Another View: Contrived Hysteria, Feigned Outrage, What is, What Should Addressed

Drivel drives out Substance
By Carolyn LaDelle Bennett

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owerful people, public figures, people placed high have the power over life and death. They allow some to speak. They silence multitudes—multitudes never seen, their voices never heard. Because of this, we—the people of the United of America and indeed the peoples of the world—now and for a long time have been handed “leaders” and prospective “leaders” (high placed people) who have been fielded and supported and who rise to public office, high office, for which they are unspeakably, entirely unfit.

This is the situation Americans again face in this election season. Those permitted access and speech—those sided with by the masses—are thoroughly unfit for purpose. Instead of Americans seeing and cutting through the charade and show, instead of demanding inclusiveness of people and ideas and substantive speech focusing on policy past, present and consequence, real needs, issues and answers domestic and international—they are giving in (succumbing) to the inordinate power of manipulation and flinging back and forth, up and down, wherever blows the wind of distraction.

“Sex sells” but it does not question qualification and character for leading what could be a great nation. I don’t really want to comment on another embarrassing speech by the US First Lady; read the transcript provided by NPR (I did) or watch some portal or tube of Web Viral. 

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ut as to substance and the measure of qualification and character, I have a few words. While words, a leer, furtive touch can hurt—the truly vulnerable have neither voice nor choice. Human beings blown up by US bombs (ordered, approved or sold by US leaders) have no recourse, no resurrection, no rise from death.  

I am alarmed and concerned about a country that holds most of the world’s nuclear weapons and unmanned/remote (drone) missiles; harbors most of the world’s arms dealers and sellers; and  whose inordinately powerful leaders (many still in office and or aspiring to high office) have pretty near destroyed the world and relations among peoples and cultures of the world. I am deeply concerned that these corrupt, incompetent, immoral “leaders” have engaged endlessly in war, belligerence, violent aggression, and directly or indirectly caused the exacerbation of tribal and regional suffering and conflict and the death, displacement, homelessness and statelessness of hundreds of millions of people (then further punished, disparaged, rejected and or denied them asylum or refuge). I am concerned that these “leaders” have assassinated or caused to be assassinated, removed or conspired to remove other heads of state; that these mainly  (though not only) US leaders have abducted and interned (without charge or trial) and tortured other nationals (some US citizens); that they have ripped to shreds vital US (and international) documents and institutions; and concomitantly with world violence they have neglected their (our) homeland, its common defense and general welfare, the health, education and welfare of our people and lands. Until these concerns are addressed, there is nothing out of the mouths of the monopoly and their minions that is worth listening to.

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et’s face it. The current crop of kin and kind—Nobel laureates notwithstanding or carelessly mendacious graduates of Yale or Harvard, Columbia or Stanford, Chicago, Princeton or Duke, Wellesley or Radcliff—they are unfit for the purpose, unfit to assume either US public office or world leadership.

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Pegs: 

Press TV October 14, 2016.Michelle Obama rebukes Trump's 'sexually predatory behavior' October 14, 2016 “US First Lady Michelle Obama has launched a scintillating attack against Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s ‘sexually predatory behavior.’ http://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2016/10/14/488968/Michelle-Obama-powerful-rebuke-Trump; 

NPR (National Public Radio, USA) Transcript: “Michelle Obama’s Speech On Donald Trump's Alleged Treatment Of Women, October 13, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/10/13/497846667/transcript-michelle-obamas-speech-on-donald-trumps-alleged-treatment-of-women; 

Washington Post Blog: The Fix “Michelle Obama’s speech on Donald Trump was remarkable” By Chris Cillizza October 13, 2016 https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/10/13/michelle-obama-just-put-a-huge-and-emotional-exclamation-point-on-trumps-hot-mic-tape/]

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A lifelong American writer and writer/activist (former academic and staffer with the U.S. government in Washington), Dr. Carolyn LaDelle Bennett is credentialed in education and print journalism and public affairs (PhD, Michigan State University, East Lansing, Michigan; MA, The American University, Washington, DC). Her work concerns itself with news and current affairs, historical contexts, and ideas particularly related to acts and consequences of U.S. foreign relations, geopolitics, human rights, war and peace, and violence and nonviolence. Dr. Bennett is an internationalist and nonpartisan progressive personally concerned with society and the common good. An educator at heart, her career began with the U.S. Peace Corps, teaching in Sierra Leone, West Africa. Since then, she has authored several books and numerous current-affairs articles; her latest book: UNCONSCIONABLE: How The World Sees Us: World News, Alternative Views, Commentary on U.S. Foreign Relations; most thoughts, articles, edited work are posted at Bennett’s Study: http://todaysinsightnews.blogspot.com/ and on her Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/carolynladelle.bennett. http://www.prweb.com/releases/2014/08UNCONSCIONABLE/prweb12131656.htm http://bookstore.xlibris.com/Products/SKU-000757788/UNCONSCIONABLE.aspx Her books are also available at independent bookstores in New York State: Lift Bridge in Brockport; Sundance in Geneseo; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center in Buffalo; Burlingham Books in Perry; The Bookworm in East Aurora