Big Ten Democrat, whom I greatly like and respect, says Barack Obama should opt out of public financing, and that he should do it now, while it is still early. Strategically, Big Tent is absolutely right. As he says, should Obama opt out now, while his opponent is Hillary Clinton, the corporate media won’t question it. Should he win the nomination, and only opt out once his opponent is John McCain, the corporate media will eviscerate him. The free pass they give him against Hillary Clinton, whom they have always despised, and cherish the thought of defeating, if not destroying, will not transfer to a runoff against St. Maverick; and it won’t matter that the Saint is utterly and completely full of shit. But I strongly disagree with the fundamental premise of Big Tent’s argument:

Unlike most good government types, I believe that until there is full public financing of political campaigns, the Democratic Party should NEVER give away an advantage when it has one.

If John McCain accepts public financing for his general election campaign, and the Democratic nominee does not, the Democratic Party will lose the moral high ground, and much credibility, on campaign finance reform. That McCain is a liar and a hypocrite won’t matter. What will matter is that the Democratic nominee will be opting out, while the Republican nominee won’t be. Many are saying we should not cede the financial lead, now that the internet and a cratering Republican Party have handed it to us, but accepting that argument would only prove that campaign finance reform was always about the politics of being financially behind, rather than about the principle of creating a politics of people. Big Tent’s ideal of full public financing will never come to be because campaign finance reform will be, effectively, dead.

As I’ve previously pointed out, John Edwards had less than half as much campaign money as did Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama; and the rest of the candidates had much much less. Similarly, it’s no coincidence that Obama’s emergence as the clear Democratic frontrunner came as he vastly outspent Clinton, after Super Tuesday; and as they court the increasingly important Superdelegates, he has given more than three times as much money as has Clinton to those Superdelegates who are elected officials. Forget debates, speeches, policy statements, and stands on the issues, the Democratic nomination is being determined by nothing other than money.

Some claim that the internet has so changed the game, and so enabled people to participate, that it’s really a question of the other campaigns better resonating with the people. Obama supporters, in particular, point to his donors averaging some $250 or so, which sounds very nice. Unless you actually consider the national poverty rate, the more than 35 million people who live under it, and the 38 million who are food insecure. The poor cannot afford $250 donations. Those on strictly fixed incomes cannot afford $250 donations. We Democrats talk about the elderly who have to decide between needed medicines and food, well how many of them can afford $250 campaign donations? And who was the candidate who spoke most often, most passionately, and in greatest detail about poverty in America? More than a tenth of our population lives in poverty, but how high a priority will they be to candidates who depend on campaign donations that average hundreds of dollars?

The most common argument in favor of the Democratic nominee opting out of public financing relates to the Democrats’ extraordinary ability to raise huge sums of money over the internet. This is supposed to prove that the Democrats are more pure, their money more clean, and their susceptibility to favoring pernicious private interests over the common good diminished. Let’s look at some facts:

As Public Citizen’s White House for Sale website explains:

Bundling describes the activity of fundraisers who pool a large number of campaign contributions from political action committees (PACs) and individuals. Bundlers, who are often corporate CEOs, lobbyists, hedge fund managers or independently wealthy people, are able to funnel far more money to campaigns than they could personally give under campaign finance laws.

While there are disclosure requirements for bundling, they only go into effect when a bundler personally hands over checks. Most campaigns get around the disclosure provision by not having the bundler ever touch the checks. Mandatory disclosure of all bundled contributions – regardless of whether the bundler touches them – is the very least we can do to address this new way to evade disclosure laws. Disclosure of bundling activity could be achieved either through a new law from Congress or by an improvement in FEC regulations.

And for all the talk about the Democrats being able to raise tens of millions of dollars from regular folks, via the internet:

Hillary Clinton has 322 campaign bundlers, 19 of whom are lobbyists, and from whom she has raised a total of $104,571,988.

Barack  Obama has 359 bundlers, 10 of whom are lobbyists, and from whom he has raised a total of $101,429,497.

