Over
the years of my political seething I have cooled myself off some by
exercising an art form, the letter to the editor. I even got one in
the New York Times once. Mostly though they go to Atlanta's daily or
weekly rags, or when I'm visiting Michigan, their daily. Sometimes I
might browse a monthly magazine, a business-oriented one recently.
They did an interview with Georgia Power's new president and I
couldn't let him get away with his greenwashing, not when
they're engaged in a huge con, bilking the ratepayers, ignoring clean
alternatives like wind and solar and building dangerous nuclear
reactors.
I
have learned to avoid mainstream media because the subservient party
line, the narrow range of opinion offered up as wisdom there, tends
to set me off. I can't spend all my time writing LTEs but that's what
I do if I stumble upon propaganda masquerading as journalism. A
couple examples below, the first run in the Atlanta Journal
Constitution 9/16/14, this one on the Citizen United issue.
There
are a lot of jokes about the supreme court ruling "Citizens
United", including the judgment itself. Such as, "I'll
believe
corporations are people when Texas executes one." That
corporations are not people is so transparently obvious that one
can
only conclude the supreme law of the land has been deliberately
twisted to favor business interests of citizens (I had actually
said... to
favor business interests over
citizens - changing over to of
muddies what I was saying). That seems to me an impeachable offense
for any public official who has taken
an oath to protect the
constitution. The first step should be to reverse that decision with
a constitutional amendment.
Editors,
I suppose because they are editors, often feel they have to put their
mark on whatever crosses their desk. I don't mind this if it
clarifies but often as not it muddies, or even subverts. Check this
one out:
I
sent this LTE around the time of the BP oil spill, to the Atlanta
Constitution Journal. Interesting to compare what I wrote to what
they ran. It's almost an illustration of my point (what they cut I
highlight in bold):
The
term fundamentalist ideology probably evokes Islamic fanaticism to
many, Christian or Jewish extremists to others, but rarely are the
promoters of capitalism associated with the term. Yet there is
clearly a similar level of intellectual dishonesty among its
advocates.
Rush
Limbo has been implying that the Gulf oil spill-disaster is caused by
“whacko environmentalists” and though he is the hysterical end of
capitalism you won’t find a lot of real analysis on the more
respectable end either. Numerous pundits approvingly report on the
“nuclear renaissance” without mentioning Chernobyl, indeed,
scrupulously avoiding the New York Academy of Science’s recent
claim that nearly a million people world-wide died as a result of
that disaster.
And
my long unanswered question, if we truly have a free press providing
a full range of views for an informed citizenry, where are the
socialist commentators? In my home town newspaper you get Bill
O’reilly all the way over to Thomas Sowell. That’s probably more
or less true across the country. No commentator consistently pointing
out the contradictions and corruption of capitalism and discussing an
alternative need apply to any mainstream news outlet.
I need not rehearse the corporate “ownership” of congress and the
political process in the U.S. directly related to how campaigns are
financed.
The owners control policy and media debate and where this leads us is
ominously illustrated in the oily waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
.
The
LTE below I sent out into the ether, I forget where, responding to
yet another wave of war drums, just enough time now passed,
apparently in the war mind, for the public to forget about the costly
stupidity of the last one.
__._,_.___
In
the hometown of Martin Luther King one would think the lesson, that
violence begets violence, would not have to be re-learned. Unless we
are very lucky, what MLK predicted will come to pass: we either end
war, or it will end us. We should not be squandering opportunities to
practice the non-violent skills essential to providing an alternative
to war. As Einstein warned, until we change our thinking, due to
nuclear weapons, we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe. It will
not be easy, and who knows how much time we have, but it is
necessary.
And
it's true, who knows how much time we have to end war before it ends
us? Seems like there's a race on: climate change, population,
pollution, nukes... which one will bring us to extinction first? Or
should we, instead of passively placing our bets, adopt non-violent
conflict resolution, no matter how difficult, institute sustainable
policies around population and pollution, and incorporate another
necessary ingredient for peace, justice?
