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Today's
Stories
September 4,
2004
William A.
Cook
The
Day of the Lemming
September 3,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Jesus Told Him Where to Bomb
Rahul Mahajan
Bush's RNC Speech: an Annotated Response
Carl Estabrook
The
Book of Slaughter and Forgetting
Joshua Frank
The Florida of the Northwest: Oregon Dems Sabotage Nader Again
Gary Leupp
Music to My Ears: Sunday's March
James Hollander
Deja Vu in Manhattan: Assisted Political Suicide?
Mark Engler
Republicans
Among Us: a Week at the RNC, Inside and Out
Jesse Sharkey
Making Students and Teachers Pay for the Crisis in Education
Jane Stillwater
Calling the Cops on Your Own Kid
Stephen Green
Serving
Two Flags: the Bush Neo-Cons and Israel
Sex,
Drugs & the Blues!
Serpents in the Garden
CounterPunch's
Sizzling New Book on Culture and Sex is Now Available
Click here to purchase
September 2,
2004
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part 3: More Pricks Than Kicks
Max Gimble
Et Tu, Menchu? Extrajudicial Killings and Clandestine Graves
in Guatemala
James Petras
President Chavez and the Referendum: Myths and Realities
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush and the Afghan Electoral Model: "If They Want to Vote
Twice, Let Them"
Todd Chretien & Jessie
Muldoon
Will the Democrats Expel Zell Miller?
Jack Random
Spite and Venom Day: the Turncoat and the Profiteer
Alan Maass
The Real Vietnam
Christa Allen
Contre Bush
Website of
the Day
[Redacted]
September 1,
2004
Alexander Cockburn
The
Stench of Doom
Kathleen and Bill Christison
Poor Larry Franklin
Dave Lindorff
Kerry's Litmus Test
Josh Frank
Protest in White: Not All of New York Rises Up
John L. Hess
Moles, Scoops and Flip Flops
Mike Whitney
Deconstructing Arnold
Jack Random
Kindergarten Night at the RNC
Andrew Wilson
War on the Pachyderms: Why Do Elephants Hate Us?
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: Part Two: Mark His Words
August 31,
2004
Joseph Nevins
Escapism
and Global Apartheid: The Dominican Republic & the NYTs
Matt Vidal
Beyond
Bush's Rhetoric on the Economy
Neve Gordon
Kerry and the Middle East
Dave Lindorff
Bush
the Peace Candidate?
Mike Whitney
NPR Leads the Charge for War Against Iran
Jack Random
Opening Night: Playing the War Card
Jeffrey St.
Clair
High
Plains Grifter: the Life and Crimes of George W. Bush (Part One)
CounterPunch Photo of the Day
Pete Seeger in NYC
August 30,
2004
Justin Podhur
The
Disappeared Mayor
Shaun Joseph
The
Hypocrites at TheNaderbasher.com
Mike Whitney
Israeli Moles in the Pentagon: What More Could They Possibly
Want?
Ron Jacobs
Live, From New York: the Majority of Protesters Claimed No Candidate
David Lindorff
Sunday in Manhattan: the Sound of Marchin', Chargin' Feet, Boy
Dave Zirin
USA Basketball: The Team White America Loved to Hate
Sam Husseini
Israeli Spying on the US: a Long History
August 28 /
29, 2004
Alexander Cockburn
Zombies
for Kerry
Patrick Cockburn
Najaf Ceasefire Good for Iraq, But Weakens Allawi and US
Ray McGovern
Blowing Smoke on Intelligence
Dr. Juan Romagoza
From El Salvador to Abu Ghraib: Reflections of Torture Survivor
Ray Hanania
An Israeli Spy in the Pentagon? Ridiculous!
Fred Gardner
Eddie Lepp Busted by DEA: Facing Life for Growing Medical Pot
Diane Christian
Big Men: the Better Leader Lets You Live
William S. Lind
The Desert Fox
Paul D'Amato
The Left Takes a Dive for Kerry
Joshua Frank
Greens at the Crossroads
Mickey Z.
Media Declares War on Anti-War Protests
Winslow T. Wheeler
Sen. McCain's Pork Chops: an Exchange
Justin E.H.
