Antidisassemblementarianism

[omega minimo]

Somewhere between Deep Throat and Disassemblement Day we read the writing on the wall.

For those old enough to remember Watergate, while you watched or listened to the Rose Garden disassembly, did your heart break (again) and did you ask yourself, "How did we get here?"

Any old hippie/yippies want to tell us what happened to The Movement?

Any old punk rockers wanna say "WE TOLD YOU SO!!!!!!!"?

Any 80's activists wanna say "We tried, we really really tried"?

If enough people recognized what was happening while it was happening, why was there nothing we could do to avert the eventual disaster that we witnessed today, the complete disassemblement of everything we believed the U.S.A. stood for? We all have different views of the timeline, but the general consensus seems to be this trainwreck has been approaching for 2.5 to 3.5 or so decades. Have we just been stuck on the tracks staring into the approaching headlamp?

Today Randi Rhodes played some testimony from last week's Congressional hearings on media bias. A man (didn't get his name) was advocating the importance of diverse media for the empowerment of young people. Isn't it obvious-- wasn't it obvious at the time that media consolidation began (around 1980)-- that one of the main INTENDED effects was the disassembly of the YOUTH MOVEMENT?

Was anyone else alarmed at the time? (Well yeah, the punk rockers.....)

It was so strange listening to this advocate testify before a Congressional committee, entreating them to correct a phenomenon (disenfranchisement of youth culture) that was done quite purposefully and successfully, with the cooperation and complicity of many of those in Congress.

Media consolidation? Miseducation and bamboozlement of the American public? Civil rights obliterated? Corporate stranglehold on every aspect of human life? Trickle up economics to siphon and concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a very few?

Why are we trying to undo the damage that was foreseeable and obvious as the framework was built up gradually over the decades between Watergate and Disassemblement Day?

Did you read the writing on the wall? Is there more we could have done or need to do now?

:evilgrin:


Antidisestablishmentarianism

by Norman Ball
“Properly, opposition to the disestablishment of the Church of England, but popularly cited as an example of a long word.” – Oxford English Dictionary

To define this word on record-breaking strength
is to curse the more succinct for lacking length.
For this outsized word seems rooted in a mission:
to uproot (through size) its proper definition.
 
My suspicion is some cunning, cleric-scribe,
bent on dictionary fame through diatribe,
seized a perfectly benign church-state dispute
and affixed it with syllabic ill-repute.
 
Let's establish, sitting down, a standing rule:
not to stand prosthetic words on gimpy stools,
as their borrowed girths make light of levity.
In a word, the grace we seek is: brevity .

 
Author's Note: This poem would not have been possible without the renowned 19th century dispute involving the Church of England and the British government. Of course, this church/state tension continues into the present day, and probably will always be with us.
 
Norman Ball is a Scottish-born writer, musician and poet residing in Herndon, Virginia (close to Washington, D.C.). He may be reached by email at [e-mail] .

[Selteri]

1. I was one of the kids growing up in the 80s who said so in the 90s

and I did tell people so.

I will continue to tell people so too.

[omega minimo]

3. The tools of disassemblement rachetted up bigtime after BushCo. War I

and no one listened?

Thanks, Patriot!:patriot:

[paineinthearse]

2. How rich.

Have we come far, or have we regressed to a point where our pResident lacks the intellectual capacity to understand the word "dissemble.


"...people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble -- that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report...."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=1820391&mesg_id=1820391

[omega minimo]

4. A chilling effect

May 31, 2005-- Unmemorial Day

[Eloriel]

5. The writing on the wall --

was in code. Only in this new century have we truly begun to decode things in any viable breadth and depth. BUT: we have begun. (We = enough numbers of everyday citizens to begin to matter.)

As a child of the 60s I can tell you that we did not, COULD NOT have understood the strength and pervasiveness of what we were up against. We fought at the level we could see. The REAL problem was at least one and maybe more levels above what we could see. Yeah, we sorta understood they were fascists, tho I suspect we used the term more to inflame than to express a real understanding of "the enemy." We thought we'd "won," and indeed there were things we won -- more civil rights for African Americans, an end to the war, more freedom and opportunity for women. What we didn't/couldn't have understood, had absolutely no way of knowing, is that what we got were mere concessions designed and intended to lull us back into a sense of complacency.

(The other thing that happened to the activists of the 60s and 70s was that we grew up and eventually had to get real jobs in order to clothe and feed our families! The economy changed too, so that the minimal amounts of $$ we were able to live on back then became way too little to live on after.)

