GOP Attack Machine Knows Misinformed Intensity of Emotion Wins Against Reason and Fact: FOX News Best Year Ever

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

By Mark Karlin

Haven't we seen this before? The majority of Americans support progressive policies, such as the public option in healthcare reform legislation when stated factually, but oppose them when the false perceptions fostered by right wing media and GOP politicians take root in their heads.

For all the comaradarie and mutual indignation of the net roots -- including BuzzFlash -- at the failure of the Obama White House to aggressively push the public option (not to mention single payer), they are up against the same corporately and wealthy individual finance propaganda media dissemination machine that Clinton ran into. In this sense, little has changed in 30 years, since the right wing misinformation infrastructure started to fully take root in the Reagan years (although FOX "News" came later).

Indeed, much to the dismay of progressives, FOX "News" viewership is up 11% over last year according to Nielsen Media Research, as cited in an AP article ominously entitled "FOX News on Pace for best year ever."

Yes, MSNBC is picking up and has surpassed CNN as second in cable news -- and David Shuster, Ed Schultz, Keith Olbermann, and the superstar of the progressive perspective in journalism -- Rachel Maddow -- are a distant third to FOX, but maintaining a viable audience, as long as MSNBC's parent company -- GE -- don't see its larger corporate interests directly threatened.

But FOX and its cohort right wing hate shills ignite and incite its audience with misinformation; Rachel Maddow and the MSNBC night shift inform and string together the facts. It's the classic difference and dilemma for secular progressives: reason vs. deceptively kindled emotion.

The hysteria that FOX, with its increasing viewership, has set off with its lies has led to a British correspondent calling the GOP a cult.

As George Lakoff, the specialist in framing issues, recently noted, the WH has done a poor job of communicating and marketing healthcare reform. Obama has not embraced language that appeals to Americans with health insurance, he has shifted his sales strategy several times, and he hasn't successfully conveyed a sense of urgency. In addition, Obama has made the mistake of thinking that logic prevails against misinformed intensity of feeling.

I campaigned for many years for gun control. And if anyone has shown what a small minority of highly energized, angry, and emotionally threatened voters can accomplish -- egged on by the propaganda of the NRA -- it is a relatively small group of gun owners. Legislators, besides being beholden to big money for the most part, also want to flee out the back door when confronted with angry constitutents. Many, if not most, will vote with the group that has the highest intensity of feeling over the restrained reasonable advocates.

The GOP figured this out a long time ago. And that is why in quick succession we have seen the teabaggers, birthers and Town Hall lobbying-groups organized terrorists. And that is why FOX, a gift of Murdoch to the GOP and to protect his corporate interests, has been lighting the bonfire.

Furthermore, the more people who get upset from lies that threaten them, the more who join the movement. It's like a lynch mob walking through town and gathering a larger crowd as people hear that "a black 'boy' raped a virgin white girl and we're going to hang him" and join the vigilante group (most likely based on a rumor, just as FOX is.)

Rachel Maddow is our Godsend, because she has the ability to be Rhodes Scholar smart and not threaten viewers who might disagree with her. She has a reassuring presence even as she dismantles the GOP attack machine.

But Maddow is successful -- to a certain degree -- for just the opposite reason of FOX. She is reasoned and at one with herself; FOX is irrational and a firebomb thrower that is incendiary.

Remember that: because recent polls show that FOX viewers are the most misinformed in relation to facts. The same was true during the height of the Iraq War. And it will always be true, because FOX is a propaganda station, an arm of a demagogic machine to incite and divert the economically pressed working and middle classes against scapegoats, while preserving the economic rule of the corporate and the wealthy.

BuzzFlash gave its Wings of Justice Award to ColorOfChange.Org for organizing the current effort to get advertisers to boycott the Glenn Beck show. They have done a fantastic job.

But as successful as the effort has been, mark our words, Glenn Beck will be back (he is currently on a one-week "cooling off" vacation). In three decades, the right wing media has only grown stronger, abetted by a corporately owned mainstream media.

FOX "News" is growing, and so is the potential for armed rebellion and assassination in the United States. Already, followers of the right wing hate hosts have committeed individual shootings around the nation, because the right wing validates victimhood and justifies outrage.

None of this will stop, despite the fine work of sites like mediamatters.org, until pro-democracy Americans start owning big chunks of the media.