Smith
The New Age Racket and the Left
Thomas St. John
Burning Slaves at the Stake: On "Sinners in the Hands of
an Angry God"
Ali Tonak
Help the NYPD?
Mark Engler
New York Says "No"
Justin Felux
Haiti: the Attica of the Americas
Poets' Basement
Gelman, Albert, Ford and Hamod
August 27,
2004
Gary Leupp
Neocon
Musings
Robin Cook
The
Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
Diane Christian
Disarming
Michael Donnelly
Situational Democracy: the Show Me the Green Party?
Jack Random
4F and Other Heroes: an Army of War Resisters
Mike Ferner
"To the Swift Boats!"
Mazin Qumsiyeh
7000 Palestinian Political Prisoners
Veronza Bowers, Jr.
"You Won't Be Leaving Tomorrow"
August 26,
2004
M. Shahid Alam
The
Clash Thesis: a Failing Ideology?
Diane Christian
War
Rules: Bush is No Sun Tzu
Derek Seidman
"They're As Bad As Wal-Mart:" Starbucks Workers Get
Organized
David Lindorff
Court to RNC Protesters: Drop the Rally
Christopher
Brauchli
Signs of Dissent: the Bush in the Bubble
Stew Albert
Reporting Suspicious Activity
Mark Donham
Judgement in Athens: Give the Koreans Their Day in Court
Saul Landau
Pinochet:
the Al Capone of the Southern Cone
Website of
the Day
The Kerry 527 Ad You'll Never See
August 25,
2004
Amelia Peltz
Can
I Have 9.8 Seconds of Your Time?
Noah Leavitt
Defining and Redefining Torture
Ron Jacobs
Takin' It to the Streets: It's Not About the Election, It's About
Democracy
James Brooks
Coronado Crosses the Jordan
Akiva Eldar
How to Win the Jewish Vote: Turn Gaza into a "Mini-Afghanistan"
Gemma Araneta
Chavez's New Brand of Populism
Philip Cryan
Uribe's Boys: the Death Squads of Colombia
CounterPunch Wire
Cheney Opens the Closet Door
August 24,
2004
Jeremy Scahill
John
Kerry: the Warchurian Candidate
Gary Leupp
"We
Want Them to Go Away"
David Domke
God
Willing: an Echoing Press and Political Fundamentalism
William Loren Katz
The Meaning of Hugo Chávez: Black and Indian Power in
Venezuela
Jonah Gindin
With Chavez? Reading the International Private Media
Fran Schor
Denying Atrocities: From Vietnam to Fallujah
Joe Bageant
Driving
on the Bones of God
Website of the Day
The Great America Lockdown: a Primer for the RNC
August 23,
2004
Winslow Wheeler
Don't
Mind If I Do: Porkbarrel and the War on Terror
John Pilger
Bush
May Be the Lesser Evil
Stan Goff
Swift
Boat Dogfight
Bill and Kathleen
Christison
Notes
from the West Bank: Build, Demolish, Rebuild
Mike Whitney
The Unraveling of Afghanistan
William Blum
Brave
New World of Iraqi Sovereignty
Ralph Nader
A Letter to the Washington Post: a Shameful and Unsavory Editorial
August 21 /
22, 2004
Cockburn /
St. Clair
"They
Want Blood:" The Bi-Partisan Origins of the Total War on
Drugs
Landau / Hassen
Failing
the Mission? Form a Commission
Brian Cloughley
The
Bush Team in Iraq: Moral Cowardice, as Practiced by Experts
Josh Frank
Nader as David Duke? The ADL Wants You to Think So
Mike Whitney
Reincarnating Mengele: the Torture Doctors of Abu Ghraib
Ron Jacobs
Day Labor Blues
Mickey Z.
Shooting at Whales: 40 Years After Tonkin
Fred Gardner
Dr. Wolman Comes Out: The Cannabis Consultants
Dave Zirin
Uprising in Athens: Iraqi Soccer Team Gives Bush the Boot
Josh Saxe
Witnessing Police Brutality in LA
Yanar Mohammed
Letter from Baghdad: a Democracy of Killings and Bombings
Helen Williams
Ali's Story: a Taste of Reality from Baghdad
Michael Donnelly
Elemental and NaturalForests, Fire and Recovery
Elizabeth Schulte
The Crisis in Affordable Housing
Poets' Basement
Adler, Albert, Virgil, Ford and Krieger
Hot Stories
Alexander Cockburn
Behold,
the Head of a Neo-Con!
