Re: [Gnu-arch-users] [OT] facism gaining ground in US

[Pierce T . Wetter III]

> [*] I did, even though I despise GWB and his cronies, and think they 
> are
>     causing more harm to the U.S./world than any president I can 
> remember
>     (yes, more than Reagan).

 It's really been discouraging me lately the level of hatred I see in 
US politics lately. It started building in the Reagan era, wasn't too 
bad in the elder Bush era, built up again in the Clinton era, and has 
peaked (so far) in the Bush era.

 I don't blame people for being upset with any of those presidents. 
Most people get their information from the media, and if you watch the 
media, you'll find lots of reasons to hate any of those people if you 
care strongly about almost any issue. Its important to realize that the 
media doesn't distinguish between rhetoric and fact, and that their 
goal is not to inform the public, but to gather viewers.

 Presidents in general tend to be more centrist then left or right 
wing. Reagan was effectively pro-choice, Clinton was pro business, and 
so on. But if you listen to the media, they'll quote people who said 
Reagan was a Nazi, and other people who say Clinton was a Communist.

 Neither is a true, Clinton and Reagan probably had more in common then 
they were different. But if you're speaking to a rally of Democratic or 
Republican supporters, you'd never say "ah, that opposition really 
isn't that bad, they're ok guys." No, you demonize them. Which is ok at 
a Democratic or Republican rally. But then the media starts reporting 
that rhetoric as if its true.

 This spiral of hatred bums me out. So now Tom posts a link to this 
article.
Which is so typical of the media hysteria machine. Let's fisk it.

For those who don't read a lot of web logs, fisking is taking an 
article and going through it to extract the biases/truths/untruths. Its 
named after the journalist Robert Fisk, who typically, reported that US 
troops were nowhere near the airport, while we were all watching live 
feeds on CNN. I think its a symptom of how bad things have gotten that 
we had to invent a new word for "extracting truth from a newspaper 
article".

Ok, so let's start with the first fact:

"U.S. officials have discussed the idea of postponing Election Day in 
the event of a terrorist attack on or about that day, a Homeland 
Security Department spokesman said Sunday."

Well, that's pretty boring, really. Some officials talked about 
something. No doubt they talk about the Sopranos/sex/where to go to 
lunch too... Let's sex it up.

It's about an election. Any way to get the 2000 election mentioned? 
Sure!

"The commission was set up after the disputed 2000 presidential vote to 
help states deal with logistical problems in their elections."

Ok, so that will get people going. Let's see if we can scare the left 
some more:

"Soaries, who was appointed by President Bush, is a former New Jersey 
secretary of state and senior pastor of the 7,000-member First Baptist 
Church of Lincoln Gardens in Somerset."

Great! Now everyone who was a little disturbed by the Florida results 
can freak out even more. A religious nut appointed by Bush wants to 
control your elections!

Now lets get some quotes. We'll remind people that Ridge said recently 
that we had intelligence (we really have to stop calling it that) that 
there may be an attack during the election process. We'll give people 
some other dates to worry about: "The four-day Democratic convention 
kicks off July 26 in Boston, Massachusetts, and the Republican National 
Convention begins August 30 in New York City."

Now we need a negative quote. Who have we interviewed lately? Here we 
go:

"Democratic Rep. Jane Harman of California, ranking member of the House 
Intelligence Committee, said Sunday that she believes planning for the 
possibility of postponing Election Day is "excessive, based on what we 
know.""

 I don't know how "planning" for a "possibility" can be "excessive", 
but ok.

 Anyone else? Feinstein is always good for a quote:

"I don't think there's an argument that can be made, for the first time 
in our history, to delay an election," said Democratic Sen. Dianne 
Feinstein of California, a member of the Intelligence Committee.

Uh, elections have been delayed before. Learn some history Dianne.

Ok, now we have to be "fair", so lets look for another quote.

"Noting that New York election officials were able to postpone their 
September 11, 2001, primary election after terrorists slammed hijacked 
planes into the World Trade Center, Cox said "there isn't any body that 
has that authority to do that for federal elections.""

Great! He brought up 9/11. That will push everyone's buttons. Now time 
to feed the hysteria.

