Think About It: Is This Truly Happening?
By
Mike Pulaski
September 21, 2007
You don’t wanna know?
You don’t wanna talk about it?
You don’t wanna think it’s really happening here in America?
The aim of this article is to provoke you into thinking how our democracy has evolved toward tyranny over the last 6 years. Please think about how it has happened and ways that you can stop it.
The general US population seems to be one big couch potato; its collective brain scrambled by an onslaught of flashing electronic images on TV, movies, and video games. Advertisers’ 30 second spots, teaser news headlines, and split-second images of murder and mayhem in movies and video games have reduced our attention span. Most all critical thought has been eliminated by this constant onslaught of mind-bending stimulation.
That’s why political campaign strategists rely so heavily on promoting their candidates through expensive TV advertising. Image is most important, causing candidates to get $200 haircuts.
Issues are secondary. Whereas images are easily communicated on TV, issues are complicated. Thus, they are rejected by mind-numbed couch potatoes as “boring”.
The strategists’ goal is to show short, simple, pleasing images. They want to keep us in an “opiated”, placated state.
Because TV ads are so expensive, candidates are always groveling for money. Big money.
Individuals don’t have the kind of money candidates need; corporations and lobbyists do. A candidate who receives funding from these sources is required to give something back in return…..like voting a certain way on a particular issue.
Almost anytime you look into the Congressional Chambers when issues are being debated, there is hardly any politician in attendance. They are usually out and about, raising money. Besides, they aren’t required to attend, listen, or debate. The money they’ve already received has determined their vote.
This is why we don’t have a democracy of the people. Instead, we have a democracy of lobbyists and corporate campaign contributors. Elected officials are their lackeys.
How else can you explain that 71% of the American public are against the Iraq War, yet the House and Senate have steadfastly voted to extend the war indefinitely? The answer? Political contributions from defense contractors and oil companies trump the will of the people.
The American public has been duped into turning its democracy over to a small group of corporations and individuals who are only interested in wealth accumulation, the power to acquire more wealth, and the ability to hold on to it without having to pay income tax.
Consider these examples.
ExxonMobil’s record-breaking profits. Alan Greenspan, a lifelong conservative Republican and former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, recently stated that the Iraq War’s purpose was to acquire oil.
Vice President Dick Cheney’s former employer, Halliburton, has been able to receive billions of dollars in no-bid defense contracts.
Blackwater’s rapid rise as a paramilitary power. Blackwater, the mercenary arm of the Bush administration, has randomly killed hundreds of innocent Iraqi civilians. It acquires huge profits from international arms trading. As a government contractor, they do not answer to Congress or the American People.
Bush’s huge tax cut benefiting only the super-rich.
$6 Billion in cash was loaded on pallets directly from the US Federal Reserve, flown to Baghdad, then subsequently “lost”. The cash was traced through a series of PO Boxes in San Diego to off shore banks in the Bahamas, where the trail goes dead. I thought only drug dealer thugs laundered cash, not governments!
President Bush claims the “surge” is working. He says it is providing the necessary stability so Iraq can pass laws privatizing their oil industry and distribute the profits to all political regions. An enterprising oil executive thinks not.
Dallas-based Hunt Oil Company recently entered into an agreement with Kurdistan, the northern Iraqi province, to develop their oil reserves and share profits only with that province. Longtime Bush supporter Jim Hunt doesn’t believe the surge will work, and instead, cut his own deal. Meanwhile, the Bush Administration is permitting Hunt’s deal, which essentially undermines their publically stated intentions of the surge!
Further demonstrating how we have let our democracy slip away, Congress passed into law the Military Commissions Act. It provides for shocking reversals of American Ideals, where:
1. We now torture prisoners. Later, if international tribunals determine that President Bush and his staff are found guilty of war crimes, the Act provides them immunity from prosecution.
2. Habeas Corpus was first developed as an English Law in 1305. It discourages government tyranny. The Military Commissions Act suspended it.
Fellow citizens, let’s take back our democracy.
Mark Twain once said: "In the beginning of a change, patriots are few, brave, hated and scorned. When their cause succeeds, the timid join in, for then it costs nothing to be a patriot."