But after three decades, that doesn't appear like it will happen anytime soon.

BUZZFLASH EDITOR'S BLOG

Published on Thursday, August 20, 2009 by The Guardian/UK

BP and Shell Warned to Halt Campaign Against US Climate Change Bill

Oil firms urged to leave American Petroleum Institute and halt political lobbying by Greenpeace

by Terry Macalister

BP and Shell are being told to tear up their membership of the American Petroleum Institute (API) in protest at the organisation's attempts to incite a public backlash against Barack Obama's energy and climate change bill.

Protesters in Houston, Texas, on Tuesday, venting their feelings against the climate change bill Photograph: AP

The two oil companies are also being asked to bring a halt to their own political lobbying in Washington in letters sent to their chief executives from Greenpeace and the Platform environmental group.

"BP maintains its membership of the API through paying substantial fees based on the large size of BP's business. It is our concern that these fees are used by the API to undermine US government action on climate change and that BP's membership of the API contradicts its position on the issue," writes John Sauven, executive director of Greenpeace UK, in a letter to Tony Hayward, the BP boss.

The letter also questions the $8m (£4.8m) worth of spending on lobbying in Washington since the start of 2009, saying this runs against the commitment made by BP's former boss, Lord Browne, in 2002 that BP would from now on "make no political contributions from corporate funds anywhere else in the world". A similar letter has been sent to Peter Voser, the new boss at Shell.

The demands from Greenpeace follow revelations in the Guardian last Friday that the API was pumping money into a series of "citizen rallies" to put pressure on the Obama administration over its support for a climate change bill sponsored by Congressmen Henry Waxman and Edward Markey which comes before the Senate next month.

The proposed legislation, which has already successfully passed through the House of Representatives, marks a clear move by the US to adopt a greener political and economic agenda and ditch the kind of sceptical views on global warming that were the hallmark of the previous government run by George W Bush, himself a former oilman.

An email sent by Jack Gerard, president of the API, says the lobby group will provide "upfront resources" to pay for a highly experienced events company to organise the public protest meetings, but it says oil companies themselves should encourage their staff to go to some of the 20 rallies being considered.

"In the 11 states with an [oil] industry core, our member company local leadership – including your facility manager's commitment to provide significant attendance – is essential," the note says.

Greenpeace and Platform believe these actions are "astroturfing" – a determined attempt to create a false appearance of popular opposition to the Obama plans to control carbon emissions from oil while boosting wind and other cleaner technologies. The environmentalists remind Hayward and Voser that their companies were once members of the API-backed Global Climate Coalition in the US which successfully campaigned against it signing the Kyoto protocol on the grounds that there was not enough proof that global warming was being made worse by man-made carbon dioxide pollution.

After protests, BP and later Shell withdrew from the GCC and started to make tentative investments in renewable energy, notably wind farms in America, which continue today. The two companies are now actively involved in the United States Climate Action Partnership, which is seen by environmentalist campaigners to be playing a very positive role on driving forward the green agenda in a country only recently overtaken by China as the world's biggest carbon producer.

BP said it was "highly unlikely" it would pull out of the API, which was just one of hundreds of trade bodies to which it was affiliated. But it stressed that it was not involved directly in any of the planned public rallies. "Our views on climate change legislation are fairly well known," said a BP spokesman at its London headquarters. "We support action to counter emissions although we favour market mechanisms, like trading schemes."

Shell said tonight that it had told the API that it would not participate in the rallies but indicated it would not be leaving the organisation. "Our focus is on seeking common ground with stakeholders that can aid Congress in enacting a fair and effective cap and trade program. We will continue to express our position within API and other business and trade associations of which we are members," added a spokesman at its headquarters in The Hague.

Meanwhile ExxonMobil, a stalwart of previous opposition to Kyoto but a company that insists it is not a climate change denier, seems to support the API wholeheartedly. The part of the company's website devoted to the "ExxonMobil Citizen Action Team" gives pride of place to an official letter from the API opposing the Waxman-Markey legislation.

A note above from Rex Tillerson, chairman and chief executive of the world's biggest publicly quoted oil company, says: "Our elected officials make decisions that affect all of us. It is critical that we as a company, and more importantly as individuals, are part of the political process. By linking ExxonMobil employees and retirees to their elected officials, we can let our representatives know that the ExxonMobil family is an important force in civic life."