 "What has Homeland Security officials worried is that terrorists could 
attempt to disrupt the election in the same way that train bombings in 
Madrid created unrest three days before the Spanish general election, 
the Homeland Security spokesman said.

Although there is no evidence that the bombings influenced the March 11 
vote, socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero unseated Prime Minister 
Jose Maria Aznar, whose center-right government supported the U.S.-led 
war in Iraq.

The country's new government then pulled Spanish troops from Iraq."

Great, now we have Iraq involved too. Now everyone who doesn't support 
our presence in Iraq will think that Bush is going to postpone 
elections forever.

 So this article seems pretty typical media claptrap. You've got some 
minor bit of news: Tom Ridge talked to a lawyer. This is then built up 
to imply this giant conspiracy, yet without actually stating that. So 
we're left with the impression that Bush is seizing control of the 
electoral process, when actually Congress would have to pass 
legislation or something for that to happen.

  Now lets go check out this electoral assistance commission...googling

  http://www.eac.gov/

  Ok, so it was part of a law passed in the wake of 2000.

  Here's their mission statement:

"The United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC), an independent 
bipartisan agency, is authorized by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) to 
serve as "...a national clearinghouse and resource for the comparison 
of information" on various matters involving the administration of 
Federal elections."

  Basically, there are 4 people on the commission:

  Soaries: Served as Secretary of State in New Jersey
  Hillman: Worked for Dukakis, Clinton, worked to promote women's rights
    internationally.
  DeGregorio: Head of a NGO promoting elections worldwide
  Martinez: Lead voter registration drives, worked in the White House 
for Clinton

  So this _bi-partisan_ commission, lead by Soaries, who as a black 
man, is probably extra sensitive to issues of dis-enfranchisement asked 
the department of homeland security to look into what they would have 
to do if they needed to delay an election? Why am I worried about this? 
So someone talked to a lawyer, BFD.

 The thing is, this is so typical of the media, that they feel they 
have to spin controversy out of everything. This is so not-news. 
Fascism is not gaining ground in the US. Tone down the hysteria. Tone 
down the hatred. Bush isn't perfect, Clinton wasn't perfect, Kerry 
isn't perfect, Reagan wasn't perfect, you aren't perfect, I'm not 
perfect, none of the next 1,000,000 presidents will be perfect. The 
only "evil" person in that list is me. :-)

  When the media implies someone is evil, they're probably lying. If 
they really were evil, they would come out and just say it. When they 
don't come out and say things, they're just trying to mess with you.

  Pierce

P.S.

 Well, you read this far, so I'm going to talk some more about my 
disillusionment with the media. About 2 years ago, it was really 
obvious to me that we were going to have to do something about Iraq. 
(Yes, I knew that early. It's called being well informed.)

 So I subscribed to two things. One was the state department mailing 
list of press briefings. The other was Foreign Affairs.

 They were really an eye-opener for me, especially the state department 
briefings. While I don't think that what the state department says is 
true, I do think its a true statement of what they said. That is, if 
the spokesman for the State Department gets up and says something, 
that's what the State Department said.

 That seems like I'm saying A=A. I am. The startling thing for me was 
that CNN/Washington Post/NYT were saying A=Q. That is, what they 
_reported_ the State Department saying was not the same thing as what 
the State Department said. They were generally wildly different.

 So I did some digging. They were wrong on Israel, on Palestine, on 
Iraq, on everything. Anytime anyone said anything, anywhere, it was 
twisted until it was controversial. One need not believe in a vast 
right/left wing conspiracy. One need only believe that these 
organizations are trying to make money, that more viewers is more 
money, and that more exciting news is more viewers.

 So now I rarely get my information from the media: too much of what 
they say is suspect.

 As far as Foreign Affairs goes, its a non-partisan magazine put out by 
the Council on Foreign Relations, and its basically your ticket to the 
inner workings of US Foreign Policy. Just knowing what issues the CFR 
thinks are significant will tell you what will happen in the world a 
year from now. For instance, two years ago, the discussion was not over 
whether Saddam should be gotten rid of, but how.