GOP Brownshirts

[Chris Alger]

Someone posted a transcript of a debate between Senatorial candidates Barak Obama and Alan Keyes the illuminates the most important issue in American politics, one that will likely determine the survival of American democracy, yet one that is rarely discussed. It's found in Keyes's description of an event that has killed several times as many innocent civilians than perished on 9/11, with more dead daily:

[ QUOTE ]
ANDERSON: Ambassador Keyes, the U.S. has armed forces in Iraq. How long will they stay there, and when should they get out, and how should we get them out?

ALAN KEYES: I think they stay there until they get the job done. I know that John Kerry is preoccupied with an exit strategy, but as I've been telling folks lately, if you get into a battle and the only thing you're thinking about is how to get out, I think we have a word for you--and it's not very complimentary.

We are engaged in a war . . .

MODERATOR: What is the word?

KEYES: We are engaged in a war against terror that was started by the terrorists, that claimed the lives of thousands of Americans, that involves a global infrastructure of insidious individuals. We have seen the work they do, in Russia and elsewhere, against innocent lives in the most bestial fashion possible.To fight that war, as I learned in my experience when I was on the National Security Council staff working directly on the problem of terrorism, it is not sufficient to have rhetoric, it is not sufficient to react after the fact. You have got to preemptively move against their bases, against their sources of supply, against their training camps, against the states the provide them with safe haven and infrastructure. If you do not, then they will simply prepare for further attacks.

And in a world where we have weapons of mass destruction, it's not good enough to say that, "Well, if there's a 50% chance that they could use them, I will act"--because once one such attack succeeds, we could end up losing tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of people.

[/ QUOTE ]

Note: the war in Iraq was "started by terrorists." I agree, but I doubt that Keyes and I mean the same thing.

Anyway, the unexamined issue is: HOW THE HELL CAN ANY PARTY THAT PURPORTS TO BELIEVE IN THE INFORMED CONSENT OF THE GOVERNED SUPPORT A DEMOGOGUE FOR MASS KILLING LIKE ALAN KEYES?

The answer, of course, is that the mass media in the U.S. doesn't do what it's supposed to but does do what it shouldn't. As a result, not since Germany in the 1930's has such a huge population of a modern society been so utterly deluded about the nature of the troubles they face. This point was again made in Paul Craig Roberts' recent article The Brownshirting of America:

[David] Brock makes a credible case that today's conservatives are driven by ideology, not by fact. He argues that their stock in trade is denunciation, not debate. Conservatives don't assess opponents' arguments, they demonize opponents. Truth and falsity are out of the picture; the criteria are: who's good, who's evil, who's patriotic, who's unpatriotic.

These are the traits of brownshirts. Brownshirts know they are right. They know their opponents are wrong and regard them as enemies who must be silenced if not exterminated.

Some of Brock's quotes from prominent conservative commentators will curl your toes. His description of the rightwing's destruction of an independent media and the "Fairness Doctrine" explain why a recent CNN/Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 terrorist attack on the US and 32% believe that Saddam Hussein personally planned the attack.

A country in which 42% of the population is totally misinformed is not a country where democracy is safe.

Today there is no one to correct a lie once it is told. The media, thanks to Republicans, has been concentrated in few hands, and they are not the hands of newsmen. Corporate values rule. If lies sell, sell them. If listeners, viewers, and readers want confirmation of their resentments and beliefs, give it to them. Objectivity turns listeners off and is a money loser.

In his book, Cruel and Unusual, Mark Crispin Miller, professor of media studies at New York University, explains how rightwing influence has moved the media away from reporting news to designing our consciousness. "The Age of Information," Miller writes, "has turned out to be an Age of Ignorance."

Miller makes a strong case. His description of how CNN and Fox News destroyed the credibility of Scott Ritter, the leading expert on Iraq's weapons, reveals a media completely given over to propaganda. Ritter stood in the way of the neocon's invasion of Iraq.

CNN's Miles O'Brien, Eason Jordan, Catherine Callaway, Paula Zahn, Kyra Phillips, Arthel Neville, and Fox News' David Asman and John Gibson portrayed Ritter as a disloyal American, a Ba-athist stooge on the take from Saddam Hussein, and compared him to Jane Fonda in North Vietnam.

With this, the rightwing talk radio crazies were off and running. Anyone with the slightest bit of real information about the state of weapons development in Iraq was dismissed as a foreign agent who should be shot for treason.

By substituting fiction for reality, the US media took the country to war. The CNN and Fox News "journalists" are as responsible for America's ill-fated invasion of Iraq as Cheney and Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle.

With a sizable percentage of the US population now addicted to daily confirmations of their resentments and hatreds, US policy will be increasingly driven by tightly made up minds in pursuit of unrealistic agendas.

