Commentary

[Talking Stick]

Archived at http://talkingstick.gamontains.net/news Corporate talking points. Whether by intent or by having been duped; if the Congress and the administration enacts health care legislation that is not robustly transformational they will have ignored the mandate of the majority of the people It's my opinion and I am sticking to it. I acknowledge confusion and mistrust. I believe I am representative of a large number of liberal progressives and independents. The greater the confusion the more humans do tend to stick to perceptions rooted in the past. And that's the focus of the tactics of confusion employed by the powerful and vested interests who perceive threat in change. To obstruct progress, just confuse the issue enough to throw up doubt and fear. That's conservatism. An example: Exxon has done a masterful job in opposition to any prevention or remedies for the heating of the planet. By attending to language in the public and scientific arenas to create doubt as to the facts, causes and consequences of global warming has created sufficient confusion to lead the public, the public's media and their politicians to hold to on to familiar but obsolete actions. In so doing they have committed 25% of living species to extinction and millions of humans to death.; this while building infrastructure, tankers and drilling rigs to employ in the summer of 2013, when Arctic polar ice will be melted. I chose that example because it is vivid, has been so successful and it is consequential. There are many other examples in recent years. We are seeing the tactic again in full bloom directed toward the newly elected Democratic administration as it has set out to right a country on the brink of bankruptcy and chaos. (I do find some hope in the fact of the failed corporates now resorting to lies so overt as to be noted by many, even in their own ranks.) Today the people are wiser and more accepting of the need for government involvement in implementing the imperatives of civilized societies which protect the human rights of their members. This includes the law and its use in equality of application and fairness of systems by which resources are distributed. Chris Matthews' romantic narrative here to the contrary, I believe the the people have had enough of the "Cowboy Natio" and its clutch of fighter plane jockeys. They will not as easily be pumped up by sentimentality. The people who voted in this administration are desperate for change in the morality of our security forces and fairness of our legal, economic and health care institutions. We are being deluged by corporate pundits and elected officials in all the media the agenda of the corporate patrons of the politicians. The drumbeat is that the nation is inherently conservative and fearful of change; that the majority of the people are satisfied with their insurance companies and oppose any government administered safetynet of any kind. They gravely pronounce that the Congress should not enact any meaningful legislation as to health care, regulation of banking and investment industry and; heaven help us! if any investigation and prosecution of torture is carried forward. These are corporate generated lies. Sadly too much of this rhetoric has been taken up and is coming out of the Democratic Party also. The White House is opaque. By far the majority of the polls I can find refute all of those talking points. Poll Shows Democrats Lead On Issues http://www.ourfuture.org/news-headline/2009093604/poll-shows-democrats-lead-issues Citizen activism A danger I see from the Democrats and in particular the Obama administration is that they may accept the lies that their support is in the middle and or they do not trust in the good sense and determination of the people who put them in office. Or perhaps they never intended that much? Just a few backroom deals for the banks, insurance and pharmaceuticals companies, keep the wars going for the military? That's a good conservative. Don't rock the boat. If my read of the mood and capacities of the people is correct President Obama and his party will not recover if they betray the wishers for radical change in the way we do business, charity and civil rights. Everyone must involve themselves at whatever level and mode. I respect all. I personally would love to see a resurgence of local gatherings of liberals and progressives who will strive for visibility and attention to our values, expectations and yes consequences to elected and candidate Democrats who do not take note. As to North Georgia specifically, I simply do not believe we should cower in fear of displeasing our conservative neighbors. The local political parties and candidates for office are the best, often only, venue for expressing our values. They should be a bully pulpit; the content not soft-pedaled. The John Birchers are back! They are working the old old lies below the radar belt. They are instilling and inflaming terror of Red Menace among the chronically resentful ignorant. Many seem to have become simply insane. Enough has bubbled up to have made the town hall protestors multiply and be taken seriously. More ominous, is conflating socialism with fascism and introducing it into the mainstream conversation. On the cable networks at least it is now discussed as a serious intent of the Obama administration. It is all lies. It was lies in the thirties and in the fifties and it is now. But the degree of terror, ignorance hate and ethnic racialist demonizing mixed with guns is dangerous. It should be taken seriously. Notes: There are so many good and not so good provocative articles in print and online I am not going to try to include links to many. Check the web log for more I will add. http://talkingstick.gamountains.net/news "As a physician in early retirement I do have profound empathy for the situation in which physicians find themselves. I personally can attest to the immensely tempting and potentially corrupting effects of the corporate business model when applied to providers of medical care." http://talkingstick.gamountains.net/news/index.php/2009/09/ For your use; material refuting the Birchers claims conflating the Nazi party with Bolshevism is this excerpt of a letter I have incubating. It is factual and not out of some dark paranoid web site. Let me know if you need documentation: "Almost immediately following the end of WWII American supporters of fascism began to rewrite history by conflating the Nazi movement with the Marxist Bolshevik revolution. Mr. Riemann's letter http://www.gainesvilletimes.com/news/article/23006/ repeats the misrepresentation. Hitler was not a Marxist socialist of any stripe. The Nazis early on dropped "workers" from their name while retaining the word "socialist." They never delivered on the promise its use suggests. It was set up with the collaboration of German and not a few admiring American industrialists. German giant Krupp Ironworks enabled the rebuilding of military hardware. Particularly noteworthy IG Farben-Bayer created much of the infrastructure and the technology for the human atrocities and murders. They even owned a death camp of their own, Auschwitz. Among the, well intentioned no doubt, American enablers were John D. Rockefeller, Henry Ford, the Mellons and the Carnegies.  It was Rockefeller that almost single-handedly exported the racialist philosophy, eugenics, to the medical establishment of Hitler's Germany. Eugenics of course provided half the rhetoric fueling the holocaust.  The violently anti-Marxist Nazi movement provided propaganda inflaming fears of Red Menace.  Sound familiar? Well read and educated scholars universally accept the term fascism as most descriptive of the managed economic system of Hitler. " Health arguments paint a false picture by Joan King http://joanking.gamountains.net/ Bob Cesca: The Public Option is Popular, Moral and Inexpensive, Therefore it Must Die "I can only recall the lead-up to the invasion of Iraq when the establishment press and most of Washington got it so wrong. Deliberately or accidentally -- it doesn't matter. It's wrong and it's deceptive. And they're doing it all over again."http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bob-cesca/the-public-option-is-popu_b_275845.html David Sirota on the Differences Between Democrats and Progressives "Progressives Pay the Price for Confusing a Party With a Movement"http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20090903_progressives_pay_the_price_for_confusing_a_party_with_a_movement/ Other Economists in the Room Jane Smiley Pulitzer Prize-Winning Novelist and Essayist "Is human nature basically good or evil? No economist can embark upon his profession without considering this question, and yet they all seem to. And they all seem to think human nature is basically good, or they wouldn't be surprised by the effects of deregulation. Have none of these guys been to Naples or Moscow? Or even seen a James Cagney movie? " http://www.huffingtonpost.com/jane-smiley/other-economists-in-the-r_b_277065.html That's it. Have a great Labor Day weekend.