We are in Iraq based on lies, and our military men and women are dying. This is President Bush's war, not America's war. There is no dishonor for the United States in stopping Bush's war.
I realize that the majority of the population is under the illusion that the mainstream mass media is free and unbiased. Americans today have a rather unique problem: our government has no nationwide media of its own, because it trusted the market--and anti-sedition laws--to use existing media sources to transmit information from the government to the people.
But in today's post-McCarthy world, America has become like the sad loser of a Copyright case: having so failed to defend the nation's right to non-seditious (and even non-treasonous) media, it would now be difficult to suddenly begin enforcing such basics without screams about freedom of speech being violated.
That freedom of speech allows dissent, anger and even outright name calling, and that this is not sedition--yet much of the behavior from politicians and media personalities of today is sedition--is hardly worth the breath to point out. The MSM is so disingeniously obtuse about even the simplest issue already, and this is a collective, empirical, judgement call requiring actual brain cells (...not to mention that missing-from-media quality of "good judgement").
TASS
The Russians with TASS always had it good, we can now see; the government-run media was known to be biased. Many locals would hear the news and then turn to their buddy and say, "So Ivan, what do you think is really going on?" My husband escaped from behind the iron curtain of Czechoslovakia in the early 1980's. He taught 8th grade, which was significantly more advanced than most college work in this country. It was no secret that their media and the more local-history and local-political aspects of media and education were propaganda. As a result, any person with a brain knew better than to accept it without question. Alas, in the USA we have been raised to believe that speech is free, that the media is unbiased, and that since there are many different papers and channels, it seems if most of them agree this would de facto prove it must be the truth.
CALLING IT LIKE I SEE IT
The mainstream mass media of the USA today is to free speech what the mafia is to a family business. It's a lot of different people with relationships ranging from friendly, to influential, to affectionate, to naked in bed together. They may seem separate, but as I've said before, I consider today's USA mass media a loosely collusive, seductive sedition by the "govern-by-media" coalition. The fact that this coalition has not formally registered as a business together (does the mafia?) let alone a competing-government (unless you count "The Democratic Party") does not prevent it from operating.
SAME PLANET, DIFFERENT WORLD
But here's a real twist: The liberal mass media and conservative share the same core problem: the enemy is often someone we love.
In the case of the media, they love our political enemies; terrorists who bomb innocent people, even children, are 'freedom fighters' (even when they were doing this long prior to 9/11 or Iraq, and later in countries which openly opposed the US going into Iraq, and in countries where they are killing other Muslims). If I began listing the comments even by major U.S. Democratic politicians that are provably outright contradictory lies, as well as many comments and behaviors clearly seditious (and even likely treasonous), we would be here all day, so I'll skip that, it's been done to death.
The bottom line is that the media is not even covert, subtle or inconsistent about it anymore: they now openly work to exploit the democratic process of the United States to overthrow not just the government individuals but the very style of government and primary premise of our nation, by mass propagandizing the public into fear and to revile our leadership and our values, during a time of war; they are marketing experts, and they attempt to leverage the fear and rage they create in the public, to persuade them to vote for the media's representatives, rather than America's representatives.
LOVE HURTS
In the case of conservatives, we have a different love with the same problem: the people we love are often those very people indoctrinated and stirred by the govern-by-media sociopolitical networks. They watch TV, they read the paper, they went through a lifetime of institutionalized schooling that more than left its mark.
They are well intentioned. They are also usually incapable of holding a single coherent conversation and sticking to one point during it. I spent months online and with family members in an experiment that grew out of my frustration with political discussion but eventually became a psychological case study: the search for even one person who could hold up their end of an intelligent discussion without quickly devolving to
(a) catchy jingles promoted by the Left and the media on their behalf, which ignored facts entirely in lieu of slogans and 5-second sound-bytes;
(b) emotion reducing them to completely irrational, and/or
(c) instant wandering into many completely unrelated topics when it's clear that they cannot demonstrate any logic or reality about the one at hand.
To the degree that people have a different opinion, they are free to do so. To the degree that people rant and rave with opinion, that is free in this country also. But in the last couple of years, the unofficial "govern-by-media" coalition has moved the political left and right so far left and right that they have finally circled around the back, run smack into one another, and climbed into bed with each other, and are now working against the "common enemy" of the founding tenets of America herself.
The ignorant and propagandized, and their resulting irrationalism, has created an entirely new kind of American: the Stepford Americans, who use the ideals (and permissions) of freedom to do active harm to the real ideals and freedoms in our country.
Sometimes, hopefully not often but sometimes, they are friends and family. We love them. But some of them, by accident or design, have literally become tools of the enemy, right inside our nation. Not because they are bad, but because they are ignorant--and having been properly whipped up into an emotional frenzy incapable of rational thought on the subject, no amount of education can dent their slogans.
How do we deal with that? What do you do when someone you honestly love, is not only just "really dense," and is not only "completely in disagreement," but may in some fashion be so entwined in what amounts to actual sedition that were any self-respecting government in place today they'd already be in jail?
THAT
Ironically in a way, the Stepford Politics are often advertised by the big white smiles of rich celebrities, that Accidental Monarchy created by the market of media, ever-selling us The Perfect World. The real world, unfortunately, has a massive number of people with a fairly organized and overt agenda--no secrets, no conspiracy, it's out in the open in writing and in repeated actions and statements for decades--to literally take over the world and kill everybody who doesn't bow to their extreme religio-political fanaticism, and to use every means possible (including pretending they are friendly and peaceful) to infiltrate, subvert and consume from within every other culture.
The bright smiles of the Perfect World's Stepford Representatives, of course, would have the public believe that all is happy in Barbie's Funhouse, that fashion merits more seriousness than international politics. It doesn't matter what is going on all over the world--much of which the media ignores entirely, the rest of which they present in tiny unrelated pieces while carefully removing the most critical point of commonality so Americans won't accidentally notice what is going on. According to the Stepford Americans, they seem to figure that anybody who take millions of murdering maniacs bent on the utter obliteration of democracy, freedom, etc. seriously is just grumpy and paranoid--and, they figure, probably rooted in the evil of George Bush, who in a convincing act, helped liberate tens of millions of people to freedom just to make it look like he cares about freedom. Hmmmn. That Poser.
**
Having your family fall in propaganda-based delusion with the mainstream media is rather like having your wife fall in love with a movie character. How can you compete with something that isn't real? With great throwaway one-liners and an entire presentation designed start to finish to "win her over" -- if not for a movie ticket, for a voting ticket.
Can we shake awake the innocently-obsessed, wake them to reason and rationalism, make them understand that the root-rot of America from within is our greatest danger?
It's easy to want to defeat the enemy. But what happens when someone you love becomes a tool of the enemy itself?
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