Neither Bush nor the media is responsible for the hell our country is in.

[Anti-fascist]

Sorry, but in a republic with democratically elected politicians, the people are responsible to know who the hell they're voting for and what they're supporting.

If our compatriots had only cared about something other than their SUVs and professional wrestling, there might not have been a war. There is no way Bush would have gotten away with war if 70% of America hadn't supported it.

There is no excuse for them not to do inform themselves about things like that, especially not with the internet around.

The majority of Americans are idiots, and I'm embarrassed.

Thank you.

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

1. As long as there's a good excuse, that's cool!

We're a nation of morons. No argument there.

All is forgiven. I love Big Brother!

"Hey, kids! Whadda ya say we put on a show!" --Mickey Rooney

[displacedtexan]

24. I've got a piano!

and I've got a barn!
let's do it!
let's put on a show!
we can save the world!

[dofus]

2. Well, keeping in mind

that the majority of Americans did NOT vote for Bush, I guess the ones to blame are the five Supreme Court Justices.

[Wwagsthedog]

18. Don't forget kathrine harris, et al

n/t

[movonne]

3. I agree 100%%

[Flying_Pig]

12. I DISAGREE 100%..., ..OK, 80%....

The media IS responsible. The fascists ARE responsible, in that they have gutted our educational system, creating a nation of morons. All cannot be laid at the feet of the populace. They have been manipulated, lied to, cheated, and emotionally battered (9/11). Those responsible for all of this, need to pay a VERY HIGH price for their actions, as must those who have willingly collaborated with them, despite knowing better. We will need serveral Federal grand juries and commissions to sort out who and what is guilty, and then the prisons should be opened up to receive the lot of them.

[ramblin_dave]

4. True only if

the people know the truth and their votes are counted.

[msmcghee]

5. You are exactly right about that.

And it starts in school where we are taught . .

. . to mindlessly repeat political prayers on command,

. . that winning for our side is all that really counts - it's not how you play the game.

And now we're all (most US citizens) good Americans by that definition.

[ElkHunter]

6. Sorry...

...but at last count Al Gore still received nearly a half million more votes than did Bush. That means that there were one hell of alot of Americans that weren't as stupid as you believe to be. Last polls I saw also pointed to the fact that this country remains closely divided along liberal/conservative lines.

[msmcghee]

7. In a sane country . .

. . it would not even be close. 50/50 sane/insane? Sorry, not good enough by far.

[Abe Linkman]

10. Meaningless polls about liberal v. conservative Americans

"Last polls I saw also pointed to the fact that this country remains closely divided along liberal/conservative lines."

Polls like that are meaningless, unless they actually define the two terms. Few do that. If they did, so-called liberal ideas would be the winner, hands down.

[Anti-fascist]

13. That was a different America.

Many of those same Americans who voted for Gore, who, if you mind my saying, was nothing special in the first place, later started getting orgasms looking at the American flag and contributing to the culf of Bush.

[CarlBallard]

25. But "the people"

such as they were were out in the streets in the millions, engaged in letter writing campaigns to their Congressmen and Congresswomen, and the Whitehouse. And yes they voted against Bush 2 and a half years ago. The notion that "the people" didn't do anything strikes me as a little strange. Yes polls showed support for the war, but polls also showed Gore losing the popular vote. Certainly there are people who could have and should have done more to prevent the war(myself included). Still the lion's share of the blame for the war goes to the people who fomented pro war propaganda (both in government and the media) and the actual architects of the war.

[ElkHunter]

32. I agree.

And I cannot blame "the people" for liberalism that at times seems to have lost it's spine. The rightwingers have had more than a dozen years of having people like Rush on the radio daily to propagandize and rally people to their cause. And where was the left? It's only been recently that liberals like Michael Moore and Al Franken, etc., have risen to the challenge and have been willing to go after the right employing the same tactics and methods that have been used successfully against us. Honestly, I cannot figure out how one can succeed in building a political movement if one has contempt for "the people" that are needed win. Sorry, we cannot create another "people." That means that we'll have to work with what we have.

