The River

Friday, November 05, 2004

Democracy, such as it is

Consumerism is what emerges when we are duped into having desires that we would not normally have. -- saw it on Yule's blog

I remember during one of the debates when President Bush said the Iraqis long for elections. I said to myself, disbelieving, “you mean they want *this*?”

Can you imagine going through another one of these? We have been viciously fucked over by the corporate media and the corporate plutocracy. The Democrats, who put up a weak pretend fight, are merely the strawman enablers of the whole charade.

As soon as John fuck you Kerry conceded, the media immediately pounced on the 65 million who voted for the democrat and the millions more who were too disgusted by the fake show to begin with. It’s almost like a feeding frenzy, this moral values bullshit. And it’s one big mind fuck to be sure.

Basically, we are being told to bow down to the cult. Wait, check that. The RELIGIOUS cult. It exists, but despite this propaganda onslaught, it is most definitely a minority. That should be relatively simple to work out – 60 percent of the eligible voters voted, roughly half went to Kerry and of the remaining 30 percent, I’m guessing maybe half of them are in the religious wing of the Bush cult.

Need I go into what the cult stands for? We all know. It’s ugly, it’s fascist, it’s predatory. And that’s what the media is pleased to call “moral.”

I caught a few minutes of CNN last night. I have cut out almost all TV and all the “news” shows, but my need to know what people are watching gets the better of me, and so I turn on the 24-hour cable news networks for a quick peek a few times a week. Paula Zahn was interviewing New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. I can’t compare the last four years, but my God! She was practically channeling Bush and Rove. The smirk was there. The contempt. The obvious satisfaction in the election’s correct outcome.

Poor Bill. So reasonable. Trying to talk with someone with no interest in what he was saying. “Damnit, Bill, I have my script and I will not come off it,” Zahn all but said. “you democrats are losers, out of step, history. You better get in line with the awesome power of BushCult.”

So I switch over to Fox. Remember, I’m supposed to be engaged in a democratic act here, relying on the press to inform me, a citizen. It’s Bill O’Reilly. Oh, the sneer, it was out in full hubris. What is it with news consumers that they love sneers and smirks? (I know, I know, something about hate being a palliative for the powerless).

Anyway, haha, are you ready? Are you laughing with me yet? O’Reilly is talking about Hillary Clinton and the chances of her running for prez in 2008. It must be like a ghost limb. You just finished putting on your 2004 charade and you can’t quite believe it’s over, so, absurdly, you reach for 2008, four fucking years from now, when, quite possibly, we’ll all be dead. (sorry, but don’t you think gallows humor helps at this point?).

What’s truly funny, and how we manage to laugh here in a Red State, is later when we were getting ready for bed, Leigh said “what are Rush and Hannity going to complain about now? Hillary?” And I told her, yep, guess what I just watched on Fox?

She has a good point, though. And a lot has already been said about how the Repubs now have a second-term president and both houses of congress, and therefore have enough rope to hang themselves good and proper and no one to blame but themselves.

Wait, what am I saying? Accountability? That would still require a non-corporate press, and if we had one, Bush would have already been impeached. Instead, they are busy greasing the skids for a one-party, warmongering dictatorship. They say it’s a moral values revolution.

And, as we know from the Suskind article, if the Orwellian motherfuckers say it, it’s true. It’s the “reality” we have to deal with. Unable to comprehend, unwilling to fight, the Democrats are rolling over.

Even though I’ve spent some time here recently saying that I don’t believe the vote reflects a majority or plurality or mandate or whatever bullshit the media is bandying about, I do recognize that “the story” is that we are a one-party theocracy. Because, as of now, every democratic institution has failed: the in-name-only two-party system, the press, the integrity of the vote.

As Harry has been saying, it’s now time to get radical. Corporate personhood is one place to start. And how about the Federal Reserve? Our money is controlled by a private corporation. These private bankers can print money in an unrestricted fashion; there is no tying it to a gold standard. They can then lend it to the U.S. government at interest, throwing the government and the populace into their debt.

Do we really want to talk about power and the ability to create reality? From what I’ve heard, JFK did. Apparently one reason he was assassinated was that he wanted to wrest control of the Federal Reserve from private interests.

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