A Turn off Fox News Letter to the Editor
by: Lauren Reichelt on August 28th, 2010 | 25 Comments »
I have been trying to counter the planned negativity promoted by Fox News and corporate interests by standing up to it at every opportunity. Bullying tactics are only effective if individuals allow themselves to be bullied en masse. When specific individuals refuse to be bullied in a public manner, they lessen the effectiveness of the intimidation. The time to stand up is in the beginning, before the bullies completely delegitimize the rule of law.
This week, I stood up to the bullies in two small ways that I would like to share in the hopes that others will follow suit or (even better!) improve upon them: I told my favorite Congressman at a town hall that I disagreed with his sudden unexpected choice to address substance abuse and mental illness as a law enforcement issue; and I wrote a letter to our local newspaper defending this same Congressman from a writer who compared him to Hitler.
About a week ago, Congressman Ben Ray Lujan (D-NM), sponsored a town hall on substance abuse in my community. This is not odd. We have some of the highest rates of drug overdose death in the nation. What was odd was the focus of the summit. Congressman Lujan has been a strong supporter of addressing the epidemic as a public health issue, and of ending our state of permanent American warfare.
The panel represented a surprising departure from what I know to be his genuine philosophy. It was composed almost entirely of military and law enforcement personnel. The moderator opened up the discussion by turning to an Adjutant General of the National Guard and asking him, “General, nobody would have a better answer to this question than you. How do we win the war on drugs?”
The General looked surprised and said something to the effect of “F**k if I know!” (albeit more politely)
I strongly suspect the the “summit” was not the Congressman’s idea. He was most likely snookered into it at the last minute by certain opportunistic officials in our local Democratic party who organized the event. Also, his father, the speaker of our state house (who has the power to make sure my funding requests either pass or don’t pass) was sitting in the audience. So was my boss, who needs his own bills to pass. (Not a deliberate act of intimidation, of course. They just happened to be there supporting the Congressman.) I convinced myself they were hallucinations, stood up, and objected to approaching the drug epidemic as a war. I wanted to let Congressman Lujan know that he has public support for his liberal views. There were a number of recovering addicts in the audience and once I spoke the theme persisted; many of them related how difficult it is to be denied opportunities for recovery and jailed when they are living with a chronic, brain-altering disease.
A few days later, I picked up our local paper and noticed a letter to the editor written by someone who had obviously been watching too much Glenn Beck. He accused Congressman Lujan of being a card-carrying socialist (as if this were a criminal activity) and inferred from this assertion that Lujan is a lot like Hitler. I decided to answer it. I have no idea whether my response will make it into print, but here is the unedited version for your enjoyment.
Dear Editor,
Lee Hickerson’s comparison of Congressman Ben Ray Lujan to Hitler is ignorant and offensive. As a Jew, I grew up around Holocaust survivors and as an adult, have worked with their children. I am proud to call Congressman Lujan my friend. The assertion that this kind, thoughtful, honest man might one day perpetrate acts of mass genocide is unjustified.
Hickerson’s argument is also incorrect. Without offering proof, Hickerson accuses Lujan of being a member of the left-wing Democratic Socialists of America (which he mixes up with the Socialist Party), an organization that eschews racism and champions the right of workers to organize. I don’t know if Congressman Lujan actually is a member of either of these conflated contemporary socialist associations, and I don’t care. I’m glad Ben Ray supports unionization and the regulation of industry!
Hickerson erroneously confuses today’s DSA with mid-20th century Nazis. Hitler’s German Workers Party was a right-wing, ultra-nationalist, anti-democratic organization that promoted the elimination of Jews, Catholics, gays, Gypsies, the disabled and any other minority perceived as threatening to the desired eugenics including members of the Social Democratic Party of their day. They eventually added the word “socialist” to attract a larger following but never deviated from their blatantly racist, nationalist agenda.
Hitler’s first act as head of his Party, which was composed mainly of child molesters, bad-check writers and other moronic deviants, was to barricade a beer hall, jump on a table and orate to drunken revelers. The teabaggers’ thought-challenged xenophobia resembles brownshirt mentality far more closely than any of the articulate ideas I’ve ever heard uttered by Ben Ray Lujan. Brownshirts perpetrated Kristallnacht much as today’s thugs attack Mexicans, Muslims and mosques. If Hickerson cares about constitutional government or intelligent public discourse, he should contribute to it by turning off Fox News and picking up The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.
Hitler would not have accepted Congressman Lujan as an Aryan. If you ask me, Hickerson’s letter was either cut from hate-filled brown cloth or smelly brown paper.