American troops are in Iraq on false pretenses. No one knows all the fateful consequences of this mistaken adventure. Bush's reelection would be seen as a vindication of aggression, and more aggression would likely follow. A continuing expenditure of blood, money, alliances, good will, and civil liberties is not a future to which to look forward.

[lastchance]

Both sides are abusing misinformation to try to win a political war. If anyone thought of the CBS stuff, that stuff on Bush's military service in the Guard was just as dirty as Fox News, probably more.

I do think these comments show us something. It is much easier to lump your enemies into one sum than it is to keep them separate, and Republicans are doing a pretty lousy job of keeping them separate, either by design or just by accident.

As for the right-wing conspiracy stuff, your essay upon that was filled with rhetoric. I want to see exactly how it happened. Explain pure facts, we already heard your commentary. However, I would assume that you would tell us to go read "Cruel and Unusual" the book by Mark Crispin Miller, but I do not have the time for that.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
your essay upon that was filled with rhetoric. I want to see exactly how it happened. Explain pure facts

[/ QUOTE ]

A "CNN/Gallup poll found that 42% of Americans still believe that Saddam Hussein was involved in the September 11 terrorist attack on the US and 32% believe that Saddam Hussein personally planned the attack."

Sounds like a statement of fact to me. Ditto with the media treatment of Scott Ritter and quote by Keyes.

[lastchance]

I agree many Americans are misinformed, but I just didn't see the level of detail I really want from an allegation about a right-wing conspiracy.

I want to see how they destroyed the leading expert on Iraq's WMDs. I really want to see how the Right Wing crazies took off with something. Very, very specific examples.

[GWB]

Kerry's marching orders:

[Chris Alger]

This is a perfect example of what I've been saying about the GOP obsession with lying. Of course Kerry doesn't believe that national defense requires foreign permission. Nor does the UN Charter for that matter.

But when Kerry used the phrase "global test" in reference to the ability to prove to the U.S. electorate and the world that the war is justified, the GOP jumped on it to falsely claim it amounts to giving other countries a veto, even after Kerry said the exact opposite. To the extent the GOP disagrees with Kerry's real position, it means: "we should sometimes wage war for no good reason."

Up = Down, another brownshirt equation.

[anatta]

[ QUOTE ]

But when Kerry used the phrase "global test" in reference to the ability to prove to the U.S. electorate and the world that the war is justified, the GOP jumped on it to falsely claim it amounts to giving other countries a veto, even after Kerry said the exact opposite. To the extent the GOP disagrees with Kerry's real position, it means: "we should sometimes wage war for no good reason."

Up = Down, another brownshirt equation

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course you are right. All this global test bullshit is the BIG LIE which the right constantly tells. The left tells little lies like, $200 billion spent. Right tells big lies, "the vast majority of our tax cut went to the middle class".

[ QUOTE ]
To the extent the GOP disagrees with Kerry's real position, it means: "we should sometimes wage war for no good reason.

[/ QUOTE ]

You really nailed it with this one.

[adios]

Same question for you; does the term "global test" refer to government policy that Kerry is formulating or has formulated? A yes or no response please.

I'm heading out of town for the next 5 days or so and I doubt that I'll be getting back to this thread [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]. To me the term "global test" refers to a government policy regarding preemption. Go back to Kerry's answer in the debate and you'll see that the "global test" comment was an answer to a question about preemptive war. Process is the means by which policy is carried out more or less. I asked that question about what the process for enacting Kerry's "global test" policy would be and the answers I received were that process is unimportant for enacting policy which in my opinion is ludicrous and that the process would be that fight the preemptive war and after words have iron clad proof that you offer to the rest of the world that your preemptive war was justified. I maintain that Kerry's referring to a policy that inidicates a justification to the rest of the world for a preemptive war before the fact. Maybe I'm being arrogant but I think my interpretation is far more reasonable than those who believe it would be after the fact. If I'm right then my question stands, what would the "Global Test" process entail in justifying a preemptive war to the rest of the world and what constitutes passing the "Global Test" as a result of that process?

If "Global Test" comment is just campaign rhetoric then it's irrelevant.

[anatta]

No, Global Test isn't a "test" or list of criteria that has to be answered. Its a test of legitimacy or truth. Read the quote, Kerry says this right after he says global test. Is the reason valid or are we making shite up? Is the Sec. of State going to have to apologize? Will the word of the US President be good enough again? Sorry gave you more than a yes or no answer.

[Chris Alger]

[ QUOTE ]
"I maintain that Kerry's referring to a policy that inidicates a justification to the rest of the world for a preemptive war...."

[/ QUOTE ]
Exactly. Kerry opposes wars that cannot be justified. So, presumably, does the GOP. The issue is whether the Iraq war was justifiable, not whether it should have been. The GOP line that Kerry advocates the need for "permission" from foreign countries before waging a justifiable war is another of a long list of Iraq-related lies spawned by the GOP smear machine, enabled only because GOP stalwarts are so dumb that they believe almost anything their masters tell them.