Subcomandante
Marcos
The
Death Train of the WTO
Norman Finkelstein
Hitchens
as Model Apostate
Steve Niva
Israel's
Assassination Policy: the Trigger for Suicide Bombings?
Dardagan,
Slobodo and Williams
CounterPunch Exclusive:
20,000 Wounded Iraqi Civilians
Steve
J.B.
Prison Bitch
Sheldon
Rampton and John Stauber
True Lies: the Use of Propaganda
in the Iraq War
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click
Here for More Stories.
|
Labor Day Weekend Edition
September 4-6, 2004
The Day of
the Lemming
From
Boston to NYC: Two Weeks of Distraction
By
WILLIAM A. COOK
"As the Little Men disappear,
more and more economic power comes to be wielded by fewer and
fewer peopleWe are far indeed from Jefferson's ideal of a genuinely
free society composed of a hierarchy of self-governing units--'the
elementary republics of the wards, the county republics, the
State republics and the Republic of the Union, forming a gradation
of authorities.' Never have so many been manipulated so much
by so few."
Aldous Huxley, Brave New
World Revisited
The Republicrats have now met, the unwashed
in Boston manipulated by the managers of the Kerry command that
allowed no dissent from the predetermined platform, a platform
that supported the war (although an estimated 90% of the delegates
attending decried the war according to Joe Scarborough's unquestioned
authority on "Hardball" 8/31) and supported Bush's
total acquiescence to Sharon's shattering of the "Road Map"
(an acceptance that guarantees the continuation of terrorist
acts against America), and the pin-stripers in New York controlled
by a well-oiled machine driven by Karl Rove who allowed "moderates"(an
oxymoron in any language) like Giuliani, McCain, and Cheney
to speak about the inclusiveness of the Republican Party even
as it forced all to rally around a preset platform that denied
access to thousands upon thousands of Americans. "Never
have so many been manipulated so much by so few," as Huxley
notes, and he spoke in 1958!
These are not the first days
when the few manipulated the many in America. Those in charge
before our Revolution and those in charge after it manipulated
the majority by using fear of economic chaos and congressional
gerrymandering to allow the continuation of slavery until the
people took control and ended it with a bloody civil war. John
Greenleaf Whittier, a mild and gentle American poet, understood
that America could not be free until it accepted its guilt and
consciously confessed:
That all his fathers taught
is vain--
That Freedom's emblem is the chain.
For his efforts he was beaten,
chased, derided; his books and papers burned. Today we remember
Whittier for this aphorism:
of all the words of tongue
or pen,
The saddest are these: it might have been.
How appropriate! It might have
been that George W. Bush admitted his guilt and consciously confessed
his lying to the American people!
But that wasn't the end of
the manipulation of the slave population; another 100 years had
to pass before a semblance of equality penetrated our society,
and that only after a second "civil war" uprooted the
status quo and forced our representatives to acknowledge what
our Bill of Rights claimed was due all the people. Three massive
issues drove the people to the streets during this period, issues
they literally forced their representatives to not only acknowledge
but to correct: civil rights (more properly called human rights),
feminine rights (more properly called human rights), and the
Vietnam protests (more properly called "taking back America
from the oligarches"). Then the people forced their representatives
to admit their guilt and consciously confess their obstruction
of citizen rights. Would that George W. Bush admit his guilt
and consciously confess his lying to the American people.
During those years I served
the people of a small Massachusetts town as Moderator. I wrote
these words in 1967 in a talk to the Whittier Society; they seem
an apt analogy to our present state where we are manipulated
by corporate media and bought politicians:
"Today there exists another
band (the Abolitionists were the first) who publish and demonstrate
and march in yet a second massive attempt to rouse the conscience
of this nation, not against an institution, but against the insidious
fact of actual slavery--economic, political, and social. Both
groups have had their share of righteous indignationIn 'Stanzas
for the Times' Whittier proposed the ironic possibility that
this nation founded on freedom for all should harbor and protect
those who wielded the slaves' whips. He asked ironically if each
American should not bend his pliant knee 'and speak but as our
masters please.' Whittier states in effect that America's claim
to freedom, equality, and justice is a sham. We worship God,
we invoke his name, we ask his blessing, we sing his praises,
and we enslave his children. We turn to the Pilgrims' spirit,
to Plymouth Rock, to Bunker Hill to affirm our claim to freedom,
yet we justify and protect the Master that fetters his slave.
