity and O’Reilly and Glenn Beck ranked HIGHEST in TRUST, at 49%, of any news network. It beat out CNN, trusted by only 39%, and the three “major” networks, ABC, NBC and CBS, none of whom even reached the high thirties (NBC led at 35%. Apparently, PBS wasn’t even included.)
For anyone who values accuracy, for anyone who values actual objective reporting rather than slash-and-burn “opinion” growled by conservative curs like the three mentioned above, the results of this poll are more than befuddling; they are alarming in the extreme. For what this confirms is what many of us have suspected for many years: Americans have now lost all connection with reality (the contempt of the Bush Administration for “reality-based” opinion seems prescient here), and prefer to be roused out of their shopping stupor by rabid demagogues. Americans do not have the patience to read; they do not want to be bothered with “facts.” They want someone to tell them what to think and how to think and to entertain them with simplistic savagery and rant that can penetrate their beaten-down skulls. They want quick solutions to complex problems that any four-year-old can understand. They want to know who the bad guys are and who the good guys are, and a program for rounding up and eliminating the bad—starting with the eggheads in government who make them feel stupid.
So here’s the situation. We now have many of the ingredients in place for an eruption of mob agitation and anger similar to the ones that erupted in Europe in the 1930s. We have an economic collapse. We have urban bankers receiving huge bailouts from a government that seems to be in their pockets, while average people get stuck with the bill—those who still have jobs and can pay the bill, that is. We have a nation reeling from the offshoring of the very economic engine—manufacturing—that brought it to the top of the global economy. We have corporations handed a Supreme Court decision that promises them even more power to buy politicians and collude in looting the national treasury than they already have. We have states going broke, major corporations going on the dole, the federal government going ever deeper into debt, and the stage set for a collapse of the dollar that could make savings and earnings worthless. And we have half the world pissed off at the USA for its years of high-handed domination of the global economy and the corresponding ruin and/or enslavement of countless local economies—not to mention its overwhelming military power and political meddling in nations all over the globe. And what Fox-devoted Americans want is a simple and easy solution to these problems, something that will restore quickly, easily, directly the “greatest nation ever” to its rightful place as NUMBER ONE.
In short, the ingredients of scalding discontent are in place (and more can be added at a moment’s notice via flood, storm, earthquake, or even a nice little military incident ginned up to get the blood boiling) and require only a little spark, a nice scapegoat towards which the good citizens of the nation can direct their wrath. These are the things that Fox does so well. Its pundits can rail about foreigners, immigrants, ragheads and assorted third-worlders without even a script. Its slanted news coverage can highlight the most wacky of paranoid fantasies—they’re arming, they’re developing nukes, they’re all on welfare, they’re sneaking onto our airplanes, into our subways, our ports, our ships, our nuclear plants—and make them reverberate throughout the land with the utter simplicity and ferocity that its audience requires.
You get the picture.
Fortunately, we still lack the demagogue who can bring all this together. We still have a few reasonable voices counseling caution (and an unknown number who don’t watch networks at all). We still have no logical and helpless-enough target against which to direct the collective anger. But these things were lacking in Nazi Germany before 1930 as well. Then along came a house painter with a knack for boiling brain cells with his very voice. And the convulsion started.
Will it start here? Perhaps it already has. Just think of it: 49% of those polled said they actually trusted the Fox News Network. Fox more than any other. Fox über alles.
Can the bonfires be far behind?
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, January 31, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Stop the Games
Barack Obama and his Democratic Party colleagues are reeling. With the Republican victory in the special Senate election in Massachusetts, they now have no hope whatever of putting together the “required” super-majority of sixty votes to pass healthcare. Indeed, with the loss of the “sure” seat long occupied by Ted Kennedy, the Democrats may not be able to pass any legislation whatever. The President tried to address this situation in his State of the Union Address this week, haranguing and sometimes begging Republicans to stop being obstructionists and start being bipartisan. He reportedly did the same thing in his meeting with Republicans on January 28, accusing them of being obstructionist for political purposes and putting party loyalty before the good of the nation, and appealing to them to at least vote for the measures—tax cuts, support for states going bankrupt—that would normally be Republican pet projects. It appears, in short, that the President has learned almost nothing in the year since he’s been in office, and still sees himself as the great statesman who can bring the warring parties together under his bipartisan leadership.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Republicans have made no secret of their intention to bring the president down, to make him fail, and their equal determination to sacrifice the country they profess to serve in order to do it. This has been the Republican strategy since at the least the days of Richard Nixon, although it became most extreme during the Reagan-Newt Gingrich-George W. Bush era.