John McCain has 468 bundlers, 59 of whom are lobbyists, and from whom he has raised a total of $37,036,050; and I’m going to make a wild guess that if he opts out of public financing, those 468 bundlers are going to produce much larger numbers for McCain, in the coming months.

But even more disturbing, for any idealistic Democrat, is the way special interest money seems to be influencing the candidates’ policy positions. I’ll give but a few examples:

Clinton and Obama have each raised millions of dollars from the health care industry, which may be why nyceve recently wrote:

I want to tell you my good friends, if you care about healthcare, if you’re uninsured (that’s 47 million of us), or underinsured, (that’s the rest of us), less cheerleading and more holding their feet to the fire is in order.

I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news, and  you may already know this, but neither health plan is great. Truth be told, they stink.

Clinton and Obama have each raised millions of dollars from the banking firms involved in the sub-prime disaster, which may have something to do with the bad news in this interview of The American Prospect‘s Robert Kuttner and The Nation‘s Max Fraser, by Juan Gonzalez and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!

JUAN GONZALEZ: Could you outline the differences between-the major differences between the candidates? And it would be instructive also to talk about John Edwards’s policies, as well.

MAX FRASER: Sure. Well, when he was in the race, Edwards’s plan was by far the most comprehensive and aggressive, insofar as it really committed the government to intervening on behalf of homeowners and resolving the crisis in such a way that it would keep people from losing their homes. Edwards called for a mandatory moratorium on foreclosures, a freeze on rising interest rates, a real kind of redoubled efforts to not only regulate the mortgage markets, but financial markets generally.

Clinton and Obama fall short of that, and Obama falls short most significantly. He is the only one of the three who hasn’t called for a moratorium on foreclosures or a freeze on interest rates, which really are the most effective short-term measures that can be taken to keep homeowners in their homes. And beyond that, his plan calls for the least aggressive government intervention, the most limited spending to bail out homeowners and to especially borrowers who are at risk of defaulting on their mortgages and to help them restructure their loans in such a way that they’re affordable moving forward. And his plan actually really most relies on a pretty insignificant tax credit, which comes out to about $500 on average for homeowners, which might make a difference for those who are just barely falling behind, but not for those who are falling further and further behind.

AMY GOODMAN: Max, in your piece, “Subprime Obama,” you talk about his three main economic advisers.

MAX FRASER: Right.

AMY GOODMAN: Tell us who they are.

MAX FRASER: Well, there are these three young economists: David Cutler, Jeffrey Liebman and Austan Goolsbee. Cutler and Liebman are Harvard economists who hail from the Clinton administration. Goolsbee, who does the lion’s share of the work on this issue, comes from the University of Chicago. They’re all centrist market economists, I mean, what you would call them Clintonian in their politics, and that’s really where they’re coming from. They are oriented towards, you know, market-based solutions to social welfare issues. Cutler writes about incentivizing the healthcare industry as a way to improving care. Liebman has endorsed the partial privatization of Social Security. And Goolsbee also is one of the kind of market faithful.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Yeah, I’d like to ask you about Liebman in particular, because I think that, from what I understand, he is proposing a-has proposed for a 20 percent increase in the Social Security payroll tax to, in essence, create private accounts for all Americans. It would be like the equivalent of dues check-off for Wall Street.

MAX FRASER: Yeah.

JUAN GONZALEZ: It would be an enormous windfall for the Wall Street firms to be able to get that kind of a operation.

MAX FRASER: Right.

JUAN GONZALEZ: But it’s not clear-Obama has never said anything about this in the campaign trail, but his key adviser is known as the main proponent of this, right?

MAX FRASER: Well, one of the-a proponent of it, that’s right, entirely true. And, you know, Obama, I think what he says on the campaign trail on various issues of domestic policy are, you know, not wholly in line with where these policy advisers are, but they clearly are animating where he stands on these issues, like Social Security and the housing crisis, most notably, I think.

