Blinding ideologues pandering to power, agreeing upon lies
and half truths spewed to a command audience in exclusive settings where substance
and debate are denied ─ these do not add up to something called democracy. They
only destroy what little democracy there is.
Editing and commentary by
Carolyn Bennett
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ress and Partisans push “ideological claims benefitting
narrow elite class”
I.
DEBATE ISSUE/QUESTION: IRAN
Glenn Greenwald comments this week at the Guardian (UK)
“The very idea that Iran poses some kind of major ‘national
security’ crisis for the United States – let alone that there is ‘really no
bigger national security’ issue ‘this country is facing’ – is absurd. At the
very least, it is highly debatable.
“The United States has Iran virtually encircled militarily.
“Even with the highly implausible fear-mongering claims
earlier this year about Tehran’s planned increases in military spending, that
nation’s total military expenditures are a tiny fraction of what the United
States spends.
Iran
has demonstrated no propensity to launch attacks on U.S. soil,
has
no meaningful capability to do so, and
would
be instantly damaged ─ if not (as Hillary Clinton once put it) ‘totally
obliterated’ ─ if they tried.
Even
the Israelis are clear that Iran has not even committed itself to building a
nuclear weapon.
Glenn Greenwald continues a focus on fact and consequences
of journalists in lockstep with Washington. “Establishment journalists, creatures
of a highly ideological world … often cause ideology to masquerade as neutral
fact”
II.
DEBATE ISSUE//QUESTION: MILLITARISM
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| U.S. drone war on Somalia |
“It is often noted that the Catholic Church stridently opposes reproductive rights but it is almost never noted that the Catholic Church just as stridently opposes U.S. militarism and its economic policies that continuously promote corporate cronyism over the poor.
“Too much emphasis on that latter fact might imperil the
bipartisan [singular] commitment to those policies, and so discussion of
religious belief is typically confined to the safer arena of social issues.
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| U.S. corporate Washington drone weapons offensive wars |
“The Catholic Church’s decades-long denouncement of the U.S.
government’s military aggression and subservience to the wealthiest ─ is almost
always excluded from establishment journalistic circles, even as its steadfast opposition to abortion and gay rights is
endlessly touted.”
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ournalists entrenched in the Washington Beltway culture assume
Washington’s narrow, ideological desires and equate them with neutral facts, a false
or fake journalistic neutrality.
Quoting Jonathan Schwarz, Greenwald concludes: Whether by
design or otherwise, this is what the faux journalistic neutrality always
achieves.
It
glorifies highly ideological claims that benefit a narrow elite class (the one
that happens to own the largest media outlets which employ these journalists)
by allowing that ideology to masquerade as journalistic fact.
Establishment journalists are
creatures of the [Federal] Washington, D.C., and corporate culture in which
they spend their careers and thus absorb and regurgitate all of the assumptions
of that culture. This may be inevitable.
But having everyone indulge the
ludicrous fantasy that these journalists are ‘objective’ and ‘neutral’ is most
certainly not inevitable.
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HAT
IF there were no corporate media-government collusion and lockout of substantive
ideas and real difference
The group Open Debates recalls that leading up to the 1998 Minnesota
gubernatorial election, Minnesota public radio and the Minnesota chapter of the
League of Women Voters, which alternated sponsorship of the eight gubernatorial
debates, insisted that third-party candidate Jesse Ventura be allowed to
participate in the debates.
Six weeks before that election, the Star Tribune reported Reform
Party candidate Ventura at 10 percentage points in the polls. Three debates later,
on October 20, without having aired a single television advertisement, he was
at 21 percentage points.
On Election Day, Jesse Ventura captured 37 percent of the
vote and the governorship of Minnesota.
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| 2012 U.S. Presidential candidate Rocky Anderson Justice Party U.S. |
“I was allowed to debate,” the Governor said, commenting on
his victory.
I proved that you could go from 10
percent to 37 percent and win if you’re allowed to debate. Rest assured these two parties [Democrats and
Republicans] don’t want to ever see that happen again.
“This is what happens,” Open Debates comments on its
website, “when pro-democracy institutions committed to the voters’ interests
run debates.”
But a current corrupt system wrapped around the status quo
and onerous power vested in the Commission on Presidential Debates (CPD) dedicated
to singular viewpoints, pandering to exclusive interests of the Republican and
Democratic parties prohibits democratic openness, difference in person,
presentation or viewpoint and precludes substantive, insightful, wide-ranging debate.
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| 2012 U.S. Presidential candidate Jill Stein Green Party |
“The CPD excludes independent and third-party candidates
that a majority of Americans want to see ─
even
though those candidates would raise pressing national issues,
have
a chance of winning the race, and
certainly
increase voter turnout and debate viewership.
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istorically, third party candidates (many of their issues later
taken up by major parties) have played critical roles in U.S. democracy by
introducing popular and groundbreaking issues and institutions for the common
good. Among them ─
Abolition (of slavery)
Woman suffrage (women’s right to
vote)
Social security
Child labor laws
Public schools
Direct election of senators
Paid vacations
Unemployment compensation
Labor unions
But when their voices, different voices, substantive-issue
voices are silenced, when they are locked out of public forums and debate platforms,
third-party candidates and independents cannot dislodge, uproot or break
through the ideological wall, the propaganda and lies, the entrenched
Democratic/Republican (corporate media) conspiracy of silence on issues which
are [often] at odds with most Americans; and more importantly issues and
difference that Americans must hear in order to establish, reaffirm and preserve
this Union, the republic, and the enabling instrument of democratic process.
Sources and notes
“Martha Raddatz and the faux objectivity of journalists ─ Establishment
journalists are creatures of a highly ideological world and often cause
ideology to masquerade as neutral fact” (Glenn Greenwald), October 12, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/oct/12/raddatz-debate-objectivity
Open Debates: the issue, http://www.opendebates.org/theissue/overview.html
http://www.opendebates.org/theissue/exclusionofpop.html
Bennett's books are available in New York State independent bookstores: Lift Bridge Bookshop: www.liftbridgebooks.com [Brockport, NY]; Sundance Books: http://www.sundancebooks.com/main.html [Geneseo, NY]; Mood Makers Books: www.moodmakersbooks.com [City of Rochester, NY]; Dog Ears Bookstore and Literary Arts Center: www.enlightenthedog.org/ [Buffalo, NY]; Burlingham Books – ‘Your Local Chapter’: http://burlinghambooks.com/ [Perry, NY 14530]; The Bookworm: http://www.eabookworm.com/ [East Aurora, NY] • See also: World Pulse: Global Issues through the eyes of Women: http://www.worldpulse.com/ http://www.worldpulse.com/pulsewire http://www.facebook.com/#!/bennetts2ndstudy
