Fate of Democracy May Still Hinge On Disinformation and Deceit.
(BEND, Ore.) - Ever since just-before the Reagan "victory" at the polls, some of us then "in the media" kept hearing about a widespread Far Right billionaire/financed attack to rig longtime Republican Party control, via strong concentration for broad media infiltration across the entire nation.
That same rumor of radical dollar-driven open-attack on clear and clean well-established principles for our democracy has kept on turning up, every so often, all these years.
Partial and incomplete references to something even stronger than any then-known concentrated-power/attack can be found in many political, press and broadcast-media productions and published records, all through the past thirty years.
But then came David Brock, himself a noted insider-conservative, informed by personal/professional participation in plain and open fashion within key conservative publications for decades. He tore off all previous disguises and made distinctly damaging and deep disclosures of the real facts, firmly on public record in any documents and via still-reliable press/media reporting-then.
Here’s what he states in his now-famed book, published in 2004: “Once upon a time, right-wing strategists, operatives and financiers believed they could never win political hegemony in the United States unless they won domination of the country’s political discourse.
"Towards this end, a deliberate, well-financed and expressly acknowledged communications and deregulatory plan was pursued by the right wing for more than thirty years in close coordination with Republican Party leaders to subvert and subsume journalism and reshape the national consciousness through the media, with the intention of skewing American politics sharply to the right. The plan has succeeded spectacularly.”
Even more inflammatory as well as informative, the title of hi s book is : “The Republican Noise Machine: Right-Wing Media and How It Corrupts Democracy”. Which is absolutely, correctly descriptive!
Where were we all --and where was our “free press” playing the essential role of clear-communication channel for informed citizens- when this book was published ? When these-others also appeared?
Indeed, ever since, more-and-many such frank, open, informative and extremely well-documented volumes, investigative reports in nationally-noted magazines, deeply-probing studies from academia, and other highly informative --and persuasive-- materials demanding serious cogitation have surfaced --and continue to survive.
Each in turn has had its well-received, but short first-run - and then been sidelined; as if suppressed and/or otherwise made to partially-disappear by some “invisible hand” - surely not the same-one claimed to operate by some “free trade” partisans!
But each, too, keeps returning to the fray, brought back by continuing public demand for deep-truth --no matter how distressing.
Could it be that partial-suppression also is the continuing work of this same cabal? Although not necessarily a true “conspiracy”, nevertheless now more than ever before, that long-continued effort is plainly seen as extremely threatening to the political wit, wisdom and will of our American people; still deeply devoted to what we still have of our democracy.
My purpose here is NOT to be “persuasive” re the impact of these irrefutable events now clearly-cleanly on the public record. What we do here is simply to survey and “see with your own eyes” what has happened, as now made completely and collectively visible and viable by these solid-sensible, authoritative and documented disclosures.
This Op Ed, first of two, will seek to “see for you” the sources in this now-open and better-understood information-flow re this ongoing cabal, built openly, and clearly meant to attack our democracy at its source, for the malign purposes of those allied in this surely-questionable enterprise.
The recent Bush “administration” debacle, currently completely illuminated by the sudden involuntary departure of Karl Rove after fatally tangling those puppet-strings controlling Bush-policy applications, has now thrown exceedingly bright-light on the whole controlling cabal at work for those past decades.
His unavoidable book, rumored to bring him millions as advance-payment, is expected to spell out a strong attempted defense for what is already seen as the most appalling - and democracy-damaging of political failures ever recorded in our American history.
During the very-key and consequential thirty years just following the Reagan administration, that so-called conspiracy or cabal - later in large part attributed to Norquist et Cie on K Street-- has now been shown, by events and ongoing actions right out in the public eye, to have been driven by Far Right dollars supplied by those-few who had them in profusion --some from still-questionable economic sources.
Those funding-suppliers were then still well within the Republican Party-mechanism --and now have emerged in firm control as an all-powerful “neo-con” minority, firmly astride what’s left of the original Republican Party.