This being the case, it simply defies belief that Democrats, especially those in the Senate (backed no doubt by the Administration), continue to try to muster up the “super-majority” they say they need to pass legislation. Normally, legislation simply requires a simple majority—51 votes—which the Democrats could muster even in a flu epidemic. What they need 60 votes for is to override a Republican filibuster. The Republicans have threatened such a filibuster every day since the President was elected, a move which means that Senators can take the floor and read from a telephone book, one after another, for days and weeks on end, to prevent any vote from taking place. By doing this—or rather by threatening to do this—they force the nervous Democrats to abandon every progressive measure they were elected to implement, in order to get the votes of heretofore mealy-mouthed mid-west senators like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, or literal traitors like Joe Lieberman. They can also try to ass-kiss the so-called “liberal” Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine. It is a humiliating and doomed strategy, as a full year of trying to craft a “passable” health-care reform bill plainly indicates. And now, with the loss of the Massachusetts seat, the doom is palpable.
There is only one solution. Abandon the ‘super-majority’strategy. A bill can be passed with 51 votes. Therefore, the Senate should simply begin the process of bringing the bills that they truly support—and healthcare should include a public option—to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Call the Republicans’ bluff. Force them again and again to either vote on the healthcare bill, and all the other bills that are in process, or to filibuster. Force them to go public with their idiotic strategy of reading phone books on the floor of the senate while the country goes down in flames. Force them to take responsibility for bringing the business of the country—the business they are sworn to act upon—to a total halt. And then have the President, with his bully pulpit, call them out daily for their obstructionism. For having no policy but a policy of “no.”
Yes, it will take some guts. Yes, it will require that the Democrats take the risk that the public will blame them as well. But the risk is worth it, especially from a position of action. This nation is being held hostage by a group of yahoos who wish only to win back their majority. The health of actual people, of actual citizens, means nothing to them. The welfare of the nation means nothing. The only welfare they care about is the welfare of their white, moneyed classes and their wealthy corporate sponsors—the ones who make a killing in privatized health care, medicine, warfare, and corporate and banking fraud. But the truth is, the big numbers are all on the other side. Democrats have to return to the ideals that they pretend to espouse: help for those who need it, help for the common people who work for a living and who yielded to so much hope when Obama was elected. They have to let the American public know that Democrats actually stand for something, and are willing to risk a defeat in the Congress to prove it. As it is, Americans see through the games, see through the compromises that have been employed to gut the health-care bill of any meaningful reform. And they have contempt for it, for a party that is unwilling to stand up and be counted.
The Republicans threaten to filibuster? Call their bluff. Let’s see how many are willing to announce to the nation that they have but one policy: NO; that they give not a damn for the pain of the people, or the ruin of the nation’s economy; that they have but one solution to the country’s ills: more wealth for the wealthy, their one and only constituency. Otherwise, the fate of the Democrats and their President will be more of the same: slow death by a thousand cuts from a party that a few months ago was in an advanced stage of rampant cell death. Otherwise, we could soon see the resurgence of this, the crew that gave us Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Yoo and that gang of criminals that nearly sank the nation, and would like nothing better than to try it again. This time with an even bigger yahoo like Sarah Palin.
Get some backbone, Democrats. Call their bluff. And then get on with the people’s business.
Lawrence DiStasi
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The Republicans have made no secret of their intention to bring the president down, to make him fail, and their equal determination to sacrifice the country they profess to serve in order to do it. This has been the Republican strategy since at the least the days of Richard Nixon, although it became most extreme during the Reagan-Newt Gingrich-George W. Bush era.
This being the case, it simply defies belief that Democrats, especially those in the Senate (backed no doubt by the Administration), continue to try to muster up the “super-majority” they say they need to pass legislation. Normally, legislation simply requires a simple majority—51 votes—which the Democrats could muster even in a flu epidemic. What they need 60 votes for is to override a Republican filibuster. The Republicans have threatened such a filibuster every day since the President was elected, a move which means that Senators can take the floor and read from a telephone book, one after another, for days and weeks on end, to prevent any vote from taking place. By doing this—or rather by threatening to do this—they force the nervous Democrats to abandon every progressive measure they were elected to implement, in order to get the votes of heretofore mealy-mouthed mid-west senators like Max Baucus and Kent Conrad, or literal traitors like Joe Lieberman. They can also try to ass-kiss the so-called “liberal” Republicans like Olympia Snowe of Maine. It is a humiliating and doomed strategy, as a full year of trying to craft a “passable” health-care reform bill plainly indicates. And now, with the loss of the Massachusetts seat, the doom is palpable.
There is only one solution. Abandon the ‘super-majority’strategy. A bill can be passed with 51 votes. Therefore, the Senate should simply begin the process of bringing the bills that they truly support—and healthcare should include a public option—to the floor of the Senate for a vote. Call the Republicans’ bluff. Force them again and again to either vote on the healthcare bill, and all the other bills that are in process, or to filibuster. Force them to go public with their idiotic strategy of reading phone books on the floor of the senate while the country goes down in flames. Force them to take responsibility for bringing the business of the country—the business they are sworn to act upon—to a total halt. And then have the President, with his bully pulpit, call them out daily for their obstructionism. For having no policy but a policy of “no.”