Sincerely,
Lauren Reichelt
Please feel free to plagiarize if you like it. If you draft your own letters remember to limit them to 350 words. And here is a link to Turn Off Fox News, an organized effort to have Fox News turned off in by local businesses and in public places.
Nothing could be better for maintaining a diverse and robust democracy.
Cross-posted at Blogistan Polytechnic Institute (BPICampus.org)
A “diverse and robust democracy” as you state does not try to silence opposing views, as you propose with your link to Turn Off Fox News. Either your point of view has no merit, or you can’t persuade, so you try to silence. How pathetic.
Dear Betty,
I fortunately have the freedom so far to be able to turn off Fox “news” and I do. Otherwise I would be physically sick from the hatred and misinformation and half truths they speal out every day that confuses citizens on critical issues.
Walter Cronkite they are not !!!
Fox does not do investigative reporting. They present positions and opinions and attack anyone who doesn’t tow their line or way of thinking. And very seldom are they open to dialogue or telling the full truth!!
Lou
Betty, there is a difference between silencing opposing views and not supporting them. It is a shame so many people seem to fail to make such a distinction today. A great example is when Dr. Laura suggested her rights were being violated after she chose to resign in the wake of her offensive comments. No one advocating using government to chill or prohibit free speech. If you ask a business or a private citizen to turn off Fox News you are not violating their rights. They can choose to ignore your request, much as they can choose to ignore complaints from customers. When a business engages in unethical practices and a boycott is called by concerned citizens, it is voluntary. No one is forced to abstain from doing business with that company. The company is not prohibited from conducting its business. What is being advocated is a boycott of Fox News. Nothing more, nothing less. I am not currently convinced that this campaign will be effective, that it is the best strategy, or that it is worth joining,. That is up for discussion and debate. But let’s be accurate in describing what it is and what it isn’t.
Must all media these days exaggerate? Is it necessary that ‘news’ be dramatized beyond reason? Are letters to the editor places that allow attributions that otherwise would qualify as libel?
I am glad that Lauren defended her Congressman. He’s lucky to have her on his side. But I am dismayed that the newspaper would even print such accusations as she must defend against. I guess business is really bad, so that the more ugliness as can be stirred up, the more people will pay attention, the more newspapers will be sold.
We pay a price for that. Wanton name-calling poisons our public discourse, even while it may draw a larger audience. Americans are so dumbed down and bored that we love to watch other people fight. Don’t just turn off Fox News; turn off your TV (except for public TV). Avoid the insanity that passes for public discussion. Things just have to get better.
Dave, I agree with you that we should be accurate in describing what is and what isn’t. The statement above is ” Turn Off Fox News, an organized effort to have Fox News turned off by local businesses and in public places.” In a public place, you can boycott Fox News by not listening to it. But in a public place, if you prevent it from being heard, you are silencing it.
An organized effort to express our desire to listen to a different channel in airports and businesses is not censorship. It is our right. It is perfectly constitutional for those of us who are tired of discourse being drowned out by demagogues such as Beck and Limbaugh to defend our eardrums from further pummeling. For some reason, viewers of Fox think it is censorship when the rest of us voice our opinion.
And JR, I have no idea when CNN became a “left-leaning” station. There aren’t any truly left-leaning stations that I know of because ALL stations seem to be owned by corporate conglomerates and to express the corporate point of view. If anybody in this country is censored, it is the actual non-corporate left.
I agree with Betty. CNN has a left-leaning view of the news. Fox has a right-leaning view. I have also found news stories on Fox that are not on CNN and vice versa. To get a complete view of the news, I read both CNN and Fox news sites. The Turn Off Fox News initiative is akin to censorship.
it isn’t censorship if you voluntarily choose to not watch it. I choose to not watch it and find myself to now be far more optimistic and at peace.
I would have to say that Fox news motivated me to become far more involved as a citizen in progressive actions with others to move our Nation towards reaching the higher ideals of our Constitution and Bill of Rights. A nation of tolerance, justice, freedom, a true democracy (vs. being corporately run as today). A nation of Brotherhood where No person lacks food, housing, quality education and healthcare. The days of those who profit off of diseases, poverty, ignorance and wars is coming to a close.
Our dialogue is not about Left and right, Liberal vs. Conservative. That is the dialogue set by the Corporate owned media to keep people fighting among themselves & distracted from real issues that face all of Humanity.
