Will Bunch:
In the 18 days since Parkland, the governmental response to school shootings has been next to nothing — even on gun safety measures that are overwhelmingly favored by the American people. You’d be hard-pressed to find an idea with greater public support than strengthening gun background checks — backed by at least 85 percent of voters and a mind-boggling 97 percent in one recent survey — yet even that, and the slaughter of 20 kindergartners and first-graders in Connecticut five years ago, didn’t convince Congress to act. Public support for stricter — and saner — gun laws has spiked to 66 percent since Parkland, yet our deer-in-the-headlights lawmakers stand numb, paralyzed. It’s the most powerful proof yet that democratic government in America is broken beyond repair.
You probably already knew that. But the Parkland aftermath has laid bare another fundamental change in modern American life that is truly stunning, with powerful implications for both the present and future of our fragile experiment in democracy. After seven decades of rampant post-war consumerism, in a world shaped by omnipresent marketing, where “corporations are people, my friend” with unlimited power to buy politicians with campaign contributions and to create enormous wealth at the expense of the middle class, the fundamental relationships have changed. Government of the people, by the people and for the people is dead. Corporations rule the land, and are now using that clout to eliminate the ineffective middlemen of politics and to set our policy. And citizens like you and me? It turns out we have some limited sway — not as voters but as consumers.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
On this date at Daily Kos in 2004—Bush gave terrorist a pass:
Let me set the stage. Abu Musab Zarqawi, a Jordanian militant with ties to al-Qaida, is being blamed for most of the major terrorist attacks in Iraq the past few months, including the horrific suicide bombings that killed hundreds of religious pilgrims on Tuesday.
This guy is a real slime, obviously, especially since his connections to al-Qaida appear real, not trumped-up for political reasons.
So get this—the Pentagon could've wiped him and his merry band of terrorists off the face of the planet two years ago. But Bush and his merry band of liars nixed the attack.
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