We say there is freedom of speech, but any thoughts that disrupt
the status quo will not be tolerated: to say there is enslavement
will cause hatred and resentment and to do something about it
will cause disruption and chaos. Therefore, it is best to do
nothing." Shades of Ashcroft! Don't disrupt the status quo.
Whittier responded: "Shall tongue be mute, when deeds are
wrought/which well might shame extremist Hell?/ Shall freemen
lock the indignant thought?/Shall pen, and press, and soul be
dumb?" And the people disobeyed and both groups prevailed
momentarily against the manipulators.
"Yet Whittier's idealism
and his dream of an awakened America was but an illusion. Melvin
B. Tolson wrote "Dark" in 1944:
They tell us to forget
Democracy is spurned,
They tell us to forget
The Bill of Rights is burned.
Three hundred years we slaved,
We slave and suffer yet:
Though flesh and bone rebel,
They tell us to forget!
"These are the statistics
for a hundred years of freedom: in Los Angeles proper, there
are 7.5 people per acre, in Watts, there are 27.9; if a black
man loses his life in Vietnam, his widow gets $10,000.00 but
she can't live in any neighborhood she wants to; Dick Gregory
said, 'If my daddy had been killed in WW II, the German that
killed him could move to this country today and buy a house in
a neighborhood where my Daddy's son would be excluded.'; the
Federal Trade Commission has reported that prices in ghetto area
stores are 265% higher than in suburban areas. Blacks today are--
American:-- of all Blacks live in sub-standard housing; Blacks
have-- the income of whites; twice as many Blacks are unemployed
as whites; twice as many Black infants die as whites; twice as
many Black soldiers die in Vietnam in proportion to their numbers
in the population. Black elementary schools are three years behind
the white and receive less federal support. One-twentieth as
many Blacks as whites attend college; 75% of employed Blacks
hold menial jobs. These are the statistics of 100 years of freedom."
It took the National Advisory
Commission on Civil Disorders to admit that the cause of these
conditions resulted from "white racism." That caused
the laws that allowed these conditions to exist. How abominable
that the American people had to endure the atrocities inflicted
on the civil rights movement to correct these abuses. How horrendous
that our representatives, driven by special interests, created
the legislation that allowed these abuses to exist and continue
for a hundred years. How ironic that it took us a hundred years
to grapple with the reality that Whittier understood when he
wrote:
Let him go where the cold blood
that creeps in his veins
Shall stiffen the slaves whip, and rust on his chains:
Where the black slave shall laugh in his bonds, to behold
The white slave beside him, self-fettered and sold!
"James Baldwin, a Black
writer of great perception, interprets at this time an American
conscience that is tragic and pitiful. He writes that 'the Negro
has been formed by this nation, for better or for worse, and
does not belong to any other...' He places the responsibility
for the Negro problem where it belongs, on each of us as Americans.
We can toss the problem back to our forefathers, we can shift
the blame to the South, we can attempt to escape responsibility
by half-baked allegiance to some time-worn principle, we can
refuse to admit of equality, we can blame the extremists--but
no matter what means we take to avoid the fact, the problem exists
because we Americans have made it a problem. It exists in our
minds because we will not expunge it from our minds. It exists
in our hearts because we fear, perhaps subliminally, either the
potential overthrow of our dominance or the inevitability of
it. The problem in turn exists in the Negro, but only because
it first existed in the white. We have not only made the problem,
we have fostered its existence and its acceptance on the object
of that problem. The roots of the problem lie deep in the puritanical
background of this nation. While being raised in the charity
of a personal God, while being imbued with the equality of all
men, we have existed in the past with an institution diametrically
opposed to these principles and we perpetuate today the inequalities
of that institution while claiming that we have obliterated it.
"Those puritanical roots
have not rotted over time. They exist today as this administration
pursues its racist superior agenda against the peoples of the
Arab world, and that pursuit will result in exactly the same
enslavement for the American people that the institution of slavery
created for over three hundred years.
