On this day when we remember those who fought and died for this country it is fitting to ask what they died for?
Was it for Freedom Fries?
Was it so radio stations instead of playing the Dixie Chicks, could burn their cds?
Was it so Colin Powell could present the UN with a map of WMD sites in Iraq.
Was it so the press could endlessly parse the rise and fall of a laugh known as the cackle?
Was it so candidates for the greatest office in the land, who hope to reclaim the Presidency for democracy, could lie, dissemble and attack each other with Republican talking points?
I hope the answer that springs effortlessly to mind is NO!! Because the negative campaign is a mistake. Ask Max Cleland! Ask Helen Gahagan Douglas! And ask John Kerry! But perhaps most threatened by the negative campaign which some candidates are now waging is the ability to fight the reality of our political landscape today. Maybe, if they can't win, they don't care about it. I dunno. All I do know is we are still poised on the brink! This democracy is in tatters, so compromised and battered that two centuries of American soldiers who bled and died for her, wouldn't recognize her today.
Undermined by lies and propaganda, a democracy we are finding out, can easily become a dream remembered.
There is only one way for a democracy to survive and that is if the people can be informed. But the media we once trusted to tell us the truth cares little for that sad, forlorn commodity. It doesn't sell. Not like lies, negativity and finger pointing. The more rancid the lie, the more corrosive the information and the greater the harm, the more our corporate media loves it.
And so,sadly, what has happened to the truth in this Primary Season? To Democratic candidate truth? Why did the decision to go negative arouse little opposition? Why didn't it cause an outcry? Where was the understanding that negativity only feeds the Republican attack and noise machine.
If you doubt that machine is still a problem, I ask you? Why does a cackle garner more stories and repetition than health care positions? Why does a question "suggested" by a campaign official rocket to the front pages, when the effort to imeach the vice president is ignored? Why do the scandals associated with some candidates get front page coverage, and the scandals of others never climb off the inside pages? Why have all but two of the democratic candidates gone negative in their campaigns instead of hashing out their issues and positions. How can a media official entrusted with safeguarding the fairness and accuracy of a debate smear and relenetlessly attack one of the candidates with impunity? Why didn't the democratic candidates agree at least not to fuel the Republican noise machine?
Actually, noise machine is quite an euphemism. It is the politics of the Big Lie which has killed Thousands of Americans in foreign lands for close to seven years now.
We are confronted by classic totalitarian tactics daily. Civic debate is replaced by public scapegoating. Smearing opponents versus debating them is another tactic.
Everyone discounts Richards for refusing to go negative. Oh, hell, the wisdome goes; he's angling for veep. Maybe he isn't! Maybe he is refusing to be drawn into the brainwashing and the relentless disinformation and the demonizing of opponents.
I weep for us. For me! Because we are all in this together. And we have to demand this campaign Be Different. We can't think the totalitarian tactics of the Rpublican party combined with a corrupt and corrupting media will not hurt us Anew. I do not understand how the Big Lie repeated enough comes to be accepted. But I have learned over and over and over that it does. We could run out the most endearing, honest, incorruptible public official and by the time the rightwing machine gets through with them you would spit in their face.
Positions matter. Voting records matter. History and Attitudes matter. But the single most important step any candidate for the Presidency can take today is Refuse to Go Negative!!!! It doesn't feed the machine. And deprived of meat what does it do? It starves.
And so I implore each and every one of you. Write, call, lobby your candidate. Do what you can, any way you can, in a call for the candidates to stay postive. Fight it out as hard as possible, but don't go negative. We all know what a fair fight looks like. Let's have one.