© 2009 Guardian News and Media Limited

Pelosi: Healthcare can't pass without public option

solon.com

By Alex Koppelman

Thursday, Aug. 20, 2009 18:55 EDT

Pelosi: Healthcare can't pass without public option

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has already defended the public option once this week. But on Thursday, she came out with an even stronger defense, saying that at this point there's no way a reform bill can pass the House if it doesn't include the plan.

"There’s no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option,” Pelosi said. "Unless someone comes up with a better idea, that's how we're going forth in the House .... If someone can come up with a better idea, let them put it on the table, we haven't heard that yet."

Of course, it remains difficult to see how the Senate will pass a bill with the public option included. So there's going to be some awkward negotiating going on pretty soon.

― Alex Koppelman

Lutherans move toward more open view on gays

365 Gay: News

Lutherans move toward more open view on gays

By The Associated Press
08.20.2009 8:47am EDT

(Minneapolis) Leaders of the country’s largest Lutheran denomination have agreed to disagree on homosexuality, endorsing an official statement on human sexuality that says there’s room in the church for differing views on an issue that’s divided other religious groups.

Delegates to the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America’s nationwide assembly in Minneapolis on Wednesday approved a “social statement on human sexuality.” The vote was a prelude to a bigger debate Friday, when delegates will tackle a proposal that would allow individual ELCA congregations to hire people in committed same-sex relationships as clergy.

The social statement lays a theological foundation for a liberalized policy on gay clergy, and supporters of the proposal praised Wednesday’s vote. “We are encouraged and hopeful that … this will result in the church’s elimination of the current ban on ministers in same gender relationships,” said Emily Eastwood, executive director of Lutherans Concerned/North America, a group of pro-gay Lutherans.

Opponents of the social statement said it ignores clear scriptural direction that homosexuality is a sin. “We are asked to affirm a description of sexuality based on a reality that’s shaped not by Scripture but by today’s culture,” said Curtis Sorbo of Adams, N.D., a convention delegate from the ELCA’s Eastern North Dakota Synod.

ELCA officials said it shouldn’t be assumed that passage of the social statement automatically means the proposal on gay clergy will be approved. “We haven’t yet had that debate, and I would not want to conjecture that,” said the Rev. Rebecca Larson, an official in the ELCA’s headquarters in Chicago.

Still, the social statement passed a higher bar than what will be required to approve the new clergy policy. The social statement, as a foundational document for the church, needed to be approved by a two-thirds supermajority of the 1,045 convention delegates. It got exactly that, passing with 66.67 percent of the vote.

The new clergy policy needs only a simple majority to pass.

The 34-page social statement actually touches on homosexuality only briefly, and is intended as a sweeping definition of the ELCA’s approach to matters of human sexuality. It also sketches out the church’s approach to gender, friendship, marriage and children, cohabitation outside marriage, the commercialization of sexuality, and the global sex trade.

But it acknowledges what Larson described as an utter lack of consensus toward homosexuality and same-sex relationships across the ELCA’s membership. She said the statement’s drafters agreed that such differing views could be accomodated because the homosexuality issue is “not central to our faith,” Larson said.

Wednesday’s debate was interrupted briefly in the afternoon when severe storms and a possible tornado passed through downtown Minneapolis, damaging the steeple of an ELCA church across the street from the convention center. Delegates were allowed to remain in the convention hall, but a few jokes about God’s wrath proved inevitable.

“We trust that the weather is not a commentary on our work,” said the Rev. Steven Loy, who was helping oversee the convention.

Obama guarantees reform will pass

Obama guarantees reform will pass
Promises bill to reduce costs, prevent abuses, provide affordable choices.

Associated Press

On defense, Obama woos right, left on health care

By PHILIP ELLIOTT, Associated Press Writer Philip Elliott, Associated Press Writer – 15 mins ago

WASHINGTON – With control of the health care debate slipping from his grasp, President Barack Obama pitched his ambitious plan to both conservative talk radio and his own liberal supporters Thursday — and denied a challenge from one backer that he was "bucklin' a little bit" under Republican criticism.

