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Onward,
Alexander, Jeffrey, Becky and Deva
November
20, 2006
Here Come the Armani Democrats
America's
Progressive Nightmare
By JOE MOWREY
We are already beginning to see the
results of the "blue wave" which occurred in our recent
elections. Lobbyists are retooling to accommodate their favorite
Democratic politicians. Harry Reid has promised to increase the
military budget by $75 billion. Impeachment is "off the
table," not to mention trials for war crimes. And Democrats
have pledged to raise the minimum wage to a whopping $7.25 an
hour. That's a total income of $15,080 a year, before taxes.
Members of Congress will give themselves that much in automatic
cost of living increases alone over the next five years. Let's
face it, the power elite have successfully executed a changing
of the guard.
The "progressive"
community wasted the last two years and countless resources sponsoring
corporate lackeys for election to a fascist system of government.
(Fascism was originally defined by Benito Mussolini as a partnership
between government and corporations.) Congratulations. There
still is no serious anti-war or anti-militarism movement in this
country. The corporatists won-peace and social justice lost,
again. With progress like this, who needs habeas corpus?
As I did before this recent
lemming vote-fest, I suggest we spit out the electronic pacifier
of the masses and begin a program of vaccination for "chronic
voter's syndrome." We should recognize the corrupt system
of electoral madness for the farce that it is and implement a
boycott of elections, local as well as national. As long as we
agree to participate in an Alice-in-Wonderland system of governance
we will continue to be ruled by corporations. We will continue
to see unlimited manufacture and exportation of arms around the
globe. We will continue to witness the wanton destruction of
our planet by sociopaths in Armani suits with sound-bite
smiles. (Yes, that was an Armani Nancy Pelosi was wearing
at her first press conference following the election. No kidding.)
Whether for federal, state
or local ballot items, which ad campaigns did you like the best?
Did you vote for Captain Crunch or Count Chocula? How about that
myriad of candidates' forums and policy discussions? Who could
keep up with the avalanche of meaningful information we were
given about these politicos and their agendas. It was tough deciding
whether to vote for "a new direction" or "a positive
change." There were so many clever and inspiring slogans,
one was hard pressed to choose among them.
Some Democrats expressed their
opposition to the war but don't hold your breath waiting for
them to end it any time soon. While we're busy celebrating the
ascension to power of the kinder, gentler fascists, innocent
men, women and children continue to die at a rate of thousands
per month in Iraq and Afghanistan. You remember Afghanistan,
don't you? That's the country we bombed the hell out of, then
turned back over to drug lords. Most progressives seem to have
forgotten that war. And do you seriously believe those fourteen
permanent military bases we're building in Iraq are going to
be abandoned any time soon? If so, then I've got a bridge in
Baghdad I'd like to sell you. No matter which political party
is in power, the United State's military industrial complex will
remain the wellspring of death and destruction in the Middle
East and around the world.
There is no one left to end
this reign of terror but you and me. If we have any social conscience
at all, we should quit participating in the shell game the criminal
elite uses to manipulate our society, our country and the world.
Change from within has become an absurd and impossible notion.
The structure of government itself is the problem, not which
collection of puppets pretends to maintain it. We must seize
control, peacefully and nonviolently, of our governing institutions
as well as the major corporate broadcast centers that hold our
public airwaves hostage. We must organize caucuses nationwide
and send delegates to a People's Congress in order to establish
a new constitutional government. We must create truth commissions
to allow the American people to come to grips with the fact that
our culture and our nation, our "land of the free and home
of the brave," born of one of the most brutal genocides
in history, has been and continues to be a cancer on the world
social and political order and the global environment.
There is no American dream,
only a nightmare which the rest of the world is forced to endure
while Americans remain steadfastly asleep in front of their televisions
every evening soaking up the infotainment we call news. Or if
you are a really wild and crazy liberal you listen to Air America
Radio, the so-called new voice of "progressive" media,
where people like Al Franken and Randi Rhodes prattle on about
what a great president Bill Clinton was. They seem to have forgotten
how he bombed Iraq continuously for his entire eight years in
office, rammed NAFTA (the North American Free Trade Agreement)
down our throats, accelerated the consolidation of corporate
media and used extraordinary rendition to send our "enemies"
to countries around the world to be tortured. You didn't think
Cheney and the boys came up with that one on their own, did you?
Though estimates vary, even
conservative figures attribute the deaths of as many as 350,000
children to the economic sanctions imposed on Iraq during Mr.
Clinton's "liberal" administration. These draconian
measures were implemented under cover of the United Nations by
such "progressive" war criminals as U.N Ambassador
Madeleine Albright. Ms. Albright has a new book out in which
she laments her blunder in answering yes to Leslie Stahl's question
on 60 Minutes about whether the death of so many Iraqi
children was worth it in order to punish Saddam Hussein. No mention
of how wrong it was to actually enforce the programs that caused
those deaths. Hey, she has a book to sell. No time for true confessions
now.
Then there is Democrat Bill
Richardson, one of Albright's successors as U.N. Ambassador,
whose reward for continuing to withhold chlorine from water treatment
facilities in Iraq was an appointment as Secretary of Energy.
