Self-determination: The Sequel

One of my readers, BigMark243, whose blogs can be found here http://starslikegrainsofsandinmypocket.blogspot.com/ and here http://afriendonthebackroadsoflife.blogspot.com/ made a comment about my blog on self-determination that I would like to reproduce here and comment on…

Big Mark said “This was another of your usual thought provoking entries. Of this entry, I have always wondered, what is it that I can do, since I am not going to actually 'do it', you know what I mean?

For instance, giving money to ACLU, is that enough? Voting against laws that I don't agree with and legislators are another.

Where is the front line for fights of liberty? And now with the patroit act, and the 'you don't love america' folks having squeezed all the toothpaste out of the tube, what is it that I can do?”

First off, thank you for your compliments. I enjoy writing, and am glad that it brings others new thought or pleasure.

Second off, this is a great question. I’ve been pondering it since you posted it, trying to formulate an answer.

So what is the answer?

I think that the most important thing is to pay attention. My parent’s generation, between Viet Nam, Watergate, the Bay of Pigs and whatever else went on came to view the “government” as something to be at best mistrustred. (Not MY parents, mind you. They may not have been active, but to this day they pay attention to what politicians are doing and can speak intelligently on it.) The result of this is that, up until this last federal election, voter turnout has been more or less steadily declining since 1960. This year, sources say that the voter turnout was 61%, higher than any year since 1964.

The second most important thing is to PAY ATTENTION! I mean, everyone knows that the Bush years brought us the worst attack on US soil since Pearl Harbor, a total of three wars, an economic crisis that may end up rivaling the great depression and a steady erosion of our civil rights, because the national media covered all of this. Endlessly. What many people do NOT realize, however, is what’s happened to our “free” press. Mr. Bush appointed Michael Powell, the son of Colin Powell as FCC Chairman. Mr. Powell immediately started shifting press power away from small, independent media groups to the “major” media. One of these tactics has been to increase postage duties on independent media outlets, while keeping it the same for Time, Warner, Fox et al. You know those seats that you see in the Press Room whenever Mr. Bush or Ms. Perino gives a press conference? That packed room of reporters? I don’t know how many seats there are, but it’s a lot. The problem? More than ¾ of those seats are controlled by one of SIX national media outlets. SIX!

These same six outlets control almost every major media outlet in the United States. Let’s say, for instance that you think that CNN is too biased, so you go somewhere else for your news. Say to Time magazine. Too bad. They’re both owned by Time Warner. Time Warner controls almost 18% of cable programming. NewsCorp, on the other hand, the pet project of Australian troll Rupert Murdoch, controls everything with the Fox logo on it, as well as the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post and TV Guide. So when you want the news, seek out an independent source, or even foreign sources. If you split the difference between F-word news and Al Jazeera America, you’ll probably be pretty close to the actual facts.

Another thing that’s vitally important is to turn on your bullshit detectors. There was a saying when I was a kid that I think that we would do well to remember now… “If it seems too good to be true, it probably is.” Same goes for bad. In the build-up to the mess in Iraq if ANY of our national, corporate-controlled media outlets had had the wit to say “Wait a minute… this doesn’t add up” then we might not be in the fiasco that we’re in now over there. If something that you hear or see just don’t look or sound right, research it. Turn off “moment of truth” long enough to look this stuff up. The internet is a marvelous resource for that. A guy at work who read my blog on Sarah Palin’s convention speech asked me how I managed to find out that she was telling so many lies and factual distortions. I replied that each one of them took me about a minute to research on the ‘net.

And Big Mark hit another nail right on the head that’s connected to that… VOTE! And don’t trust campaign mailers or media spots. Actually research your candidates. If it’s an incumbent, their entire voting record is available on-line for you to look at. And if they voted for something that you didn’t like, vote against them. Vote for their opponent. And do everyone a favor, would you? Look beyond party loyalty. If you’re a republican for instance who wishes that jobs would return to America, and the republican candidate wants to continue merrily outsourcing our economy (like John McCain), then vote for the Libertarian (Bob Barr) or the Democrat (what was his name? Oh, yeah. Barack Obama). I upset a LOT of my liberal friends when I said that I would vote for John McCain over Hillary Clinton. When they asked why, it was pretty simple for me. Ms. Clinton voted for the war in Iraq. She voted for the “Patriot” act, and then voted for it AGAIN when it came up for renewal in 2005. Yes, I know that John McCain did as well, but I expected that.

Finally, I would like to say that we need to change our language. When we change our language about something, we change the way that we think about it. For instance, if you catch yourself talking about “THE GOVERNMENT” as an entity outside yourself, you are distancing yourself from it. In fact, we have a government “Of the people, by the people, for the people.” In other words, brothers and sisters, WE are the government. YOU are the government. I am the government. Instead of “the government”, try saying “our government”. That way you feel the ownership that you have. And stop talking about how all elected officials are lying, selfish sacks of shit, okay? If you truly feel that way, vote new people into office. We currently re-elect incumbents at around an 80% rate. If we don’t like what they’re doing, we need to fire them. Another thing that I did that pissed off my liberal friends was to discourage them from voting for Maria Cantwell in the Washington primary. She has supported the Bush agenda from the beginning, and I hate that. I wanted to see her replaced by someone new on the ticket. But the democrat’s desire to see that seat remain in their hands was so strong that they supported a candidate who DIDN’T support the liberal agenda.

Peace.

Randal