The dialogue is about what is morally right and what is morally wrong in how we treat one another, other nations, and our environment that supports our very ability to live healthy lives on this beautiful Planet.
Lou
Lauren, it is obviously not censorship when “the rest of you” can voice an opinion. However, to prevent others from doing so under the ruse of exercising one’s constitutional right is. Moreover, your choice of words to describe Beck and Limbaugh are indicative of a disdain and intolerance for other points of view.
The careless accusation of censorship mentioned here disturbs me. Censorship means only one thing, and that is suppressing the expression of ideas by law. To advocate that individuals ought to ignore certain spokespersons is not censorship. It is education.
So far as I can tell, no one is calling for a government ban on Beck and Limbaugh, even while they are, themselves, clear examples of “disdain and intolerance for other points of view.” A boycott is not censorship. Articulate disapproval is not censorship. Beck and Limbaugh have made themselves quite wealthy by pandering to American ignorance. Required is American education, which includes identifying the outrageous misinformation both those sources produce. I do not listen to either, but I do read the almost daily examinations of the tawdry quality of their work .
This is clearly an important discussion. It has ramifications that go way beyond boycotting virtually the sole TV news outlet that speaks from a rightwing perspective.
It is critical that we have and support free speech.The foundations of democracy depend upon it.
We have a crisis in this nation of science that is commissioned to support the left, and science that is commissioned to support the right. But that isn’t science.
I recently read an article written by a respected journalist from a left wing blog, who was faulting a research ares and their outcomes, as if research in service of propaganda trumps the scientific method, and the critical need for responsible journalists in the media to investigate and present facts fairly and justly.It still appalls me that Lou Dobbs was let go. We don’t need more loyalty tests for those who agree with us. We need more discussion … and search for what is at the heart of the frustration and anger and helplessness that is finding its outlet in demagogery and censorship instead of sicussion and consideration.
We are running at such high speed in this nation that we are not holding the road. First of all, while i share Lauren, your concern about the militarization of the substance abuse issues, i am also concerned that Mexico is literally as one headline put it bleeding.
It is no different , this policy of appeasing the gangsters, than a policy of appeasing nazis or bullies. It doesn’t work. A sound deterrant to the importing and exporting of crime is for Americans to stop using illegal drugs. Don’t boycott FOX–boycott illegal drugs. For that matter boycott the illegal use of Big Pharma drugs. And let’s demonstrate for adequate treatment facilities and investment to make it possible for addicts to get off drugs without waitlists.
All the foks who want to enculturate a peaceful world –well we will need to have the protection of a government that is powerful enough to keep the peace, and wise enough to maintain justice internally…and sagacious enough to realize that living up to ideals is the means to the end of peace and justice: no short cuts or soundbites or demonizing people or punishing for every mistake.
At the same time, in the process of this great evolution, let’s not forget that if we are not willing to stand up and protect what we have we lose it.
There are many many traumas to the lower classes that have ensued with social change. If we take the blinders off, we can see that most social change over the past fifty years, for all the rhetoric, has not been female or family friendly, and that it has resulted in a classist elitist society in which families have lost ground to people who seem to believe that a culture based upon acting out behaviors that cause great harm to others, and objectifying peoplefor the purposes of exploitation, to the point that life and safety are cheap.
If we look at the Congo, and the rapes there, and the excuses, we can see that having a roving band of extrenal forces is not going to be sufficent to protect citizens in areas where chaos that is representative and just.
we are losing ours. We are ceding it every time we begin to try to irradicate the voice of the Other, and limit instead of express democracy ourselves.
We have to restore trust. We cannot do that by simply clashing opposing POVS. There are a whole group of people faulting Beck and Limbaugh. They are mirror images of many on the Left. Howls every time our president tries to restore Bi-partisanship. As if appointing people based upon their supposed ideology trumps their knowledge and skills–or that any person has not errors and flaws that can be magnified and focused on to the exclsuion of theri strengths…that is like lousy parenting, It is lousy governing. A good adminstrator spots talent and dvelops it–picks from the avalibable “free agents” on both sides solely because he has been playing in the ALC a few seasons.
Let’s examine the notion that legalizing drugs will “work” and that “prohibition” fails. A pop notion that is dangerously flawed. For one thing Prohibition failed in the main because it was a feminist issue. Prohibition does in fact work. But try getting that publicized, recently the Rutgers groups 16 days, against gender violence, published a link to a brief about Sweden and Norway’s prohibition of prostitution, uspported by exit strategys for women and children already in the industry and it is REMARKABLE in its results…which were not orchestrated to promote any poartcular position.
