I don’t even bother with the major news outlets anymore (notice I’ve removed them from the link role to your right). I get my news from blogs. Creative sample leads to a pungent multi-media experience without the sore eyes and gibbering lunacy encoured from actually reading a primary source…say, the New York Times.
Why bother? I think to myself. I’ve been reading corporate hometown newspapers all my life and it never made me a wit more informed. There’s the occasional diamond in the rough, like when USA Today lets us know the government has our phone records—but how often does the blatant lie, the obvious sin of omission, sneak by under the radar of our journalistic “watch dogs.” Things like,
“Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised."— President George W. Bush 17 March 2003 |
Or the ever popular,
“Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us."—Vice President Dick Cheney, August 2002 |
I’m reminded of Maurice Chavez, a great man who once said, “If you don’t vote you get morons in charge. Is that moral? I don’t think so.” Not to press the issue, but it seems that, year after year, cycle after cycle, we’re presented with a never ending crop of morons, whether we vote or not.
Worse, my home state of Oregon is far from clean. It, too, is subject to the despicable evolutionary laws of American politics. The headline of a study by the Money In Politics Research Action Project, dated November 7th, 2004, says it all:
The “Money” Party Wins 91 Percent of Oregon Legislative Races News reports often focus on the top fundraisers in the most competitive races, which sometimes leaves voters and potential candidates thinking that candidates must raise large pots of money to win elective office. However, while the typical candidate still needed to raise substantial amounts of money to win—nearly $59,000 for a House race and more than $100,000 for a Senate race—the top fundraisers for 2004 House and Senate seats raised nearly six times more. Overall there was a decided lack of competition among candidates for House and Senate races. More than one in 10 legislative races were one by candidates who were unopposed in their general election bids. Another 56 percent of races had a fundraising spread that was so large that the money underdog was effectively drowned out by the top fundraiser in the race. |
So, really, what’s the point if the person who raises the most money wins 91 percent of the time? I could hop skip and jump my way to Open Secrets Government and track their graphs all the way up to November 7th. So what’s the point?
(And here I was hoping it would be the 5th. That would be just too much to bear.)
The point is, if you don’t participate at all you get what you disserve. I get what I disserve. No where else on earth have so many people cared so little about politics. What if we all decided not to care about the state of our car’s break systems? Or airplane maintenance schedules? Or nineteen, seedy looking Arab gentlemen who are all fired up to learn how to fly planes, just not so concerned about proper landing protocols.
Oh, I’m sorry. We already chose not to worry about that in the summer of 2001. And look where it's gotten us.
I say "us" and “we” only because “we,” the people are nominally responsible for the structure of our government. It is us, even as it listens to us. We listen to ourselves. We’ve tapped our own phone calls and we are building an enormous telephone call database beneath our NSA. With our money. That we, all of us, earned and just sent off to the federal government not a month hence with our tax checks.
The man who thought up this grand scheme is a Clarence Bodiger-looking motherfucker name General Mike Hayden. He’s currently in line for a promotion: form NSA to CIA after Porter Goss (an unqualified partisan hack, by all accounts) quit the job of Director amid rumors that he spent his nights partying with Republican lawmakers at roving booze, poker and hooker parties run out of the Watergate by lobbyists.
This is our current state of affairs, and despite the temporary upswing of attention garnered by Stephen Colbert, I have no problem predicting that the jaded public will continue doing nothing, or very little, to get up off their fucking asses and educate themselves to the state of their own supposed "leaders." They’ll be surprised as hell when the jackboots come kicking.
Me, I plan to be waiting in my crawlspace with my finger on the Big Red Button. Why should the President be the only one who gets to play around with Big Red Buttons?
In that spirit I go to Open Secrets and begin doing some research. I suggest you do the same, whoever and where ever you are. There are six months remaining.
Required Reading—Wired News: Whistle-Blower’s Evidence, Uncut
