{"id":42732,"date":"2011-08-06T08:32:28","date_gmt":"2011-08-06T12:32:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/?p=42732"},"modified":"2011-09-24T15:57:32","modified_gmt":"2011-09-24T19:57:32","slug":"beware-the-loathsome-memes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/by-judith-gayle-2\/beware-the-loathsome-memes\/","title":{"rendered":"Beware The Loathsome Memes"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves<\/strong><\/a><\/p>\n

Fewer than 15% of the American people approve of Congress today. After years of frustration over filibuster and obstruction, after long weeks of stonewalling, threats and name-calling over the debt ceiling, I’m surprised that we still view ANY of the nation’s lawmakers as worthy of their pay. Congressional approval hasn’t dipped this low since Newt Gingrich raised his crusader’s flag over the House of Representatives in the ’90s, leading his madcap band of religious zealots in assault against all things progressive. I take our collective disapproval as a modest sign of sanity, hopeful but not a sure thing. Clearly, our understanding of what ails us is still too small and confused, too polarized.<\/p>\n

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Being angry at Congress is akin to having a gangrenous leg spreading its deadly infection dangerously close to our vital organs, and being pissed at our pinky-toe for turning black. The whole thing’s rotten, dearhearts. If we want to walk again we have to factor in the executive and judicial branches, the think-tanks, lobbyists and big money boys, the corporate sponsors, para-religious movements, and most important of all, the pundits and media that play on public fear and ignorance to keep us dancing to corporate tunes. Congress is theatre, and power resides in the corporate checkbook. It’s important to get the bigger picture into public awareness if we want to launch a precision strike against whatever meme threatens to capture the national imagination next, whether true or not, and more often not.<\/p>\n

Just look at what happened when the public accepted the Tea Party premise about a debt crisis. While there were certainly concerns about excess spending, especially with Bush’s big wars still simmering in the Mideast, Republican rhetoric about a spending crisis was a lie that skewed the details, omitted the revenue loss of Bush’s tax cuts, and minimized corporate welfare for big businesses that paid nothing into the nation’s coffers. Still able to borrow money for pennies on the dollar, and badly in need of stimulus spending to kick-start an economy on life support, the last thing the American economy needed was a fear campaign. Yet last summer, the absurd political debate gathered enough emotional debris around debt and taxation issues to expand a calculated political challenge into a national lie. Next thing you know, we had a homegrown and deliberately created political meme.<\/p>\n

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Those on the left who saw this coming on like a freight train did our best to defend against it, but to no avail. Once the public had heard the lie often enough, it became THE most critical thing on our national plate, occulting even the growing poverty and joblessness that is bleeding our society like a hungry parasite. The Pubs’ only justification for holding the nation hostage to budget cuts was a vitriolic PR campaign that so confused the facts and staggered the imagination that the rubes were finally suckered. The lies that infected the public consciousness were cause enough for Republican celebration, crowing over Obama’s approval of funds slashed from dearly-won Dem programs while demanding no increase in taxes on the wealthy. The Dems just aren’t into going toe to toe with people who want government dead, and the real progressives were being held on choker chains down the street and around the corner where their growls could not be heard.<\/p>\n

Still, the entitlements remain untouched as yet, and many of the cuts are back-loaded into 2013 when it is hoped the economy will be more robust, but on that front we should not, as they say, count our ducks. And that’s the only good news for the time being. The Republicans continue to carry the goal posts farther to the right, and the President trots behind, trying to plant his feet in a shifting middle.<\/p>\n

Now that we have negotiated with terrorists, the next loathsome meme is that the so-called “entitlements” must be streamlined lest our suddenly fragile nation crumble under their massive fiscal weight. Never mind that Social Security is 22 TRILLION dollars to the good, never mind that Medicare costs a mere three percent off the top to deliver, while private insurers average thirty percent and often exceed that. Medicare for those who don’t need it is too expensive to keep lavishing on old folks, short-timers that they are, and Medicare for all is obviously a socialist plot. Never mind that little kids and elders, powerless to care for themselves, will suffer most if Medicaid is diminished.<\/p>\n

Newly pragmatic, we’re told we can’t spend on everything the public wants — like roads and schools, social protections such as cops and inspectors, assistance programs like food for the hungry or heat for the freezing. In fact, House Minority Leader Eric Cantor has pretty much promised that entitlement promises are a thing of the past if he and his band of merry Baggers continue to be in charge. The new meme insists that we must do more with much less, and if the public begins to believe that, it will become acceptable to mainstream thought. The only hedge we have against such a fate is the truth and an engaged press.<\/p>\n