AMY GOODMAN: Robert Kuttner, can you weigh in here with these three economists that Max writes about in The Nation magazine, their significance, and especially on this issue of privatization of Social Security?

ROBERT KUTTNER: Well, it’s very distressing. I mean, I think it was National Journal, recently came out with a rating that showed that Obama has the most left-of-center record, voting record, in the Senate. And yet, the advisers that he relies upon are-I would call them center-right. They’re basically free-market guys who want to use markets to somehow solve social problems, which is like squaring a circle. And I was just at a board meeting of the Economic Policy Institute, which is, you know, the most effective left-of-center think tank in Washington. Except at the staff level, he is not reaching out to progressive economists. It’s a fairly narrow circle.

Same, of course, with Hillary. If anything, Hillary’s advisers are a shade more open to reaching out a little further left. And you worry that as attractive as Obama is, as inspirational as he obviously is, he might be very centrist as president, and you wonder whether this is him trying to be the Democratic version of John McCain, trying to tone it way down in order to reach out to independents, or whether this is what the man really believes, or whether he’s still a work in progress.

Obama and Clinton are the two leading recipients of campaign donations from the nuclear energy industry. Obama has already demonstrated that he will sacrifice the common good to the benefit of his nuclear industry donors, and as Beyond Nuclear‘s Paul Gunter explained, in that same Democracy Now! interview:

PAUL GUNTER: Well, both Senators Obama and Clinton have basically displayed a lot of indecisiveness about all the concerns with nuclear power-its cost, the inherent dangers, the unsolved nuclear waste issue, the proliferations issue. But I think that what’s most notable about that clip is the evasiveness, the indecisiveness, that the campaigns have taken. And it’s also been reflected in legislation with both Senators Obama and Clinton.

One of the main concerns is that both Clinton and Obama have very strong backing, financial backing, from the major CEOs from the nuclear industry. For Senator Obama, the chief executive officer, John Rowe, with Exelon Nuclear, Chicago-based, largest nuclear utility in the country; and Senator Clinton has strong financial backing from David Crane, who’s the CEO for NRG Energy, which is based in New Jersey. Both Exelon and NRG right now have got applications before the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission to build new nuclear power stations in Texas. So it’s disturbing that both Senators Obama and Clinton left out nuclear in their Utah speech, but we’ve seen that basically this kind of indecisiveness, you know, being all over the board indicates that influence-peddling with the nuclear power industry is alive and well on Capitol Hill and in these presidential campaigns.

And is it but a coincidence that because it has no major financial or lobbying power, one of the most promising new, renewable energy resources gets nary a mention on the campaign trail?

Now, of course, John McCain is simply terrible on health care, inscrutable on the subprime disaster, and an unapologetic fan of nuclear power; and, beyond that, of course, he’s simply sinister and deranged. But this is not about Democrats being better than John McCain, it’s about Democrats being right! Does anyone truly believe that the fundraising prowess of the Democratic frontrunners is significantly better or cleaner or more beneficial to the public than was that of the Republicans? Does anyone truly believe that “experience” and “hope” are immune to money’s corruptive power? The evidence clearly suggests otherwise. As Senator Russ Feingold has written:

Because it costs so much to run for office, interests with big money to contribute to candidates or spend on ad campaigns are able to get special access in Congress. Campaign finance laws on the books are supposed to limit the power of wealthy interests, but the search for ever-increasing sums of money to finance campaigns has led politicians and both parties to stretch the rules and create new loopholes – not to mention promoting legislation that serves wealthy interests rather than ordinary Americans.

If the Democrats do not stand on principle, when they have the financial advantage, they will never again have the credibility to promote campaign finance reform. Rather, they will continue to be as addicted to the same big money from the same special interests that have been poisoning our politics and destroying our government. They will continue to pursue safe, unthreatening incrementalist policies rather than aggressively pursuing the bold transformations that are required. And when the political wheel turns again, and the Republicans, with their much more accommodating approach to big money special interests, regain the financial upper hand, the Democrats will be locked out. Campaign finance reform will be dead. If, on the other hand, the Democratic nominee wins with public financing, when he or she could have spent much more, with a much greater financial advantage, by opting out, the possibility of selling and enacting full public financing will never be greater. That Democratic president would be uniquely positioned to truly transform our political system, and would be ready on day one to create change we can all believe in. And from such principled leadership, the Democratic Party, the nation, and the entire world will benefit.

