How the Progressive Punditry's Inability to Communicate the Big Picture to the Mainstream Media Supports Bush and his Right Wing Base

Note: When I was trying to find Frank Rick's email I noticed that The New York Times does not allow nonmembers to access the columnist's email addresses.

Truth is a shock to the system. To the critical thinker there is much missing in the discussion about current events and politics and policies. The speech at the UN that Chavez seemed odd and simplistic but it propelled Noam Chomsky's book to the Bestseller list knocking out NYT's Frank Rich's critical expose of the war and general cynicism of Bush/Rove politics from the no 1 spot.

Seems a bit a odd that it takes a foreign leader like Hugo Chevez is needed to make mainstream America aware of one of its own greatest living social and political critics. Yet that to me is the most striking thing about it all - in the 20 years I have researched media and current events this is the first time I ever heard Chomsky referenced in the mass media.

Chavez's waving of Chomsky's book into the air during his UN speech may have done more to make the American mainstream aware of alternative thinking than the American progressives themselves even those who get access to the mainstream media such as Rich and the Nation's Katrina Van Huevel.

Yet Rich when asked about Chavez's speech on ABC's This Week, http://abcnews.go.com/ThisWeek/ the first words that roll from his mouth are "I hate him." At first I was not sure if he meant Chavez or Chomsky... There is much about Chavez to dislike, but why put him in a different league than Bush when the very book he writes makes them look very similar - as opportunitistic ego centric master manipulators? I guess the answer is that Bush is American and Chavez is not. Bush is not simply a SOB but he's our SOB and that changes everything and indeed sets the faux progressives apart from those deeply dedicated to progressive values. Recenly in Israel we saw a similar dynamic with even Haretz - the main progressive newspaper - suddenly sounding very hawkish during the invasion of Lebanon.

In America there is much questioning about why the Democrats are failing to get their message across to mainstream and some say it is an issue of organization and sound bites. The answer to me goes to deeper than that. Even the progressive wing of the Democratic party is dominated by well intentioned but still top down thinking folks and so it smells of hypocrisy and more importantly such smells are disempowering to the grassroots rank and file. Conservatives are more effective in mobilizing their grassroos, as the conservatives are more inclined to uncritically accept authority and the perogatives of top down organizational structures that dominate their political movement.

Another major issue: Progressives when they get air time seem very timid in connecting the dots and standing their ground, because they are afraid they will be called out of touch with the mainstream, liberal or worse unAmerican.

It is not so much that Rich had to say he loved Chavez, but he just blurted out "I hate him" without really considering why Chavez's anti-American views seem to reflect the sentiment of a growing number of people around the world.

Its another missed opportunity to connect the dots between the stupidity of American foreign policies and growing global resentment of America - especially in relation to his recent book on Iraq and the War on Terror.

Are we Winning: An Alternative View on the War on Terror

Its been Five years since 9/11 and yet much coverage is still devoted to 9/11 and the resulting War on Terror. The targeting of the Pentagon and the Twin Towers was no doubt a provocative act that shook this country to its very foundation. However I question much of the rhetoric that resulted and led to many policies and approaches which I believe have not made America safer and have instead only made the cultural divide between Islam and the West more pronounced.

With reference to the Op-ed recently published in the News Leader “Are we winning?,” my view is that we need to look seriously at whether the attack on Iraq was justified, when there was no clear link between Iraq and 9/11. The huge expense of deploying troops to these countries has meant that we don’t have money to address both the root cause of not just terrorism (which is the same with all terrorism poverty and marginalization) but global resentment of the USA and its policies on the external front. Internally that $300 billion could have gone a long way to make America’s airports, ports and railways as safe as they possibly can be.

In terms of winning the war we should also consider the possibility that there’s actually more serious issues that threaten civilization than Islamic extremism and terrorism. People in Springfield seem very conscious of the War on Terror as a threat to their way of life, but when the debate about the coal power plant came and went residents voted for the status quo by passing a bond issue to fund another big coal power plant. This is understandable as most people do not see renewable energy sources as viable alternatives to fossil fuels. Yet it must have been lost on most folks who voted for this bond issue, that many scientists now say that the greatest challenge to humanity is not terrorism but Global Climate Change. One can only wonder how rapidly renewables could have become part of a viable national energy strategy to fight Global Climate Change, had the 300 billion spent on Iraq been instead spent on wind, solar, bio-fuels and conservation.

Note: I just sent the content below to the local newspaper where I am currently staying: The Springfield Newsleader.

While many Red state and even Blue state farmers support Bush and the Republicans...

While many Red state and even Blue state farmers support Bush and the Republicans, the fact is that they could care less for the farmers because they get a significant chunk of campaign finance change from the pockets of big agri-biz companies like Con Agra and ADM. Lets not forget the Farm Bureau who according to FamilyFarmer.org (a project of Defenders of Wildlife) works as front to mobilize rural farm folks to defend issues that are most dearest to the very people that are putting them out of business!

Interestingly while often denigrated in rural areas (and not just in the red states look at upstate NY and Hillary Clinton’s struggles there), many liberals actually support organic farmers by going to Whole Foods, Trader Joe's and other health food stores. The rapid rise of the organic food industry is helping to reverse the demise of the American small farmer. The result is that many small farmers are now out-competing big business and developing ways of producing food that are less harmful to humans and the environment.

