Mission Accomplished: Funding Battle Highlights American Embrace of Moronitude

[babylonsister]

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/7789

Mission Accomplished: Funding Battle Highlights American Embrace of Moronitude
by Ted Rall | May 30 2007

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In his new book Al Gore argues that Americans are losing the ability to, well, argue. "Reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions," claims the President-in-Internal-Exile. Never mind left versus right; irrationality has become so prevalent that outlandish jingoism and sentimental lunacy have displaced reason as the framework of our national dialogue. What passed for debate on the latest funding bill for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan makes a convincing case for Gore's thesis.

snip//

Remember, this isn't about war--it's about logic. Cutting off funding would do nothing to jeopardize U.S. troops fighting in Iraq. That's obvious. It would, of course, endanger the war itself. Without Congressional appropriations, Bush would be forced to bring them home. Which would make them, despite the reductionist and false 2003 GOP talking point that the streets of some U.S. cities are more dangerous than Iraq, safer. A lot safer.

Both parties, with the media playing along, have painted a bleak, transparently ridiculous portrait of besieged American soldiers, surrounded by rabid insurgents. It's The Alamo 2007, or maybe 2008, and our brave young men and women go down, fighting to the last man (or woman) until they run out of ammo, cursing Washington politicians for failing them. Save the last bullet for me, buddy!

It is baffling that this fiction prompted any response from the media, or Democratic pols, beyond dismissive laughter. The fact that it carried the day in a Congressional vote, without even a word of comment from national barometer Jon Stewart, stands as testimony to the triumph of what Mike Judge termed "idiocracy."

"Thank goodness we are finally here," Republican Congressman John Boehner said in reference to the Democratic agreement to support the war, "choking up" for C-SPAN. "Three and a half months to respond to our troops and their families is too long," added his colleague Roy Blunt. What are they talking about? The troops don't need or want the appropriation. They get a paycheck whether they're stationed in Iraq or here in the States. The Congressional appropriation in question goes to weapons manufacturers, contracting firms such as Halliburton, and Iraqi tribal sheiks in the form of bribes. The troops don't see a cent, much less their families.

What puts our troops in harm's way is the war. No war, no worries. Sure, Iraq falls apart (faster). Sure, Iraqis die (faster). But lost in the malarkey is the brutal truth: Voting for more money for the war means more troops get killed and wounded. Again, there are valid arguments for subjecting them to these risks. But there is no logical basis for the claim that the money will make them safer.


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[Demeter]

1. More Money Makes Our Troops Less Safe, Actually

It emboldens the Idiot-in-chief and his Vices to do even stupider things.

[Peace Patriot]

2. Brilliant, insightful post! But please put American in quotes. "American" embrace of

moronitude.

Most Americans are not morons. 75% of Americans oppose this war and wanted it ended. It is our leaders both Democratic and Republican, the Bush Junta, the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, and the entire, filthy political establishment in Washington DC, who are morons, or, more accurately, think that we are morons and treat us with utter contempt, because we haven't figured out yet what the game is.

The Iraq War Resolution and the "Help America Vote For Bush Act" were passed by the Anthrax Congress in the same month, October 2002, and are closely related. You can't perpetrate an unjust war, in a democracy--especially one with Vietnam in living memory--without fixing the elections. That's what they did. And both things--the war and electronic voting run on 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, owned and controlled by rightwing Bushite corporations--were supported by the Democratic leadership.

Half of our Democratic officeholders in Congress voted for the Iraq War. The 156 holdouts was an improvement over the "Gulf of Tonkin" resolution (Vietnam), which had only 2 opposing votes. But then, half of those anti-Iraq War votes turned around and voted FOR non-transparent, corporate-controlled vote "counting," the means by which the Iraq War was shoved down our throats. At that time, just prior to the invasion of Iraq, 56% of the American people opposed the Iraq War. 56%! That would be a landslide in a presidential election. It was to thwart that large, peace-minded, common sense, progressive American majority that the "Help America Vote for Bush's War Act" of 2002 was passed, along with the IWR.

This is how and why our political establishment can throw moronic phrases at each other--"support our troops, Nancy," "support our troops, Harry," "we support our troops, Georgie and Dickie," "do you support our troops?", "yes, we all support our troops"--echoed by the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, in a perfect loop of idiocy that passes for "national discussion." It is a closed loop of power. There is no possibility that a Congress that truly reflects the views of the American people, and acts in our interest, can ever be elected. What money can't buy, Diebold/ES&S steals--a percentage here, a percentage there--with their "trade secret" vote counting.