[Skittles]

8. HOW

are people supposed to know "who the hell they're voting for and what they're supporting" IF THE G.D. MEDIA DOESN'T REPORT THE TRUTH???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

[msmcghee]

15. The people support that media . .

. .and pay for it by choosing to watch stations that feature sex and scandal instead of substance. Sizzle instead of ideas.

Well regulated capitalism is good in many respects (economic freedom) but it does appeal to the lowest common denominator.

It's a vicious circle. The pukes figured out the way to plug into that circle a couple of decades ago. Carl Rove now controls that circle with his mastery of memetics and the help of his rich buddies like Rupert Murdoch.

[Anti-fascist]

16. The media doesn't tell me the truth either.

Nothing's stopping the people from going on the internet and finding the other side of the issue.

And on public television where I live (WPBT, Miami) there is a news hour by BBC World, which is amazingly objective. They can just watch that.

[bicentennial_baby]

17. Um

"Nothing's stopping the people from going on the internet and finding the other side of the issue."

Ever heard of the Digital Divide? :eyes:

[teknomanzer]

9. I would agree but I find exceptions...

Many americans have been raised on one way media, ie. television. They expect the news media to tell them the truth. But that medium is wholly owned by corporations whose interests mostly lie contrary to the needs of the people.

And what is the real purpose behind television. Is it to inform? To educate? To entertain? NO! Its purpose is to get people to BUY SHIT! That includes gas guzzling SUV's that no one can really afford to buy fuel for anymore, yet they are still pushing them!

So if Americans are idiots it is because those in charge want to keep them that way. If we, the intelligentcia, give up on the people instead of continuing to reveal the truth, we will only lose in the end.

[wtmusic]

11. And where do we go from here?

Assume there's nothing we can do?

Just because the majority of Americans are either ambivalent or not smart enough to know doesn't mean the media doesn't share complicity.

[Abe Linkman]

14. "The public always prefers nonsense to sense." H.L. Mencken

Your analysis is correct, in my opinion.

And, since "rich people kiss each other, while poor people p--- on each other"; fascism or "compassionate" fascism will continue it's 200+ year dominance of American political life.

[liberalmuse]

19. Unfortunately, you're right

I can't count how many people I've met who voted for Bush and supported the war and do not know a damn thing about what is going on. The better informed seem to use right wing radio and Faux News as their only sources of information, and I wish I were exaggerating. It's very frustrating.

I am so disgusted with a friend of mine, who will neither vote, or discuss politics. She acts as if she is above 'silly, misguded' me, because I wade in the cesspool of politics and am stupid and deluded enough to think I, or anyone else can make a difference. I see it as giving a damn about what kind of world we are going to leave to our posterity. If the discussion even gets close to politics, she shuts me down. Yeah, I'm getting a little bitter, nevermind ready to stop associating with her for awhile.

I like to think along the lines of, 'What if there is no afterlife? What if this is all we have?' If so, I want to make sure I life a good, relatively enjoyable life, and do as much as I can to make sure we leave those who follow us with something good to make even better. Is this delusion? Sometimes I wonder!

[ewagner]

20. Bill of Goods

I disagree only to the extent of these propositions:

First, Americans who voted for Bush thought they were getting a "compassionate conservative"; a centrist, with leanings toward the right. They did not know they were buying into PNAC!

Second, after 9/11 the majority of Americans were scared shitless over the spectre of another attack. Even in my backwater little city people were staying away from large gatherings because they thought terorists would find a high school football game a prime target for OSB and company. (Yes, I know how ridiculous that is but just remember how fearful everyone was in the days following 9/11) The PNAC ers took every advantage of the climate of fear and the outpouring of patriotism and parlayed it into a base of support for their preplanned actions.

In short, we, the American people were sold a Bill of Goods from this admin and to some extent, we're still buying it!

[arikara]

21. Speaking as a Canadian, I don't see it as being that simple...

The chimp wasn't elected, he was installed. The theft of the election had been very carefully planned and choreographed. The story wasn't ever told by the corporate controlled media which incidentally is all owned by the same groups that benefit from the chimpista's rise to power.

