Many of you are politically engaged people who are deeply concerned about the direction that history is taking in our time. One would have imagined that in 2004 we would have had fewer wars, less obscurantism ruining the human mind, less prejudice and less hatred. Precisely the opposite is true. Everywhere we care to look we find enormous examples of moral backwardness and institutionalized injustice in power, or simply rampant irrationality among the masses. Conservatives, as usual, will gloat on this, since it confirms their low opinion of “human nature,” and especially its putative immutability, to which they have contributed so much.
This is not the place to try your patience with a long tirade on what’s really wrong (and why) in the US. But let me sum up one possible one-size-fits-all diagnosis for the problem: American society is suffering from the gradual but real death of its democracy.
Never mind that this country was never as perfect a democracy as our self-inflicted propaganda and mythologies would have us believe. Democracy is an ideal that requires a constant journey, increasing participation, and is therefore never truly fulfilled 100 percent. Still, what we see today is more than just alarming, it is obscene. This country is rapidly becoming what its underlying economic logic compels it to be: a callous, global plutocracy wrapped in democratic symbols to attain its unpopular goals.
In this context, periodical elections—flawed by design—mean very little as the choices are controlled from above. Edward Herman, author of a volume on the fraudulent elections conducted in Third World countries only to impress the American people back home with “the evolution of these US client states toward democracy,” calls them “demonstration elections.” They have only one goal: to “demonstrate” to the American taxpayers that our millions invested in propping up these criminal oligarchies are actually well spent. The US media, of course, can then be relied on to carry the story back to the unsuspecting US publics without much contextual criticism or verification.
A similar imposture is and has been taking place for some time right under our noses. In a nation that, alone among major powers, and practically throughout its history, has had no major party representing even nominally the interests of workers, and I mean by that those who must work for a living, it is not surprising that this should be happening. Now, however, in the age of Reagan, Clinton, Bush, and who knows who else later, the situation has become critical: the fact that American elections are grotesquely costly, highly managed events, offering little substantive in the manner of true choices, is no longer just a scandal we can humor by retreating to our gardens, a la Voltaire, it is a growing cancer in our midst menacing our very freedoms and prospects as citizens with an elementary right to peace, a stable livelihood, and effective representation, the core of our social compact.
All of the above are rapidly being eviscerated by the Right, which has no use for real democracy anywhere, let alone an expansion of democracy. The Right believes in just one thing: privilege. The privilege of self-perpetuating elites, elites born out of brute power, chicanery and luck, not the consent of the masses. Hypocritical posturings aside, the Right’s core value and ultimate goal is not a democracy of equals but a huge pecking order, a hierarchy of different powers with eternal, murderous jockeying for position, a hellish social Darwinist order closer to that of animals in the jungle than a true civilization.
If things continue deteriorating like this, if the Right is not challenged, defeated and stopped, hopefully in a decisive way, we will all witness a rapid descent into corporate feudalism. I hate to tell you this, but there’s hardly any hyperbole in this. That is precisely the term for the kind of society we’ll all end up inhabiting. Unless we act. Unless we move decisively while we can to gain control of this nation.
I don’t think I have to draw you a picture of how ugly it will get if the US, with all its power, continues down the road controlled by a combination of cynical wealth addicts—what else are we to call these new corporate royalists for whom no fortune is large enough--and millions upon millions of religiously-inspired cretins, super-patriots, and an assortment of deeply misguided people who regard Bush and the establishment he represents as the “better choice.”
The problem of the media
In this situation, the real Left urgently needs to communicate its ideas, its visions to our fellow citizens. We need to “deprogram” and re-educate millions and millions to form a broad coalition, a broad populist front capable of dislodging the current usurpers, because, make no mistake about it friends, that’s exactly what these cynical elites are all about: usurpation of power. Our power. And there’s nothing nice about usurpation because usurpation is theft.
But no movement for the liberation and reconstruction of American democracy is likely to succeed until we break free from the mental stranglehold of the mainstream media. For the system is all of a piece, and it follows its DNA blueprint into each and every single organ, and the media is a very important organ indeed, essential to the system’s first-line of defense and survival. That’s why just like we have a highly deficient, largely phony democracy, so it is with the American media—these self-appointed gatekeepers of what is and isn't "acceptable" to transmit to the American people. Thus the main obstacle on the road to authentic American democracy today is the media as presently constituted, as presently controlled, by plutocracies with not an ounce of interest in advancing a truly democratic agenda.
The recent election and events since 9/11 provide a good object lesson. You saw what they did to Howard Dean; what they did to Dennis Kucinich; what they have done, all along, to Ralph Nader--in short to anyone who was even slightly to the left of the sacred “respectable center.” And you saw how they turned Ronald Reagan, demonstrably one of the most contemptible and criminal politicians in decades, into practically a saint. What’s more, when the drums of war started beating for the assault on Iraq, the media fell almost in unison to its preferred position: on its knees to power. Is that the position for an independent information system in charge of guiding the most powerful nation on earth?
The center won’t hold
Some continue to pin their hopes on a resurrected “liberalism” and on a "reformed" Democratic Party. They continue to be mesmerized by the stuff that folks like Clinton, Mondale, Lieberman, Gore, and before them LBJ, JFK, Humphrey and the rest of the lot have been mouthing for decades. Well, guess what, the “respectable center” is useless to stop the crypto-fascist horde currently on the move. The Right is in the saddle: they got the foot soldiers (courtesy of the Christian fundamentalist legions); they got the money; and they got a terrific steering mechanism: the cynical GOP, a party which, considering its poisonous agenda, in a better educated and more enlightened society should long ago been relegated to the dustbin of history. Liberals and "polite moderates” are no match for these maniacs. Just like it happened in every country where this political picture arose, they’ll be smashed, if--a big if--they choose to stand up and be counted, which I bet they won’t.
