I Don't Want to Hear It!

Ah, my liberal friends. They get themselves up in a lather over how these crazy tea party lunatics are putting through all sorts of nutty bills in state legislatures and even the United States Congress.

I don't want to hear it.

They get all hot and bothered about how desperately needed social services are being cut, how schools are being dumbed down and turned into training schools for dead-end jobs, and how the military-industrial complex gets all the public money.

I don't want to hear it.

They grind their teeth audibly about how the ultra-rich and the big corporations are getting out of paying any taxes, while more and more of a tax burden is being dumped on the backs of lower- and middle-class citizens.

I don't want to hear it.

They get steamed how the religious right (neither religious nor right) wants to get rid of everybody but the white, heterosexual, evangelical Christian, politically conservative.

I don't want to hear it.

My liberal friends don't want to hear it, but they have no one to blame but themselves for the state things are in. Their complacency is to blame. We're in this situation because my liberal friends got lazy and comfortable, and, while they were sleeping at the switch, the crackpots were everything that the liberals should have been - organized, with a clear uniting plan - and they, not we, got their people into Congress, they got their people onto every court from the local level to the Supreme Court, they took over the news media.

Some of my liberal friends still want to complain and belly-ache. They'll be whining about George W. Bush a hundred years from now.

I don't want to hear it!

Others of my liberal friends set all sorts of silly goals, like impeaching the boneheads on the Supreme Court, or getting rid of the Electoral College.

Nope, I don't want to hear that, either!

But this doesn't mean that I think we should just give up. That has never been my philosophy. But we have to decide our best course of action.

We're tilting at windmills if we think we can get anybody impeached when their friends control most of the state legislatures and the Congress.

And we're out of our minds if we think we can get rid of the Electoral College such that there is direct voting for the office of president; this requires a Constitutional Convention, and my liberal friends forget that the wackos are aching to call a such a convention to order - and once it's been convened, anything can happen, literally; any demagogue can stand up and say let's change the Constitution so only aardvarks can vote for presidential candidates, and if that demagogue persuades a majority to vote for it, it's the Constitution! And, since their friends in the various state legislatures will be choosing the convention delegates, their agenda will win out, not ours.

Instead, we need to think in terms of BUILDING BLOCKS. We need to start by continuing to point out the insanity that's going on (tax breaks for the rich and their companies, removing needed social services, attempts to privatize or eliminate Social Security and Medicare, fighting oil wars, trashing the Bill of Rights, and so on). We need to build a groundswell to elect to state legislatures and the Congress individuals who are more honorable, and more accountable to their constituents ​and not their big contribu​tors or their party bosses.

Then, a decent Congress can impeach these nincompoops, and presidents like Obama can lead more effectively and appoint better people to the Supreme Court.

My talk about building blocks like this frustrates a lot of my liberal friends because it's slow, and it's frustrating because it doesn't yield the big results they want immediately.

Well, maybe so. But it has one advantage over silly talk about impeaching judges and canning the Electoral College.

It's a goal that we acually have a chance to reach.

We have to remain strong, consistent, and united. Remember, these blankety-blanks don't just control the Supreme Court and the Congress. They control a critical mass of (what used to pass for) print and broadcast news media. This is why it's going to be a serious uphill battle. But we have no choice if we want to save this world.

After all, what I'm recommending is exactly what the Tea Party wack jobs did. They were smart. They were patient. They set themselves a step-by-step plan. They first repeated, over and over, the same consistent message - that "we" need to elect people who think like "we" do. Then they put up candidates who provided that opportunity; and these candidates won.

This is a proven method - our opponents have proven it works.

Now we too must do the same.

So stop whining, my liberal friends. I don't want to hear it!

Instead, start repeating as often as possible to your friends who've been reprogrammed by the Tea Party nutbags our consistent point - that the creeps they've put into public office are endangering not just the financial and moral integrity and safety of the United States, but of the world.

We must put up candidates who repeat these same points.

We must not give up; we must continue to strive to win hearts and minds.

And this, after all, is why I wrote this column, and continue to speak in this blog. I believe in what I am saying!

If you believe it too, start saying it!

Winehouse and Terrorism

Surely all reasonable people feel a deep sense of grief for the death of so many innocent people recently at the hands of madmen. From Arizona to Texas to Norway these madmen have decided to make their point in dramatic fashion by engaging in the wanton destruction of life.

I share those feelings of grief.

Surely all reasonable people also feel somewhat frightened - for there is an unpredictability about these events. Who can possibly predict when and where one of these crazies will strike?

I share those feelings of fear.