Hundreds of thousands of Americans protested the invasion of Iraq in the weeks leading up to it. The corporate media made light of this and underreported it, choosing to shine the spotlight the dozens of morans that were out "supporting the troops".

Don't sell yourselves short.

[bowens43]

22. Nope.

It's bush.

[QC]

23. Is there some new rule at DU that requires

a minimum of five "Everybody But Me is Stupid" threads every day in General Discussion?

Honestly, they pop up like mushrooms, and, like many mushrooms, they are poisonous.

As I've posted in a lot of the previous ones:

There are many possible reasons for people's disengagement with politics. Among them are the sorry state of journalism, the fact that few people have the means or leisure time to spend hours on the web tracking down alternative news sources, and the perception--not unjustified--that we have no control over our government anyway, since the special interests control it.

All of those things are worth discussing, because they can be fixed, but if the public is really just incurably stupid, then there's no reason for us to be here. We should just shut down the site and go watch wrestling on the teevee, or maybe run down to McDonald's and try one of those McGriddles.

Talk about defeatist attitudes....

[Anti-fascist]

26. The people are stupid.

When you see working class people voting for Bush I don't see how you can think otherwise.

On a poll I saw a few months ago it said that about 30% agree with Bush on health care and social security. What in the name of shit?

[QC]

31. There are lots of possible reasons for people voting against

their own interests.

Hell, the story of American politics is the story of getting people to vote against their own interests. That's what Jim Crow was all about, to name only one example. It's also why the Right has spent the past three decades creating a propaganda machine the likes of which even Goebbels never imagined. Meanwhile, the Left has not made any serious effort to reach the masses, leaving the whole field open to the likes of Limbaugh and O'Reilly.

If you are looking for a reason why the working class generally votes Republican, that's a good one to start with, though it doesn't offer the comfort of blaming someone else.

[Tinoire]

27. I totally agree with you

I'd add that we did not get to the mess we're in without the continued enabling attitude of our Democratic Reps.

The Pentagon budget didn't get as fat as it is without Democratic support.

The Republicans weren't the only ones accepting money from the most corrupt corporations out there.

It was not a Republican administration that did this to the Iraqi people: http://www.web-light.nl/VISIE/extremedeformities.html
have recently received large numbers of photographs of horrendous birth deformities that are being experienced in Iraq. I have not, quite frankly, ever seen anything like them. I urge you to copy this page / these pictures and circulate them as widely as possible.

In an act of stark cruelty, the US dominated Sanctions Committee refuses to permit Iraq to import the clean-up equipment that they desperately need to decontaminate their country of the Depleted Uranium ammunition that the US fired at them. Approximately 315 tons of DU dust was left by the use of this ammunition.The Sanctions Committee also refuses to allow the mass importation of anti-cancer treatments, which contain trace amounts of radio-isotopes, on the grounds that these constitute '...nuclear materials..'

<snip>
- Report by the US Army Environmental Policy Institute: 'Health and Consequences of Depleted Uranium use in the US army', June 1995

DU ammunition is now possessed by more than 12 countries, and was used during the NATO led bombing of the former Yugoslavia. Western forces stationed in the region have recently been advised not to drink the local water or eat locally produced food. Yet the British MoD continues to deny any potential risks, stating: "We have not seen any peer-reviewed epidemiological research data to support these claims <...> There are no plans to remove DU-based ammunition from service." (Source: Two letters to me from Simon Wren, Overseas Secretariat, Ministry of Defence, Whitehall, London - 20th May 1999, and 22nd March 2000)

On a more personal level, I have heard stories of visitors to Iraq who spoke with mid-wives there. These mid-wives are purported to have said they no longer look forward to births as.... "We don't know what's going to come out."

The pictures here, which are extremely disturbing, show exactly what does.

http://sandiego.indymedia.org/en/2003/07/6772.shtml

Nor as noted above, to the people of Yugoslavia.
-----------------

We are too willing, in this country, to cast our little vote based on slick marketting and rethoric, and go back to sleep, especially if our party is in power. Even today, few people here want to own up to the bad things that happened under Democratic administrations. Until the day we do that and watch every one of those suckers, regardless of Party, we are responsible and very deserving of where we are today.

