The Illusion of Normality
Ernest Partridge, Co-Editor
The Crisis Papers
Never in the 229 years of United States history has this government “of, by
and for the people” been in greater peril. Not during the Civil War, not
during the great depression, and not during the Second World War or the Cold
War which followed.
Until today, gross incompetence, abuse of power, corruption, corporatocracy,
and federal insolvency could be checked and reversed by balanced and
separated governmental powers, and at the ballot box by a citizenry informed
and provoked by an alert and independent media. Now all branches of
government and the mainstream media are dominated by the wealthy elites in
control of a single political party.
Can you believe this? If not, you are in the company of a majority of
Americans who might respond to the above jeremiad with “Oh c’mon now, it
can’t be as bad as all that! We’ve always had incompetence, corruption,
waste, fraud and abuse in the federal government, and stolen elections are
as old as the republic. It’s no different now.”
So long as that majority of Americans believes this, the rule of the
Busheviks and its successor oligarch regimes will be secure. Thus Bush, Inc.
and its obedient mainstream media are desperately endeavoring to nourish and
sustain this “illusion of normality.”
The illusion has many facets.
Elections? “Get over it!” The refusal of the public to
believe that national elections can be stolen, validates the claim of the
Bush Administration and the Republican Congress to political legitimacy –
that they “derive their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
(Declaration of Independence). The evidence clearly indicates otherwise.
(For an excellent summation of this evidence, see Dennis Loo’s
“No
Paper Trail Left Behind.” See also The Crisis Papers
pages on “Election
Fraud, 2004" and
“Electoral Integrity.”). On the other hand, the evidence for the
legitimacy of the elections is virtually non-existent, due to the secrecy of
the software and the absence of paper validation. So all that the defenders
of the legitimacy illusion have is ad hominem insults of the
challengers – “conspiracy theorists,” “paranoid,” “get over it!” The
mainstream media’s response is, no response, with the apparent hope
and expectation, so far successful, that if it is ignored, the ballot fraud
issue will go away. The primary aggrieved institutional victim of the fraud,
the Democratic Party, simply won’t touch the issue, which can only serve to
strengthen “the illusion of normality.” Thus allegations that the elections
were stolen and thus that the government in power is illegitimate are
confined to the alternative media and the internet.
And so the Democrats carry on as if the upcoming elections of 2006 and 2008
are “normal,” as they diligently solicit more votes and cheerfully look
forward to taking back the Congress in 2006 and the White House in 2008 – as
if the same “normal” rules and conditions apply as they have before. Those
poor, naive saps! Don’t they realize that once again, Republican
operatives will count the votes!, and that the results will be just what
the GOP wants them to be, regardless of the wishes of the electorate? Unless.
Unless, very
soon, the people demand reform and restore the integrity of the
ballot box.
The Media are biased in favor of the liberals. The right-wing
talk-merchants who, until Air American Radio came along, had the AM dial
pretty much to themselves, complain constantly that the mainstream media has
a left-wing, anti-Bush bias. So too the cable news chatterers. Much of the
public believes this myth because it is repeated so often – not, to be sure,
on the strength of the evidence which clearly proves otherwise. Two brief
examples: In October, 2004, immediately before the presidential election,
the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes (PIPA)
released a report
that among Bush supporters, 75% believed that Saddam Hussein’s Iraq
government supported al Qaeda, and 72% believed that Iraq either had weapons
of mass destruction, or active WMD programs. In addition, the Bush
supporters said that the US should not go to war if it were known that Iraq
had no WMDs. Which means, to put it bluntly, that Bush owes his election to
this WMD lie (among other lies, but those require separate arguments). Now
where did the Bush voters get this misinformation if not from the mainstream
media, which obviously passed it on uncritically from the Bush
administration. Example two: On CNN’s “Crossfire, Paul Begala reported the
following results of a Nexis-Lexis Search:
"There were exactly 704 stories in the [2000] campaign
about this flap of Gore inventing the Internet. There were only 13 stories
about Bush failing to show up for his National Guard duty for a year.
There were well over 1,000 stories -- Nexus stopped at 1,000 -- about Gore
and the Buddhist temple. Only 12 about Bush being accused of insider
trading at Harken Energy. There were 347 about Al Gore wearing earth
tones, but only 10 about the fact that Dick Cheney did business with Iran
and Iraq and Libya."
The advantage of the myth of the liberal media to Bush and
the Republicans is enormous. To those who believe it, if a story favorable
to Bush and the GOP appears, the response is “it must be true, since even
the liberal media reports it.” And critical stories? “Don’t believe it, it’s
just the liberal media dissing our President again.” Conversely for stories
about the Democrats and progressives. (For more about right-wing and
pro-Bush media bias, visit the website of FAIR).
“Torture? We wouldn’t do that, we’re Americans” and “It
was just a few bad apples.” Few Americans appreciate the depths of
moral depravity that are are plumbed by this administration’s justification
of the use of torture of prisoners captured in this “war on terror,” and by
its official violation of the Geneva accords – ratified treaties that have
the status of US laws. Nor are many of our fellow citizens aware of the
disgust and hatred of our country’s government engendered throughout the
world as a result of these policies. And why not? The mainstream media do
not accurately report the tortures, assess the treaty violations, or inform
the public of international opinion. Attorney General Gonzales has
effectively “abolished” torture by defining it out of existence, yet the
tortures still go on. The Geneva conventions are evaded by the invention of
a category of prisoners, “enemy combatants,” that is unrecognized by
international law. In effect, the government of the United States of
America, our country, is an international outlaw. The Busheviks do not care.
