Now that the Neocons have once again risen from their graves to use their magic powers to wipe out our Elite Media's memory of anything that happened before January 20, 2009, it seemed a sadly appropriate time to republish a nibble from this post of mine from that mysterious Land Before History:
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[Conservative leadership] -- liked the press that conspires with them -- speak out feebly or not at all on the ongoing scandals of NOLA…and Iraq…and Abu Ghraib…and torture as policy…and secret prisons…and purloined elections…and habeas corpus being walled up and left to die like Fortunato.
And the many treasons of Karl Rove.
And the destruction of the CIA’s WMD intel infrastructure out of Cheney pique.
And their base’s Rapture-based molestation of genuine Christian values.
Their antediluvian superstitions that supercede any notion of science.
And the many treasons of Karl Rove.
Their pathological need to lie – badly -- about every single fucking thing.
And millions of missing emails.
And the many, many treasons of Karl Rove.
And so many more, all notable for the fact that no one in the MSM and no on in the Republican party dares to even whisper their simple common element: That they are all the fault of George W. Bush.
That their Dear Leader and his Regent are lying, criminal freaks who have led them all to disaster after disaster.
These GOP regime-dead-enders are weak and stupid and rotten to the bone. One or two hard, righteous punches and they would go down like a sack of wet switchgrass.
One or two of the kind of punches that the MSM used to casually rain on Bill Clinton day after day after day...
And yet the MSM continues to prop up the rotting carcass of the GOP like the corpse in ”Weekend at Bernie's”, and waltz it lovingly across the national stage year after year after year, protecting it as ferociously as they would their own children even as it goes raving mad, putrefies and crumbles to reek and maggots in their arms.
Is it that meme-nto disease? That inability to form any new political memories after 1997? Or is it something darker?
Whatever the reason, the story behind it would certainly be gripping, epic, infuriating and a great and lasting service to the cause of Democracy.
Too bad we no longer have a press capable of telling it.
9 comments:
The press didn't tell it back then why the hell would they now!
So true about the difference a truth telling press would make.
Driftglass,
I believe one of the reasons we find ourselves in the dicked up world we’re in is because one of the worst things to happen to Democracy was the creation of Corporations. They are nothing but shelters for the true owners to hide behind, and from behind the Corporations they are free from any consequences for anything they do. The MSM is now wholly owned by corporate fronts. Corporations have become the front line weapon for the Fascists in their war against Democracy. Corporations, as well as being many different tools, are capable of providing all the money needed to self perpetuate its self.
The war Iraq is the finest example of the true power of Corporations at work. They helped to gin up the war, they made money from the war by looting our treasury, they kept the war going, and they are now rewriting the history of the crimes that they helped create. Add to that the current rush to now defer blame for the resulting implosion of Iraq.
All with the use of the MSM and lickspittles like Brooks, Gregory, Friedman…add your own names for fun and entertainment.
I hate to sound like a conspiracy nut, but the actions of Corporations over time as told by the few intrepid people who have investigated them seem to prove out what insidious monsters and tools Corporations truly are.
"I could not agree that the laws of this kingdom, relating to the struldbruggs, were founded upon the strongest reasons, and such as any other country would be under the necessity of enacting in the like circumstances. Otherwise, as avarice is the necessary consequent of old age, those immortals would in time become proprietors of the whole nation, and engross the civil power, which, for want of abilities to manage, must end in the ruin of the public." (Gulliver's Travels, part III, chapter 10, "The Luggnaggians commended -- a particular description of the struldbruggs, with many conversations between the author and some eminent persons upon that subject)
We used to have those laws, but we pulled their teeth in 1886, and now, as anon explains, we are in the hands of monsters.
"'Absolutely, Mr. Charlesworth?'
"'Positively, Mr. Green!'"
