Evading basic American realities
Paradox, blogging at The Left Coaster, posts a jeremiad which cuts deeply to many truths
Top-down change requires more than one sector from the powers that direct national policy - international corporate elites, international financial elites, wealthy elites, and their minions (the political elites and the TV/Radio/Newspaper opinions makers, the military and law-enforcement apparatus) to believe that the threat of bottom-up change (which historically has been quite violent) must be fended off with sufficient cosmetic alterations to provide the appearance of "change".
Which reminds me of Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. navy (retired) recent sage observation that for ONCE this President has gotten something right, that al-Qaeda and Iran are America's biggest foreign threats:
The mechanisms are in place. Just remember to pay the phone bills to re implement FISA to spy on "domestic enemies." The judges have been appointed (as was the President in 2000) to spare corporations and police the legal consequences of their crimes.
It is in dealing with "domestic enemies" that the recent verdict to acquit of all charges the three New York City police officers who killed the unarmed Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets makes complete "sense":
The witnesses for the prosecution had criminal records, and thus was the officers' testimony more credible to the judge. The officers did not take the stand.
The gross evasion to many basic realities in American politics has been much on my mind lately, ... the implacable insistence for denial and fantasy so pervasive in our politics.There is no certainty of a democratic candidate winning the general election in 2008 (nor winning the electoral college). Should a democratic candidate win the presidency - one hopes that current and long held fantasies would be returned to reality - but such hope rests on the assumption of top-down change.
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First and foremost in our denial and fantasy is our great crushing militarism. We are a nation of weapons, wars and death, an amazingly wealthy nation spending half its discretionary spending on instruments of maiming and destruction! Not only is this insanity robbing us of desperately needed social investment, it’s perverted our planetary morals and goals.
... the disastrous fantasy of American militarism will rage on unabated in 2009
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Our second great happy whistle in the dark is the irrevocable fact that the current Executive leadership of the United States is rankly criminal. ... yet none of these plain facts are ever openly stated anywhere, save liberal blogs.
... If Clinton or Obama were brave enough to press the fight for prosecutions right now, would the American propaganda machine ... strangle them for it? We’ll never know, understandably neither of them are going to take the catastrophic risks necessary for such truth, so our march of oblivion under terribly harmful criminals grinds on unabated.
The third great tier of denial for modern America is her new Gilded Age, through forty years of fanatic Republican lying about taxation and quack economics we now have a super-class of incredible wealth, the top 1% now hoard a crushing load of resources that should be shared but no one ever talks about.
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Clinton or Obama will win the general election, when American troops are dead for lies in losing wars with an economy gone to hell not even all the denial of the universe could elect John McCain. How much of our current public fantasy of militarism, criminality and inequality will be yanked back to reality once President Clinton or Obama is elected? A lot more than they let on now, it is fervently hoped.
Top-down change requires more than one sector from the powers that direct national policy - international corporate elites, international financial elites, wealthy elites, and their minions (the political elites and the TV/Radio/Newspaper opinions makers, the military and law-enforcement apparatus) to believe that the threat of bottom-up change (which historically has been quite violent) must be fended off with sufficient cosmetic alterations to provide the appearance of "change".
Which reminds me of Commander Jeff Huber, U.S. navy (retired) recent sage observation that for ONCE this President has gotten something right, that al-Qaeda and Iran are America's biggest foreign threats:
... as significant foreign enemies go, Iran and al-Qaeda are about it: a country with a gross domestic product and defense budget barely six percent of America’s, and an “organization” with no economy or navy or air force at all, and no proper army to speak of.The more likely top-down change to be wrought is an evermore encompassing 21st century witch hunt/inquisition to save "US" from the domestic enemies (commies <--> liberals; fags <--> intellectuals; pinkos <--> women; and of course, terrorists <--> peoples of color [which, since one can't be sure if they are citizens or not, for safety's lock 'em all up [in a less enlightened time, it would have been kill them all as preventative, since God would know His own] and put 'em to work, slave labor devolving into the ultimate capitalist goal: maximize profits by minimizing labor costs.)
Mr. Bush was telling us, in the Freudian fashion he so often utilizes, that the enemies we really need to worry about are of the domestic variety.
The mechanisms are in place. Just remember to pay the phone bills to re implement FISA to spy on "domestic enemies." The judges have been appointed (as was the President in 2000) to spare corporations and police the legal consequences of their crimes.
It is in dealing with "domestic enemies" that the recent verdict to acquit of all charges the three New York City police officers who killed the unarmed Sean Bell in a hail of 50 bullets makes complete "sense":
Before announcing the verdict, the judge made a statement indicating that the police officers' version of events was more credible than the victims' version. "The people have not proved beyond a reasonable doubt that each defendant was not justified" in shooting the victims, Cooperman said.Shooting 31, 10 and 4 bullets apiece, having opened fire, the officers believed that they themselves were under fire.
The witnesses for the prosecution had criminal records, and thus was the officers' testimony more credible to the judge. The officers did not take the stand.
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