Yes, it will take some guts. Yes, it will require that the Democrats take the risk that the public will blame them as well. But the risk is worth it, especially from a position of action. This nation is being held hostage by a group of yahoos who wish only to win back their majority. The health of actual people, of actual citizens, means nothing to them. The welfare of the nation means nothing. The only welfare they care about is the welfare of their white, moneyed classes and their wealthy corporate sponsors—the ones who make a killing in privatized health care, medicine, warfare, and corporate and banking fraud. But the truth is, the big numbers are all on the other side. Democrats have to return to the ideals that they pretend to espouse: help for those who need it, help for the common people who work for a living and who yielded to so much hope when Obama was elected. They have to let the American public know that Democrats actually stand for something, and are willing to risk a defeat in the Congress to prove it. As it is, Americans see through the games, see through the compromises that have been employed to gut the health-care bill of any meaningful reform. And they have contempt for it, for a party that is unwilling to stand up and be counted.
The Republicans threaten to filibuster? Call their bluff. Let’s see how many are willing to announce to the nation that they have but one policy: NO; that they give not a damn for the pain of the people, or the ruin of the nation’s economy; that they have but one solution to the country’s ills: more wealth for the wealthy, their one and only constituency. Otherwise, the fate of the Democrats and their President will be more of the same: slow death by a thousand cuts from a party that a few months ago was in an advanced stage of rampant cell death. Otherwise, we could soon see the resurgence of this, the crew that gave us Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld and Yoo and that gang of criminals that nearly sank the nation, and would like nothing better than to try it again. This time with an even bigger yahoo like Sarah Palin.
Get some backbone, Democrats. Call their bluff. And then get on with the people’s business.
Lawrence DiStasi
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Haiti: The U.S. and its Priorities
The United States’ record in Haiti over the years is not one to brag about. Starting in 1804, when its southern leaders especially watched in horror as Haiti’s black population mounted the first and still the only successful revolution by black people in history (our own slaves might get ideas!), and through the years of American gunboat diplomacy and support for Haiti’s cruelest dictators, like Papa Doc Duvalier, the U.S. has treated Haiti more like a rambunctious and troublesome colony than a hemispheric neighbor. It has twice managed the ouster of Haiti’s most popular leader of recent years, Jean Bertrand Aristide, mainly it seems because his programs for the poor and disenfranchised conflicted with the neoliberal plans for third world countries. Those plans included the dumping of U.S. grain in Haiti, thus making it impossible for Haitian farmers to compete, and necessitating their move to the city, Port-Au-Prince, as paupers who would be willing to work for slave wages in the factories the U.S. and the World Bank promoted as Haiti’s economic salvation. Pauperized, most had to live in the hillside shacks of the bulging city, the very dwellings that have collapsed and killed untold numbers in the earthquake.
Now, with the earthquake catastrophe, the United States has made its usual claims about its herculean relief efforts, but the reality on the ground, now five full days after the earthquake, tells a different, more sordid tale. Here is what the New York Times reported January 17, quoting an officer for the World Food Program:
"The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.
“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.” He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
That seems to say it all. With 3.5 million people affected by the earthquake, with hundreds of thousands without food or water for 5 days, with dead bodies piling up in the streets and wounded victims everywhere, the United States, as if by reflex, chose to send in the marines—to take over the airport. It thereby blocked other relief agencies from landing desperately needed supplies of the most basic kind. America thus made clear its priorities: get our people out, get our people helped, get our military in there to “secure” the country, and then worry about the suffering of the natives. All the while, of course, mounting a public relations campaign showing the President making speeches and Hillary Clinton on the ground for a few minutes to display her compassion.
If this were still the regime of George W. Bush, one might be able to comprehend such skewed, utterly cynical priorities. But the Obama administration? It is enough to make one weep.
Lawrence DiStasi
Now, with the earthquake catastrophe, the United States has made its usual claims about its herculean relief efforts, but the reality on the ground, now five full days after the earthquake, tells a different, more sordid tale. Here is what the New York Times reported January 17, quoting an officer for the World Food Program:
"The World Food Program finally was able to land flights of food, medicine and water on Saturday, after failing on Thursday and Friday, an official with the agency said. Those flights had been diverted so that the United States could land troops and equipment, and lift Americans and other foreigners to safety.
“There are 200 flights going in and out every day, which is an incredible amount for a country like Haiti,” said Jarry Emmanuel, the air logistics officer for the agency’s Haiti effort. “But most of those flights are for the United States military.” He added: “Their priorities are to secure the country. Ours are to feed. We have got to get those priorities in sync.”
That seems to say it all. With 3.5 million people affected by the earthquake, with hundreds of thousands without food or water for 5 days, with dead bodies piling up in the streets and wounded victims everywhere, the United States, as if by reflex, chose to send in the marines—to take over the airport. It thereby blocked other relief agencies from landing desperately needed supplies of the most basic kind. America thus made clear its priorities: get our people out, get our people helped, get our military in there to “secure” the country, and then worry about the suffering of the natives. All the while, of course, mounting a public relations campaign showing the President making speeches and Hillary Clinton on the ground for a few minutes to display her compassion.
If this were still the regime of George W. Bush, one might be able to comprehend such skewed, utterly cynical priorities. But the Obama administration? It is enough to make one weep.
Lawrence DiStasi
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