Fort Hood soliders breaking the silence in war in Iraq

A growing number of active duty soldiers or recent Iraq war veterans are speaking up about the war in Iraq.

And with the number of soldiers speaking up about their experiences in Iraq via online forums, blogs and pamphlets,

some vets feel it’s their duty to let the American public know the truth.

This occurred on the 17th, yesterday, outside of Ft Hood Texas, which has a rich history of action by Active Duty and

recent Veterans of the Vietnam Conflict, back than one of many bases, around the country, as well as the world, and In-Country

Vietnam!

This Austin Texas News Channel seems to have fallen in behind these Soldiers, embedded links and all, with no negative reporting!

‘There is a cost to this war. This war is being paid in American blood, in my soldier’s blood. And that is not okay,’ Coppa said.

‘We lost really good friends, really good leaders who died in Iraq. From my perspective, it didn’t make any sense, we didn’t

accomplish anything, and I talked to a lot of other soldiers who feel the same way,’ Fort Hood soldier Casey Porter said.

Visit above link to read and Watch the Video Report

This morning Army Sargent had this posted up at Vet Voice:

Winter Soldier: What We Believe?

Many of you don’t understand why I believe in Winter Soldier, or what I think Winter Soldier is going to be about. It’s hard to explain, especially when you find yourself coming up against gaps. You can read my piece in the SIT-REP, if you’re lucky enough to be by a base where that hot little newspaper is going around.

There’s abit more, it was leading up to this Moving Video of what is to come next month in the Nations Capitol, Winter Soldier, March 13-16 2008

WARNING: A few very graphic photos and descriptions

Winter Soldier Iraq and Afganistan

When I returned home Thomas, brother Vietnam Vet, of  Military Project-G.I.Special

had sent out the following in the News Letter, it’s from an issue on 11-14-07, from an Active Duty Soldier, who might recognize it:

Army Values

“I Am Loyal To My Fellow Soldiers; I Do Not Want Them To Die In A Purposeless War”

“I Am Loyal To The Constitution; A Constitution Which Is Under Attack By Men Who Have Not Sacrificed To Protect It”

“Our Leadership Is Currently Dishonorable”

A lot of people question how I can be a sergeant in the Army, giving my oath true weight, and believing in its values, and still be a member of IVAW.

It’s easy.

I believe in the Army’s purpose-it is to defend our country and protect the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.

I don’t think its purpose is foreign wars we can’t win.

Its true purpose is noble, and has been subverted by armchair soldiers, politicians who have never had to serve.

They don’t know these values, and they don’t live them — but I do.

And here’s why they support, rather than contradict, what I’m doing now as a member of IVAW.

Loyalty: Bear true faith and allegiance to the U.S. Constitution, the Army, your unit, and fellow soldiers.

Nowhere in this list does it say “the current leadership of your country, and their political decisions”.

I am loyal to my fellow soldiers; I do not want them to die in a purposeless war.

I am loyal to the Army; I do not want it to be weakened on multiple fronts and taken away from its true purpose, defense of the nation.

I am loyal to the Constitution; a Constitution which is under attack by men who have not sacrificed to protect it.

I bear true faith and allegiance to these, most particularly the Constitution which founded our nation.

Duty: Fulfill your obligations

Our highest obligations as soldiers is our obligation to our country and the flag we salute. Our obligation as citizens and patriots compels us to defend our country in any way we can — against its destruction as well as its dishonor.

The Iraq War, and the way it is being prosecuted, dishonors us in the eyes of the world, and even worse, dishonors us to ourselves.

Respect: Treat people as they should be treated.

Treat the people of the United States as well as the people of Iraq with respect.