Here is a link
http://lists.portside.org/cgi-bin/listserv/wa?A2=ind1007C&L=PORTSIDE&F=&S=&P=26370
Just some food for thought in the wee hours of the morning.
As always i am grateful to Lauren for her stimulating, eloquent and reasoned explorations of these issues and concerns.
Thank you for pointing out that in American history alcohol prohibition was linked with getting the vote for women. I have no idea what you might possibly mean by “Prohibition failed in the main because it was a feminist issue.” Laws fail when they are unenforceable, as was the case during Prohibition.
Your example for prohibition “that works” is absurd. Sure, drug prohibition in the U.S. works, if by that you mean that it allows unemployed people to make money on the streets, allows prison guards to stay employed, corrupts law enforcement at all levels, and is ridiculed by other nations. That is not my understanding of what it means to say something “works.”
I’m not going to take up your argument about prohibition. I want to focus instead on this statement:
“There are a whole group of people faulting Beck and Limbaugh. They are mirror images of many on the Left. Howls every time our president tries to restore Bi-partisanship.”
Though the pronoun “they” lacks a clear antecedent, I assume you mean that Beck and Limbaugh are “mirror images of many on the Left.” This meme is all over the mainstream media and popular with the White House, notably Rahm Emmanuel (who calls us “fucking retarded”) and Robert Gibbs, whose outburst against “the professional Left” got him a drubbing everywhere from MSNBC to the progressive blogosphere. But it’s both silly and insulting. I challenge you to show me anyone of any influence on the Left (which means anyone to the left of the DLC, and in this country means mostly slightly left-of-center) who resembles Beck or Limbaugh in *any* of the following ways:
–is a pathological liar, continually spreading falsehoods of all sorts, some of them as in Beck’s case verging on total paranoid lunacy;
–scapegoats any social group irrationally in the same ways that Beck and Limbaugh scapegoat feminists, black people, Muslims, queers, unionists, the unemployed, government workers, and other nonwhite, non-male, non-well-off, non-”Christian” people;
–is funded in these efforts by vast media corporations and has become extremely wealthy as a result.
There are paranoids and conspiracy theorists on the Left as well as on the Right, though there is really only one major paranoid conspiracy theory movement on the Left: the 9/11 “truther” movement: contrast this with the “birthers,” the “Obamacare will kill your grandma”-ers, the “gay marriage is a plot to destroy the family”-ers, and on and on. Glenn Beck comes up with a new target for paranoia every week. And notice that the Left’s criticisms, “paranoid” or not, have only one target: a government increasingly and very visibly controlled by a corporate oligarchy. Aside from occasional thoughtless sneers by well-to-do liberals at right-wing white working-class types, the Left does not “demonize” social groups other than the actual ruling class.
As for your argument about bipartisanship: no-one much on the Left criticized Obama for his self-proclaimed efforts in this direction until it became crystal clear that the GOP strategy was to refuse virtually any cooperation with the Democrats in the (pretty successful) hope of sabotaging their entire legislative agenda. The handful of Republicans who have “crossed the aisle” have done so more as a kind of gesture than, so far as I can see, with any serious intent of negotiating. And the GOP’s agenda is both bereft of useful policy ideas and absolutely committed to two goals: remove any and all regulation from corporations and eliminate taxes for the very wealthy. These goals boil down to one: enrich the already rich and loot both the economy and the environment for short-term gain.
I would be interested to hear your detailed and factual response to my argument.
sorry i truncated some thoughts..ParThis should read:
If we look at the Congo, and the rapes there, and the excuses, we can see that having a roving band of extrenal forces is not going to be sufficent to protect citizens in areas where chaos has become endemic. this is very similar to many left behind neighborhoods that wrestle with violence and the organized criminal gangs that perpetuate it .folks need to be allowed to protect themselves and trained to do so. that is representative and just.
and we can and must reforge the common bonds of civilized behavior and a government structure that supports human dignity and POSITIVE development, and combats corruption.
There is no easy solution for the global epidemic of drug abuse, drug addiction, and the brutal, transnational organized crime syndicates that are controlling the trade and getting super-rich, often using extreme violence to enforce their market share. This is a global crisis, that requires ongoing global cooperation to solve it. Militarizing the problem by labeling it a “drug war” and sending in the Marines (along with Blackwater and who knows what other shady, mercenary goons) is about the worst possible choice, for this will simply increase the ambient level of violence afflicting the nations (such as Afghanistan, Mexico, Laos, Burma, and Colombia) that are already caught up in the drug trade, and already suffering from brutal and horrific drug wars.
