It seems that on the so-called Left there is an obsession with following every dastardly act committed by the truly lunatic and extreme right wing. You can't escape it. Daily Kos, Salon Magazine, Bold Progressives, MSNBC, and several other groups and organizations spend an extraordinary amount of time commenting and reporting on everything Republican, conservative, right wing.
And this is all happening as they (the astro-turf, billionaire-financed groups) continue to move their agenda forward, turning the country into a veritable corporatocracy, unmolested.
It's not that I don't think people should be informed about the lunacy and the lunatics on the right, and what they're up to. What I don't quite understand is the almost compulsive-obsessive attention.
Folks, the forces behind all this stuff are doing an end-run on us, on the country, on democracy.
The argument goes something like this: "We need to point out all the dastardly things the Republicans, and the Tea Party, and the NRA, and the Koch Brothers, and ALEC, ect., are doing in order to inform the populace so when election time comes along we vote in a way that will correct the situation."
And we put our faith in the Democratic party to make those corrections...
If we had a functioning political system, that approach may work, but we don't. Our democracy is moribund at best. Both major political parties are mostly corrupt; both, the Republicans (which is the most odious, fascist-like, ignorance embracing party), and the Democrats (which look like more reasonable but in the final analysis is just another tool of the corporatists).
I think that the reason we are obsessing so much about the odious right wing is because we are being manipulated to focus in utter bullshit, and dastardly acts, but at the end we don't really accomplish anything--just like they want it.
Next week the NRA will be there, strong, with millions of members and followers, financed by tens of millions of dollars from their owners, the gun manufacturers.
The Republicans in swing states are going to move forward to tamper with the electoral colleges, rigging the system even more, so in future election cycles they will keep winning so they can continue to impose their fascist cristo-corporatist system they have been dreaming of.
The totally bought off Democratic party establishment will continue to play the dumb-ass appeasers, looking the other way, while stuffing their coffers (and pockets and purses, and bank accounts) with bribery money, provided to them by their corporatist masters.
Explain to me why the so-called left, the liberals, the progressives, the sane citizens of this country continue to be relegated to complaining and reporting on every single lunatic act of the fascist corporatist right wing?
Can somebody explain to me why we don't have a powerful, mighty, effective, and intimidating progressive agenda and platform?
There is MoOn, and Daily Kos, and Bold Progressives, and the SEIU, and probably hundreds and hundreds of organizations, and many of them do good work and accomplish good things--but it's not nearly enough, given the magnitude of the forces we face.
Why the OWS stalled? That was very promising, when it comes to confronting the brutal corporatist system head on.
We need to break free of the mental shackles of the corporate media. A very large amount of the information that enters our minds on a daily basis is deceptive, carefully calibrated to manipulate, to render the citizen ineffective and incapable of discerning the true nature of what we are facing, and the step we need to take to correct it. It is indeed a form of brainwashing.
Imagine if all the major unions around the country (and why not, around the world) came up with innovative and powerful initiatives to unionize every worker? Analyse the systemic obstacles to unionization and then come up with ways of overcoming those obstacles. Why is it hard to unionize Walmart and Target employees? Could some very aggressive and innovative tactics be used? About creating a worldwide "virtual union" where employees of companies that are not permitted to unionize (because of structural obstacles as the result of government corruption, including in the U.S.) can join as an interim step?
Imagine if OWS-like small groups around the country got together on a regular basis to strategize about ways of cleaning up the political system, community by community, town by town, city by city, state by state.
We all know what the source of the corruptions is, more or less... Moneyed interest subverting and bypassing democracy by paying and bribing politicians with money, favors, campaign contributions, lucrative jobs for themselves, family and friends.
Of course, informing us about the level of corruption of each politician is mainly the role of a free media, but unfortunately we don't have a free media anymore because it has been corrupted to the core by special interest moneys from their corporate masters.
So how do we go about bypassing the toxic mental garbage being put out by the corporate media conglomerates? How do we go about helping finance non-profit media outlets?
These things can happen! I know many people reading this may feel that it is too hard, that the system is too corrupt, that the fascist corporatist taking over the country are too powerful. Other may thing that there is no such a thing; that everything is fine; that the Democratic party is not corrupt--to the core.
But again, anybody that feels like that does so because of the effect of the mental shackles we're under as the result of the most powerful (scientifically-designed) propaganda machine the world has ever suffer: the corporatist owned U.S. media conglomerate.
We don't have to have indefinite detention of U.S. citizen laws. We don't have to have and accept the use of drones killing thousands of innocent civilians, and the extrajudicial assassination of U.S. citizens. We don't have to have and accept a surveillance police state, with the proliferation of spy cameras in hundreds of cities (small and large) around the country.
This is all being done, in the final analysis, at the behest of the corporatist oligarchs, to enslave the population.
You want security? Educate your mind; educate your children. Stamp out the endemic pay-to-play corruption that plagues our entire political system.
We can do this...