The Advantages of the Legal System
The lesser of these two reasons is this: the battle against the Bushites is a battle of truth against lies, and ?especially in Karl Rove?s America? the truth fares better in the legal arena than it does in our nation?s other public forums.
We need only to look at Patrick Fitzgerald?s investigation to see how the disciplined approach of the law can sweep obfuscation aside and uncover the truth.
In today?s media environment, by contrast, lies are allowed to prosper. In the face of evidence of illegal wiretapping, this president can stand before the cameras and justify his violation of the law and the constitution by saying that he was doing it to protect us against terrorists, without being forced to explain just why he couldn?t protect us and obey the very accommodating FISA law he was breaking. And millions of Americans buy it.
In the public arena, the Bushites can maintain their position simply by asserting that night is day loudly and frequently enough. In the processes of the law, such rhetorical sleight of hand does not cut it.
Our present mainstream media, for whatever reason, no longer sees its role as being the fact-checker for the American people. To them, ?balance? involves letting ?each side? have its say. And that means that ?balance? means treating truth and falsehood the same. And when the side that is spouting the lies has the bigger megaphone ?i.e. is the one enjoys what Teddy Roosevelt called the ?bully pulpit? of the presidency?then falsehood can overwhelm truth.
This problem is compounded by the fact that this administration?s chorus of falsehoods is orchestrated by a genius at The Art of the Lie. How much better if the combat can be moved to a forum structured and disciplined for the purpose of ferreting out the truth.
If, therefore, we can get our battle against the Bush regime into the arena of legal proceedings, into the hands of people like Patrick Fitzgerald, there?s a good chance the reign of lies in America can be brought to an end.
Beyond ?Liberal versus Conservative? to ?American versus UnAmerican?
But the most important advantage of focusing our attack on the issue of ?Save Our System? is that it is fought on advantageous terrain: this issue can unite Americans on our side.
In the age of the Bushite forces, that is no small thing. Beginning well before these forces seized the White House, they have been working long and cleverly at dividing Americans along increasingly polarized ideological lines in order to gain political advantage.
Starting back in the late 1980s, the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh began using propaganda techniques to make ?liberal? into a dirty word. Recall Gingrich?s tutorial to aspiring Republican politicians, teaching them to link the word ?liberal? with ?abnormal.? And with his daily radio shows to his ?dittoheads? around the country, Limbaugh has spent the last decade and a half teaching millions of our countrymen to have nothing but contempt for the values and principles and ideas of liberalism.
We must now deal with the consequences of all that poisonous propaganda, streaming into America for so long almost unanswered.
And one main result, judging from the political record, seems to be that those issues that can be rendered by the likes of Karl Rove in terms of liberal-vs.-conservative play into the Bushite?s hands. Even where public opinion polls show that majorities of the people agree with liberal positions, it consistently seems that the Rovian spin succeeds in turning the issues to work politically for this administration.
Is there an instance in the past dozen years when that was not so?
Such is the power of a generation of pernicious right-wing propaganda, that much of the American public cannot now hear clearly, or consider fairly, a message that the Bushites can cast as liberal.
(Why else is it, do you suppose, that liberals are shopping around for some new word, like ?progressive,? whereas Republicans are only too glad to blazon themselves with the word ?conservative??)
The lesser of these two reasons is this: the battle against the Bushites is a battle of truth against lies, and ?especially in Karl Rove?s America? the truth fares better in the legal arena than it does in our nation?s other public forums.
We need only to look at Patrick Fitzgerald?s investigation to see how the disciplined approach of the law can sweep obfuscation aside and uncover the truth.
In today?s media environment, by contrast, lies are allowed to prosper. In the face of evidence of illegal wiretapping, this president can stand before the cameras and justify his violation of the law and the constitution by saying that he was doing it to protect us against terrorists, without being forced to explain just why he couldn?t protect us and obey the very accommodating FISA law he was breaking. And millions of Americans buy it.
Our present mainstream media, for whatever reason, no longer sees its role as being the fact-checker for the American people. To them, ?balance? involves letting ?each side? have its say. And that means that ?balance? means treating truth and falsehood the same. And when the side that is spouting the lies has the bigger megaphone ?i.e. is the one enjoys what Teddy Roosevelt called the ?bully pulpit? of the presidency?then falsehood can overwhelm truth.
This problem is compounded by the fact that this administration?s chorus of falsehoods is orchestrated by a genius at The Art of the Lie. How much better if the combat can be moved to a forum structured and disciplined for the purpose of ferreting out the truth.
If, therefore, we can get our battle against the Bush regime into the arena of legal proceedings, into the hands of people like Patrick Fitzgerald, there?s a good chance the reign of lies in America can be brought to an end.
Beyond ?Liberal versus Conservative? to ?American versus UnAmerican?
But the most important advantage of focusing our attack on the issue of ?Save Our System? is that it is fought on advantageous terrain: this issue can unite Americans on our side.
In the age of the Bushite forces, that is no small thing. Beginning well before these forces seized the White House, they have been working long and cleverly at dividing Americans along increasingly polarized ideological lines in order to gain political advantage.
Starting back in the late 1980s, the likes of Newt Gingrich and Rush Limbaugh began using propaganda techniques to make ?liberal? into a dirty word. Recall Gingrich?s tutorial to aspiring Republican politicians, teaching them to link the word ?liberal? with ?abnormal.? And with his daily radio shows to his ?dittoheads? around the country, Limbaugh has spent the last decade and a half teaching millions of our countrymen to have nothing but contempt for the values and principles and ideas of liberalism.
We must now deal with the consequences of all that poisonous propaganda, streaming into America for so long almost unanswered.
And one main result, judging from the political record, seems to be that those issues that can be rendered by the likes of Karl Rove in terms of liberal-vs.-conservative play into the Bushite?s hands. Even where public opinion polls show that majorities of the people agree with liberal positions, it consistently seems that the Rovian spin succeeds in turning the issues to work politically for this administration.
Is there an instance in the past dozen years when that was not so?
Such is the power of a generation of pernicious right-wing propaganda, that much of the American public cannot now hear clearly, or consider fairly, a message that the Bushites can cast as liberal.
(Why else is it, do you suppose, that liberals are shopping around for some new word, like ?progressive,? whereas Republicans are only too glad to blazon themselves with the word ?conservative??)
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