“They” --these “neo-cons”-- were even then purported to be seeking to subject the American media-system to such an intensive, continuing attack that “the media would fall into systemic failure”; and thus be forced to abandon its longtime-strong Constitutional responsibilities for full and open communication providing that most-essential component for democracy: Full “freedom of information, backed by comprehensive delivery of the entire spectrum of views and opinions” --properly shaping democratic decision by involved citizens.
Politics is the process purporting to provide full shape and strength for democratic decision, thus making possible the Founder-stated ideal of “government OF the people, FOR the people, BY the people.”
When that efficient, effective process is distorted and then perverted by huge pressures achieved by money-power in the hands of the elite few, used for their own purposes and interests, any possible performance in governance is also distorted and perverted; destroying that essential foundation of decisive control “of the people, for the people, by the people.”
Albeit always claiming their every action was completely devoted and fully directed to promoting alternative views on “what is right for America”, the strengthening neo-cons have discovered that over the years the wit, wisdom and will of the American people still has prevailed over all those billions of dollars-worth of exceedingly well-prepared propaganda.
The current Rove-determined debacle drives home that recurring demonstration one more time, after ongoing previous proofs on the public record, thus irretrievably spread widely on the pages of our American history for all to see and comprehend.
Advertising itself, insidiously designed to shape, control, motivate and move into purchase decision millions of Americans - spending billions to support and strengthen corporate business - has also provided the skills, abilities, and easy access for continuing applications adaptable to facilitate, and even guarantee full political control to a rich elite, as well as those dollar-paying customers.
“Corporate person-hood” offering First and Fourteenth Amendment provisions for “political speech-rights”, heavily funded by the resulting corporate “campaign contributions”, has become the ultimate tool --laid on lavishly by well-funded corporate-controlled lobbyists outnumbering elected representatives, in every State Legislature and even in our Congress itself.
The unavoidable, consequential outcomes have been well-and-painfully demonstrated with cyclical return to Founders/built principles, as set forth and then well administered by Teddy Roosevelt, to clean up the first “Gilded Age”; then FDR with his Depression-driven New Deal; then Truman’s Fair Deal; and finally Johnson’s deepening, difficult Vietnam “victory” at great cost in not only cash and wrenching loss of warrior-lives, but also of ultimately deep and overwhelming frustration for the many millions of Americans suffering from that war’s accumulated tensions and intolerable national stresses.
Is this overwhelming “neo-con” political philosophy what the American people really want, now, as our 21st Century begins its inevitable flow into the pages of history?
Many more among our millions are coming to doubt that continuing development, every day, in every way, with an answering flood of solid, substantiated, practical, rational and reasonable statements reflecting that most significant trend of our own days: To retrieve and return our own nation to the people, “for the people” --ONCE AGAIN!
In our second Op Ed on this topic we will explore how it came about that this powerful partial/party-cabal has been allowed to so seduce and sequester and force us to succumb to its malign will -- surely no substitute for the wit, wisdom and overwhelming democratic will of our whole people.
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Reader’s Note:
David Brock’s seminal statement in “Noise Machine” is ISBN
0-307-23689-7. Other major volumes referred for this Op Ed include: Cass Sunstein’s “The Second Bill of Rights; FDR’s Unfinished Revolution-Why We Need It More Than Ever”; ISBN 0-465-08332-3. Michael Lind’s “Up From Conservatism”: ISBN 0-684-83186-4; Thom Hartman’s “Unequal Protection: The Rise of Corporate Dominance and the Theft of Human Rights”; ISBN 1-57954-955-1; Steve Fraser’s “Every Man A Speculator: A History of Wall Street in American Life”; ISBN 0-06-662048-1; and Garry Wills’s “A Necessary Evil: A History of American Distrust of Government”; ISBN 0-684-844489-3”; Doris Kearns Goodwin’s “No Ordinary Time”, Pulitzer Prize-winner chronicling the FDR-dominated period when modern America was created; ISBN 0-684-80448-4; among others too numerous to list here.
Quotes are verbatim, shortened, summarized due to usual space restrictions; list of sources available on request. Other references from Internet and personal files are also far too numerous to list here; all sources are available on request.
Op Ed: Conspiracy Now CalledSalem-News.com