I have no easy answer, but I have a good question, which I think we all need to be asking more and more. This global drug trade is driven by a thriving consumer demand for illicit drugs, mostly in the more affluent, industrial nations of the north. Without such a huge consumer demand, there would not be such intense and murderous competition for control of the supply lines.
The question we therefore need to ask is–why are so many people turning to drugs? What is their appeal? And what could we therefore do to (1) find out why people turn to drugs, and provide healthier, more attractive alternatives; (2) reach out to those who are addicted and help them break their addiction; and thereby (3) reduce the global market demand for these illicit drugs, making them less profitable? Again, I have no easy answers, but these questions, at least, are a good place to start. Would it make sense, for example, to legalize these drugs, and then gain control of their distribution, regulate the price, and provide inexpensive interim drug maintenance for addicts who enroll in a neighborhood clinic for recovering addicts?
On one level we’re simply asking businesses to shut off Fox as a matter of improving the customer experience; for me, finding Fox “News” on in a store or restaurant is like finding that the place smells like vomit. The proprietor is perfectly free to let it go on smelling that way, but I won’t remain there long enough to do business.
Why does Fox “News” smell so bad? Because it is a propaganda outfit, not a journalistic organization. CNN, for example, is part of the corporate mainstream media, but it’s not out to exploit events and issues – or invent them – to advance a particular political point of view in the way that Fox “News” is. So it’s a false comparison to say that Fox is conservative and CNN is liberal.
When the proprietor of a shop or restaurant subjects patrons to Fox News, that proprietor is apparently seeking to spread a particular – and deeply messed-up – point of view through lies, distortions, and ginned-up hysteria. There is no reason for a customer to put up with, in the name of free speech, being subjected to such malicious propaganda. They can clean up the place and make it smell better by turning off Fox, or I’ll leave. That’s not censorship – that’s voting with your feet.
And once I know the establishment smells that way, I might ask them to clean it up before I will do business there again. That’s not censorship either; that is a boycott.
Disclaimer up front: I’m a registered Republican.
From my conservative perspective, Fox is outrageously right-wing. Worse that this, they have no problem at all distorting the “facts” that they do present, and carefully presenting only the facts that support their clear right-wing agenda.
Beyond Fox, why would I expect any of the networks to be anything except right-leaning? They’re all owned and funded by right-leaning organizations. This is really simple. I’d love to see something that proves this wrong, but to date I haven’t. Every bit of evidence that I see, including my own observations, make it clear to me that logic holds true again, and all of the major networks lean to the right.
But none of them are the overt right-wing propaganda machines that Fox is. They all seem to at least attempt to provide some reasonable facsimile of “fact”. For left-leaning news, you’ll have to turn on Amy Goodman, but good luck finding her anyplace…
That’s the real problem today – we have the extreme right and then we have the “only a little right” wing, and somehow we think something between the two is balance?
Remember that I’m speaking as a Republican here folks – it’s just that I choose to keep my brain engaged rather than spout off whatever the machine is telling me to spout off.
Over the years, I’ve been very assertive and firm with anyone that I do business with: If they want me to do business with them, they won’t run propaganda on the TV when I come into the lobby. I consider Fox to be pure propaganda (and very good propaganda by the way). I’m very vocal and up-front about this with anyone who I do business with, and have been for years. If I walk into a dining establishment and sit down and they have Fox running, I’m very polite and let the waiter know that I won’t do business with folks who run Fox on their TV, and if he’s like to have the manager change to anything else, I’d love to continue dining, and if not, then I’m fine leaving as well.
The key is civility. To suggest this is censorship is absurd. This is the marketplace folks, and I get to vote with my wallet. My wallet doesn’t cast any votes in a place that allows a propaganda machine that’s as efficient and powerful as Fox to try and work the right-wing koolaid into me.
It’s simple, and effective. Be nice, be firm, be consistent. Merchants get the message, but only if they hear it often from many people.
And guess what, if you’re a lover of Fox, and love to absorb their blather, then you get to vote to – you get to tell merchants you’ll only do business if they do run Fox. Ah, the beauty of the free market – I love it!