But I also feel angry.

I am angry with politicians who use violent rhetoric in reference to those who oppose their partisanship. I am angry with politicians who even go so far as to visualize their hate; Sarah Palin, a maverick lunatic politician of astonishingly limited acumen (that means you're stupid, Sarah), put images of gunsight targets on the faces of politicians she hoped to see lose their re-election bids. And I get increasingly angry at these politicians when they piously deny using such rhetoric or insist that it had no relation to the decision of crackpots who go out shooting and bombing -- in support of these politicians' views.

And I am angry with the news media. They play up the death of Amy Winehouse - even though no one should be surprised that a drug addict should be found dead like thousands of other drug addicts; her considerable musical talent does not make it any more noteworthy, since dozens, at least, of famous pop musicians have likewise died from drug complications. And while playing up Winehouse they play down the mass murders at around the same time in Norway and Texas.

Where is the outrage on the part of the media? Where is their sense of priorities as to what is a serious news story and what is hardly more than entertainment?

And I am angry with the public, worldwide, because I don't get the sense that very many people share my anger with the politicians and the media. I hear them "isn't it too bad" -ing about Winehouse, and the subject of Norway hardly ever comes up.

Today, the media are almost universally owned by large companies - and the people in charge do not demand impartial news coverage from their employees. They do not demand serious raking in the muck of evil that is drowning this world. No, they demand profits! So news is put up for its entertainment value. Giggly anchor people chitter-chat with giddy reporters, and rarely do the real events get serious attention.

Somewhere along the line - probably Roone ("Wide World of Sports") Arledge - realized that television news could be a profit-maker instead of a highly respected public service. Out with the Walter Cronkite types. In with the reporter-cum-celebrity and the ditzy weather girl with the big you-know-whats. Out with serious reports that lasted (can you believe it?) as much as five minutes, and in with little puff pieces no more than a minute in length. Out with reporting, in with inane banter among the boneheads in the studio. Out with integrity, in with ratings.

This is why the no-surprise death of Amy Winehouse gets bigger headlines than nearly one hundred people unexpectedly slaughtered in Norway at the hands of unmitigated evil.

What is more, those large companies demand the news that their employees publish to reflect their political values, to support the reactionary boneheads who call for violence against anyone who dares to disagree. Rupert Murdoch just let his people get a little sloppy. What his media empire does is done by every other news outfit from Cumulus to Fox.

And I am angry at how the news media slant their reporting in the direction of racism. Remember Fox News accusing Barack and Michelle Obama of committing a "terrorist fist bump"? Nothing has changed since.

It is immensely curious that news descriptions of the dual massacres in Norway included the word "terrorist" -- up until it was determined that no Muslim extremists were involved. Once it became clear that the, ahem, alleged perpetrator was ostensibly Christian, the word "terrorist" disappeared.

(Let me be clear in passing that Islam and Christianity, like every faith, denounce and decry violence and killing altogether, except perhaps in self-defense. They do not call for the murder of people of other faiths. They do not condone the murder of innocents in order to draw attention to the murderer's religious or political views. As far as I am concerned, anyone who kills for any reason other than unavoidable self-defense or the defense of innocents is not a Christian or a Jew or a Muslim or a Buddhist or a Hindu or anything else but a violent hypocrite. And, contrary to what you've been told by uninformed know-it-all news media types, Islam does not condone terrorism or mass-murder, or the forcible conversion of non-Muslims. In fact, the Qur'an clearly states that if you take one life it is as if you have killed all of humanity, and that conversely if you save one life it is as if you have saved all of humanity. There is more about Jesus in the Qur'an than in the New Testament. Judaism and Islam are incredibly close: kosher and halal are just about identical, the Tanakh is sacred scripture to both, and both have noble heritages of excellence in historiography, law, and philosophy. And so on!)

So why would the news media describe a mass-murderer of Muslim background as a terrorist but describe a mass-murderer of Christian background as just a mass-murderer?

Terrorism, simply put, is the undertaking of dramatically violent actions in order to inspire terror in the general population. All of these mass murders of late clearly fit this definition.

Some people prefer to say that it is the undertaking of dramatically violent actions in order to publicize some (usually religious or quasi-religious) ideology. But even by this definition, the horrible events in recent weeks still fit; a madman who kills innocent people to dramatize his ideology that Muslims are destroying Europe, like the wacko who killed innocent people in the Oklahoma City government office building, or the lunatic who killed innocent people on the streets of Phoenix, is clearly a terrorist.