Liberals were on the verge of revolt as Obama refused to say any final deal must include a government-run insurance option, while Republicans pressed their all-but-unified opposition to the White House effort. Obama, who will leave Washington Friday on vacation, said reason would prevail and it was no time to panic.

"I guarantee you ... we are going to get health care reform done. And I know that there are a lot of people out there who have been hand-wringing, and folks in the press are following every little twist and turn of the legislative process," Obama told a caller to Philadelphia-based radio talk show host Michael Smerconish during a broadcast from the White House Diplomatic Reception Room.

"You know, passing a big bill like this is always messy."

Obama is struggling to regain the momentum on a comprehensive bill that would extend health coverage to nearly 50 million Americans who lack it and restrain skyrocketing costs. Opponents of the overhaul have drowned out supporters at lawmakers' town halls around the country this month, and public backing for Obama's effort has slipped in opinion polls. Congressional Democratic leaders are preparing to go it alone on legislation, although bipartisan negotiations continue in the Senate.

On the defensive, Obama is embracing a new role of fact checker-in-chief, trying to correct untrue claims such as that the proposals would provide health care for illegal immigrants, create "death panels" or pay for abortions with taxpayer dollars. Aides say the situation has left Obama exasperated.

"Now, c'mon," a mocking Obama told a cheering crowd late Thursday at a Democratic National Committee appearance designed to re-energize activists who were instrumental in his drive to the presidency. "What we're going to have to do is to cut through the noise and the misinformation."

"I said during the campaign that the best offense against lies is the truth," Obama said. "And so all we can do is just keep on pushing the truth."

Yet for all the gnashing from Republicans and fiscally conservative Democrats, he faces equally tough opposition from lawmakers and activists on the left who insist any overhaul must include a government-run insurance option.

In fact, shortly after his comments Thursday, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi declared the Democratic-controlled House simply won't approve the overhaul without it.

"There's no way I can pass a bill in the House of Representatives without a public option," Pelosi, D-Calif., said after a round-table in San Francisco.

Obama told his DNC audience — as well as thousands watching online and listening by telephone — that health care was the toughest fight he has faced in office.

"Winning the election is just the start," he said. "Victory in an election wasn't the change that we sought."

That election, though, came with his promise of the government insurance option, a provision that Obama's team now calls "preferred" but not mandatory. During both his Thursday appearances, Obama declined to call it a deal breaker.

"What we've said is that there are a number of components to health care," he told Smerconish, who is generally seen as a conservative, although he endorsed Obama last year and supports abortion rights. "I see nothing wrong with having public option as one choice."

He said "the press got excited and some folks on the left got a little excited" when he and top administration aides last weekend made statements indicating that a publicly run health insurance option was just one of several alternatives.

Since then, Obama has faced increasing criticism from his left flank.

"And even though some White House advisers seem to have forgotten, the reason the public option has become central to reform is simple: We're fed up with the insurance companies and we need real accountability for them," liberal MoveOn.org said in a message sent to its 5 million members while the president was speaking with Smerconish. "They've had decades to fix the problems with our health care system, but they haven't done it."

One caller to Smerconish's program said he sensed the administration was making a misstep.

"I'm getting a little ticked off that it feels like the knees are bucklin' a little bit," said the caller who identified himself as Joe. "You have an overwhelming majority in both the House and the Senate, and you own the whole shooting match. ... It's very frustrating to watch you try and compromise with a lot of these people who aren't willing to compromise with you."

Obama told his audiences he is trying to reach across the aisle to craft a bipartisan plan, even as he blamed Republicans for delay. He peppered his DNC remarks with jokes and jabs at conservatives that had the partisan crowd breaking into applause and laughter.

In response, a spokesman for the No. 2 Republican in the House said he had a question for Obama and his team.

"We would love to know when, exactly — time, date, place — the president or his staff reached out to Republican leaders?" said Brad Dayspring, a spokesman for Rep. Eric Cantor, R-Va.

Republican leaders in May sent Obama a letter outlining the GOP's principles and asking to collaborate.

"And the president's response?" Dayspring said. "Meeting? Nah. Work together? No thanks. Further discussion? Nope. Instead, they went with, 'Thanks for the letter.'"

While the White House insists Obama is still looking for Republican support for a comprehensive health care bill, Democrats privately are preparing a one-party push, which they feel is all but inevitable. Polls show slippage in support for the president's approach, although respondents express even less confidence in Republicans' handling of health care.

Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney said Thursday that Obama is struggling to get a health care bill because he has been too deferential to liberals. Romney, who may challenge Obama in 2012, said on CBS' "The Early Show" that "if the president wants to get something done, he needs to put aside the extreme liberal wing of his party."

__

Associated Press writers Juliana Barbassa in San Francisco and Charles Babington and Julie Pace in Washington contributed to this report.

Olbermann sees similarities between insurance, casino profits

By David Edwards and Stephen Webster

Today, insured Americans will ultimately pay up to 20 cents on every dollar they spend for health care. However, according to MSNBC host Keith Olbermann on Wednesday night, in its “reform” talks the U.S. Senate is debating if it should allow insurers to increase that figure to as much as 35 cents for every dollar.

“In Vegas, they used to call casinos that made more than 20 percent profit a ‘flat store,’” said Olbermann. “The flat store reputation was the kiss of death, because gamblers knew they could get a better deal elsewhere. Today, Nevada laws restrict casino profits to a max of 25 percent. New Jersey casinos take no more than 17 percent profit by law.”

The difference now is, insurance companies may have a real shot at taking much more.

He continued: “So, why is the Senate Finance Committee, run by Democrat Max Baucus [of Minnesota] considering making even Americans who have insurance pay 35 percent of their medical bills?”

The iconoclastic host was joined by Wendell Potter, the former communications director for health insurance giant Cigna. Potter has since become a Senior Fellow on health care at the Center for Media and Democracy.

Potter, speaking to PBS host Bill Moyers in July, appraised the U.S. health insurance industry as being exactly like what filmmaker Michael Moore depicted in his documentary Sicko.

Olbermann called him “one of the heroes in the current drama being played out.”

Potter explained that what the insurance providers are after is nothing short of a “vast shift” of costs onto U.S. consumers.

“It is a reason why you already have a lot of people filing for bankruptcy or losing their homes,” he said. “Right now, if you consider the average median income in this country is $50,000, if you’re asking people to pay that much out of pocket for medical claims, you’re going to have a much worse crisis of bankruptcies and foreclosures in the near future.”

“Are we, the American consumer, under attack by these insurance companies?” asked Olbermann.

Potter claimed that insurers had enlisted an unwitting mob through the use of misinformation.

“The insurance companies are very, very savvy at manipulating public opinion,” he said. “They do this through big PR firms that they hire to feed talking points to politicians to talk show hosts, editorial writers and people that these people trust, so that they think they’re hearing it from people who are telling them the truth, but not realizing it’s coming straight from a special interest that wants them to think a certain way.”

This video is from MSNBC’s Countdown, broadcast Aug. 19, 2009.

Download video via RawReplay.com

A Nation of Children Roots for the Mafia

The Entertainment Value of Snuffing Grandma

A Nation of Children Roots for the Mafia

by Joe Bageant / August 20th, 2009 / Dissident Voice

Every day I get letters asking me to weigh in on the healthcare fracas. As if a redneck writer armed with a keyboard, a pack of smokes and all the misinformation and vitriol available on the Internet could contribute anything to the crap storm already in progress. Besides that, my unreasoned but noisy take on this issue is often about as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit. None of which has ever stopped me from making a fool of myself in the past. So here goes.

There ain’t any healthcare debate going on, Bubba. What is going on are mob negotiations about insurance, and which mob gets the biggest chunk of the dough, be it our taxpayer dough or the geet that isn’t in ole Jim’s impoverished purse. The hoo-ha is about the insurance racket, not the delivery of healthcare to human beings. It’s simply another form of extorting the people regarding a fundamental need — health.