Portugal decriminalized drugs — and did not see an uptick in drug abuse and addiction as a result. The level of addiction has remained fairly constant; the difference is that now it is treated as a medical issue instead of as a criminal issue, as it should be. And deaths from addiction-related causes have dropped dramatically. That is just one of the real benefits to decriminalization: it saves lives. It also saves money: fewer court cases, fewer people incarcerated, fewer prisons, with all that those entail. Decriminalization is not the same as tolerance or encouragement; a switch to the medical model just means that the fight against addiction takes a different path.
And how the drug decriminalization issue became part of this discussion of a Fox News boycott is beyond me.
It became part of the conversation because recently i read yellow journalism on the left that suggested that our nation should be using public monies to fund RESEARCH THAT SUPPORTS drug legalization; ie research with a planned outcome.
it is the raised voices of the elite on the right and the left who beleive that the other side that shut up, that is a manifest of venting and blaming, with some shaming and ridicule thrown in, that is escalating the problems.
If we would sincerely make an effort to respect the other parties irrespective of how extreme the moderates sound when they sound off, and just ignore the extremists on the right and the left, i think we could make some progress.
i guess no one read my link to the Nordic prohibition that ahs worked extremely well and is the ONLY thing that has worked to reduce human sex traficking…also let us examine prohibiton of cigartttes which is making great strides…adn reexamine the phenomenon of alcohol prhibiton which was undermined by males who considered it an infringement of their male privilege…and if you read the history you will see that virtually every feminist supported it in order to reduce domestic violence which ios at an all time high in the united states in part because of the dehumanizing impact of the addcition cycle, drugs that exacerbate violence and block inhibition, and the extreme violence and dehiumanization assoicated with a culture that rpeys on its most vulnerable to market addictive products to them.
the idea of legalizng drugs is horrendous–we have already seen that mistake with methadone which has resulted in the pharmaceutical industry keeping drug slaves for life for profit.
personally, i like what Thom had to say and contribute…and i agree with him…also i will return to the main theme which is that yellow journalism is hugely extant on the right and the left…the media sources are not infromation but interpretive and slanted povs that want to sell their product by appealing to a mainsterream of consumers irrespective of whether there product is accurate…studies that completely conflict with each otehr re rampant…most people for this reason have a terrible loss of trust in science…this often rsults in a more fundamentalist approach as many people would prefer to suspend their disbelief for their spirituality rather than for humanly flawed and compeletly contradictory outcomes in science being claimed by parties who are each at each other’s throats.
insofar as the enws…the ridicule and the marginalization of the right is extreme by the elft–yet the left is often flat out wrong on policy and how it effects individuals and families..we have eben pushing the antion rightwards for about two generations and Obam’a election offered us the best possible way to make common ground and common cause but we have not availed oursleves of this yet.
Aminah: I would, indeed, like to read your “detailed and factual response” to Adam, as he requested. In particular I would like to read your response to is very direct challenge posed as follows (pardon me, Adam, for using your material–I get tired of unsubstantiated claims, and you nailed this issue!):
“I challenge you to show me anyone of any influence on the Left (which means anyone to the left of the DLC, and in this country means mostly slightly left-of-center) who resembles Beck or Limbaugh in *any* of the following ways:
-is a pathological liar, continually spreading falsehoods of all sorts, some of them as in Beck’s case verging on total paranoid lunacy;
-scapegoats any social group irrationally in the same ways that Beck and Limbaugh scapegoat feminists, black people, Muslims, queers, unionists, the unemployed, government workers, and other nonwhite, non-male, non-well-off, non-”Christian” people;
-is funded in these efforts by vast media corporations and has become extremely wealthy as a result.”
Aminah?
and by the way Robin–Deaths from drug overdoses are at an all time high–this includes hospiotals making medication errors, but i talso includes the scourge of hillbilly heroin or oxycontin which is endemic in my region of appalachia. also deaths by gun violence linked to organized crime linked to criminal gangtsterism supported by media and music industry profit which enculturate the young into a shocking lack of empathy and a concerning objectification and degradation of women has been completely ignored by the left for about twentyfive years.
i’will show you my research if you will show me yours LOL
which is exactly what i am talking about, but being a recovery coach for over 40 years i ahve an experiential frame of reference too
I don’t think prohibition failed because it was a “feminist” issue. Many suffragettes were also abolitionists, yet ultimately, they succeeded in ending slavery and winning the vote for women, African-Americans, Native Americans, etc. “The arc of the moral universe is long” but it does seem to bend towards egalitarianism.
