The US Public Space - empty and desolate as the real space?

[mogster]

The silence over the election result in the US mainstream media is eerie. It's uncanny. Why doesn't the public space function properly? If someone had tried to tamper with the democratic process in Norway, he would have been nailed to a wall and beaten with a fish until he confessed!
Figuratively speaking, of course. By the media.

But they would harass him on the street, in the shops, in the gym, on work - everywhere. In short: make it so costly to cheat that he is forced to resign, go to jail - whatever appropriate.
An act against the democracy should transform any true journalist into a paparazzi, instantly. Manners, angle, bias, aggressiveness - it doesn't matter until the threat against democracy is gone, the main thing is to get things under control FIRST - and no wonder they should think like that: this goes right at their work ethcis and their point of existence?

In the US the public space is heavily contaminated by FOX, the main force that sets the agenda. Backed up by the reverbating soundboard of NRO, WT, NYP, and a million websites squirming to get as close to the action as possible. Get favored <jeer>

They'll just say anything the administration tells them to say, and is worthless as a medium for truth. Or just plain worthless. Pathetic!

Then there are the poodles. CNN par example. So afraid of being rubberstamped with 'liberal bias' that they measured out election air time between Bush/Kerry like kids sharing a bottle of Coke.

Never mind that the incumbent administration seems to be control freaks adversary to free speech, and with their own interpretation of democracy. A 'democracée' of "order, but not justice". And God of course. Everywhere.

Never mind their numerous attacks on free journalism. Or their massive negative attitude to normal, democratic expressions like demonstrations and public political gatherings.

Never mind the 'free speech zones' where protesters are shipped absurdly far away from the object of their protest - there have been examples of protesters herded into a field several miles away from Bush during the pre-campaign. Get real! :-o

Never mind the Patriot Act, the incredibly strange war in Iraq or the fact that the president maybe is/maybe not a mental retard that need to be wired during debates.

Never mind the M.A.D PNAC-doctrine commissioned by sentral members of the government or Bush's Close Spiritual Advisor Jerry "Peace Is Anti-Christ" Falwell. Or The Rumsfeld & Ashcroft Sweet Recipes for Pain Cookbook (Undertitle: New ways of fingering anuses - with a twist).

Never mind the ugliest Republican campaign in the US history, where intimidation, slander and pure personal bashing quickly reduced the OK war hero to a dubious character in a lot of Americans eyes, while the moron that screwed and boozed himself through his military carreer is elevated to near divinity.
The reek of this finest hour of the 'Christian' Right has just subsided here in Europe. We can breathe again.

After all this, what's so big about a fixed election?
You! Liberal! Put your microphone on the floor and back slowly away! Step away from the microphone!

Never mind, CNN, ABC, WP et al. It's all just everyday politics.
No need to watch, people. As you were. Just keep on doing what you were doing, madam. Look the other way. It's not what you think, it's not a coup. It's just a Cd'E-procedure.

Against this combination of partisanship and ignorance, we have in the Blue corner a somewhat unorganized opposition:

The Internet.

The Internet biases against anyone that wants to keep things secret (as in fundamentalist oppressor), because you can post anonymously, and it spreads very quickly. And it's very affordable. And easy. You can do things at home, when the kids have gone to bed. If you don't have kids, and usually gets up when kids go to bed, you don't have to wash first.
It allows you to create groups (like this ;) to forward that secret and make it 'unofficially public material'.
It allows you to use the dangerous, dangerous political humor on that secret.
It allows you to pound secretees to pulp in lengthy articles.
It allows you to whistleblow on political opponents.
It allows you to plant targeted rumours

In short: just like the Right-Right+ has done for years.

In their case, it turned into the monolithic, sick, tripe-slinging, hird-like movement we all know. The Reicht, I mean, Right, was in opposition when the Internet developed and fused it with their radio/TV/Magazine propaganda ministeries into an effective and streamlined totalitarian Mouth, that forward the Message,the full Message and nothing but the Message, as God helps them.
Or whatever.
The Left/Center doesn't have that kind of need - who wants to be part of Web-Waffe anyway?
We liberals are free. We want to have fun. We LIKE disorganized ;-)

But the last is changing, and if you'll take the word of an anonymous internet person for anything:
It's GROWING out there!
I've never seen anything like this! :-)

I turned political moron on 911, and my Bush-o-meter wasn't even at defcon 3 at that point, so I spent too much time in too late hours on Islamic websites, trying to find out about the (previously) unanswered (now answered) question:

Why do they hate us so?

At that time, 911 was still a 'good' thing, if you look at it from a cynical US-image point of view; it generated tremendous support for the US also among the Moslems in the days after the attack. The shock... I remember seeing on TV a young girl in Iran, in chador but also with lipstick, participating in a tiny litte support-demonstration that had a homedrawn US flag and some candles out. It was such a positive sign in those blackest of days!
Then Bush stumbled into action with his 'crusade' and Black Belt in Offense, and the rest is history.

Why bother with what bearded camelback riders do (even though they're intelligent, well funded and armed camelback riders), when the Beast in the Revelation himself *irony* is leaning over the Atlantic, drooling madly in your direction?

Terrorism failed to scare me, sorry!

This US government does.

They've shown through two consecutive elections that they'll do anything to get/keep the power, they're not even above intimidation of voters. How dirty can politics get before it stops being dirty and becomes something else?

No one knows until the US mass-media takes hold of the story, turns it's insides out and flushes the skeletons out of the closet. And that ain't gonna happen, because we're already far past any thing a normal president would survive politically.

Really!
WMD, anyone? A piece of delicious yellow cake? Aluminium tubes? No? Another cup of fear?
Any Democrat president that tried the stunt Bush has pulled for the last several years would have been nailed to a wall and beaten with a fish.
Or with his vice-president, if he'd been half as pushy as Cheney.
Figuratively speaking, of course. By the rightwing mass-media.

And CNN, chief poodle.

If Bush nuked the Middle-East tomorrow you would spot it on FOX by Hannity and O'Reilly wearing militia gear, with assault rifles slung over their shoulders looking even more paranoid than usual. You would spot it on the BBC by the news is being read by the washing lady - everyone else is out reporting.

But on CNN it would have been business as usual: a mix of Wolf Blitzer jerkoff action, Business News - a special on how this would affect the oil price, and OpenForum, where little Hassan from Jordan can post EXACTLY what he think about the incineration of the 350M+ moslems Bush were trying to free.

This time around.