February, Volume 11 Nr. 7, Issue 128
  
Optare Absurdus 

Jozef Hand-Boniakowski

On December 12, 2003, the day after it aired the Democratic Party presidential candidates' debate, the ABC television network decided to withdraw three off-air producers who were up to that time covering the campaigns of Carol Moseley Braun, Dennis Kucinich, and the Reverend Al Sharpton.  ABC decided that none of these 3 candidates for the Democratic nomination could be taken seriously any longer.  From that day forward, TV viewers across the United States were hard-pressed to hear or learn anything about Braun, Kucinich and Sharpton.  In other words, corporations made the decision that democracy was not important enough to let the thoughts, visions and aspirations of bona fide presidential candidates be heard by the public over the airwaves which they, the people themselves own.  Kucinich told Ted Koppel during the debate,

Ted, you know, we started at the beginning of this evening talking about an endorsement. Well, I want the American people to see where the media takes politics in this country. To start with endorsements, to start talking about endorsements. Now we're talking about polls. And then we're talking about money. Well, you know, when you do that, you don't have to talk about what's important to the American people.

Evidently, this rebuke of a media multi-millionaire personality was a bit much for the punditocracy to take lying down.  They conveniently expunged Braun and Kucinich from  the political landscape.  As Kucinich would later say in an interview with Amy Goodman on her show, "Democracy Now!", the media takes its task of choosing the president seriously.  Even the newspaper of record, The New York Times, in its January 28 editorial, called "Defrosting the Primaries", wrote 

Representative Dennis Kucinich has every right to keep campaigning despite his minuscule vote tallies, but he should not be allowed to take up time in future candidate debates. Neither should the Rev. Al Sharpton, who is running to continue running, not to win.

Thank you New York Times whose message is: To hell with these candidates' ideas. To hell with their vision.  To hell with an open democracy and the debate and discussion upon which it depends. The intent is obvious.  The nomination is for "us" to win, for us, the corporations, to choose the president.  I say, to hell with the corporate media.  Long live the ever expanding and growing alternative and independent media.

And Again

After the Iowa caucuses, there was a very exuberant candidate Howard Dean boldly  vociferating to his youthful supporters and staff that he would continue the campaign.  Under other circumstances, the corporate media would have been applauding the zeal, zest and vitality of a U.S. warrior for a worthy cause.  After all, UStatesia admires the team spirit of sports, the roar and passion of the football field.  It's OK to be gung ho when killing in war, elevating the NASDAQ, or securing oil wells for profit.  It's quite another thing when one becomes boisterous and enthusiastic while bucking the DLC (Democratic Leadership Council) and the DNC (Democratic National Committee) the way that Howard Dean did.  And so, the  corporate media told the nation that the Vermont doctor had delivered what they called the, "I have a scream" speech.   

When first introducing Howard Dean, the candidate, the Washington Post on page 1, reported,

Howard Dean was angry. Ropy veins popped out of his neck, blood rushed to his cheeks, and his eyes, normally blue-gray, flashed black, all dilated pupils.

I can only imagine what the 4th Estate would do to Senator John Kerry if they were to get wind that he skipped out on a year of his military service obligation?  What would they do if there was merely the suggestion that the Senator had his military records altered to cover up the reasons for a missed medical appointment?  What would they do if they discovered that Kerry had acquired a new driver's license so that any convictions for driving while intoxicated would be expunged? They would, of course, as they had done to Bill Clinton, gone gung ho, ape gaga, over finding evidence to sink the campaign.  They would sniff for alcohol everywhere possible the way they sniffed Monica's blue dress to make their case.  Of course it is not Senator John Kerry whose military records are in question.  No.  It is George Bush's military service absence that is catching up to him and finally being brought to light by persistent media webmasters not beholden to the ruling elite.  Will the corporate media go after the Resident in the White House over this issue?  We'll have to wait and see whether a Ted Koppel or the other bearers of the "truth" uncover the facts.  I'm not holding my breath as the entire process is optare absurdus, an exercise in electoral absurdity.  