And sadly, the American people, by and large, do not know. They believe that
our treatment of prisoners is justified, and that the opinions of us abroad,
are “normal.” It is an illusion.
The President, his cabinet, and the Congress will, as they have all
sworn, “protect and defend the Constitution.” In fact,
American citizens are now being held indefinitely, without charge, without
counsel, without trial, in violation of four of the Ten Amendments to the
Constitution (The Bill of Rights).
The President
claims the right to designate any American citizen as a “terrorist
suspect” and to arrest and confine that citizen in similar violation of law
and the Constitution. The same Constitution stipulates that
Congress declares war, yet this “war on terrorism” is undeclared. This is
but one of many clear violations of law by the Bush Administration
(enumerated in my “The Bombs in the Basement"). The conventional attitude that “they all
do it” just doesn’t begin to excuse the unprecedented lawlessness of this
regime.
The policies of this administration are based on “sound science.”
The term “sound science” and its antithesis, “junk science,” are inventions
of that semantic genius of the GOP, Frank Luntz. So too those Orwellian
names, “Healthy Forests,” “Clear Skies Initiative,” “The Death Tax.” The
conclusion of more than 2,000 world scientists
concerning global warming? “Junk science.” So too the warnings of
geologists that the world is
approaching “peak oil production.” Industry sponsored reassurances
that mercury emissions from coal-fired plants are not harmful? “Sound
Science.” The fact that virtually all peer-reviewed scientific studies
disagree seems not to matter. “For every Ph.D there is an equal and opposite
Ph.D” – if the price is right. The public believes the “news” it is
given, and does not pay attention to the American Association for the
Advancement of Science, the National Science Foundation, the National
Academy of Sciences, or other professional scientific journals and
associations. Nor is the public much concerned with the fact that this
administration’s “war against science” is costing us our long-established
lead in scientific research and development – a foundation of our economic
prosperity.
And the list continues: record federal deficits, a widening income
gap between the very rich and the rest of us, corruption – personal
enrichment at public expense, corporate “purchasing” of legislation and
“regulatory relief” through campaign contributions. Massive.
Unconstrained. Unprecedented. Unbelievable. And so most of the public is
unwilling and unable to believe it.
Add to this the enormous stake that the Administration, the Republican
Party, and their corporate patrons have in perpetuating this “illusion of
normality.” Billions of dollars of public funds have been snatched from the
federal treasury and billions more from the investments, retirement funds,
health benefits and social services of private individuals. Add to that the
deterioration of educational facilities and public infrastructure. Some of
this has been done through the cover of “legitimate” congressional
legislation, and some of it through outright criminal activity. Remnants of
our criminal justice system are pushing back. Today, David Safavian, Jack
Abramoff and even Tom DeLay are under indictment. Soon Patrick Fitzgerald’s
grand jury will hand down their indictments which, it is likely, will reach
into the White House. Hopefully, that will be just the beginning.
In short, the malefactors are facing not only the loss of their ill-gained
wealth but perhaps federal prison cells. And don’t suppose that they don’t
know it, and that they are not prepared to take extreme measures to avoid
it. The injured and cornered beast is the most dangerous, and these critters
have some fearful resources at their disposal.
But they are up against the most formidable and unyielding of adversaries:
the truth – an adversary that they have abused and repressed
throughout their reign of error. And as they must eventually discover,
reality bites. “Truth crushed on earth,” wrote William Cullen Bryant,
“will rise again,” and it will rise, no matter how many millions are poured
into the budgets of “think tanks” or into the pockets of whore-“scientists.”
“Truth will rise again,” if not here, then abroad, and if not now, then
eventually.
If we are to restore our democracy, truth must rise again
soon and here.
But how?
Foremost among the objectives of the progressive resistance must be to
disabuse the public at large of its “illusion of normality.” We must attack
the widespread but understandable unwillingness of that public to face up to
the enormity of the crimes that have been perpetrated upon the body politic.
Fortunately, events are at last coming to the aid of the resistance. A
“perfect storm” is descending upon the White House and Congress: the
innocent lives sacrificed to the Iraq disaster, the Katrina catastrophe and
the evident inability and unwillingness of the Bush Administration to attend
to the business of protecting the public, the aforementioned criminal
indictments – present and forthcoming. Looming ahead is a collapse of the
economy as the housing bubble bursts, consumer spending crashes because the
American consumer “maxes out” his credit and faces unemployment, and our
international creditors decide they’ve had enough, and decide to invest in
other currencies.
Public opinion polls (if we can still trust them) are reporting plummeting
approval ratings for the President and the GOP, along with a loss of
confidence in the direction that the country is taking, and a loss of
credibility of the mainstream media. “The fear factor” is losing its
potency. It’s beginning to dawn on more and more of our fellows citizens
that they have been suckered and lied to, and they don’t like it.
Trouble is, they don’t at the moment have any place to turn. The “opposition
party,” the Democrats, don’t fare much better in the opinion polls than the
Republicans, and for good reason. They are dumb-struck, incoherent, and
impotent.
The time is right for forceful, inspired and articulated leaders of the
opposition to emerge. Where are they? Who are they? Who dares step forward,
speak out, and take the lead? What individuals, what organizations, what
factions will put aside their differences and unite in common cause?
On these questions, the issue of the restoration of our liberties, our
welfare, our republic, will turn.
Copyright 2005 by Ernest Partridge
Ernest Partridge's Internet Publications
Conscience of a Progressive:
A book
in progress.
Partridge's Scholarly Publications. (The Online Gadfly)
Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field
of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at
the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He
publishes the website, "The Online
Gadfly" and co-edits the progressive website,
"The Crisis Papers".
