April 2008 archive

and extremely tired of sucking up to power.  It is well past time to flex our collective muscles.  What is wrong with people in this country?  Most of us are wage slaves because we have to be.  Okay: fine.  Maybe that’s the way of the world.  They call it “work” for a reason, right?  And I don’t think anybody here opposes work, per se.  What I oppose is the suppression of the “underclass”–which increasingly means anybody who isn’t a multimillionaire.

The Democratic candidates for president felt compelled to attend a public forum on religion. The two biggest controversies about Barack Obama involved religion. Because Obama has been falsely accused of being a member of a religion that is disgustingly demonized in this country he is nearly required to talk publicly about being a member of a more accepted religion. Because her husband offended the delicate sensibilities of some sexually repressed middle Americans, Hillary Clinton has to talk publicly about her own religious beliefs. In the third century of this nation’s existence, the constitutionally enshrined concept of separation of church and state is, in practice if not in fact, an anachronism. Does anyone else have a problem with all of this?

Jimmy Carter was openly religious and attempted to pursue a foreign policy based on respect for human rights. George W. Bush is openly religious and pursues a foreign policy based on vicious violence against those who are not compliant to his rapacious imperialistic greed. Why would anyone believe that a politician’s public blather about religion necessarily has anything to do with what that politician truly thinks or believes or would do with political office? All American politicians now feel required to tout their personal relationship with the divine. None have the courage to simply state that religion is intensely personal, and nobody’s else’s business. None have the courage to remind people of Article VI of the U.S. Constitution:

…no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

To demand that politicians explain their religious beliefs is literally in violation of the Constitution. And yet, here we are, with one candidate who claims to have the experience to be ready to lead on day one, and another who claims to champion hope and change, and with neither able to stand up against the disgusting political expectation that they engage in public displays of religious demagoguery. What the hell does talk about religion have to do with the way people will run the country? Nothing. Of course. And this is to in no way disparage religion itself or those who are religious. It’s just that religion and politics should not mix. Neither is good for the other. And nothing any person says about their personal religious beliefs can be presumptively taken at face value. And yet, two nights ago, the two Democratic presidential candidates were in public, on national television, discussing their religious beliefs.

What makes this even worse is that there has never been a night when two presidential candidates were in public, on national television, discussing their beliefs about science. To anyone not overly cynical, it would be astonishing: in an ostensibly rational nation, among ostensibly rational people, religion takes precedence over science. Despite the fact that so many of the problems that actually will decide humanity’s future and fate have to do with science. From global warming and climate change, to biomedical research, to whether or not our education system trains our children to be ready to compete and help our nation compete in an increasingly technologically competitive world, there are few broad political themes as important as a candidate’s understanding of and relationship with science, and few that receive less attention both from the candidates and from the corporate media.

“The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers… [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper.” –Thomas Jefferson

A Free Press is one of the foundations of a free country. But as with all freedom, it comes with responsibility. The press, the media, in America has not just abrogated that responsibility, they have thrown it on the ground and urinated on it. With very few exceptions, they have become more of a public relations arm of the government than the absolutely vital component of democracy it is their duty to be. The Fourth Estate, they were once called, in effect the fourth branch of government itself, the keepers of truth, the arbiters of honesty, the last resort against corruption. A great objective equalizer, the conscience of the nation.

Journalism was once a sacred and noble trust. Newsrooms were once sacrosanct chapels of Truth. Now they are an industry. Now they are little more than pimps for fast food…and fascism.

I am thoroughly appalled and disgusted that the President of the United States of America admits publicly to approving an entire network….a entire segment of OUR government paid for with our taxes….to torturing, raping, and killing often innocent HUMAN BEINGS…..human beings no different than you, or your children or your parents (regardless of their place of birth) …and todays media treat it as just anther ‘product’ for their ‘industry.’ They have the power to emphasize and pound this home to the American People, the power to serve justice and the Truth ….but… They. Do. Not.

As with the Democrats in Congress, the Free Press has failed America. Tragically so. To the point of betrayal. I condemn them from the bottom of my heart.

I urge all of us in the Blogosphere to do so daily as part of our regime of taking back our failed society. Failed by the President, Failed by Congress, Failed by the Judiciary, and Failed by our Free Press. Take it back, We the People. Take it back. It is up to us, now, that sacred trust of Freedom. We are all that is left of the Dream of Democracy.

But hey! Let’s look on the bright side! At least the Fourth Estate is not actively cheerleading for torture as they did for the invasion of Iraq.

We know you’re plenty pissed off about the war.

Pissed off enough to write about it and comment on it, and to resort to some pretty rough language to describe how you feel.

Five years.  Thousands of Americans and perhaps a million Iraqis dead.  Four million refugees.  Trillions of dollars wasted. Government spying.  Torture.  Lies.  Coverups.

It’s enough to piss anyone off.

But are you pissed off enough to do something?

Racism is based on ignorance and is passed down generationally.  One racist adult caretaker may infect a few children with their racism; however, one racist film or television show would infect many more and more deeply ingrain any racism that already was in existence in my opinion. Examples such as in the following video have contributed to anti – Indian sentiments in the popular American culture in the relevant generations who viewed such films.

Crossposted at Native American Netroots