"But as Baldwin states,
'the sloppy and fatuous nature of American good will can never
be relied upon to deal with hard problems ... freedom is hard
to bear.' We can talk of freedom, we can mouth the word, but
the Negro is the key 'figure in this country and the American
future is precisely as bright or dark as his.' Freedom is more
than cutting chains, the conscience too must be unshackled."
The Civil Rights movement forced
America to confront its conscience by taking to the streets and
forcing each representative to confront his conscience. Americans
went to the streets, suffered the punishment of police club,
beatings, mockery, even jail because they knew that principle
trumps power, that America had been hijacked by special interests,
and that America's future depended on returning its control to
its rightful source, the people themselves, or it would cease
to exist except as a hideous sham dressed in hypocritical platitudes
and fatuous phrases.
As I watched the Democratic
Convention, meeting in Boston where I taught years ago, in the
state of Massachusetts where I lived for many years, I saw Democracy
mangled before my very eyes. Here in a state that retains, as
John Kerry knows all too well, the only remaining vestige of
true Democracy, the Town Meeting, where ordinary citizens can
congregate, create laws, propose and argue them before their
peers, and vote on them, here he and his henchmen muffled free
speech in favor of the special interests that find war profiteering
and imperial ambitions the diet to feed America.
As if that were not enough,
the Republican Convention of obsequious and pious sycophants,
arms raised in holy supplication to their resident saviors, made
Democracy a joke. Pastor George W. Bush, like Pastor John Hagee
of the Cornerstone Church in San Antonio Texas, encircled by
his worshiping penitents, proclaimed God's word as he is mandated
to fulfill them, and like Pastor Hagee he found no sister religion
in the Islamic world but only the completion of God's wrath as
He threatened the ultimate annihilation of his chosen enemies.
But I tell you this, those
who know how I should be governed without asking my opinion are
not virtuous, though they may be well bought. I will not throw
away for lack of corporate support my responsibility as a citizen
to give voice to those who will serve me in my government though
they control what voting machines I can use and what vote electors
will make in my name. If Democracy does not exist in the convention
hall then let it exist in the streets!
In 1973, a different time with
a different cast of manipulators, I wrote this as Town Moderator
in protest to the prevailing powers: "No time in our history
dramatizes the virtues of the town meeting form of government
as well as this. Our current administration, though elected by
a vast mandate, rules the nation without consent of the governed,
without, indeed, even lip service to the representatives of the
governed. Silence and political coercion compel the few in Congress
and the Senate to acquiesce to the dictates of a President who
has no concern for the uninvolved citizen and a callous disregard
for their opinion.
"The town meeting forces
those governed to confront the governed. Here they are held accountable.
Here they must provide reasons for their acts. Would that were
so at the federal level. I do not elect another man's conscience
when I vote on election day. I will not be subjected to the inhuman,
insensitive, and barbaric behavior of that man simply because
he holds office. If the elected official cannot face the people
he governs, if the people have no recourse to alter the actions
of their elected officials, then why go through the farce of
an election?"
"People deserve that form
of government which they allow to exist. America has been the
haven of the poor and afflicted, but only because the people
of America have cared for those in want and offered succor to
those in pain, not because the government was a haven and a shelter.
It is the people of the country that constitute its virtues,
not the government that acts in their name. But note what happens
when the institution becomes more sacred than the people that
compose it. An aura of infallibility surrounds the office, a
quality of royalty cloaks the incumbent, a sense of righteousness
shrouds the acts of the civil servant. The opinion of the individual
citizen, so necessary before the election, is no longer sought,
his concerns no longer heeded, his expectations no longer fulfilled,
his citizenship, indeed, is buried beneath a monument of scented
semantics, platitudes, and patriotic cliches."
"A government that does
not face the people does not have to account to the people. Under
this sinister reality lies interred individual rights. We have
become victims of our own propaganda. We apply to our individual
lives and our rights as individuals theories that are advantageous
to our economic base, Capitalism. Streamlined efficiency, hard-headed
decisions, practical reality, these are the virtues that guide
our day to day behavior. To thrust their effectiveness on our
governmental structure is to erase the principles upon which
it was built. For the individual to have a say in how he will
be governed is a most time consuming , controversial, and inexpedient
process. To respond to the needs of the governed, as diverse
as that population must be, is most impractical, most cumbersome,
yet very Christian and very Democratic."
