I mean what makes me crazy is that this country has two political parties. And one of those parties, extremely well-funded, still with a strong hold on the federal government, is totally dedicated to make sure nothing gets done. America is hurting right now, America needs help. And the Republicans not only don't care about helping them, they want to stop everyone else from helping them.
Now normally this would be a recipe for political disaster. But we have the media actively assisting Republicans in their obfuscation, for the obvious reasons that their corporate owners want the Republicans in power so they can help them make more money. So everyone is confused and doesn't know who to blame, and we enter a situation where even after the debacle de Bush, if the economy doesn't significantly improve and/or the Democrats don't enact real health care reform, Republicans stand to make real gains in the 2010 elections.
The problems are manifold. One is that there is a hardcore base in this country that hates. They hate black people, they hate gays, they hate anyone who is different from them. The Republicans have thrown their lot in with this bunch. Now the time for these people is running out, and they know it. One wonders if they know the Republicans don't give a shit about them but they can't find anyone else to even pay them lip service. And the hatred itself is worth remarking upon because it so obviously comes from fear. And it's the fear of the oppressor. For a long time, this country internalized the believe that white people were better, and deserved better, than people of other races. Now the people who have lived and died by that belief are scared shitless. They know how minorities got treated back in the day, and many of them automatically assume the same will be done to them. Leaving utterly aside the idea that Obama is about as interested in retribution for racism as he is in prosecuting US war crimes or implementing single-payer health care. One only wishes Obama was the radical so many people have portrayed him as.
So that's one problem; a large chunk of the population recoiling in horror from any kind of substantive change. Now these people by themselves could not sustain Republican power. But you've got another large group of people who really don't follow politics that much; they don't see themselves as "those kind of people" (Somehow in the US, we've managed to embed the idea in the national character that politics is best left to "experts" and isn't something that the average man should mess with too much or think too hard about. It's been branded a specialized field, like electronics or explosives. That's a whole other post). These people, I think, tend to see politics, when they think of it at all, as more like a sport. Sometimes the Democrats lose, sometimes the Republicans do, like the Red Sox and the Yankees. Don't mention last night. I don't want to talk about it. The media is happy to feed this perspective, providing as they do the Democrats' limp, half-hearted defenses of the truth and the Republicans' utter bullshit as two opposing points of view with equal weight and shrugging their shoulders in bewilderment as to which side is true. Noticeably absent are the many other points of view any particular topic (health care, the wars, the economy, etc., etc.) might be examined from.
So the formula breaks down like this: Democrats do a shitty job proposing solutions because the cost to fix real problems would upset their rich campaign backers. Republicans attack their proposals, although instead of criticising their ineffectiveness, which would raise the questions that said campaign backers don't want asked, they make up lies and horseshit and scare people away from supporting them. The media acts stupid and presents both sides as gospel truth that they're utterly incapable of differentiating between. And America sinks ever more slowly into helpless despair.
The thing is, this shit has been going on for something like thirty years now, at least. And all we've been able to do about it is elect a black president, which, while it makes us feel good and causes the racists of America to have a hugely entertaining collective meltdown, doesn't really solve things because he really doesn't appear to have any major interest in changing the current paradigm. We've learned a lot of things in the past eight years; how better to win elections, how--somewhat--to make our voices heard in government, even, in some isolated instances, to get the better of corporations. But the one thing we never seem to have any real preparation for is the corporate spin provided by the media. We're constantly playing catch-up, reacting to the latest bunch of nonsense and trying to correct the story that the Republicans and the corporations have already been able to frame. It ends up discrediting us because the media is constantly able to play the "teach the controversy" meme and the ordinary viewer either gets lost or gets bored.
This not to discount the great work being done by bloggers on this site, TPM, HuffPost, FDL and others; but the bare fact is we are not reaching the audience we need to. We need to come up with a strategy that will allow us to get the information we have to large portions of the country, and in a way that will listen (which most lefty bloggers don't do; most of them tend to write for an audience of the converted, often heavily relying on snide comments and in-jokes that people who aren't already confirmed leftists won't get or feel sympathetic toward; for instance, I think your average American would be bewildered at any kind of hatred towards David Gregory or Chuck Todd). Once we find a way to create a counter-narrative to corporate media, we'll find it that much easier to convince people that what we want is the right thing for them. And that's half the battle to getting the things we want enacted.
I'll conclude this with the perfect example of what I mean:
Hillary answers criticism of Bill's trip to N. Korea. And of course John Bolton is a fool, and her takedown of him was pretty funny. But listen to what Hillary said:
It is a recognition that certain countries that I think are kind of beyond the pale of the rule of law hold people and subject them to long prison terms that are absolutely unfair and unwarranted.
Which country is she talking about there? Who has been imprisoning people without trial for years on end, some of them who were teenagers when they were first taken into captivity? Yet Fareed Zakaria didn't ask the question. Why? Is he that stupid? Doubt it. Who told him not to?
This is what we're up against. I've said it again and again; until we manage to either bypass the current media or somehow loosen the corporations' control over it, not much will change. I'll admit to not having the first clue how to do that, but goddamn it, it's far past time for us to start having the discussion.