No Electoral Messiah Cometh

I support no-one for president in 2004.  I refuse to get caught up in yet another quadrennial farce.  Democracy fails to exist in elections where only millionaires raising millions from millionaires get a candidate positive media coverage by millionaires employed by multi-millionaires CEOs.   What happens to   democracy in a nation where tens of millions of dollars are spent on electoral market-hyped consciousness?  What happens when the people are guilt-tripped into voting for the lesser of two evils yet another time?    

The Democrats are pushing forward an anybody-but-Bush (ABB) policy under the guise of pragmatism.  The insulting zeal of their pragmatism conveys that the Party apparatus cares more about winning the election than protecting democracy.  What Democrats and ABBers fail to, or do not want to admit, is that Kerry or Bush, Democrat  or Republican, the nominee represents a system long ago corrupted by power and greed.  In my lifetime (born 1949), I cannot recall it being any other way.

This is why I believe that a strong third party or independent candidacy and campaign for president is necessary for our crippled democracy to heal and flourish.  I also believe that it is necessary in order to evict the current Resident of the White House.  I doubt Kerry would support the inclusion of a Green such as Peter Camejo or other  independent (such as Nader or Perot) in the presidential debates.  Kerry's refusal to insist that other party candidates participate will be telling.  The inclusion of Nader (or other candidate based upon a theoretical possibility of their electoral victory by ballot placement) would say much for democracy.  I'm not holding my breath over that possibility.  Kerry is no more likely to press for inclusion than he is likely to revoke his membership in the secret society, Skull and Bones.  There is, after all, a higher purpose as to why both Bush and Kerry are running and to which they aspire.  Of this, we can be certain.  To this, the political duopoly, machinery, and major party body politic is dedicated. 

Linda O'Brien in her piece, "It's Too Soon to be Pragmatic", published February 9, 2004 on Common Dreams, writes regarding John Kerry,

...your campaign was going nowhere until the establishment media decided to eradicate Dean's campaign and anoint yours.  We'll never know exactly how much of that was due to your ties to the establishment and their expectation of payback. It was, after all, Dean and not you who promised to break up the media conglomerates that have denied the people the power of truth the last three years. 

John Kerry is not the messiah cometh.  Far from it.  Like his Skull and Bones rival, Bush, the desire to attain power by the secret society Yale men and their New World vision, is anything but enabling to a democratic nation nor world.  Quite the contrary.  The vision rewards the privileged and the wealthy with a license to continue dominating and exploiting the resources of the planet and people for the purpose of achieving neo-liberal hegemony.

Edward Said in an article entitled, "American Elections: System or Farce?" wrote,

the system favors the rich and powerful  (one of the reasons why Bush won was that he spent far more money than anyone), and in effect works to preserve their ascendancy through a multiplicity of means, including the electoral and ideological systems, at the same time that the whole world is filled with the rhetoric of American democracy and freedom, most of it misleadingly propagandistic; and b) that in reality there is a constant struggle in America which the disadvantaged, including women, racial minorities, and underpaid workers like teachers and nurses, try to wage against the system...the "free" market undermine(s) labor in favor of the largest employers who are coddled by the government through favorable tax laws, loopholes in social security payments, and unfair labor practices. 

Succumbing to pragmatism, yet another time, for yet another election cycle, stifles the internal spark of freedom necessary for liberation from the propagandistic mind control of the system.  I may not vote for the winner.  I may not vote at all.  I may write- in, "None of the above".  I will not, however, any longer vote for a candidate that I do not want.  That does little for restoring UStatesian democracy.  That, I'm afraid, will take a lot more work than merely voting via a Diebold touch screen device that leaves no paper trail.

An election cannot give a country a firm sense of direction if it has two or more national parties which merely have different names but are as alike in their principles and aims as two peas in the same pod. -- Franklin Delano Roosevelt

An election tells how many of your supporters are alive, and a war tells how many are willing to be dead. -- Anonymous 

© 2003 Jozef Hand-Boniakowski, PhD