They deserve to be treated according to their status: if they are prisoners of war, then treat them with the full dignity accorded POWs. If they are criminals, then give them trials.

Innocent until proven guilty: we do not lose our values when we step away from our shores.

Selfless Service: Put the welfare of the Nation, the Army, and your subordinates before your own.

Being a member of IVAW is hard.

It is hard to stand up, to devote effort and time to an organization committed to what is right, when your leadership so firmly believes that it is wrong.

It’s hard to face the intimidation and harassment that many members of the active duty military face when they begin to speak out on what they feel. It’s hard to stand up and tell your higher ups that they are committing crimes.

But the welfare of the Nation, our continued survival as an honorable country, and the continued survival of the Army depends on some of us standing up, and saying, “Sir, no Sir!”

That we will not participate in illegal acts, and we will report them when and where we see them.

We will not train our soldiers to commit them, and will train our soldiers to follow the honorable path.

And the honorable path now, the hard service, means standing up and speaking the truth, so that legislators can begin to realize it, and bring us home.

Honor: Live up to Army Values

Honor is living up to all the Army Values, but it is even older than that. It is the thing you have when you have nothing else left. It is all you need: it should be the cornerstone of a soldier.

It is phrased as living up to all the Army Values, because if you lack even one, you cannot be an honorable soldier.

It is the ability to look yourself in the mirror at the end of the day and know you have done all that you can, and that you have not had to reproach yourself for anything.

Our leadership is currently dishonorable.

By their bending of the torture legislation to allow what they want to take place, they are attempting to put a stain upon our honor that will take at least a generation to erase.

As soon as our soldiers have fulfilled their usefulness to them, leadership shuffles them away, with “personality disorders” instead of PTSD treatment.

Benefits are cut, while contractors reach huge rewards.

This is not taking care of the people who have given their all to the country.

It is dishonorable, and the only way to restore that honor is to stand up against the people who are doing so and will do so again.

Integrity: Do what is right, legally and morally.

The things that the political leadership of this country are trying to do right now are neither legal nor moral.

The acceptance of torture, the belief that once Americans go beyond their borders, they no longer have to hold to the beliefs that shaped our nation, ‘baiting’ with weapons caches, and other such tactics at the very least skirt the fine line of legality: they are definitely not moral.

Claiming that it is okay to treat people dishonorably because they are not an organized force fighting against us is simply wrong, as is the argument that they are not citizens and therefore do not deserve the protections of the Constitution.

We are the good guys!

We do the right thing, even if others don’t, and if our leadership does not understand that, it needs to.

It needs to pull out of this war, and cease its immoral actions, to bring itself in line with the country’s beliefs and principles.

Personal Courage: Face fear, danger, or adversity (physical or moral)

It does not take physical courage to stand up and fight against injustice in this fashion.

Most members have not been physically attacked — the cowards who attack people for their beliefs have gone after a father of a dead servicemember instead (Carlos Arredondo).

But it does take moral courage.

It takes moral courage to stand up for what you know to be true and right, moral courage to say that the country is steering in the wrong direction, and you are committed by your oath to turn it around.

It takes moral courage to resist a war that your leadership believes in, or to stand against your entire platoon and state that you will not treat a prisoner with anything less than full dignity.

And it takes moral courage to be counted, here, to let people insult you for perceived cowardice, when the truth is that you, like I, may not be against all wars, all places, all times.

But hopefully you, like I, like many committed and dedicated members of the military community, are against this one.

In the leadup to the present Winter Soldier we get words from one who participated in the one of the past.

Joe Bangert, Smedley Butler VFP, Star of  “Winter Soldier” and “Sir! No Sir!” speaks at the Moonakis Cafe, Falmouth, Mass- 2/9/08- film by Paul Rifkin and David Souza:

Joe Bangert, a Vietnam Vet, of Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Veterans for Peace, who gave testimony at the 1971 Winter Soldier Hearings, lays the groundwork for Winter Soldier 2.