"A government that operates
on the basis of business principles is not and cannot be a government
of the people or a government for the people. It is and must
be a government of the few, accepting as a matter of course profit
and loss, both in matters of money and in lives. A humanitarian
government cannot be operated efficiently nor can it confront
practical reality only."
"We cannot have it both
ways. Either our government serves us or we become the servants
of the government. Every election day should be a day of revolution.
No office holder should be secure in his seat. He only will respond
who must beg for our vote again. We insure our rights by keeping
the office holder tottering on a wall of uncertainty. The town
meeting is followed by the election of town officials; woe to
him who would mock my voice or disregard my opinion. Democracy
dies when we elevate our leaders to seats made precious by divine
right. I will know the reasons for my acts even when they are
perpetrated by my elected representatives."
"We have in the complexity
of our lives and in the numbers of our people foregone the simple
rights we first professed two hundred years ago. We have surrendered
our money, our principles, our consciences to our legislators.
We assume erroneously that having stated our beliefs at the outset
of the nation, they are secured forever. It is not so."
"Our government no longer
walks the streets; it comes to us in the form of papers, cards,
questionnaires, legal documents, and tax forms; it speaks through
a ghostly 'White House' voice, an anonymous person close to the
President, a mumbling spokesman for the War Department, an innocuous
press secretary--voices with no blood, no emotion, no love or
hate, no compassion or sympathy, no human vital signs at all."
"Our government is no
longer people; it is a functioning thing; it operates within
the construct of its own system. We keep it alive with our memory
of what it used to be; we breathe life into it by asserting its
morality; we pump the blood of principles into it believing in
our hearts that it is good. But we live a dream. The principles
carved above the portals of our government buildings no longer
penetrate within. The voice of the people is silenced by the
strident bombast of the military; the cry of the poor is drowned
in the cant of the Capitalist; the lame, the afflicted, the aged
, the child in Appalachia, the migrant in the field, the stranded
in the ghetto, that whole chorus of need is not heard. Priority
goes to military honor, to political face-saving. Our leaders
will have honor even if it is mutilated; it will stand like a
statue in some park, medals pinned to its chest, though it reeks
of maggots that rummage within its soul."
"Democracy is a feeble
form of government. It is afflicted by apathy; it becomes ill
with ignorance; it succumbs to silence. Constant vigilance, tempered
with conscience, keeps Democracy alive. Comfort, leisure, dependencies,
procurement, acquisitions, affiliations, programmed learning,
acceptance of platitudes, allegiance to institutions, chauvinistic
loyalty, blind trust in leaders, unquestioned acquiescence to
authority, these are the symptoms of a decaying Democracy."
"Where are our representatives?
Where have they been for the past eight years (substitute four
now)? Special interests, obligations, party loyalty take their
toll of the free man's conscience. When the legislator's security
depends on his vote, he is no longer a free man. When the people
have no means of confronting their elected officials, they are
no longer free... Any attempt to remove the people from their
government is an act of betrayal. We have had almost two hundred
years of erosion now; let us stem its steady way. If we find
it difficult to spend time at governing ourselves, then we deserve
to be governed by those who will. Our voice, which speaks for
our rights, is our only weapon against oppression. Let us keep
that last vestige of our Democracy..."
"I firmly believe there
is a silent majority in this country, but it is neither pro-Nixon
Administration or pro-withdrawal from Vietnam. It is pro-nothing
and it is con-nothing. It is a silent majority, an apathetic,
uninformed, non-committed 'Mass of men who live lives of quiet
desperation.' It is unhealthy to have in a Democracy a mass of
citizens who know nothing and care nothing about the government
of their lives. Those citizens who affirm the government and
those who challenge it, those who commit themselves to work for
the government, and those who test it and debate it and dissent
against it with reason and feeling, these are the citizens of
a Democracy."
What need to draw parallels between Nixon's secretive administration,
the one Arnie found a "breath of fresh air," and the
Neo-Con administration that believes the people must be lead
like sheep, and so use the Christian symbol of the protective
Shepherd watching over his flock keeping them safe from terrorists.