Unfortunately, the people have been mesmerized by our theater state’s purposefully distracting and dramatic media productions for so long they’ve been mutated toward helplessness. Consequently, they are incapable of asking themselves a simple question: If insurance corporation profits are one third of the cost of healthcare, and all insurance corporations do is deliver our money to healthcare providers for us (or actually, do everything in their power to keep the money for themselves), why do we need insurance companies at all? Answer: Because Wall Street gets a big piece of the action. And nobody messes with the Wall Street Mob (as the bailout extortion money proved). Better (and worse) presidents have tried. Some made a genuine effort to push it through Congress. Others expressed the desire publicly, but after getting privately muscled by the healthcare industry, decided to back off from the idea. For instance:

• Franklin Roosevelt wanted universal healthcare.
• Harry Truman wanted universal healthcare.
• Dwight Eisenhower wanted universal healthcare.
• Richard Nixon wanted universal healthcare.
• Lyndon Johnson wanted universal healthcare.
• Bill Clinton wanted — well we can’t definitely say because he made sure that if the issue blew up on him, which it did, Hillary would be left holding the turd. Is it any wonder that woman gets so snappy at the slightest provocation? First getting left to hold the bag on healthcare, then the spots on that blue dress.

So why did American liberals believe Obama would bring home the healthcare bacon? Because they live in an ideological cupcake land. It’s a big neighborhood, a very special place where “Your vote is important,” and “by electing the right candidate, you can change our beloved nation.” Most of America lives in that neighborhood, even though they’ve never personally met. It’s a place where the shrubbery and flowerbeds of such things as “values” and “hope” bloom. Hope that our desires coupled with the efforts of a good and decent president can affect “change.” Evidently these voters never heard the old adage, “Hope in one hand and piss in the other, and see which one fills up first.”

The slaughter of the innocents by the healthcare lobby has pretty much extinguished the political usefulness of the word hope. Nobody, especially Obama, uses it now.

The first on-stage scuffle of the Obama administration, government assured healthcare, quickly settled down into the accustomed scenario of very rich and powerful people in expensive suits “finding middle ground,” otherwise known as the status quo. Single payer healthcare soon became “a consumer government alternative to private insurance,” and is now “a system of health cooperatives. Next comes “slightly better health insurance (but not medical services) than before, from the same insurance companies but at twice the price; don’t worry though, we’re increasing your tax load so you can afford it.”

The televised screaming matches, having served their purpose, are over now. The presidency and the nation have settled back into the normalcy of the officially sanctioned state consciousness and its curious non-language, one modified and shaped daily by corporate and government symbiosis. Over generations we’ve come to internalize this imagistic language, which is quite theatrical when heated up for public consumption and dully bureaucratic when attention is to be avoided. But always it is void of content and any sort of truth. In the corporately managed theater state, it’s not whether a thing is true that matters, but how it sounds and looks and what you call it. Call end of life counseling a “death panel,” and you’ve just turned mercy and choice into one more Great Satan.

In the end though, healthcare American style comes down to the preferences of two elite castes, Congress and corporate powers, neither of which can exist without the other. Corporations need the government to sanction their methods of extracting wealth from the public. Congress needs corporations to finance its campaign chariot races. Right now members of Congress have an excellent chance of putting the arm on healthcare industry lobbyist for some real cash:

Senator Smedley Heathwood: “Oh, I dunno, I’m sort of liking Obama’s alternative.”

Godzilla Healthcare Inc.: “Here, take this suitcase full of gold bullion, call me if you run short. And remember, we’ve got that ‘Life is a pre-existing condition’ bill coming up in the Senate soon.”

Siamese twins, joined at the hip, they share the same goal, preservation of control — the government’s social control and the corporations’ economic control. And you cannot have one without the other.

Obama got elected on hope of reform, despite that one cannot reform a mafia, only pay increased extortion moneys. He’s fortunate that it was not a genuine demand for reform, just hope. We’re fortunate we did not demand reform because we’re not going to get it. Obama doesn’t have to reform the healthcare industry mob. All he has to do is look like he took a shot at it, and hope it’s convincing enough. What we’ve seen is probably his best shot, too. Why not? There is always the off chance it might work, in which case his “presidential legacy” would be assured. And if it doesn’t, well, the serious progressives who are screeching mad at him now will still have to vote for him as the incumbent in 2012. Or learn to love somebody like Mitt Romney, Sarah Palin, Mike Huckabee, Jeb Bush, Rick Santorum (take your pick) or some as-yet-unknown the GOP drags out from under the hen house and ballyhoos as a “new face.” Luckily, Dick Cheney is out of the question, barring a coup by the far right wing of the schizophrenic GOP. But still, after Palin, one shudders at the prospects.