You see, TPTB don't give a damn about most of what goes on at the superficial level where we all live our lives. To them, for the most part Dem and Repug don't matter. Their only "politics" involve just 2 things: money and power. They don't REALLY care about abortion, gay rights, guns, or anything else that trip so many triggers for so many people. They are so far above those concerns, or even beliefs about those concerns, that it's almost laughable. These and everything else are merely things that keep the masses busy and them amused when they bother to look.

Oh, sure, there are the errand boys (and girls) on the right like Pat Buchanan and Ann Coulter, and many others including a bunch of Congresscritters all of whom are true believers but perform the primary task of keeping things riled up, keeping things moving, and to a certain extent, pushing society in this direction (theocratic right) or that (neocon right). But all that is really still at that superficial level and not that important to them. For the most part, it's all DISTRACTION from the REAL work being done: consolidation of wealth in the hands of a few and consolidiation of real power in the hands of even fewer. Their intent has always been world domination. And by always, I mean since Nazis and other fascists of the 1930s, and even before that in the attitudes and beliefs that spawned fascism.

Here are some old threads where I tried to lay it all out, once *I* finally understood what happened and where we are now and why:

Reality 501: A DU Course Syllabus
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=6920&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes


REALITY 501: Course Syllabus Special Addendum - The 60s
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=14030&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes


Reality 501: Syllabus UPDATE
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=8535&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes


The US, the Saudis, and oil (a piece of Eloriel's Big Picture)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=8558&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes



Reality 501: Course Syllabus (first, preliminary draft)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/cgi-bin/duforum/duboard.cgi?az=show_thread&om=6873&forum=DCForumID70&archive=yes


The Way Things Really Are -- MUST READING esp. for new DUers
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x1452106

[omega minimo]

6. "The writing on the wall was in code"

The consolidation of media in the 80's (and beyond) and gradual erosion of civil liberties was as subtle as that hand turnin' the heat up on the pot of complacent frogs.

There are some/many from the generation you describe who have kept working/writing/speaking about this. I'm still wonderin'-- if there were enough folks who could decode the future in the entrails of the present eviscerated by, say, Reagan's charming crimes or the first censored war and its influence on domestic media in the ensuing decade; why then was there nothing to be done to correct the course?


:bounce:

Eloriel, thanks for all those reality checks!

[Eloriel]

7. What, exactly, would you have suggested happen to

"correct the course"?

FIRST you have to figure out the off-course condition -- and I contend that most of us just didn't get it, or passed all the warning signals off as anomalies.

But in any case, what would you have preferred have been done, and when, and by whom?

[omega minimo]

8. Right. So the first question is

How many people saw the writing on the wall?

If the number was significant, what more could have been done?

How does that inform where we go from here?


We are in a similar situation presently. Some discussions recognize the implications (for the future) of (current) events, yet run as if certain doom is inevitable. As ever, well-intentioned Americans end up saying "What can we do?"

"...most of us just didn't get it, or passed all the warning signals off as anomalies."

The first step is to be honest about those warning signs, with ourselves and each other. Maybe figuring out what to do depends on believing that we have the power to do something. Is/wasn't that part of the American Spirit?

:kick:

[hfojvt]

10. I strongly disagree about the economy changing

Although some of that may be social change. I remember how simply my parents lived in the 1970s. We had a used Gremlin and a new station wagon that dad used only for vacations and drove for about 12 years. Mom and dad and most of us kids went around that small town by bicycle.
Anyway, the economy did not change as much as families kept desiring "more" - more and newer cars, bigger and fancier houses, clothes dryers instead of clothes lines, more eating out, more gadgets and services, etc.

I must admit that I was unaware of the ground being laid in the 1980s and 1990s. I was teaching radical economics at the end of the 1990s, had been a Jackson supporter and then Dukakis, but only had the MSM to tell me about Bush I. I thought education and books was more of an answer than politics. In the 1990s I was running a new business and working volunteer with youth, hoping to make a difference that way. I was writing LTTE's and trying to sell thought-provoking books.

I really did not think Bush I was that bad, with only MSM to tell me, nor did I think Clinton was that good - he sounded like another Republican to me, and Perot was hardly a leftist, so I voted SW. I marched in 1991 to oppose the first Gulf war, but it was over too quickly to generate much of an anti-war protest.

The links look interesting, but will have to be tomorrow.

[omega minimo]

11. Actual "children" of the sixties grew up with excellent BS detectors

June 1 Randi Rhodes interviewed a man (didn't hear his name) talking about Deep Throat, said he was 14 at the time of Watergate; Randi said she was 12-- and he said, "We all grew up wanting to be investigative reporters."