Why mention at this convention or the Democratic one that our
leaders lied to the people, asked them to sacrifice their children
in battle for an unjust cause, nay, more than an unjust cause,
a fabricated cause shrouded in the sacred garments of God's word
fulfilling not the words of God but those of Aldous Huxley,
"...behavior is determined, not by knowledge and reason,
but by feelings and unconscious drives... The driving force which
has brought about the most tremendous revolutions on this earth
has never been a body of scientific teaching which has gained
power over the masses, but always a devotion which has inspired
them, and often a kind of hysteria which has urged them into
action." Does that quote not describe the Republican Convention?
Zell Miller, the yet to be
cleansed racist crossdresser from the former land of Dixiecrats,
Dick Cheney whose very words curl like venom out of his snarling
mouth, and the compassionate conservative with the Texas walk
who mouths the words given to him by his alter ego, Karl Rove,
did Hitler proud as they systematically exploited the "secret
fears and hopes, the cravings, anxieties and frustrations of
the German (Republican) masses... It is by manipulating 'hidden
forces'... that Hitler induced the German masses to buy themselves
a Fuehrer, an insane philosophy and the Second World War."
(Huxley).
Watching this triumvirate manipulate
the mass of delegates so that they wept in adulation before their
king, buying in their turn yet another war, another insane philosophy
of pre-emptive killing to ensure world dominance, and another
Fuehrer, I could only weep at the demise of Democracy. Huxley
quotes Hitler: "All effective propaganda must be confined
to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few
stereotyped formulas...only constant repetition will finally
succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of the crowd."
How effective has been the Bush machine that has lied and continues
to lie regardless of the truth using fear to motivate its forces
and to maintain control.
What drives these people to
deliver their conscience to the manipulator? Why would purported
religious people forego the promise of knowledge and salvation,
achievable only in the individual mind, to cast their lot with
demigods and charlatans? Dostoevsky in a passage from The
Brothers Karamozov, "The Grand Inquisitor," suggests
that the freedom offered by Jesus required each person to think
for herself, to judge for herself, and to act in concert with
that judgment. That responsibility Dostoevesky concluded was
too hard for the masses to bear. Those in power, the Power Elite,
understand this reality and capitalize on it. It is, in Huxley's
words, "the subhuman mindlessness to which the demagogue
makes his appeal, the moral imbecility on which he relies when
he goads his victims into action...(these) are characteristic
not of men and women as individuals, but of men and women in
masses." These masses, like the lemmings, move irresistibly,
irrationally, ineluctably to the cliff, driven by devotional
distraction perpetrated by politicians and prophets to their
intellectual death, destroying in the process their right to
a Democracy. "Never have so many been manipulated so much
by so few."
William Cook is a professor of English at the University
of La Verne in southern California. His new book, Psalms
for the 21st Century, was just published by
Mellen Press. He can be reached at: cookb@ULV.EDU
Weekend
Edition Features for August 7 / 8, 2004
James Petras
The
Anatomy of "Terror Experts": Meet the Mandarins of
Abu Ghraib
Fred Gardner
Run
Ricky Run: Football, Pot and Pain
Justin Delacour
Anti-Chavez Pollsters Panic: Fix Numbers; Reinvent Venezuela
Brian Cloughley
Persecuted by All; Supported by None: Who Would Be A Kurd?
Joshua Frank
The
Outsider: a Talk with Ralph Nader
Iain A. Boal
On "Shame": Warmed-Over Orientalism and Racist Projection
Chris Floyd
All About Eve: Open Season on Women in DC and Rome
Andrew Fenton
Fighting for Democracy and Justice in Haiti
Aseem Shrivastava
Saga of an Anguished Afghan
Neil Corbett
See Cuba: Sometimes a Cigar is Just a Cigar, Mr. Bush
Carol Miller
/ Forrest Hill
Rigged Convention; Divided Party: How David Cobb Won with Only
12% of the Vote
Tarek Milleron
Breaking the Principled Voter
Donald Macintyre
The
Battle of Najaf
Ron Jacobs
Spirits of The Dead: Why I Love My Petty Bourgeois Tendencies
Mickey Z.
Kid
Gavilan's Grave: Propaganda Scores a TKO
Poets' Basement
Adler, Ford and Albert
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