Mainstream Pundits Bash Fahrenheit 9/11 without Mentioning that much of the film's Allegations have been Proven True

After hearing all this predictable negativity from the mainstream political pundits about Fahrenheit 9/11, I was wondering how many of them actually saw the movie. It would be a great exercise to go over point by point what Michael Moore was trying to say. I think it would be shocking to see that despite some questionable assertions how much of what he said has been confirmed by mainstream institutions such as the 9/11 committee itself and the recent senate report that explored the links between Al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein's Iraq.

The REAL QUESTION is; are we open to the truth or would we prefer to bash those who go against our preconceived notions of reality?

On ABC’s This Week (Sept 10 2006) George Will went on the attack against the Nation’s Katrina vanden Heuvel regarding Michael Moore's Farenheit 9/11 movie, in which Will incorrectly portrayed as docudrama, Vanden Heuvel went on the defensive (possibly - and understandably so - fearing that any passionate defense of Moore's work on Farenheit 9/11 would undermine the mainstream pundit credentials she has worked so hard to build over the years) and did not challenge him on the fact that much of what Moore said in the movie was in fact proven true in the years after the movie by numerous reports mentioned in the mainstream media. Zakaria while noting that Will was incorrect in labeling Moore's movie a docudrama went on to denounce the movie (without really explaining why it should be denounced!). The responses of vanden Huevel and Zakaria in their reaction to Will's denunciation of Moore demonstrate the power of the conservatives to define the boundaries of the discussion in the mainstream media, particularly in relation to economic and national security issues.

Also see Chris Hitchens critical view of Farenheit 9/11.

With the steady rise in our reality of being driven and influenced by a celebrity driven culture, complementing this has been an increase distance betweenthe lives of the commoner and elite celebrity, professional and old wealth classes. What's more intersting is the idea that celebrities and VIPs in the USA are more isolated from the common classes and everyday life than in the UK or Europe.

Mark Lawson says that American anchors and top journalists are wisked away in limousines and taken to special, high security VIP airport facilities as they await their private jets. In America there appears to be something exclusive in having high security, VIP existence which makes the new elite more separated from the lives of the common people any elite has ever been in history (Mark Lawson Loss of Innocence Guardian Weekly 5/9/99 22).

While in aristocratic Britain, famous people are seen amongst the masses riding the Underground and frequenting neighborhood supermarkets, American celebrities and other well known, powerful people seem to go to quite a distance separating themselves from the masses. A lot of this may be out of necessity since the American civic orientation seemed to really encourage over the years a number of events include a predisposition towards celebrity obsession and worship and the corespondingly of whole new media and entertainment industries. Much of this led to obsessional tendencies on the part of die hard fans and/or sociopaths. The results of this in terms of privacy intrusion and security were quite frightening to many notable personalities.

However it is hard to isolate whether the rich and famous live their security obsessed celebrity class, lives separated from the lives and experiences of the common people for this reason totally. Since it is that the American experience has for quite some time fostered the notion of us verses them, but this has been if not as much, then more apparent in England. England is a much more spatially tight society, that has not seen the same the demographic and cultural changes take place. For one thing there is less space to move at a level that most Americans have grown accustomed to. British society is still centered in London a city of seven million people, the scale is much smaller and in many respects. England is much more tightly knit society than the U.S. The social fabric for the common people may be more satisfying than that what many see as the soulless culture in America. The common people in the U.K. not been completely rendered into mindless consuming masses to the extent that they have in the U.S.

However there are signs that this is changing, as their have been an increasing occurrence of trajedies involving famous people. More people are living their lives through famous people that idolize to an extent which many psychologists might see as mentally unhealthy. When one lives their life vicariously through someone else, there is a element of meaninglessness and worthlessness in their own lives, so they put all their energy into the worship of the all powerful and supremely distant other. Thus a cult of personality "ring "is configured much like a religious cult, and all religions begin as cults. This may explain why they so deviate from the original truth of the prophet. It is for this reason that almost all organized religions are little more charismatic, "personality" games that are defined by idol worship, "ass kissing," back stabbing and a heavy dose of hedonism.

With the death of Princess Diana there was a Kennedyesqe show of sorrow. The obsessive compulsive behavior among a large cross section of society that manifested illuminates the magnitude by which people have lost a sense of themselves and then seek to recapture it among the people who "matter" in the world. It demonstrates the gross distance between the haves and the have nots that goes beyond simple economic statistics. England has been seen as less affected by celebrity, but this little more than a quaint platitude that is useful to remind Brits as to their superiority over the Americans.

Yet there are signs that England is becoming more Americanized. That it is not immune to the statistical inevitability of tragedy as the celebrity obsessed cultures of the world cultivate mentally unstable people who target the stars. Jill Dando was a television presenter (anchor) that was recently killed by a stalker outside of her terraced house in London. Ironically she had just sold her house and planned on moving to more private and exclusive surroundings. Her killing has shaken the British from their ivory tower that was perched way above the Americans. Soon after Dando's killing in 1999, the BBC tightened security so that uncredentialed, unauthorized people could not so easily access on the premises of the most prestigious media entity. George Harrison was nearly killed when somebody entered his house and stabbed in the chest several times.

On a deeper level, our need to become important relates to the sense of ordinariness within the common everyday lives that more people live. What's interesting is we are not simply talking about different class distinction but entirely different human realities and the increasing inability of one lower class group to relate to the reality of the upper class group. Regardless of the rationale for celebrities isolating themselves from the general population, we must consider whether such isolation of the elite classes from the common person experiences in the USA as well as the world is healthy in terms of maintaining a thriving and sustainable global society.