Prohibition failed because demand for alcohol remained. People will continue to want to temporarily shut down with substances, and this is not necessarily bad in moderation. Many religions including Judaism incorporate the controlled ritual use of specific substances. Widespread addiction is a problem, however, but it is a public health and not an enforcement issue. People tend to overuse substances en masse when community infrastructure becomes degraded and they are unable to form relationships of interdependence in healthy ways. They can’t find work, the family has disintegrated, etc. If we were to pass laws cutting down on marketing of drugs, and to stop allowing private entities to profit off of the imprisonment of addicts, we’d see large decreases in the numbers of individuals who develop dependency problems. As a public policy, this means we must decriminalize use, put money into schools and other community infrastructure, and heavily regulate marketing of potentially addictive substances. This is not the same as prohibition, but neither is it the equivalent of full legalization.
I don’t think the left is nearly as proficient with propaganda as the right. There are very few left wing news organizations…Pacifica may be the only one…and I’ve yet to see Amy Goodman from the lobby of an airport. The left blogosphere boasts many citizen journalists who actually fact check one another’s work, but the right relies on doctored videos, manufactured stories and lies. I become annoyed by negativity on the part of the left at times, but that is not the same as fabricating stories from whole cloth. I do not see any left leaning equivalent to Glenn Beck or Rush Limbaugh at this time.
I don’t know the French for “spam,” but this is spam. It is a commercial endorsement for the Centre Laser Monceau in Paris. Given that it’s in French and totally out of context, I assume it was sent by a bot. Webmaster at Tikkun: you might want to run periodic checks for this kind of thing.
Dear Lauren and Other Folks participating in this discussion,
Here are a couple responses that address a couple of the balls lobbed in my court…i am sorry that one of my replies lost in cyberspace to one of my shortcut key accidents, was the baseball analogy i so carefully crafted, LOL, but will use tennis this time and see if that works its way through the energy field.
First, the major challenges to the Left are class based. The Left is actually at war with the lower middle and working class, since Clinton, the last President before Obama to receive a margin of victory which was inclusive of , and motivated to vote, won a bi-partisan victory with grassroots strength across many socio-economic groups, most of whom are moderates. Rather than leaning left, Clinton leaned Right. Rather than lead, as Obama strives to do, Clinton purchased power and allowed the left lobbyists and special interest groups unfettered power, and deregulated to allow corporations such as Enron, World Com , Health South and so many others to rape our nation the way he raped democratic women and the “leftist aka liberal” media covered it up.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/johann-hari/johann-hari-why-do-we-ignore-the-abuse-of-women-400397.html
The media blatantly lied when they blamed the first financial debacle that followed Bill Clinton’s lousy economic policies and the phony bubble that enriched his leftists supporters, the new class of left wing plutocrats that profited through a pyramid type debacle of dot coms that allowed some to thrive and most to bust to the tune of impoverishing many eager USA young entrepreneurs, who in the old days before the giant class shift could have bankrupted, reorganized and started, wiser again, who were instead lost into a lower class of service labor for life, in debtors’ prison.
A whole lot of these angry young ex-entrepreneurs cum service industry slaves, turned politically Right and began to blame the “entitled” poor rather than the entitled uber- rich–which is who they “wannabe.”
Clinton as a role model has been horrific for the nation. punishing the poor and enabling the hedge funders, and his getting blow jobs in the oval office and then casting a young 21 year old intern to the wolves and lying like the cad he is did nothing to endear him to people who actually believe that truth, justice, love, duty, honor, are more than just words. And these would be the working class and lower middle class, the folks for whom he was a “good old boy ‘ and they could forgive him his infidelities but not for his shirking and lying.
The LEft seems primarily to be in denial about the “quaint” notion that role modeling has a hugely powerful impact on our young. But it is the PRIMARY way that children learn…and the media IS role modeling , and their choice of whom they celebrate like our last celebrity President, teaches children who is considered a “success” in our society.
Parents who try to mold their kids themselves find that they cannor do it unless they are rich and well educated and even still the affluenza and social Darwinism Clinton made popular and embodied, creeps in. No stand for principle-just throw your people to the wolves and rig a poll or two tro justify it. Then cry and blame it on the Right.
I think that we have the perfect illustration of the Left power surge of hypocrisy and abuse of power in their demonization of President Obama. First of all the myriad of so called Leftists who claimed he could not be elected because he is Black. Yet even in West Virginia, burgeoning groups of people in a very partisan culture were moving to wards him at the end irrespective of what the polls said (we have very shaky political system here in WV still, with rigged elections and lost votes still a major problem and very effectively covered up) …
anyway our President Obama has already accomplished far more LEFTWARDS than Clinton and done his level best to begin correcting course after the nightmare of Bush, and has been barraged from the Left even before the right, which actually encouraged the Right to block him instead of giving him the consensus he needed to really make positive strides in recouping this nation from the corporations…–the timing of the shrill. belated denunciations and propaganda by the Left was such that it handicapped and almost incapacitated him at the start of his Presidency, and the yellow journalism by commentators calling him a liar were the kind of lies i am referring to–i do not even have to name names half of the folks you all read daily in the “liberal” press were among them.