It is evil beyond belief. But it is not "American." ("American Embrace of Moronitude.") We, the real America, have not embraced it. We want the war ended, not escalated. We voted to end it. And our will has been successfully thwarted by the "military-industrial complex" and its "trade secret" vote counting. That was the plan. Mission accomplished.

The killer provision of the "Help America Vote for Torture Act" (63% of Americans oppose torture "under any circumstances"--May '04) has been totally blackholed by the corporate news monopolies and by both parties. There is some minor yak-yak about giving us a "paper trail." That would be nice, wouldn't it?--five years and tens of thousands of deaths, and many tortures, later. But we hear not even a whisper about the "trade secret" programming code in all the shiny new voting machines and central tabulators which will continue to be used to steal our elections, "paper trail" or no "paper trail." (What good is a "paper trail" if 99% of the ballots never see the light of day--are never counted?) (Currently, in many states, there is no ballot at all--the vote count is completely unverifiable.)

The "Help America Vote for the End of the Constitution Act" of 2002 WAS the coup. The ESCALATION of the Iraq War, in the teeth of 75% opposition in the country--with our Democratic leadership's lying, two-faced support--is the inevitable result of "black box" vote counting. That was the purpose of the fast-tracking of the "black boxes" all over the country, during the 2002 to 2004 period, with the $3.9 billion electronic voting boondoggle.

Don't expect anything but continued moronic national "discussion" from this point on. But don't call it "American."

We are not morons. But we HAVE been fooled. It took the entirety of the Democratic Party leadership, the Republican Party leadership, all the corporate lobbyists in Washington DC, and the concerted efforts of the war profiteering corporate news monopolies, to do it. We can wear that "Fool" badge proudly. The sheer effort it took to destroy our election system under the radar is a tribute to the American people. They knew we would never acquiesce to this war. They knew that a big majority, 56%, would grow into an overwhelming majority, 75%, and that, to defeat that majority they would need some new tools. Diebold/ES&S "black box" voting machines.

They TREAT us like morons. And they have tried their best to create an illusion that we--peace-minded, justice-loving Americans--are not the majority. They have sought to demoralize and disempower us. But we have strongly resisted their war propaganda, and they knew this would likely be the case, so they prepared the way to overrule us and to continue their war, despite majority opposition from the beginning, and overwhelming opposition now.

There has been no "American" embrace of "moronitude." The moronic phrases in Washington DC are not "American." They are the moronic phrases of global corporate predator P.R. divisions and "think tanks" who have no loyalty to this country or its people. "America" is something else, something better--and, indeed, something quite the opposite of Exxon-Mobile, AEI, AIPAC, World Bank/IMF, the Bilderberg Group, and Cabal, and their moronic, fascist "think tanks." America is where the great majority of us have figured this war out, with no help from anybody, have rejected it and are crying out in the wilderness against it, some of us in bafflement that our democracy cannot be made to work, and others of us, having peered below the radar, trying to get the word out on our fixed elections, with our chief obstacle being our own party leadership.

America is the dreams and traditions of democracy that we all share, and that are anathema to the Global Corporate Rulers and to their (s)elected puppets in Congress and the White House. Ironically, traitors now have custody of the statues of Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln, and our founding documents, the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution. They are shitting on our heroes and our ideals, and on our laws. It is sickening. And they are well-prepared for our potential rebellion, with their Blackwater and CACCI and Titan mercenaries, and their detention centers and their cs gas and their Darth Vader armor, and their "suspension" of our civil rights. There is no legitimacy in our capitol any more. There is only raw power. And that is our dilemma. It is not only difficult and expensive for most of us to get to Washington DC, once there--even in the millions--we will be ignored, and if we don't like being ignored, we will be crushed.

The question is, how to free ourselves from servitude without bloodshed, without being crushed, how to do it in a definitive and peaceful way, that does not repeat the mistakes of past revolutions? And I don't know the answer to that, except for a slow, steady, long term campaign--best waged at the state/local level--to restore vote counting that everyone can see and understand. Without it, nothing is going to change. Without it, we are not a sovereign people any more. We are slaves. Without the right to vote, no one here really deserves the name "American," neither us nor our oppressors.

I have been following the huge, peaceful, democratic revolution that is taking place in Latin America--with leftist (majorityist) governments elected in Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Argentina and also Nicaragua, and big leftist movements in Peru and Paraguay (also Mexico). These peoples have had a lot to overcome--decades of fascist brutality and US/global corporate predator interference. Here are the lessons I've gleaned from this amazing revolution to the south of us:

1. Transparent elections (!)
2. Grass roots organization
3. Think big.

Viva la revolución!