Our only defense at this point is serious political work, as if our lives depended on it, because in many ways they do. The chickens are finally coming home to roost. Can you imagine the kind of hysteria that might grip this country if bin Laden pulls off another 9/11, several 9/11s? If the Constitution is already under siege, can anyone guarantee the Bill of Rights under those circumstances? Can anyone foresee what the corporate foreign policy will be, given the jingoist furor likely to ensue? Bin Laden and his zealots, indirectly created by corporate foreign policy over the years, have given the cynical American plutocrats a terrific gift, another lease on life, and a hundred Reichtag fires' worth of political capital.
Unless we are prepared to move to New Zealand, or Canada, or God knows where, abandoning America (and our world as we know it) we must get disciplined about political work, and that means to learn to work more in groups and in larger associations, and to seek political action well outside and beyond the ballot box. It also means to visualize and create a whole new host of political structures.
For starters. we need a true populist program to reignite the masses’ imagination and create a broad front capable of challenging the power of the newly entrenched unholy alliance dominating America, that of accumulated wealth and recalcitrant ignorance.
But before we can attain any of this in a significant manner we need to take care of the media. In fact we may need to "walk on both legs at the same time" advancing our political agerndas while we work tirelessly to reform and bypass the mainstream media.
Where you come in
Cyrano is working to accelerate MEDIA REFORM and to CREATE new alternative channels of mass information—both “conventional” --i.e., radio, TV, etc.) and informal (audiotapes, e-magazines, cd-roms, and "viral" networks over the Internet, anchored in specific websites such as cjonline.org).
We aim to accomplish the following vital tasks:
(A) Continue to document, analyze, AND mobilize against the outrageous performance of the American corporate media;
(B) Set up forums and other political spaces to discuss and advance new models of mass communication, and to explore implementation of same;
(C) Organize at the state and federal levels citizens’ task forces to contest broadcast media licenses and make clear to the FCC that they can’t go on giving the public’s right to be informed and responsibly entertained to corporate franchisees who only look out for the bottom line and continue to degrade the quality of mass communications.
(D) Start drawing and collating legislative proposals to revolutionize the way mass communications is generated and practiced in this society, especially by commercial entities;
(E) Cyrano Online is setting up a special section devoted entirely end exclusively to questions of mass propaganda. Our aim is to start fighting back against the onslaught of right-wing propaganda and viewpoints, disseminated 24/7 and almost without challenge through most of AM radio (1900 stations+), most of cable TV channels, and, due to the intimidation from the right (the hyprocritical cry of “liberal media”) even through the TV broadcast networks and PBS, which continues to add right wing voices to its lineup while curtailing or eliminating liberal or left voices.
(F) Initiate special citizens’ campaigns targeting diverse subjects, from immediate political and informational objectives like, why are jobs vanishing in every sector of the economy, to broader goals, such as the preservation of the world’s Boreal Forests, the last pristine forest band in existence, currently under assault by loggers...(most of these trees are to end up as glossy catalogs, which, as we all know, are probably the most obscenely inefficient method of commercial communication around).
We need your help in the following ways:
Send this message (rewrite it to your own style if you like) to at least 3 friends in your email list. If more, so much the better. Ask them to do the same. If they do, even with the basic multiple of only 2, a huge number of people will be reached. The Right has been trying this for some time with terrific success. And we all know what happened on Nov. 2. The idea here is to create a VIRAL NETWORK to plug into our education, information and mobilization needs, a network that, united to similar fraternal networks, plus oter resources we may develop, will be able to reach many Americans in a matters of hours or days in spite of any blockages or disinformation put up by the system.
Consider a donation, no matter how small to Cyranos Journal. Cyrano is totally independent; there are no rich, shady tycoons footing our bills, as is the case with the legions of smug apologists and insidious think tanks for the Right. On our splash page you’ll find a new PayPal button that is easy and totally safe to use for this purpose. (http://www.cjonline.org) This will allow us to do more, and to expand our panoply of tools to advance our message.
Sign up on our volunteer page and tell us what skills you think you can contribute to these struggles. We need all sorts of people: professional communicators, art directors, webmasters, field organizers, you name it.
Tell you friends to visit Cyrano's website, to read and disseminate further the basic materials concerning the current crisis, and, in particular, how false social consciousness is manufactured and distributed around the clock by the system’s defenders. The Cyrano website is at < http://www.cjonline.org >
Lastly, ask your friends to send one message back to us—any message--at< > We need to have some rough way of gauging our progress.
THE MOMENT TO ACT IS NOW. Historically speaking, this is the only remaining civilized window of opportunity we’ll get before things get really nasty. After Nazism a generation ago, the Right has put humanity in another big pickle. If allowed to do as it pleases things will get worse and worse, with endless wars all over the place, including major conflicts looming on the horizon with re-emerging powers such as China or Russia, and more social toxicity, decadence and criminality at home, all fed by a deepening spiral of job insecurity, longer hours, the spreading mental rot of religiosity, and eventually simply massive unemployment. It’s not a pretty future. But it’s a future that can be avoided if we take this country back from the edge of the abyss. We are the true patriots, not them. The better, higher, more civilized ideals represented by the American flag are upheld by us, not them. It’s high time we stopped yielding these powerful symbols to the enemy. It’s time to get to work.
"We’ll see you on the beach!"
PATRICE GREANVILLE
Director, www.CJONLINE.ORG
PS/ Those of you who don’t mind reading political materials like these—and I apologize for the length of this note—will enjoy Joe Bageant’s newest column ( DINING WITH THE RHINOS, http://www.cjonline.org/bageantRhinoceros.htm ) an article that coming from someone who lives deeply in Bushland, is extremely pertinent to the current discussion.