Own up, I’d say.
Many commentators now have mitigated their tone, but not their hysterical denunciation of the Right and the generalizing of the whole group on the right, the majority of which are in fact moderates and not bigots or zealots, just as in the main the same is true of the left. However i agree that our nation is in danger, but that is because we shame and blame and point the finger and bankroll phony science, and ignore the actual underlying concerns of the people with who we disagree, while imputing the vilest motives to them.
Apart from anything else the lower class and working class has lost their economic capacity to earn a living wage, live with dignioty, and perpetuate social clout. This is the fundamental concern that allows secondary prejudices such as racism or addiction or organized criminal economies to occur. Until or unless we begin to embrace the legitimacy of at least some of their concerns that we instead have blanketly demagogued into polarization of each side as the “sole national bearers of ultimate righteousness” in the same old Clintonian and Bushian gridlock, then dishonesty, incivility and depletion of American resilience and creativity will continue to wreck us.
It strikes me that i am writing at length and still have not responded to the important points that Lauren raised about prohibition. I am not one hundred percent sure about thepolitics of legalization..but i am very very worried about what legalization does…it allows corporate profiteering from drug slavery, and it seamlessly fits the mobs and cartels into the picture behind the scenes just like legalized gambling has done, and it also means that we enculturate people into weakness instead of strength, and that we allow them to utilize drugs that cannot be used in moderation for life in a cycle of functional active addiction that nonetheless destroys people’s capacity for natural highs, for spiritual development, for connecting to p;people at an authentic level, and substitutes a relationship with a drug for all those things…we are not talking alcohol or pot here Lauren, we are talking heroin and oxycontine, speed which makes people paranoid and crazy and heroin so strong it dehumanizes people.
in fact the whole culture of objectification, of dehumanization, of sexual power instead of brain and character and love and compassion power, of purchasing power as the ultimate arbiter of success…to me it will never change if we legalize\e drugs. we will just have the comfortably numb and the uncomfortably angry and continue to have and to enculture unhappiness instead of happiness, and sickness and depravity instead of health and beauty.
finally abolition succeeded IMO because it had both male and female support…and prohibition was seen as the male prerogative being unforgivably breached by women.
abolition had male and female teetotalers and heavy drinkers on its side–the move for a clean and sober society Had only beaten women and women who were becoming unbound. i do not think for one second they were wrong or that it is unwise to enculture prohibiting …because the world is full of natural highs that are killed by addiction which feeds on an insatiable need for something more…
and instead of leading to spirituality which lifts and heals and inspires and develops, as it did in abolition, downward spirals of addiction imprison people to selfishness, self-delusion, and the defeat of all that is good , loving and holy.
i see in our culture of addiction the desire to control the other instead of to control ourselves, but we empower incapacity for self control when we empower drugs to corrupt and numb the souls and pollute the bodies of our precious children.
laws are meant to prevent the ease of extremes in hurting others, to set ultimate limits…people who do not believe in limit setting or equate boundaries with with authoritarianism rather than with human decency and good parenting and social practice, to me are people who have little experience in what comes from the lawlessness we are right now permitting in the no go zones of our society where it is pure social Darwinism and no presence of the trust and faith and strengthening of the good that boundaries for bad behaviors and rewards for good behavior ensure.
i think our wonderful unique AMERICAN society needs carrots and sticks and that we need to raise up people in the media, like our President, instead of marginalizing and denigrating him, who are not hedonistic anarchists and brutal sexist celebrity addicted thugs with huge bankrolls as our kids’ major role models.
and BTW here is a perfect illustration of the media Left bias that is distortive–
President Obama just gave the most rousing and substative Labor Day address of any sitting President in at least fifty years…in it among other things he described his program of public works investment in infrastructure and how it would be paid for///andm he took on the republicans head first and point by point decimated their emotional retrovistic revisionism and pessimism…
already the liberal left media is headlining:
Obama calls for so billions in spending…
MISLEADLNGLY FALSE PATENTLY DESTRUCTIVELY FALSE– and this is the LEFT press