Therefore, if the news media only call Muslims "terrorists", and not Christians, they are implying that Christians are not capable of terrorism. They are implying that Islam somehow condones terrorism - which it absolutely does not! - and that Christianity opposes it. They are guilty of racism.

Moreover, as a friend pointed out to me, the news media talk about ostensibly Christian mass murderers as "supposedly" Christian, or "fringe" Christian (the unspoken axiom being that "real" Christians supposedly don't commit acts of terrorism) -- but they talk about ostensibly Muslim terrorists as "hardline" or "hardcore" Muslims (the unspoken axiom being that Islam supposedly orders its followers to go out and kill non-Muslims).

Again, this is racism in the news media.

Again, the news media are, intentionally or not, encouraging people to hate and even inciting them to do something with that hatred.

Again, the news media are ignoring the very real possibility that some unhinged mind will be so caught up in this racism that the individual will go off and kill a whole lot of people.

Meanwhile, I hear the news media decry Muslims because there is (so they say) no strong outcry against the evil madmen who, under the cloak of religion, wreak horrible death on innocents. The sad fact is that many Muslims are afraid to speak out, afraid to draw attention to themselves, afraid of attracting the venomous hatred of non-Muslims. Many other Muslims know that their efforts to speak out will only be thwarted; most news media are unwilling to publish the views of moderate Muslims because they prefer to perpetuate the fiction that "all Muslims are out to kill us".

Words are powerful instruments - as Voltaire pointed out, they are mightier than weapons. And every weapon-wielding terrorist, it always turns out, was whipped into a frenzy by rhetoric in the public media.

Osama wanted to destroy the U.S. government? He's succeeded; these teabaggers wouldn't ever have gotten into power without him. He wanted to destroy the U.S. economy? He's succeeded; the money being poured into the Pentagon is wrecking the financial infrastructure. He wanted to prove the imbecility of most Americans? He did, by saying exactly what he was going to do - and then doing it.

Meanwhile, the news media continue to live in an imaginary world of people just like them - white conservative Christians. They refuse to see how most of the world is not only anything but white or conservative Christian, but is getting angrier and angrier at the bigoted cowboy hubristic arrogance of the United States. The media continue to give insult to others, like saying "jihad" means "holy war" (which it doesn't), calling for a "Crusade" against Muslims (which is like calling for a Holocaust against Jews), and calling Muslim mass-murderers Muslim terrorists while excusing Norwegian mass-murderers from being called Christian or terrorist!

One can only hope for the day to return in which the politician was a pillar of probity, whose measured words were of peace and goodness, whose promises were kept, whose lives were exemplary.

One can only hope for the day to return in which the news media return to their primary and only proper function - to determine the truth, even when it is hidden, and to tell it fairly and dispassionately. And for their opinion editors to express outrage for any and all acts of violence, for any and all racism and bigotry, no matter who is responsible and against whom it is directed.

Disclaimer: James David Audlin was for many years a newspaper opinion page editor.

The Wrong Battle

My liberal friends are pleased that the constituency of such legislative bodies as the Congress today better reflects the actual makeup of the citizenry, that there are in the Congress more people of African and Latino and Native ancestry, more women, more gays, and so on.

Yet, at the same time, I see the Congress getting farther and farther from the actual beliefs and preferences of most of the citizenry. Notwithstanding the apparently greater congruence with the actual makeup of the citizenry of the United States, there is a clear press to tax the poor and not the rich, its determination to send the children of the poor off into foreign wars over (let's be honest) oil.

I wonder whether perhaps we liberals have chosen the wrong battle - we have sought to elect people to the Congress who superficially resemble us (different colors, faiths, and sexual orientations, etc.) - we have sought to elect people who are Black, etc., simply because they are Black, etc. - but we have failed to elect people whose views and voting records more properly reflect our belief in tolerance and respect for all people.

Why is this so?

I believe it is because

1) The powerful have bought much of the news media - the media empires of arrogant rich like Rupert Murdoch, the few newspaper chains owning a great majority of newspapers, the few companies that own an overwhelming number of radio and television stations. They then proceed to twist the news to serve their goals of gaining even more power and money.

2) The powerful have coopted the Congress and other governmental institutions. Members of both houses of the Congress vote at the beck and call of not their constituents (as provided for in the Constitution) but of their party bosses and their powerful lobbyists and campaign donors. This means, in effect, we have fallen into the monstrosity of taxation without representation. We are forced to pay taxes that support a governmental institution that fails, utterly, to do our will as a people. And this, ultimately, means democracy, if ever the United States had it - rather than its being effectively a corporation of, by, and for the rich white oligarchy - is now destroyed in that country.