JOE BANGERT, WINTER SOLDIER

Visit  IVAW-Iraq Veterans Against The War

I swore that when I had kids, I would NEVER give as an explanation because. My mother was famous for it. Me: Why??? Mom: Because. If she really wanted to make the point (and a power play), she’d say because I said so. arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

Well, I never had kids. But I did end up with a few step kids. At first, any interventions on my part were always accompanied by explanation. I was a quick study though. I realized they didn’t care WHY. They’d ask and ask and whine and complain and ask WHY again a thousand times. But they never really wanted to know why. They were only interested in what they wanted and finding a way to actualize it. They used my explanations as an opportunity to stage never-ending debates, refuting all of my very sensible and very adult-correct thinking.

Mothers. They do know what they’re doing. It just takes years to figure it out. There’s not much after the old because I say so.  

I joined the establishment on this one. I can tell you. However, I did elaborate on the technique, just a bit. I’d say “because” and explain that I couldn’t explain. Adults are compelled to stop kids from doing things. There isn’t any rational reason WHY. It really is “just because.”

That seemed to confuse them enough to change the focus and the topic. Fast, pull out the playing cards or suggest a walk through the woods. Distraction. And a funny kind of honesty. Worked most of the time.

I pull this lesson into practice after surveying the upheaval of the last seven years. And I realize people who don’t agree with each other, in the fundamentals, don’t often hear or care to hear how one rationalizes their beliefs. They don’t care about WHY.  And “because” ends up being: because you’re an asshole, that’s why.

The crazy thing is that most of us seem to agree on concept. Like killing is bad. Abusing people and animals is bad. Not helping those who can not help themselves is wrong. You know, the 10 commandments et al. God…

But while the words sound the same, there is a black hole of difference apparently. For example, some (not all) people who describe themselves as pro life would vote for pro life candidates, regardless of the candidate’s support of the death penalty and/or war with Iraq. To me, that’s wrong thinking. To them, I’m wrong in my pro choice stance AND I’m wrong in opposing the death penalty.

How do you argue with people like that? Clearly, I’m right. Further, I see this as my intellect vs their DNA.

For me, it has become about our ability to reason past a survival response that doesn’t work in the world we’ve created. It is another epic battle in a seething universe. A structural change. Thought-evolution as a response to instincts gone awry. Tribal conventions scaling up to global dimensions.

This is how I make sense of things that I find otherwise hard to explain. I mean really. George W. Bush and everything that name conjures: the power-driven, the sycophants, the torturers, the theocrats, oil companies, the chemical industry (including big pharma), republicans, homeland security… No matter how you slice and dice it, most, if not all, of the constructs of these people/groups have dire consequences. Climate-altering. Politically-altering. Influence and affluence-altering. Species-ending.

So I ask myself, why? These people have access to the same information as I do. We share the power of observation: lighting and tornadoes in February. Rising sea levels. Drought. Over 1 million people dead in five years and inciting another 100 years war.

I mean why would anybody with all that power and access to knowledge/data/information skimp on safety precautions at chemical plants and nuclear power plants? Why would industries poison the Great Lakes?

WHY? Because. Because they can. Because they don’t believe they will ever endure the consequences of what they have wrought. They’re all like 21-year-olds who smoke cigarettes, drink/drive, or do any of the multitude of stupid death-defying things kids do because kids don’t believe in consequences. Or death.

WHY? I don’t know fucking why. Because. That’s why.

What is clear: Being right doesn’t move mountains. The truth is situational. And nothing appears to be absolute… except maybe for nothingness.

We need to find a different way into people’s heads.

One other thing I’m thinking:  it is people like us who have probably caused the brutes and bullies to kill untold numbers of people. All to keep us quiet and everybody else afraid to even begin thinking in terms of what is really in their best interest.

Because that is what this is all about. One’s best interest and how different groups of people interpret that very thing. This has never really been about right and wrong in the institutional/moral sense. But right and wrong in the survival sense. Survival produces its own ethic, its own morality.

