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I Am Just a Dreamer and You are Just a Dream
By David Glenn Cox
Sometimes I wonder if Glen Beck isn’t an ongoing disinformation campaign devised by the government. I read the other day, because I don’t listen to or watch the oaf, that he was advocating that the people should rise up against Pelosi and Obama. There is a fever of discontent that is quite real and legitimate. There are valid reasons to take to the streets, but they are structural and institutional and far from being about personalities.
I also read David Frum’s article in which he said, “The liberal block within the Democratic congressional caucus is bigger and stronger than it was in 1993-94.” It is a laughable assertion yet it is accepted at face value. Somehow the passage of health insurance reform was a victory for liberals? The liberals got slaughtered; it was Custer’s last stand for liberalism. It was a victory for corporatism and corporate government, i.e., fascism.
Most people today wouldn’t know a true liberal if he hit them in the ass with a bass fiddle. Most people fail to realize that it’s not the picture, it’s the frame. Someone like Glen Beck gets a national broadcast and someone like Noam Chomsky couldn’t buy his way onto the air. It’s not just Fox, it’s across the board; corporate media decides what is news and then Fox covers it this way and MSNBC covers it that way but they all stay inside the frame.
Mexico’s drug war? Oh, it’s terrible for sure, but it’s a drug war in the same way that arson is a forest fire. The transportation of drugs through Mexico has been going on for decades. It has been reported that 60% of the NAFTA inspired businesses in Mexico have closed their doors and moved on to cheaper labor markets in China. Suddenly these young men and women lured away from the farms by the promise of better wages find themselves on the mean streets with nothing.
Remember Chicago in the 1920s and '30s? There was money to be made in bootleg liquor but there wasn’t any honest work. The gangs seeking to expand their territories took on more hired guns and a turf war ensued. Mexico is no different; it is fish fighting for resources in a shrinking pool. These gangs also practice kidnapping as a revenue source. What does kidnapping have to do with drug trafficking? Nothing! This isn’t a drug war; this is a Free Trade poverty war! But they can’t tell you that. So they tell you it’s a drug war.
The Bush administration and the Obama administration have funded a militarisation of the situation giving countries in Latin America billions of dollars for attack helicopters and military hardware. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. What do US administrations honestly expect will happen? Do they honestly expect the benefactors of such largesse will stamp out the drug trade? Would that get them more money next year? Or does the administration expect that these governments will use those weapons as tools of oppression?
No one talks about the money! The billions and billions of dollars flowing from American street corners through Mexico City and Bogota. It is outside the frame, so the issue doesn’t exist. All of our bankers and public officials are so squeaky clean, right? They would never knowingly violate the law. Don’t make me laugh.
The Associated press reported in 2003: "Members of an elite Mexican army unit have deserted and formed a drug gang, using their military training to launch a violent battle for control of this border city," Mexico's top anti-drug prosecutor said.
Army desertions? Drug war or civil war?
It becomes difficult to understand until you realize the purpose of the lies. Remember back when the Berlin Wall fell at the end of the cold war? Remember the peace dividend? We were going to downsize the military because the evil Soviets were all gone away. What happened next?
Did we get our peace dividend or did we find a new evil empire full of invisible evil doers? Let’s see, Indians, the Kaiser, Anarchists, Socialist’s, Communists, and now Islamic terrorists. America loves enemies; it keeps us from noticing our own wage pool is in decline as we doze softly in Orwellianisms.
“U.S. Economy: Durables Orders Rise, Home Sales Drop”
If I remember correctly it was the collapse of the home mortgage industry that brought us to the sad state of affairs that we now find ourselves in. Durable goods orders include orders for jet airliners. If an airline buys a dozen airliners the dollar amount is huge but the impact on the economy is small as delivery schedules are measured across years. This headline takes the unimportant, trivial good news and delivers it as wonderful while diminishing what is truly important. “Mom, Dad! I got an A on my Geometry test, and I wrecked your car!”
“New home purchases decreased 2.2 percent to an annual pace of 308,000, figures from the Commerce Department showed today in Washington. The median sales price climbed by the most in more than two years.”
Last month the annual pace was 325,000; in November it was 525,000. The February sales numbers were the worst on record, the worst e-v-e-r. The number has been in steep decline for four months despite an $8,000 tax credit and lower home prices and interest rates. What did the Commerce Department attribute the decline to? “Snowstorms.” If you have money and a good job it’s the greatest time ever to buy a home, but the problem is nobody has any money or a good job.
This is where we have the great disconnect; our government and the media keep trying to tell us how the economy is improving. Yet, when you look behind the smiley faces you see that the economy is not improving. The administration steals a line from Groucho Marx, “Who are you going to believe? Me, or your own lying eyes?"
Congress and the administration offer tax breaks for small business but that term “small business” is also Orwellian new speak. Those small businesses are mines with less than five hundred employees and construction companies with less than 3.5 million dollars in annual revenues. Let me tell you, here on the downside living in a garage the only thing growing are the weeds in the cracks of the asphalt. Business is as bad as it’s ever been. The businesses here are one or two-man affairs, the concrete block plant not far from me haven’t run off a new batch of cinder blocks in weeks.
There is a store that sells construction supplies across the way and some days they don’t even bother to open their shop door. You just wait for the day that their parking lot will be empty. The car lots have fewer cars in them and fewer employees and as you take it all in, you can feel it in your bones that there is something terribly wrong going on here.
I still check the want ads each day, but some days there aren’t even any new jobs to apply for. There are jobs that want you to work for free and if you sell anything then maybe they’ll pay you. Monday as I looked the first three jobs in the “Business Management” category were also listed on the Rip-off Report. You get the feeling that it is all just others trying to fleece someone else to try and stay afloat. Then there are the jobs that are reposted every week to sell life insurance or roofing.
I try not to let myself fall into the discouraged worker category but some days it's hard not to. So when I read Glen Beck calling for mass demonstrations because of Pelosi or Obama or when I read about the success of Pelosi’s liberalism it hits me like a bath of cold water. Just today I was cautioned about advocating vigilantism except that vigilantism is the only route left for those for whom the system fails.
So when a millionaire nut case advocates taking to the streets, I wonder if it’s not just disinformation. If Glen Beck is for it then I must be nuts. Yet the federal government bailed out the Wall Street banks and insurance companies. They gave GM and Chrysler permission to file for bankruptcy costing tens of thousands of jobs and costing the tax payers billions of dollars in lost revenue and environmental clean up.
They did a 180 and now support John McCain’s nuclear power initiative and Sarah Palin’s drill, baby, drill! They’ve expanded the wars in Pakistan and Afghanistan while corporatising the healthcare system. For the unemployed we got tax cuts for businesses and next on the agenda are cuts to Social Security and Medicare.
Meanwhile the federal court rules that corporate money is free speech and hunger strikers have no rights to stop eating as a political protest. The third circuit court today lifted the ban on media cross-ownership, tightening the media focus even further.
“The most heroic word in all languages is revolution.” Eugene V. Debs
“You're not supposed to be so blind with patriotism that you can't face reality. Wrong is wrong, no matter who says it.” Malcolm X
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