Between the personal storyline you describe, Eloriel, and the one told by hfojvt, are the kids who clearly saw the original Emperor Has No Clothes Reagan and the damage that he did and what it foretold down the line. A lot of young people who "get it" now were enlightened by listening to old punk and Jello Biafra.

"As a child of the 60s I can tell you that we did not, COULD NOT have understood the strength and pervasiveness of what we were up against. We fought at the level we could see. The REAL problem was at least one and maybe more levels above what we could see."

The coincidence of Deep Throat in the news and *'s disastrous Rose Garden performance raised the question. Whether the folks who remember Watergate were sensitized to the fact that there were "more levels above what we could see." And did they sense the hidden hand writing the script for Reagan's Big Lie that led us to today; invisible hand leaving those clues on the wall.

[omega minimo]

9. Luxuriant Democratic Forms

"I say that democracy can never prove itself beyond cavil, until it founds and luxuriantly grows its own forms of art, poems, schools, theology, displacing all that exists, or that has been produced anywhere in the past, under opposite influences."

Walt Whitman, Democratic Vistas

[omega minimo]

12. Most people can read the writing on the wall

but assume it's addressed to someone else.

--Irvin Ball



http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0602-22.htm

Published on Thursday, June 2, 2005 by the New York Times
Truth and Deceit
by Bob Herbert
 
"...The trauma of Watergate, which brought down a president who seemed pathologically compelled to deceive, came toward the end of that extended exercise in governmental folly and deceit, Vietnam. Taken together, these two disasters, both of which shook the nation, provided a case study in how citizens should view their government: with extreme skepticism.

<nip>

Now, with George W. Bush in charge, the nation is mired in yet another tragic period marked by incompetence, duplicity, bad faith and outright lies coming once again from the very top of the government. Just last month we had the disclosure of a previously secret British government memorandum that offered further confirmation that the American public and the world were spoon-fed bogus information by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, as we know, wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action. With that in mind, the memo damningly explained, "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

That's the kind of deceit that was in play as American men and women were suiting up and marching off to combat at the president's command. Mr. Bush wanted war, and he got it. Many thousands have died as a result.

<nip>

At a press conference on Tuesday, President Bush, speaking about detainees who had complained of being abused, said they were "people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble - that means not tell the truth." Mr. Bush meant, of course, to say dissemble, which really means to deliberately mislead or conceal. Nevertheless, he knew what he was talking about. The president may have stumbled over the pronunciation, but he's proved time and again that he's a skillful practitioner of the art.

The lessons of Watergate and Vietnam are that the checks and balances embedded in the national government by the founding fathers (and which the Bush administration is trying mightily to destroy) are absolutely crucial if American-style democracy is to survive, and that a truly free and unfettered press (which the Bush administration is trying mightily to intimidate) is as important now as it's ever been.

[nickgutierrez]

13. When the writing was written on the wall...

...I was only a kid. Being brought up in the 1980s, I've noticed that my generation has learned to speak almost a completely different language when it comes to political issues - making the writing on the wall that much harder to read. In fact, I'd say that media consolidation is one of the most prominent reasons for the 'both parties are full of shit' feeling that seems to permeate my generation.

Without a truly independent media, those other things you mentioned aren't issues. Or, more properly, they are issues, but they won't be issues that get mentioned. The media will stick to sensational stories: the runaway bride, Michael Jackson, gay marriage, etc., and... well, to hell with everything else.

[omega minimo]

14. Absolutely

This is why the first signs of media consolidation were alarming (as it continued to be for two decades or so).

This is why they did it. Worked pretty good, huh.

"I've noticed that my generation has learned to speak almost a completely different language when it comes to political issues."

Tell us about this language, you will, hmmmmm?

[Kire]

15. We were one vote away from repealing the Timber Salvage Rider in 96

I shouted William F. Buckley, Jr. off the stage at my college over it. Gore said it was his biggest regret in an interview with some british guy before the '96 election. It has now morphed into the "Healthy Forest Initiative"

Here's the first result I found on google for "Timber Salvage Rider":
http://www.pcffa.org/fn-mar96.htm

Trees are going to be sick anyway, so cut 'em down! (That's it in a nutshell)

[omega minimo]

17. Wrong Wing ultimate failsafe argument?

Armageddon

Trees can't be "saved" I guess.

[manly]

16. response to poem

It seems to me that limerick writers
Assiduously avoid
Being sesquipedalian in their verse,
Ignoring the fact that one need not be simple
To be terse.

RWW