Whatever happens, we will not see Congress stand up against the extortion of its people by the healthcare industry. We will not see even the most ordinary kind of healthcare declared as a human right, as it is in so many other nations. We will see, however, greater access to the public treasury by the insurance corporations.

Every nation in the world is now party to at least one treaty that addresses health as a human right, including the conditions necessary for the delivery of health services. Healthcare is a right under the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Hell, even Saddam Hussein provided healthcare.

That Americans cannot grasp this fundamental aspect of human rights (but then we cannot even get child nutrition, or limiting the number of times you can taser an old lady in an airport, out of the starting gate) and join the civilized world and assure its people of such things is testimony. Testimony that we live in a vacuum exclusive of the accepted standard of mercy and decency common to civilized democratic nations elsewhere. Testimony that even we the citizenry would rather maintain and spread lies than accept truths such as most people in countries with universal healthcare would not ever give it up in favor of the U.S. system.

Most of all though, it is testimony that we live under an induced mass hallucination where spectacle replaces fact, information and common sense. In place of actionable information, we are served up screaming red faces — angry mobs manufactured for TV protesting “government interference in the people’s healthcare choices.” One must wonder what inchoate anger is really being tapped by the organizers of these strange “citizen protests.” As usual, the straw boogeyman of socialism is once more invoked. “Oh my god! I’ll have to give up my $1,100 a month insurance bill, which only pays 80% of my insurance costs AFTER I pay the initial $5,000 of those costs! If that ain’t Joe Stalin all over again, I don’t know what is!” We get the false media drama of “death panels.”

And being captives of spectacle and hyperbole, we friggin love it. The idea of death panels plays to our childish attraction to the extreme and entertaining. Killing Grandma is far more entertaining to our imaginations than say, guaranteed access to chest screens and blood pressure medicine. Two generations into this national infantilization, it’s now the only national life we know — the ideological spectacle made real.

To steal a page from Guy Debord, society has become ideology. We live in an antidialectical false consciousness, imposed at every moment on everyday life as spectacle. We are held in thrall. Our faculty of ordinary encounter has been systematically broken down. In its place we now have our unique social hallucination. Never do we encounter anything directly, yet we get the illusion of encounter. This includes encounter with each other. Anyone who lives in meatspace with his or her fellow Americans could not deny 57 million of them health. In this society no one is any longer capable of recognizing anyone else. Instead, we see others as the screamers at the town hall meetings, or as communists who want to give free healthcare to illegals and establish death panels. Or as Christian fundamentalists, or as liberals or conservatives. Or as celebrities or as nobodies.

But most importantly, whenever we must reach any significant agreement as human beings, whether it be about something as globally insignificant as U.S. domestic policy (we are only 6% of the world population, and though it hasn’t soaked in yet to most Americans, we’re also broke and owe the Chinese loan shark a wad) or as significant as global warming, we immediately cede the field to ideology. We simply don’t know how to do anything else.

Ideology has utterly triumphed. It has separated us from ourselves and built itself a home inside our consciousness, from whence it operates now as our reality. There is no going back, only forward. Given that we are a nation of children who prefer to close our eyes and make a hopeful wish with Tinkerbelle, rather than give hope the piss test, then let us hope to high hell. We may as well go for broke. So let us hope that, in going forward, new and unforeseen developments in the national consciousness occur. Developments that offer an escape from this one so deeply colonized by the corpo-political machinery we created — and which in turn recreated us. One that will break us loose from enthrallment. Maybe collision with a giant asteroid. Or that Garth Brooks will be barred from making a fifth comeback tour. That’s one hope. A consciousness shattering event by American standards.

Another hope is for an absolute and total collapse of the system.

At this point, I’ll take what I can get.

Joe Bageant is author of the book, Deer Hunting With Jesus: Dispatches from America's Class War (Random House Crown), about working class America. He is also a contributor to Red State Rebels: Tales of Grassroots Resistance in the Heartland" edited by Jeffrey St. Clair and Joshua Frank, to be published this summer by AK Press. A complete archive of his on-line work, along with the thoughts of many working Americans on the subject of class may be found on his website. Feel free to contact him at: joebageant@joebageant.com. Read other articles by Joe, or visit Joe's website.

This article was posted on Thursday, August 20th, 2009 at 9:30am and is filed under Corporate Globalization, Health/Medical, Human Rights, Obama, Right Wing Jerks.