Bob Herbert writing in today's New York Times...
"David Boren, a former U.S. senator who is now president of the University of Oklahoma, has written a short book that he called, "A Letter to America."
"His sense of alarm in the opening paragraph could not have been clearer. "The country we love is in trouble," he said. "In truth, we are in grave danger of declining as a nation. If we do not act quickly, that decline will become dramatic."
"I couldn't agree more. The symbols of patriotism — bumper stickers and those flags the size of baseball fields — have taken the place of the hard work and sacrifice required to keep a great nation great."
"As Al Gore reminds us, this is the first time in American history that "the executive branch of the government has not only condoned but actively promoted the treatment of captives in wartime that clearly involves torture, thus overturning a prohibition established by Gen. George Washington during the Revolutionary War."
"There are signs galore of the nation’s turn for the worse. We are fighting a debilitating war in Iraq without any idea of how to pay for it — or how to end it. No one has any real idea about how to cope with the devastating energy crisis, or how to turn the economy around."
"We can build spectacular new stadiums for football and baseball teams (the Yanks, the Mets, the Giants and the Jets are all getting ready to move into staggeringly expensive new homes) but we can’t rebuild New Orleans or reconstruct the World Trade Center site destroyed almost seven years ago."
"Patriotism has its place. But waving a flag is never a good substitute for serious thought and rolling up one’s sleeves."
Herbert has really hit the nail on the head. The centerpiece of Bush & Co.'s master plan to strip away the rights and freedoms that we Americans have enjoyed since the Constitution became the law of the land has been the use of distraction, misdirection, fear-mongering, and the occasional sop like $600 "incentive checks".
And with the news this week that many of Karl Rove's chief acolytes have signed on with the McCain campaign, it means that those policies will remain in force in a McCain administration.
While thousands of young men and women were being killed or physically and mentally maimed for life, while the economy was being driven into the ground, while gas prices and the cost of food were soaring, while the Constitution was being slowly negated, while the powers of the imperial presidency were growing exponentially, we allowed ourselves to be bamboozled and flimflammed by these masters of deceit.
And just how effective have these ploys been? The news story last week that the major American oil companies have been awarded no-bid oil contracts in Iraq thereby confirming the long-held belief by most Americans that it was always about the oil could not muster the faintest flicker of outrage.
And McCain is able to draw upon the dual forces that make these deceptions possible.
The first is the lingering images of 9/11/2001 which have been seared into our collective memory. The real "shock and awe" of that day coupled with Karl Rove's extremely effective co-opting of that catastrophe as a political tool keeps the fear of another attack and terrorism in general alive and well even today.This allows McCain to continue to insert that lingering fear into his political bio and create the illusion of being the only one who can keep the fight alive until "victory" is achieved. As I have noted in previous posts, his entire rhetorical bag of tricks always includes reference to his military and war experience. (And he never lets us forget the POW part.) This is one reason why he seems to continue to poll so closely to Obama. And more importantly, this allows him to continue his forceful support for an extremely unpopular war and the delusional quest for ultimate victory. He runs contrary to every issue noted above. But yet there he is.
And it is the second factor which is what makes the first one work. And that is the tone of reverence and respect with which the so-called mainstream media treats McCain. They have bought into his self-manufactured image of the "maverick", the guy who can't be bought, the guy who has the guts to go against his own party, the anti-politician politician. But the fact is that the mainstream media are as gullible as the Vegas audience at a David Copperfield performance. They ooh and aah over every thing he does forgetting all the while that the reality is that it's just smoke and mirrors.
And along with the smoke and mirrors, he has rolled out the promise of more bread and circuses which Bush & Co. have used so effectively.
We cannot allow them to win again.
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