December 3, 2003
Dean Rising
A couple of interesting endorsements of Dean:William Greider, a national affairs correspondent for Rolling Stone and The Nation, and author of several excellent books on political history, endorsed Dean. To have a thinker as independent of the mainstream as Greider endorse a presidential candidate is unusual to say the least.
Dean also picked up an endorsement from Ted Rall, the brilliant political cartoonist and journalist, also not one you would expect to see make a formal public declaration of his support for someone who is a frontrunner in mainstream American politics. Such are the times we are living in. Dean does not please me in his positions as much as Dennis Kucinich. But Dean represents the potential of uniting a broad coalition across the middle of American life. And therefore a chance to seize the White House (legally and democratically this time), to wrest power from the posers and usurpers now driving the ship of state into a sewer. This is really a measure of how bad things are, and how desperately a movement of resistance is needed to stop the Republican catastrophe now in motion. A leader does not have to be our perfect ideal. What is needed is someone who can represent the needs of a majority of Americans who now share at least one objective: the removal of the Bush regime from power. It can be for hugely disparate reasons, because the Bush regime has caused enormous damage to many people for many reasons. Its true beneficiaries are relatively few.
I know some conservative businessmen who are getting extremely worried about Bush, want him out and would support Dean. This is key. If the business community is behind a political movement, it is hard to beat. Obviously Bush has the global multinationals in his pocket, or more accurately they have him. But the increasing numbers of people who are getting left out of Bush's little American dream include many business people, not the corporate crooks, but real entrepreneurs who really do believe in democracy and free enterprise, not just the ability to buy politicians.
The Dean phenomenon is getting more interesting. Its momentum is becoming a phenomenon that multiplies itself.
What America needs is for Dean to become like a new Franklin D. Roosevelt, to sweep into office with a mandate to get things done, put the country to work again, and get things moving. He should create a jobs program which will rebuild the country while it provides employment opportunities for those who need employment, and rechannels the resources that are now channeled toward the massive military industrial complex, which is ultimately made for destruction. Money from the military should also be channeled into education, so that those now unemployed, in the military, or dependent on war industries can become educated to qualify for new productive roles in society.
It's still a long time before the election. The chances of unseating Bush are excellent. Polls have shown "an unnamed Democrat" beating or nearly beating Bush for quite a while now. A movement may very well rise and sweep him and his whole seedy crew out of power.
This is how it will happen -- The rage that you and I feel is shared by massive numbers of people. They used to suffer alone, isolated in their homes, thinking no one shared their feelings because their feelings never registered in the mass media. And that was the only culture they knew of. If there was no reflection of their own feelings in the culture, there was no affirmation, no reinforcement. They could not be sure they were not wrong and everyone else was right. But now the outrages have continued, on and on, farther and farther, things have gotten worse and worse. And now the word is getting out, despite its suppression in the mass media. The message is reverberating, building in magnitude.
The way democracy expresses itself when political systems are corrupt and no longer provide the mechanisms of democratic power is through a massive wave of action. Even though the individual acts may be small, the wave itself is huge.
Here is an example: The wife of a victim of 911, one of the most egregiously victimized of all who have been wronged by the Bush scam, has filed a suit against Bush based on anti-racketeering laws. (See Scoop)
The Bush mob may be able to stop her. The woman who filed a sexual harassment suit against Bush died of a gunshot wound and the mass media never even blinked an eye, never even asked the elementary questions that are normally asked if a person dies by gunshot who was involved in a lawsuit against someone. They may be able to stop this one. But they can't stop everyone.
In the case of the death of the sexual harassment plaintiff, like so many cases regarding the Bush family, the mass media mind disregards the possibility of any guilt or wrongdoing by this mob out of hand. Bush could not be guilty of any wrongdoing -- that is the conclusion from the beginning. Therefore any circumstances that appear suspicious, must not really be suspicious and anyone who raises suspicions is a conspiracy nut.
Yeah, it was pretty weird when the brother of the man who was convicted of shooting Ronald Reagan was having dinner with Neil Bush the night Reagan was shot. Strange that the Hinkley and Bush families were such close-knit friends, with many business enterprises shared and money exchanges and favors from one to the other. The alleged assassin's father headed World Vision, an organization that took in rather lost individuals and trained them in mysterious ways. Mark David Chapman, whose whose profile was parallel to Hinkley's, was a subject of World Vision. Yeah, those are strange coincidences, but you're not going to say that means the Bushes had some nefarious connection to ... No ... !
Sure, it's strange that Dubya's grandfather was a big Nazi banker, whose New York bank was closed down under the Trading with the Enemy Act during the war, but you aren't going to try to imply that that puts some tarnish on our boy Bush are you?
The blindness about these things is incredible. None so blind as he who does not want to see. Many people just cannot believe that their assumed leaders are really crooks and criminals. But the blinders are falling away from many eyes and people are taking action. Even small actions, like contributing a few bucks to a campaign, add up because the actions are repeated by so many people.
So do something. Anything. Now is the time.