2003
Not Dead, In Jail, Or a Slave?

By: Bryan Zepp Jamieson

I'll be curious, in a detached kind of way, to see what the media picks as the top news story of 2002. Given the state of our media, the top story is likely to be Justin Timberlake's relationship (or lack thereof) with Britney Spears. Here's a tip: Justin, in the sixth round, on a TKO. I got that from the same guy who called me on September 10^th 2001 and told me to sell my airline stock.

Whatever the news media picks as the top story, it will be something irrelevant and fairly harmless. Probably it will be the looming war with Iraq, since the media wants to promote that any way they can so they can feast on the ratings.

But if there was a top story in 2002, it should be the media itself. Nothing very sudden or dramatic happened last year, mind you. It was just that it was the cumulation of a process that began with the abolition of the Fairness Doctrine: the destruction of the free press in America.

It's most obvious in the toxic wasteland of AM radio, where each "radio host" tries to out-fascist the next, with the result being a seething and virulent endless chorus of hate, derision, abuse, and lies against the very elements that made America great: freedom of dissent, religious tolerance, willingness to probe to see what the rich and powerful were up to, and a healthy skepticism of the powerful, the institutions, the zealots. The very people who previously withered in the spotlight of investigative journalism have now taken it over, and made it a shabby and filthy parody of itself. Anyone old enough to remember Ed Murrow could imagine him and Rush Limbaugh having a debate, and see how far we've fallen.

Cable News is the playground of psychotic demagogues like Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes, Richard Scaife, and Sun Myung Moon. Time/Warner/AOL, a vast communications oligarchy with vested interests in the majority of the subjects it reports upon, is about as close to a free and independent press as is left on the public airwaves.

And it's a goddamned disgrace. For all the howls from the neo-fascists about how CNN is "liberal", remember that CNN general manager Walter Isaacson is the man who went to the GOP and cravenly enquired as to what he could do to make life more comfortable for conservatives.

Newspapers still have some independence in some areas, but even then, they have become badly compromised. More and more frequently, major stories show up in foreign papers that don't appear at all in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Most striking of recent note was the nearly complete blackout of Osama bin Laden's "Letter to America" in which he spelled out his grievances. Just last week, when the United States charged that Iraq was in "material breach" of the arms treaty - a prelude to war - England, just the day before, announced that Iraq was NOT in material breach. The US media buried that. Our one and only ally in the attaq disagrees with us on the casus belli, and the "free American press" decides that's not newsworthy.

The other big story is the packing with ideologues of nearly every function of government. Putsch is packing the courts, obviously. (The day after Trent Lott resigned as Majority Leader, it was quietly noted that the Republicans were going to try, once again, to get the confederate Pickering on the bench, despite having been turned down in the Senate previously.) They need as many racist ideologues as they can get. They'll need them for their new world order. There's a reason one of Putsch's first steps was to tell the American Bar Association he would no longer accept their ratings for judges selected for confirmation procedures (not surprising, since the right wingers make great ideologues and poor judges) but would get his "ratings" from the far right wing Heritage Foundation.

One of the very first things Hitler did when he took office was make judges accountable to himself. He knew an independent judiciary would be a problem.

It isn't just the bench, of course. Putsch has essentially reinstated the Spoils System, and is awarding every position, political or not, to cronies, donators and hangers-on. He packed the civil rights commission with people who are adamantly opposed to affirmative action, and he put industry leaders in charge of pollution commissions. Scientists being evaluated for panels are now being subjected to questions regarding their views on such things as abortion and the war on drugs. Not that either is particularly germane to the study of global warming or seismological studies. Apparently you need to be a staunch anti-abortionist in order to be a good seismologist.

The result is that every portion of government that is supposed to be operating on an administrative, scientific, medical, or judicial process will now consist of party loyalists who serve, not the American People, but the American President. And his interests aren't your interests.

The third story, of course, is the fact that America has become an Orwellian nightmare. If the President wants to get rid of you, he doesn't even have to trump up charges; he just declares you an "enemy combatant", and he is thus empowered to imprison or even execute you without benefit of charges, trial, or sentencing. The Patriot Act and Total Information Awareness combine to allow the government to scrutinize your credit, medical, and shopping records at random, and to look at your reading and browsing habits without warrant or probable cause. Strip searches at airports are commonplace, and you better be careful what you say in public. Even jokes in bars can be dangerous in these strange days, as the fellow who got 37 months for joking about a "burning bush" learned.

Let's see: a government that utterly controls all aspects of the civil service, making them answerable to the leader, rather than the people. A government that is free to spy on people on a whim, and can arrest and lock up people on a whim without due process. And a media that can't or won't report this.

Sounds like a dictatorship to me.

What ties it all together, and what is one of the main reasons why we haven't seen mass demonstrations and possibly open revolt, is "the war on terror". Der Leader is doing all this to keep you safe from terrorists.

Of course, you aren't a bit safer from terrorism now than you were on September 10^th, 2001. The police agencies are the first to admit that, and routinely issue warnings of possible terrorist attack.

But a fascist regime that operates in secret and answers to Der Leader rather than the people, the legislature, or the courts, becomes corrupt and viciously jealous of its power very rapidly. This isn't my opinion, it's something that's happened every time a free government has collapsed, whether violently, or in a bloodless coup like we've suffered.

That means that as an American subject, you are considerably LESS safe than you were as an American citizen. Not only do you still have to worry about terrorists from Saudi Arabia, but you have to worry about terrorists from Washington, DC.

I would like to wish everyone a happy and prosperous 2003. I really would. But looking at what has happened to America since December 2000, I think I'll just settle for hoping that at the end of this coming year, you aren't all dead, in jail, or a slave.

Fight to take your country back. There is still time.