(Frederik Pohl and C.M. Kornbluth, Gladiator-at-Law)
I was a teen growing up in the Reagan era and had this sneaking suspicion things weren't quite right but I couldn't put a finger on it. It wasn't until Bush 2: The Return that the process started by Reagan, continuing through Bush 1 and then Clinton that it all came together in stark relief. Yes it's corporations and yes it's unregulated campaign financing and the constant rotating door by which characters pass between government and big business but, for me at least, I had a hard time seeing it because it wasn't until we had a monumentally stupid and out of his depth human play at President that it was clear a system had been put in place for this kind of situation to occur. Maybe I was just late to the party. And now the morally bankrupt republicans are infighting with their fascist base and their so-called moderate base because they opened pandora's box just a little too much. In a two party system, that leaves us !@#$ because we have no way of dealing with a polarity where one side is completely insane. And thanks to those corporations that snapped up various media outlets, news has become compromised. It's all enough to make one so cynical that you think nothing is ever going to change. Personally I feel like the insanity of the right is pushing the left to respond in kind. Wonder how this will end.
It's all enough to make one so cynical that you think nothing is ever going to change. [...] Wonder how this will end.
In the spirit of John Simon's famous dictum that there is no point in saying less than your predecessors have said, I defer, and not for the first time, to Bukko Canukko in these very pages:
The lamescream corporate meeja can't implode fast enough. Neither can the United States. If it just falls apart quickly, and brings the rest of the current pollution-spewing pattern of civilization down with it, maybe there's a chance for the current evolution of life on Earth to survive. As long as the U.S. or Israel doesn't start throwing nukes. The human population is going to go through a severe bottleneck anyway due to Peak Oil eliminating most of the food supply that nourishes us Yeast People. The choice is between seeing 90% of us die prematurely, or 100%, along with 90% of all other species composed of more than a single cell.
The answer to the Fermi paradox is that any species capable of inventing radio is at a significant risk of inventing television, and once you invent that drug, it's very easy to spend your life on the nod. Add in a word-burning oil habit, and you discover why sentience is so chancy as a long-term survival strategy: a species starts thinking it can forget and ignore unpleasant realities out of existence, right up until they bite its ass completely the fuck off.
Trouble is, non-sentience doesn't work as a really long-term survival strategy, either--because life needs sentience to get out of its solar system before its sun becomes unstable and makes its planet uninhabitable.
"In the long run we are all dead."
Agree to a point, but remember Teddy Roosevelt slapped down corporations. The Supreme Court is of fault here by being so pro business that really they are anti consumer
Dan@12:52
I understand what you’re trying to say about governmental regulatory oversight of corporations. But who do you really think is undoing the regulatory laws? My point is that it doesn’t and hasn’t worked because corporations are nothing more than fancy fronts for legally sanctioned criminal activity with no criminal responsibility to a single person, and that is the way they like it. There are never any real consequences for their actions as individuals.
The old time Robber baron industrialists learned that being the sole owner (Rockefeller, Carnegie, Vanderbilt, etc.) led to personal responsibility for any company wrong doings, so, corporations were and are the perfect never go to jail free card.
Just compare a small business owner and their responsibilities to the law and the punishment they will receive if they do something wrong with that of any CEO of any corporation. Corporations kill, maim, and destroy like the plague with little or no legal punishment for any human being. Oh, corporations get fined some money, sometimes, which is usually less than one month of profit.
Why do you think there was such a push for tort reform, it was because corporations don’t want to even pay monetary damages for their wrong doings if they get sued by ordinary citizens. Have you noticed that BP is now trying to get out of its agreement to pay for damages to the Gulf states for that gigantic oil spill disaster? Did anyone go to jail over that disaster?
The Supreme Court is now another wholly owned subsidiary of the corporations. They gave the corporations full rights, as if the corporations were human beings and actual citizens. The courts have also allowed that money is equivalent to free speech so that corporations can speak their mind and influence our political system at will.
Corporations are psychotic and sociopathic. Their only goal is profit, even to the point of their destruction and ours.
Please, do some research, as I said earlier many intrepid folks have done some fine investigative work on Corporations and their nefarious activities.
Sorry for the long winded reply.
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