(no subject)
I was thinking this morning; with the elections in Iraq just a couple of months away, I wonder what sort of campaigning is going on over there. Are the people being inundated with inane political ads every fifteen minutes like we have in this country? Are they presented with the same style of debates where there is no real discourse, and the people don’t really get to question the candidates in depth? Who is paying for these campaigns? Is it Halliburton? Mobil? Exxon?
This administration keeps towing the same line about how the insurgents and their sympathizers are fighting against democracy. “They don’t want democracy in their country or in the Middle East.” Well, to certain religious factors, that’s very true. But I think there are lots of folks over there who are fighting against our brand of democracy. Cause let’s face it, we don’t have democracy in the United States. This country is a plutocracy. The power is consolidated by a number of conglomerates, not the people. We have free speech via the internet, zines, public access TV, and a tiny percentage of newspapers and radio stations that have not been bought up by conglomerates. But the overwhelming majority of Americans are only accessing the mainstream media. A media that discredits the alternative media every chance they get.
So I think there are lots of Iraqi people that aren’t concerned about having democracy in their country, they’re concerned about having a plutocracy. They may have free elections, but are the candidates being handpicked and funded by US corporations? Candidates who will abide by the will of those corporations? Surely such a form of government is superior to say, the sort of plutocracy they have in Saudi Arabia, where there is virtually no free speech at all. But people in the Mid East can see from the US, how free speech can become meaningless. Remember the Gil Scott Heron song, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised? Well, the sad fact is, if it ain’t televised, no one will know it’s happening. Americans are placated from knowing or caring about the truth via the bread and circus brought to you by (pick the sponsor of your choice). They are filled up with Happy Meals, hundreds of cable stations, and thousands of malls across the land (each equipped with overblown Hollywood movies that will help every American go to sleep at night with a smile on their face). The Romans had their sporting events and gladiators who fought off vicious beasts and each other. Today we have sporting events and folks on shows like Jerry Springer, who pull each other’s hair and throw chairs at one another. Sigh. Evolution is a slow process. I wonder if they had people like Bill O’Reilly back then? Nero, maybe. We’d better keep Bill away from matches.