Ahhhhh<\/em>. There’s the rub.<\/p>\n

Last week, CNN invited the public to weigh in on the budget ceiling issue. All day long they read e-mails from folks giving their opinion. The one that stopped me in my tracks was a message from an obviously confused woman who went after the president for “holding the country hostage.” When these things occur — and they do more and more often — I tend to yell at my television. I believe I said something like, “I beg yer fuckin’ pardon? The PRESIDENT is doing that? That would be the same president who was willing to raise the age limits on both Social Security and Medicare in order to secure a grudging YES vote from rogue Republicans? The same president who has lost his OWN credibility not only with his progressive base but with independents that admire toughness, not conciliation? The very same president who has been exposing the limits of his power in feeble attempts to negotiate some kind of bipartisan agreement with the puffed and bloated reptile-brains of this nation? THAT PRESIDENT is holding us hostage?”<\/p>\n

Okay, sometimes I get carried away.<\/p>\n

The point remains, somewhere out there is a dazed and confused Kool Aid drinker who repeats propaganda she’s been told, fogging up the mirror with talking points she hasn’t investigated nor seriously thought about. While experience tells me she’s probably a nice enough lady at heart, here’s my advice: do NOT let her babysit your kids or buy her cookies at the bake sale, because clearly her judgment is not to be trusted. But that’s NOTHING compared to the responsibility CNN bears for allowing that comment air time! They wouldn’t let someone bash gays or insult the Prophet or call Mitch McConnell a corporate stooge, but someone can accuse the president of betraying his country? This kind of rhetoric is not a surprise on FOX News, but from a credible news outlet? Infotainment wins the day.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, I’m seeing a sea-change in some newscasters, an attempt at baby-steps in truth-telling and ethics that surprises me when I see it. CNN’s Don Lemon has announced his gayness, while Anderson Cooper goes after those who won’t give a straight answer. A day after the Kool Aid lady expressed her ignorant concerns, one of CNN’s lady anchors screwed up her courage and went after Glenn Beck for calling Norway’s murdered children “Hitler Youth.” She was, she said, “calling him out” and, to her credit, discussed how many times in the last year Beck has used the word Hitler (hundreds) and made the comparison to Obama’s administration (continually.) Fine upstanding American patriot, that Glenn: silent as a tomb when George Bush took us down the primrose path of compromised legalities and shattered ethics, but full of vitriol for the black guy and his Muslim, socialist, commie, pinko plot.<\/p>\n

What might our nation look like if that anchor had performed such a public service a year ago on CNN, when Beck was poisoning the airwaves with conspiracy and innuendo and flat-out lies? She might have dampened some fumes from the gas he was throwing on the flames the Baggers fanned. If she’d done her job then — and if media had done the same not only with Beck but with unvetted and irresponsible right-wing rhetoric as a whole — we’d still have a cantankerous and belligerent opposition party, but we wouldn’t be in national freefall, facing a black hole of ugly probabilities. If somebody had stepped in and asked Palin to prove the garbage she was spewing, if somebody had made Rush Limbaugh site an actual reference instead of paging through the Republican playbook, if someone had demanded that the Republicans on Meet The Press<\/em> argue their point rather than simply ratchet up the heat under a boiling mass of zealotry, would things now look this dire?<\/p>\n

This new meme about austerity is both dangerous and debilitating. A wrinkle in the pathology of oligarchy, it’s a policy destined to fail, and we on the left are destined to fight against it, as we’ve always done. It’s systemic corruption and cruelty, prejudice and economic enslavement but it’s nothing new. It’s the same old decades-old culture war, the same old class struggle, dressed in political trickery. Yet in those good old days that everyone agrees weren’t all that good, we at least had a press that worked for the people. Since that’s no longer the case, we will have to stand up for ourselves.<\/p>\n

The kind of austerity planned by our corporate masters will not only rob us of a future but will drain us of our self-worth. If you think fighting it is a battle worth taking on, I encourage you to read economists like the New York Times’ Krugman and Robert Reich<\/a>, Joseph Stiglitz<\/a> and Simon Johnson<\/a> for a bit of reality therapy. Share their articles with friends and acquaintances. There are too many Kool Aid drinkers out there, blaming Obama and the so-called liberal press for a thousand ills that we can’t even imagine, let alone name. The memes are growing, and you and I are all that stands between them and the nation’s sanity. Only the truth can set us free.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves Fewer than 15% of the American people approve of Congress today. After years of frustration over filibuster and obstruction, after long weeks of stonewalling, threats and name-calling over the debt ceiling, I’m surprised that we still view ANY of the nation’s lawmakers as worthy of their pay. Congressional approval … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":""},"categories":[1744],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42732"}],"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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42732"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42732\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42732"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42732"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetwaves.net\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42732"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}