Propaganda is a sprinter, but truth is a long-distance runner.
And at last, the truth may be overtaking the propaganda and the lies.
In the new edition of his riveting book, Fooled Again, Mark Crispin Miller describes a public groundswell that should have Bush, Cheney and the Busheviks very worried.
Truth, having been ground to earth, is rising again.
Despite compelling statistical, circumstantial, anecdotal and eyewitness evidence that two presidential and numerous congressional elections have been stolen, this evidence has been discounted, ignored and ridiculed by the mainstream media and, amazingly, by the victimized Democratic Party and its defeated candidates and even by some progressive publications.
Even so, a sizeable and growing portion of the American public isn't buying the official and bi-partisan assurances that the US elections are, by and large, on the level, and that the Bush/Cheney regime is therefore legitimate. For example, an August, 2006 Zogby poll reports that only 45% of the population is "very confident" that Bush and Cheney won re-election "fair and square" in 2004. About a third were "not at all confident."
In the "Afterword" to Fooled Again, comprising one hundred pages of new material, Miller chronicles the determined and persistent resistance of "official Democrats" to the very idea that they were the victims of massive election fraud. Astonishingly, progressive publications (yes, there are still a few), such as The Nation, Mother Jones, and the liberal websites, TomPaine.com and Salon.com, have all published caustic articles debunking thoroughly researched and scrupulously argued accusations of election fraud. Familiar ad hominem rebuttals are trotted out: "get over it," "sore losers," "conspiracy theorists." Far more often, the fraud issue is denied even the dignity of mention and rebuttal. With the noteworthy exception of Catherine Crier and Lou Dobbs, the issue is virtually ignored on cable "news," and, on network TV news, the embargo is total.
Meanwhile, the evidence of fraud remains on record and it accumulates. Extreme exit poll anomalies, with final totals shifting to the GOP with statistical improbabilities of millions to one. The widespread use of unverifiable paperless "touchscreen" voting machines, secretly programmed by GOP partisans. Unsecured access to these machines. Lost, uncounted, and illegally destroyed ballots. Precinct returns in excess of registrations. (For the specifics on all this and more, read Miller's book and visit the numerous websites devoted to election fraud. Among them, bradblog.com, blackboxvoting.org, www.votetrustusa.org, and uscountvotes.org. Caution: be sure to order the second edition of Fooled Again. Amazon and Barnes and Noble are listing the first edition).
Amazingly, despite the silence of the media and the Democratic Party regulars, the message of the stolen elections is getting to the public, thanks to the determined and independent efforts of numerous writers, scholars, bloggers, and film makers, and their creative use of new and evolving communications technologies such as the internet and the DVD.
Mark Crispin Miller thus describes this grassroots groundswell. (For specific names and titles, see the book. pp. 355-8):
The evidence [of election fraud] was always more convincing than the sophistries deployed against it... Throughout the months preceding the 2006 election, many of us lectured endlessly in schools and churches, rented halls and private homes, spoke out on independent radio and posted pieces all over the internet...Offline, meanwhile, there were independent voices on the air, their numbers growing as the story slowly spread throughout the nation... And the movement also had strong champions in the world of print... and online...
All such effort gradually conveyed the truth about America's election, and the crying need for genuine reform to an ever larger, ever more receptive audience – which was, in fact, not just an audience but increasingly a citizenry mobilized to salvage and invigorate (or rather, realize) US democracy...
And so the people got it, recognizing instantly the likelihood that (a) Bush & Co. stole its "mandate" in 2004, and (b) that the regime was not above attempting it again.
Accordingly, ignored by the mainstream media and by the immobilized Democratic Party, dismissed and even ridiculed by many presumably "liberal" writers and publications, the issue of election fraud has nonetheless survived and prevailed among the general public. Consequently, the legitimacy of the Bush/Cheney regime is eroding. Meanwhile, with the ongoing exposure of Bushevik lies (e.g., the alleged Saddam-9/11 connection and other concocted justifications for the Iraq War), the credibility of the regime is also disintegrating. Bush's and Cheney's approval ratings are at an all-time low, and falling.
The once-formidable GOP/MSM propaganda machine is sputtering and running out of fuel. "Fool me once, shame on you, fool me – you can't get fooled again."
Truth, crushed to earth, is on the rise.
Will another national emergency, with Dubya and bullhorn on the rubble pile, or in a flight suit on the carrier, once again mobilize support for "the commander guy" and bail out this poor excuse of an administration? Possibly, but don't count on it. Re-runs fare poorly in both show biz and politics.
In a January, 2006 review of Miller's book, I wrote that "if we are to restore the ballot box to the voters, we need a media, we need an opposition party, we need an aroused public, and we need a miracle. But take heart: history tells us that political crises have a way of producing miracles." Since then, we've made great strides. Two of those conditions are being met, as an aroused and skeptical public is abandoning the mainstream media and is turning toward a new dissenting media in the internet. However, the Democratic Party remains dumb-frozen, even as millions of its traditional supporters are deserting the Party in disgust.
In the United States today, there is among the public a huge, growing, but still leaderless mass of discontented citizens. These are the three-quarters of the population that tell the pollsters that "the country is moving in the wrong direction." These are the two-thirds that reject Bush and Cheney and their Iraq War, and that disapprove of the Democratic Congress in even greater numbers. These are the citizens who are well aware that their Constitutional rights have been abolished, their franchise nullified, their public treasury looted, their public infrastructure trashed, their social services impoverished, and the livelihood of millions of our workers "outsourced."
While the Democratic Party was elected to Congress to address these crises, the party leaders act as if they are living in some other country: "The Republic of Beltway." If they persist in this delusion, they may manage to lose the next "sure-thing" election, whether or not the GOP engineers another "fix."
If the Democratic Party is to take charge and lead us out of the current swamp of corruption, exploitation and ignorance, it must take inventory of the present political and economic dangers, secure fair and accurate elections, change direction radically and immediately, and act decisively.
The impeachment of Dick Cheney, and then of George Bush, would be an appropriate first step.
As an anonymous French politician once said, "the people are marching and I must follow, for I am their leader."
Copyright 2007 by Ernest Partridge
Bio Tag: Dr. Ernest Partridge is a consultant, writer and lecturer in the field of Environmental Ethics and Public Policy. He has taught Philosophy at the University of California, and in Utah, Colorado and Wisconsin. He publishes the website, "The Online Gadfly" (www.igc.org/gadfly) and co-edits the progressive website, "The Crisis Papers" (www.crisispapers.org). His book in progress, "Conscience of a Progressive," can be seen at www.igc.org/gadfly/progressive/^toc.htm .