The way I think. The way I am. My sensibilities inform how survival looks to me. And I say it is this:

Acting in one’s own interest is also acting on behalf of the sustainability of all earthlings and the ecosystems they need to survive.

The side-choosing begins. The fight shifts, as it should, from right and wrong to forcing one vision (or version h/t buhdy) over another. Those who want to control the board (the old evolutionary model) and all its resources versus those of us who are the new ones… the consensus-builders and resource sharers.

Simple, isn’t it? Why? Because…

Is this man laughing at you?

.

Well. We are rapidly approaching some awfully critical events in the world of domestic and foreign politics. The denouement of the Dem primary battle, and at least a mini-showdown on a few of the fronts where the Democratic Congressionals are FINALLY opposing Bush. It sure feels like Pakistan is going to get interesting, and Iraq is reminding me of the old movie line “it’s quiet……..too quiet.” Despite all of the tensions behind the scenes having to do with the ineffective puppet Govt. And the Oil law, and the Turks and the Kurds….etc. It is going to be quite a ‘interesting’ spring and summer. And then we have the general election that will (at the VERY least symbolically) shape and determine the fate of the world for the immediate future.

And of course during all this…the world is building hundreds of new coal burning power plants and huge numbers of cars and doing all it can to pretend that the ice caps aren’t melting.

And presiding over it all will be the Fourth Estate, the media.

The corporate owned media. The self interested media, the conflicted of interest media….what we used to call, the NEWS media….will decide which pieces of information you receive. Will decide which narratives to spin. Decide how each event will be framed. How each new development is perceived. Decide which story to tell the world. Will, in that way, decide how the world reacts to these possibly monumental events.

In some ways the Wolf Blitzers and the Brian Williams’s and almost certainly Rupert Murdoch….have more influence on the way things will go than those actually generating the events they cover. In an interesting application of the idea that ‘All politics are local,’ the events themselves tend to be somewhat localized. The perceptions of events that are then broadcast, in large part determine the cultural…and thus political reaction. By picking and setting the narrative, by broadcasting their reaction to events, they are in essence telling us how we should react. And most definitely telling the politicians and participants….those who are required to react…..  What their reactions should be.

The media have become our story tellers and our interpretors of the myths and meanings of all that happens in our global village, in effect, the shapers of our reality. All we have after all, to shape and understand our reality is the information that each of us takes in on a daily basis. And even the smartest and sharpest among us cannot analyze and process and integrate that now massive amount of information on our own. In olden days, the Wise…the Elders would perform that function. And in olden days, they had the time to consider just how to do it and the effect of their interpretations of events in relation to the culture and its myths. Now, we receive a never ending shotgun blast of new myths and interpretations and attempts at pre-programming our responses hourly and daily.

There is not time to thoughtfully respond to events or to try to discuss, question and change the framework that the events are presented to us in. By the time rational thought even has a chance to surface, we are on to the next rapid fire iteration of sensation stimulating artificially enhanced emotionally barbed…’news story.’

Yes we are fighting back on the blogs as much as we can. We are trying to do our part to temper and change the myths and memes that are inflicted on the public like a plague in order to sell headache remedies that you can apply directly to your forehead in the commercial breaks between the presentation of the representation of reality that is giving you the headache. But the blogs reach a TINY portion of the eyeballs and cortex’s that TeeVee does.

So it comes down to this.

You cannot change the world unless you change the perceptions of the world, and by extension the reactions to those perceptions. And as long as our (cultural) perceptions and reactions are influenced so greatly by…if not controlled by, in the case of those of weaker mind and curiosity….The Powers That Be: Media Division, we will have immense difficulty building and maintaining a different….better….narrative….and healthier myths, for the global village.

How do we do that? How do we wrest control of the narrative away from those who are currently determining it through the way they present and frame “The News?”

It is at least as important a question as who to elect or how to prosecute their brethren in our current executive branch, if not more so.

Reality IS determined (at least to some extent)by war between two rival groups of programmers. How can we win that war?