American Herods &
The Fallacy Of
A Free Press
Exclusive to Rense.com
By Douglas Herman
9-5-5
Many writers and essayists on the Internet--that last bastion of a
truly free press--have thoughtfully and passionately compared George W
Bush to imperial leaders throughout history. Everyone from Richard
Nixon to Adolf Hitler to Nicolo Machiavelli.
"This is a dangerous analogy," wrote Byron Williams in The Moral
Cynicism of George Bush. "Tragedy, popularity, and bad intelligence
combined to allow this president to consolidate his amoral agenda of
power, selling it to the American people with overtly pious language."
Rather sympathetic, wouldn't you say? By contrast many essayists, like
myself, wonder if something far more sinister hasn't been developing,
for a much longer time, here in America. Ever since Eisenhower
realized who wielded the REAL power behind the seats of power and
spoke out, belatedly, in his farewell speech.
The recent essay "Informant Names JFK Jrs Assassins?" would have
struck me as only another wacky Internet conspiracy theory if someone
hadn't revealed the exact same thing to me several months earlier.
Indeed my informant, a former intelligence insider, became the
inspiration for the central character my recent novel, the sinister
protagonist, Jimmy Jeremiah. Assassination by aviation, was how the
real-life Jeremiah explained it to me, removing troublesome but
charismatic leaders who become problematic to the status quo.
If we Americans realize that those in power are never hindered by any
feelings of conscience or guilt, if we realize that our rulers freely
act in their own self interest, (unless forced to do so by popular
outcry), that they conduct policy as insatiable predators would, we
begin to see them with a new clarity. If we realize profits and
personal agendas, not ethics, forever influence foreign and domestic
policies, then we may finally see how everything seems to make sense
in a senseless world.
Thus the controlled demolition of a potential rival's plane--whether
John F. Kennedy Jr. or
<http://opednews.com/thoreau1203_wellstone_assassinated.htm>Minnesota
Senator Paul Wellstone--makes perfect sense. Thus the controlled
demolitions of sensitive buildings (Oklahoma City, World Trade Center,
Building 7), or the controlled demolition of a country like Iraq, or
the controlled demolition of the American media, not to mention the
controlled elections in 2000 and 2004, all make perfect sense and have
always made perfect sense.
Which makes the US media accomplices to an ongoing series of great
crimes, stretching over fifty years. As Richard Salent, Former
President of CBS News once admitted, "Our job is to give people not
what they want, but what we decide they ought to have." Clearly
controlled, wouldn't you say?
But this sort of cold-blooded criminality speaks less of Prince
Machiavelli or the Borgias than the Biblical Herod family. The three
generations of the Bush family parallel the uncanny rise to power of
the Biblical Herods. Just as the Herods conducted ruthless
policy--secret assassinations and public executions, religious plots,
terrorism, manipulation of the economic system while seeming to
embrace the religious leaders of their day--so too have our own
American Herods.
And all of these crimes have been aided and abbetted by the American
mainstream media for well over fifty years! Indeed, when has anyone
heard or read anything about Patrick "Bulldog" Fitzgerald, in the
American media? US Attorney Fitzgerald, pursuing corruption in high
places, very likely will become the next "accidental" death, planned
by the American Herods. The details of his death, and the predictable
press reports, are all being worked out behind the scenes as I write
this.
When we realize that the Biblical Herods wielded limited but absolute
power backed by imperial Rome, we realize that the Bushes, Clintons,
Johnsons and Nixons wield limited power within a framework of power
brokers. Otherwise what stake do our American Herods have in the
Middle East? Certainly not for the benefit of the average US citizen.
Likewise our "free press," never seems to ask the pertinent question
of any crime: Who benefits? Who benefits when a Paul Wellstone or
well-respected critic dies "accidentally?" Who benefits when a 47
story building falls mysteriously? And who benefits when a country is
invaded? Who profits? Aside from cementing power within the ruling
junta--our American Herods, whether Democratic or Republican--the
select group of power brokers continue to reap obscene profits.
Katrina being no exception; witness the spike in petroleum prices.
Ironic indeed that far more blame has been leveled by the complicit US
media, against the US government, for slow response to a predicted
natural disaster, than to the predicted un-natural debacle in Iraq.
Thirty months later still no outrage from the embedded US media to a
phony war draining the American treasury and the volunteer armed
forces. Ironic that far more outrage is directed against armed looters
in New Orleans than to well-connected cronies of our American Herods
who receive billions for looting the US citizen in no-bid contracts.
The Biblical Herods, like their American predecessors, once wielded
incredible power. Until one day they were swept away, swept away more
completely than Katrina swept away Biloxi. And today the Herods are
remembered as diabolical scoundrels, relegated to the dust bin of
history.
Amateur historian and Rense essayist, Douglas Herman is the author of
the recent novel,
Guns of Dallas
http://www.rense.com
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