"We the People" need to demand a Job Interview for candidates for public office.
Last week’s shocking debate performance by Governor Jan Brewer demonstrates very clearly the need for this. It is a total distraction to have a good laugh about this and pat our collective selves on the back, saying that the electorate will surely not want to elect someone who cannot speak or speak on her own. She and her like are very obviously puppets, who cannot think, not to mention, govern or legislate on their own. This is not a laughing matter. Because at the core is the question: "Who, then are the Puppet Masters and what is their Agenda?" (The answer to that question is certainly the subject of many other diaries, no doubt entitled "The Global Plutocracy enslaves the Common Man.")
With these ‘know nothings,’ we are literally seeing the planting of modern day "Manchurian Candidates."
Demanding that they undergo the elements of a Job Interview will help to UNMASK these Manchurian Candidates.
As part of the interview, we have a right to demand the basic qualifications of Literacy, Basic Public Speaking Skills, Basic Knowledge and Accountability (public disclosure of positions) from all our Public Officials. I kid you not. This is more important than working to mitigate "Citizens United" and/or install public financing for elections, as important as these reforms are to our "pay to play" election system.
The Hall of Shame of "Modern Day Manchurian Candidates" would include the likes of Sarah Palin at the head of the pack; Sharon Engle and Jan Brewer are the most recent vocal ones that come to mind. Their breathtaking ignorance creates a media circus around them and when one of them says something really ridiculous, we are then entertained with endless loops and obsessive discussions by pundits. Spell R-A-T-I-N-G-S. Meanwhile, behind the scenes, these basically illiterate people are having their egos, prejudices and financial coffers stoke while they read the scripts put before them; scripts that are designed to take down democracy and the middle class. These "tools" are, in my opinion, often actually or deliberately unaware of this crusade. In many cases, they are too ignorant or stupid to understand what they are doing. (And then there are those who do understand fully, but place their money and power above the welfare of their country. This is a subject for another diary, entitled "Treason.")
Frequently, these "front candidates" either actually do embody or are crafted into the embodiment of whatever prejudices the Republican party’s current target demographic shares. The recent "Vanity Fair" article describes Sarah Palin as not really or consistently religious; this became part of her media makeover. These issues are always publicly divisive because the Republicans (one of the most prized, reliable tools of the "Puppet Masters," have mastered the ‘divide and conquer’ strategy. These issues are bound to cause a public furor, get incensed voters to the voting booth to vote against their interests, and to basically distract from the real anti-democratic and middle class agenda of the stealth candidates.
These 'usual suspects' issues range from a fundamentalistic version of religion that actually wants to bring about the Apocalypse (the dog whistles to that crowd are deafening;) racial/sexual-orientation prejudices and the perennial favorite, the patriarchal insistence on 'keeping woman subject to man and in her place,' with assaults against her sovereign right over her body and life. The crusade for "states rights" deserves special mention, because it is a thinly viewed attempt to deal a death blow to the Bill of Rights, by making it easier to kill these rights with a "thousand cuts" in each state rather than stand up to the might of the federal government. Public education, labor unions, and national entitlement programs (Social Security, medicare and Unemployment) are also underattack because the value of these programs to the common citizen is so strong as to resist local pressure to water it down.
Republican candidates and politicians who have a measure of education, commonsense, knowledge of history and civics and are literate have bee thrown out of the party. This is not the work of the Tea Party, per se, as defined as a grassroots "mad as hell and not going to take it anymore" group. The Tea Party Borg and their minions is one of the biggest distractions going, in my opinion. They are the "tools" du jour and are manipulated to install the Manchurian Style Puppets. The more time we spend on the playing field of debate that the Republicans have drawn us on, viz. the Tea Party antics and their proponents such as Beck, Limbaugh and Fox Views, the less time we spend dismantling the puppets and limiting their use as tools. We need to disarm the tools of the Manchurian Puppet Masters, not just criticize and ridicule them.
This is all a national disgrace. Our elections are being manipulated to an unprecedented degree by sophisticated, psychological Machiavellians who learned their lessons well from Bernays, Atwater and Rove on how to psychologically manipulate and brainwash groups, by keeping them in a constant state of fear and anxiety and anger. Are we to succumb to this psychological warfare? Are we to truly degenerate in "The Idiocracy"? Are our elections gong to degenerate into "American Idol"?
It is time to stop focusing on these national circus performers as media entertainment, but rather seek to unmask them as ruthlessly used tools. The press must persistently do what they did at the end of Brewer's shocking display of her utter ineptitude and insist that the salient questions be answered. "Why don't you answer the questions about headless bodies, Governor?" Like Katie Couric, the questions must continue to be asked, "What do you read?" "What experience do you have?" "What is your position on x,y,z?" We must demand real job interviews for public positions.
And most pointedly, there needs to arise a public outcry when those running for office refuse to be interviewed. Citizens deserve to know who and what these people are. It is our responsibility to ask these questions; the candidates must not be let off the hook. It is also the responsibility of the "Fourth Estate" to ask these questions and do the appropriate journalistic reserach and reporting to defend the common good. With few exceptions, the press has abdicated this fundamental role. (Again, the reasons and causes of this in other diaires for other days, perhaps entitled: "The Failure of the Fourth Estate as One of the Major Reasons for the Fall of Democracy in America.")
We must assert publically that our public officials owe it to us, their real employers, that they be qualified and fit for their jobs. Chris Matthews asked "Where do the Republicans get these empty suits to run for election?" In a moment of clarity, he saw and named the Manchurian Candidate Phenomena, naming GWB as an example.
We need to relentlessly uncover these Manchurian Candidates for who they really are and the elements of a Job Interview during the election process will serve that end.
The Job Qualifications that we MUST demand of all candidates:
- be literate, have a basic command of public speaking, be able to articulate their opinions,
- be knowledgeable about the issues relative to their job; be more assertive about lying and misrepresentation
- be available to media for interviews to allow the public to learn about their positions
- be available for debate
- be available for impromptu questions and answers, to judge their non scripted capability
- answer questions relative to their values and beliefs as it efects their jobs and not let them become stealth candidate who hide their real agenda
We can do this with advertisements that put the concept of Job Requirements for publically elected officials and the right of the public to know the candidates as a necessity. We can continually assail candidates with these questions.
Right now we are being controlled by the Republican Psychological Machiavellian Machine, with a virtual, "These aren't the droids you are looking for. Move along." This Machine hides these Machurian candidates from scrutiny, and then, when the time is right, send the code of activation to dismantle this democracy. We have been lulled into accepting this.
And we "move along" from challenging that these stealth candidates to show us who they are, distracted by the circus that is created with the complicity of the media.
We must demand answers. We must uncover these stealth candidates. We must protect our Democracy.