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"Altogether it is thus a seductive and believable theory that says as much about American political realities as it does about the events of Dallas, LA, Memphis and NY themselves. What Oglesby tries to do, and succeeds at it brilliantly, is expose the almost organic level of corruption in the structure of the political process
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Well that corruption has not gone away as we watch the health insurance industry buy Democrats and Republicans alike, as we watch the news machine turn into the fear machine while the bankers turn the bailout billions into bonuses to enrich their already rich coffers.  A study by NY State Attorney General Cuomo found that big banks took more out in compensation than they took in. If you call this looting, you won t be wrong.
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Calhoun calls it this way:
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" there is no free lunch even in a democracy. As in any other political system, in a democracy too the choice is between terror and tyranny, between Democracy and Fascism. These two poles of political existence cannot be finessed through laziness, exhaustion, or choosing to live in denial. Like all other political systems, democracy also exists on that tenuous sliver of ground that lies between these two poles; there are no angles left to be played. Those who somehow believe that benign tyranny "by their own favorite corrupt power elite" is the answer to terror, have failed to notice Oglesbys crowning point about the JFK assassination: that terror and tyranny are but opposite sides of the same corrupt coin: that tyranny is terror, just by another name, and by other more elaborate means.
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So where does this leave us?
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Unfortunately, it s back to where I came in, as a young activist who went "part of the way with LBJ onto to agonize as he escalated the Vietnam war, as a prisoner of the cold war anti-commie consensus.
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Today, war on terror thinking is the new conventional wisdom even though we know that Iraq and Afghanistan are disasters. So why doesn t he see it? The White House is just like Wall Street in that respect: when you are inside the bubble, you don t know it;s there. You believe your own hype.
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Military commanders are always promising victory if only they get more troops and bigger budgets. That s the game they play again and again And even Stephen Colbert buys into the surge turned it all around myth.
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