Oh, by the way, recently, he also answered yes to the infamous
Madeleine Albright question. Now he is the much-touted "progressive"
Governor of New Mexico, one of the countries largest repositories
of nuclear weapons, home of the latest research into new and
improved nuclear weapons technologies in direct violation of
the NPT (Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty). New Mexico is drowning
in defense-industry blood money while its residents ranked fifth
highest in the nation for food insecurity in 2005. What a guy
Bill Richardson is. He's my kind of liberal war criminal. He's
also been shortlisted as a possible presidential candidate in
the next electoral charade.
Meanwhile, back at the progressive-pundit
ranch, even outspoken critics of the neoconservative status quo
refuse to acknowledge the most pressing foreign policy issue
of our time-Israel's illegal occupation of the West Bank. Al
Franken and the rest of the voices on Air America were outraged
when Bush and company suspended habeas corpus through the Military
Commissions Act. None of them seem to have noticed Israel's long-time
policy of detaining Palestinians without trial or charge under
its cleverly titled program of "Administrative Detention."
They decry George Bush's policy of preemptive war while in the
same breath parroting the Israel lobby's talking points about
Israel's right to defend itself against those who would dare
to resist the brutal invasions and occupations that are part
and parcel of the Zionist tragedy unfolding for the last sixty
years in "The Promised Land."
The idea of a Christian state
is out of the question. An Islamic state-what, have you lost
your mind? But progressives believe a Jewish state is to be promoted
and defended at all costs. Apartheid was morally unacceptable
in South Africa. But Israel's Apartheid Wall which imprisons
Palestinians in bantustans throughout the West Bank is considered
absolutely essential in order to provide 'security' for Israel's
colonization of Palestine. The cluster bombs Israel dropped on
civilian neighborhoods in the last days of their recent barbaric
destruction of the civilian infrastructure of Lebanon aren't
a topic of conversation on Air America Radio. Neither is the
collective punishment and systematic starvation of one and half
million civilians in the Gaza Strip. But what the heck, Al Franken
is planning to run for the Senate in '08, and we're looking to
put a Democrat in the White House next time around. Those AIPAC
(American Israel Public Affairs Committee) lobbyists and their
deep pockets are going to be indispensable.
It's time to snap out of our
collective state of "liberal" denial and take to the
streets, loudly and insistently, in numbers too large to be shot,
arrested or ignored. No more platitudes about peace. No more
lesser of two evils. No more staking out the middle ground. No
more handshakes with war criminals. No more walls or weapons
or wars of imperialist aggression. We need to declare our independence
from the stultification of corporate hegemony. Though our forebears
may not have been the most egalitarian crowd they at least had
the courage and tenacity to take a stand against colonial tyranny
and exploitation by the British East India Company. There's that
familiar corporate element again. Funny how history repeats itself.
The Declaration of Independence,
a celebrated manifesto for change, was a statement of unyielding
principle, not a statement of compromise. We need to draft a
new Declaration of Independence. We need to insist on basic principles
of human rights and social justice as the foundation for whatever
form of government we devise. We need to stand firmly and resolutely
on these principles. This is perhaps our only hope of creating
an atmosphere where peace, however you choose to define that
word, has any chance of becoming even a vague reality in our
time-before the end of our time.
Okay, so it won't be easy and
it certainly won't be pretty. But I would rather plunge into
the abyss of social and economic revolution than over the precipice
to which corporate plutocracy has brought us. Are you looking
forward to a Hillary Clinton/ Barack Obama ticket in 2008? How
about the upcoming "surgical air strikes" against Iran,
a plan which Mr. Obama has supported? Thank goodness Ms. Clinton
has taken a firm stand against flag burning. How courageous of
her. In addition, though she made a flamboyant speech on the
floor of the Senate opposing torture, publicly she expressed
her support for it-only as a last resort, of course. Ain't liberalism
grand?
Preemptive war, colonization,
collective punishment, torture, exploitation of labor, degradation
of the environment-the list of progressive values goes on and
on. I can hardly wait to vote for the Demicans again, or is it
the Republicrats we should be supporting?
Those polar ice caps aren't
going to stop melting anytime soon. We had all better start asking
ourselves how long we think we can tread water. Time is in short
supply. Hope and determination never are. To quote a marginally
popular bumper sticker from the 60's, "Why vote? It only
encourages them."
Joe Mowrey is a peace and social justice activist
living in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He can be contacted at jmowrey@ix.netcom.com.
Among his other relentlessly
futile endeavors, he is one of a small contingent of diehards
who have maintained a presence at a major intersection in town
every Friday for the last four years in opposition to the illegal
and immoral invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq.
He also manages the database and produces the graphics for the
Iraq/Afghanistan Memorial Installation, a 450-foot-long [and
growing] series of 3 by 6 foot vinyl banners displaying the names,
faces and obituaries of the U.S. military personnel killed in
Iraq and Afghanistan. The Installation is a project of the Santa
Fe Chapter of Veterans for Peace.
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