[indepat]

28. Truer words were never spoken: we the people are getting the government

we so richly deserve and hopefully none of the tens of millions of GWW supporters who have/will have been substantially harmed by his tax, fiscal, environmental, and war policies will never neither whine nor whimper.

[LittleApple81]

29. THE ELECTION WAS STOLEN! PEOPLE WERE NOT THAT STUPID!

After 9/11 everybody went into panic mode... including some democrats.

That is why the MIHOP theorists don't sound so tin-hat worthy. Bush looked like an idiot up to that point. Then everybody went bananas because of the WTC attack...

The WTC attack was a tragedy for the United States and the world. But it was used MASTERFULLY by this administration to co-opt the American people into anything they wanted to do in the Middle East.

[rock]

30. You are engaging in the falacy of a complex issue

There is plenty of blame to go around, nobody has a monopoly on it. But on the other hand I am glad to hear your opinions.

[scottxyz]

33. I disagree partly

(1) Bush LOST the popular vote last time around. So he DIDN'T fool the majority of people. If you look at the black-box voting threads here, you see that it's quite possible to steal elections, and it's probably been done already in the US. Were the people of Iraq stupid because Saddam was in power? Are we stupid because Bush is in power? It's not easy to get rid of a despot. It takes a certain amount of cleverness and organization, because despots have lots of tricks up their sleeves.

(2) Maybe YOU'RE smart because you're exposed to a variety of opinions via the Internet. If you're one of those people who hasn't discovered the Internet yet, if you're still watching corporate media, then you'd have to be clairvoyant to know what's really going on. You can't totally blame people for not knowing what's happening if all they have to read is a censored press.

For example: The biggest story probably in America's history broke this week in the London Guardian: Michael Meacher put together the facts before, during and after 9/11 and proved that the US goverment broke its own laws and committed treason by "Letting It Happen On Purpose".

Providing evidence that an Administration committed High Treason leading to the deaths of 3,000 civilians on American soil is pretty big news - and now 24 hours after this broke, not a single US paper, radio station, or TV station is carrying it. (They carried the story last year when a German minister compared Bush to Hitler.) Why can't they carry THIS? Well, because it's TRUE.

Believe me, if all the tabloids were screaming "BUSH KNEW" on the cover today, people might be a little more aware.

(3) One-way media came into its own in the last century (TV, radio) and it really changed the way we communicate. It was a great invention in many ways - but it was also incredibly damaging, because (a) no longer could you throw a tomato at the politician when he told a blatant lie, and (2) you had to get approved by the media owners in order to get airtime. The interenet is changing all that, but it takes a while. Basically you've got two groups of people in this country now: people who use the Internet and people who don't. The people who do us it know what's happening; the people who don't, don't.

What can we do? I have a suggestion: Pick and article or two that you like from the web every week, and print them out, and xerox them and drop them around your laundromat, supermarket, bus stops, campus, workplace. Spread the word. The music industry has been revolutionized because a bunch of people have discovered they can download much better music than they're able to buy from the labels. Yeah, it's free music, but they're also doing it for another reason: the QUALITY is so much better.

Same for print news. The quality of internet print news is way better than the quality on TV, radio and the papers. "The power of the press belongs to those who own one." How many of you have a printer hooked up to your computer? Well YOU own a printing press! Pick your favorite article of the week, print it out, and "download" to paper around your neighborhood.

If someone in every neighborhood printed out the Meacher article from the Guardian last week - Bush and his PNAC cronies would very likely all be on trial for murder within a month. It's that simple. Yeah, we can bitch and moan because CNN won't carry the news we want. Well, Sony Music profit is going DOWN now because the music downloaders got sick of the labels and started to bypass them. If you're sick of CNN and Clear Channel and the local fishwrap - go ahead and BYPASS them too.

[camero]

34. They say

that you get exactly the kind of government that you deserve and the American People are selfish right to the core.

But with 94,000 people being denied the right to vote in FL, I also feel that the election was stolen.