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![\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/02\/fe-logo-13-feb-09-250-px1.jpg?resize=250%2C133&ssl=1\" "\\"Fe\\"")
<\/dt>\n<\/dl>\n<\/div>\nI’ve been in a heightened state of awareness this last month in anticipation of the midterms, watching the political blogs and keeping an eye on the Yahoo! front page, which displays the news roundup from the Associated Press — its a good way to see how the right-wing\u00a0propaganda machine is holding up.<\/p>\n
As far as I know, it held up pretty well.<\/p>\n
For whatever reason —\u00a0most usually because of perennial lack of interest in voting during non-Presidential year elections —\u00a040 million Democrats stayed home. The machine held up pretty well in keeping the noise bubble at a deafening roar about the President’s\u00a0birth certificate,\u00a0his purported Muslim roots, the feared imposition of Sharia Law on America, and more recently a false report about a $200 million dollar price tag on the President’s upcoming and important two-day summit trip to India to discuss the US role in the global economy.<\/p>\n
The machine held up pretty well in keeping old, Southern, blue collar, straight\u00a0white males hopping mad and anxious to vote to elect the people who will ultimately halve their Medicare, slash their Social Security or\u00a0 dole it\u00a0out to Wall Street to speculate with. The machine was efficient in keeping us ungrounded, unfocused and therefore terrified, embracing\u00a0the dark side of ourselves with our guns, racism, homophobia, twitter tweets and Facebook pages\u00a0joking about assassinating the President, the Speaker of the House\u00a0and other Democratic politicians.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
And finally, the machine was quite adept in making sure it had already poisoned the well of politics completely by the Supreme Court ruling on Citizens United v. the Federal Elections Commission<\/em>, which now guarantees that corporations — even international ones, will dictate the outcome of the US elections vis-a-vis campaign contributions that will not be scrutinized or even found out.<\/p>\n
There’s plenty of blame to hand out in the aftermath of this election, including towards the President, who already took responsibility for not getting the message out on what had been accomplished these last two years under a Democratic White House, Senate and Congress. But we cannot stop there, and we cannot continue the path of self-recrimination. We just don’t have that kind of time.<\/p>\n
The corporate interests who have planned this entire media and political circus knows what its doing — from the Dixie cup millionaire Koch Brothers who helped fund the astroturf (fake grassroots)\u00a0Tea Party\u00a0to Rupert Murdoch buying the Wall Street Journal and CNBC, and now even the suspension of Keith Olbermann, one of the few voices of lucidity in broadcast news. They knew the minute Democrats took the 2006 midterms and the 2008 general elections that they would have to organize and retake the country, starting with the House, and next the Senate and finally the White House — in order to complete what was started in 2000. They are on their way.<\/p>\n
But we can stop them. It starts with your pen and paper. It starts with your computer. It starts with going to your school board meetings, city council meetings, and letters to the editor. It starts with keeping the fax and phone numbers for your state assembly and senate members, as well as your\u00a0state Congresspersons and Senators when the nonsense coming from Congress becomes too much to bear.<\/p>\n
It starts with turning off the news, and looking through the sources of the news you read when you do. Its about listening with the “other ear” — the one\u00a0that senses something is amiss but you can’t quite finger it — \u00a0for manipulation, subliminal messaging and race and gender baiting that makes you afraid of others,\u00a0afraid of life,\u00a0afraid in general. And calling them on it.<\/p>\n
It starts with you not getting beaten down, and to help bring others up who are. Its about sharing food with others, giving some of your extra eggplant that you’ve grown but you just can’t eat, to other people who are hungry. Its about helping other people who are in need, who are alone, who are sick, tired, poor and need to be hugged and held. Its about you and your community taking to the streets and to the halls of power. Its not just about the President, or your congressperson or your Senator doing it for you. As far as we can tell, they won’t or they can’t.\u00a0Not right now.<\/p>\n
It starts with you. And you will have the planets and the stars aligned up for you these next few years to do just that.<\/p>\n
Luckily, California saw through the noise and all that money pouring in from millionaires and corporations, failing to defeat\u00a0Jerry Brown (also known as Governor Moonbeam) — our new governor. Democratic Senator Barbara Boxer, a known protector of the environment, particularly the Pacific coastline,\u00a0has been elected for another six years.<\/p>\n
This week, we\u00a0also felt fortunate to be living in the San Francisco Bay Area, where baseball eclipsed the midterm elections for just a little bit. The high of a World Series championship dampened the grim\u00a0prospect of the noise, the oinks\u00a0and the grunts that are sure to come from the House of Representatives come January 2011.\u00a0So I think\u00a0maybe a baseball analogy\u00a0would be helpful right about now.<\/p>\n
The San Francisco Giants’ winning pitcher is Tim Lincecum, a\u00a0pot-smoking Eurasian kid from the Pacific Northwest who kind of reminds you of Keanu Reeves from “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure”. Now I don’t usually make a habit of pinning up pictures of sports heroes\u00a0by my desk, but for Lincecum, I will. The kid is a Cy Young pitching award winner, and looks like he does yoga. He’s slight, unassuming and looks under-intimidating. But every muscle in his body and all his focus goes into every pitch, and the most destructive batters in the National and American leagues have been gunned down by this supposedly physically inconsequential kid.<\/p>\n
So take this analogy to heart and keep it there, beating strong:\u00a0 They want you to imagine that you’re weak and you have no power. But you do. Its already there. All you have to do is tap it, put all your energy into it, focus it\u00a0and use it to defeat them.<\/em><\/p>\n
Use this time to rest up, paint, dance, be creative and make love as often as you can. Limber up for spring training and strengthen your voice. Reject despair. We’re going to need you. You’ve got what it takes.<\/p>\n
Who me? Calling for a revolution??<\/strong>
\n<\/em>
\nFe Bongolan
\n<\/strong>San Francisco<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Phew. Its now 96 hours past the midterm elections here in the United States, and I’m beginning to clear the debris from off my windshield. I’ve been in a heightened state of awareness this last month in anticipation of the midterms, watching the political blogs and keeping an eye on the Yahoo! front page, which … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[29,1788,1691,52,1054],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30514"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/9"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30514"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30514\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}