http://www.democraticunderground.com/crisis/05/036_ep.html
The Sleeping Giant Stirs
November 7, 2005
By Ernest Partridge, The Crisis Papers
"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by
fear into an age of unreason, if we dig deep in our history and our
doctrine; and remember that we are not descended from fearful men. Not
from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate, and to defend
causes that were for the moment unpopular... We can deny our heritage
and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result."
- Edward R. Murrow, May 9, 1954
"The Americans will always do the right thing," Winston Churchill once
remarked, "after they've exhausted all the alternatives."
The American public may be running out of alternatives.
If so, the Bush Administration and the Republicans have reason to be
very worried.
It is all too easy to despair over the ignorance and gullibility of
"the American mind."
This is a public, after all, a majority of which rejects the theory of
evolution -- the central coordinating concept of the biological
sciences.
In addition, the National Science Foundation reports that more than a
third of Americans believe in UFOs and that astrology "has scientific
merit."
And yet, amazingly, at many crucial moments in our history, public
opinion has somehow moved toward a wise and appropriate point of view.
For example, public support for the Vietnam war eroded until
eventually the war was unsustainable.
Richard Nixon's landslide re-election in 1972 was no use to him when,
less than two years later, the full extent of his "crimes and
misdemeanors" became known and he was forced from office.
Throughout his presidency, Bill Clinton was hounded by a hostile
press, while $70 million of taxpayers' money was expended in search of
a crime to fit the punishment.
Eventually he was caught in a sexual indiscretion.
It was then widely assumed that Clinton's public approval scores would
drop into the basement.
Instead, "the hunting of the president" backfired as Clinton's high
approval scores held steady, while those of his tormentor, Kenneth
Starr, plummeted.
And so right now, something remarkable is taking place.
At long last, however belatedly, the public is beginning to appreciate
the shallowness and incompetence of George Bush and the unparalleled
mendacity and corruption of his administration.
Moreover, it has arrived at this realization on its own, despite the
determination of the captive mainstream media to hide these manifest
failures from the public, through distraction, non-reporting, and
occasionally through outright lies.
For five years, the Rovian smoke and mirrors have worked spectacularly
well.
A majority of the public was persuaded that Saddam Hussein had weapons
of mass destruction, was somehow behind the 9/11 attacks, and was an
active agent of al Qaeda.
At the same time, the skeletons of Bush's past -- his AWOL from the
Air National Guard, his business failures, his insider trading, his
suspected drug use -- were all kept hidden in the closet.
A package of lies about Al Gore was concocted to "prove," ironically,
that Gore was a "serial liar."
John Kerry, an authentic war hero, was successfully portrayed as a
coward and a fake.
Thus did the Bush message machine vanquish the Democratic opposition
and reduce it to pathetic impotence.
However, there was one adversary that Bush, Inc. could not defeat:
reality.
And at long last, reality is retaliating and the public is taking
notice.
The failure of Bush's FEMA to deal with the Katrina catastrophe can
not be hidden from the public.
Nor can the loss of manufacturing jobs and their export overseas.
Nor can the rising price of gasoline and the obscene profits of the
oil companies.
Nor can the upward redistribution of national wealth from the
producers to the owners of that wealth.
Nor can the corruption and the consequent indictments or
investigations of the malefactors: DeLay, Safavian, Frist, Libby,
Abramoff, and now Tomlinson.
Nor can the horrendous tales of torture from Bush's Gulag.
Nor can the shredding of our Constitution and the loss of our
"inalienable rights."
Nor can the mounting casualties from the Iraq war, as they return home
in caskets ("transfer tubes") or with broken minds and bodies.
And despite the media conspiracy of silence, the evidence of election
fraud can not be suppressed.
The unthinkable is becoming thinkable.
Moreover, the public has a memory.
The weak but growing voice of the independent progressive media and
Internet has recorded and now broadcasts the lies in the voices of the
liars:
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons
of mass destruction" (Cheney, August 2002).
"We know where [the WMDs] are. They are in the area around Tikrit and
Baghdad" (Rumsfeld, May 2003).
"We found the weapons of mass destruction" (Bush, May 2003).
Despite their self-congratulatory myth of rugged individualism,
Americans are herd animals; they look around, then follow the crowd.
When Bush's approval scores were in the high eighties and the media
were meekly and uncritically passing on the official lies, few dared
to resist.
Troublesome news, such as election fraud,
foreign opposition,
citizen protests,
the looting of the treasury,
and the Downing Street memos, were absent from the print and
broadcasts of the mainstream media.
Those in the media who did resist, like MSNBC's Ashleigh Banfield and
Phil Donanue, soon found themselves out of a job.
Their example was not lost on the survivors.
But now the beast is wounded and just a few of the bolder predators
are coming out of the woods to investigate.
At last, the hidden issues are beginning to come into play.
And the public?
Ever so gradually, public opinion has shifted and now the critics and
skeptics are in the majority.
No longer can dissenters be successfully branded as traitors who "hate
America."
More and more of us are remembering that America was born from
resistance to tyranny and has flourished through dissent and open
debate.
Protest is once again becoming fashionable, and there is a whiff of
possible success in the air.
The message to the media?
"Lead, follow, or step out of the way. You have made yourselves
irrelevant."
When asked the secret of success in show business, George Burns
replied: "sincerity -- if you can fake that, you've got it made."
For five years, it worked for Bush and his gang, but now the public is
finally seeing through the fakery.
And once the politician loses his grip on the fakery -- once he has
lost the trust of the public - he can never get it back.
And so, Bush's approval and trust ratings are now in the mid-thirties,
and heading south.
According to the latest Washington Post/ABC poll, two-thirds of the
public has a negative opinion of Bush's ethics and believes that the
country is headed in the wrong direction.
Sixty percent believes that the Iraq war was a mistake.
A majority doubts Bush's honesty and integrity, and believes that Bush
misled the country prior to the invasion of Iraq.
And amazingly, a majority would want to see him impeached if it were
proved (as is likely the case) that Bush lied to get the U.S. into the
war.
Significantly, many GOP politicians and the media are beginning to
sense that support of Bush and his administration is distinct
liability -- a liability that can cost the politicians their offices,
and the media their audiences.
Moreover, as the demise of the Miers nomination attests, the religious
right is finally beginning to realize that they've been had, cynically
kept on the GOP reservation with promises, such as the repeal of Roe
v. Wade, that the GOP dare not fulfill.
Is it over for the Bush Administration?
Don't count on it.
As I wrote at the outset: at many crucial moments in our history the
American public gets it right.
At many crucial moments, not all.
There are no guarantees.
And the Busheviks still have formidable weapons at their disposal as
they struggle to maintain their grip on power.
Accordingly, this is no time for the opposition to sit at the
sidelines, content to be spectators of the self-inflicted decline and
fall of Bush, Inc.
This malignant regime may not go over the precipice unless it is
pushed.
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So let's start pushing.
Harry
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