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around a lo-o-o-o-o-o-ong time--forty years as a loyal Democratic voter and activist, first vote for president in 1964.
And that was an interesting vote. I voted for the "peace candidate" LBJ (that's how the Democratic Party advertised him), and got upwards of two million people slaughtered in Vietnam and Southeast Asia for my trouble.
So I'm a skeptic of the first order. When Democrats start talking about peace, all the red flags go up for me. In what way are they lying?--is generally the best question to ask.
In Howard Dean's case, in my opinion--a rare case--the lies (or rather, in his case, the omissions) are somewhat forgivable. I think he knows what's what. I think his heart is in the right place. But I think he is under constraints. The constraints have to do with the war profiteers who are running this country and its media monopolies, and are very dangerous people (they destroyed HIS antiwar campaign, for instance), and with the fraudulent election system, now controlled by two rightwing Bushite corporations--Diebold and ES&S--using 'TRADE SECRET,' PROPRIETARY programming code, with virtually no audit/recount controls. With half the Dem Party leadership in the war camp, and Dem election officials and legislators deeply involved in the corruption wrought by the $4 billion "Help America Vote Act" boondoggle, he can't really tell the truth about the Bush junta and its dreadful war--and why/how we have such a terrible president and Congress. He has to walk a tightrope in order to attain and maintain any power to do good. I don't make exceptions like this often. I don't much sympathize with this kind of tightrope walking, in general. If it's a Congressperson, say, who voted for Bush's war--or, to be more precise, voted to give away Congress' war powers to George Bush, an unconstitutional act, and a violation of the Congressional oath of office--they simply cannot be a good representative of the American people (58% of whom opposed Bush's war BEFORE the invasion!), and I know that person is seriously compromised and will likely engage in lying and deceit to protect and enrich war profiteers.
With Dean, who couldn't vote on the war, what I have to go on is what he said during the campaign and what he's saying now. Several things struck me about what he said during the campaign: a) against the war; b) need for serious curtailment of military budgets; c) need to bust up the corporate news monopolies (and it was right after he said that--mere days, as I recall--when they destroyed his campaign with the doctored shout tape).
So he truly has the interests of the American people at heart--if his campaign statements are to be believed, and I tend to think he is sincere. But he is unable to maintain such strong positions now--because (from his point of view) he's DNC chair and responsible for getting Dems elected, no matter how they voted on the war; he has a rival in the pro-war DLC; and he inherited the dreadful election system situation from his corrupt predecessors, and is faced with a highly corrupt election system establishment. (In Calif, for instance, the citizen group that has sued the state over the illegal Diebold "certification" by Schwarzenegger appointee Bruce McPherson, has had to sue 18 country registrars as well, some of them Democrats--some Calif Dem election officials and legislators are very corrupt on this matter.)
How can he do his job while fighting nationwide bipartisan corruption among election officials--who now have improper power over election results in a highly secretive, non-transparent election system--and while exposing the companies themselves, who have what should be completely illegal, PRIVATE power over vote tabulation? He risks a big split in the Dem party leadership ranks, and the hostility of election officials, if he tells the truth in the way that it should be told (shouted from the rooftops! Beware, beware, beware of Bushite corporations controlling the tabulation of our votes!!!). He has to work more quietly--or he feels that he does.
I have little doubt that Howard Dean would be dead if he had somehow won the 2004 nomination--because he had the kind of charisma, and professed the kind of representative American views, that could have overcome the fraudulent election system that was put into place in the 2001-2004 period. Kerry did not have that charisma, nor representative views Although I think Kerry won by about a 5% margin, he needed more than that to beat "trade secret" Bushite vote tabulation. As it was, they had to implement the Ohio plan, Plan B--massive, overt suppression of the Democratic vote--in order to reverse his 5% win. I think Dean would have overcome THAT, too--but he never would have made it to the White House. I've lived through three assassinations of US leaders who supported the cause of peace (four, if you count Paul Wellstone), and conditions were similar back then in the 1960s: the war profiteers on a looting rampage. They would not have allowed a populist, antiwar candidate to take over the US government in 2004. They could not even afford an investigator like Kerry, though he was essentially pro-war. The dirt, crime and looting were just too humongous by then.
This, too, is part of what Howard Dean is up against--fear, pervasive, palpable, anthrax-attack influenced, perhaps Wellstone-influenced, Bushite domestic spying-influenced FEAR. The fascists can ruin you in a hundred different ways. And they can kill you if necessary, and get away with it. They own the US government. They "outed" a CIA agent, for godssakes, and destroyed her entire counter-proliferation project, twenty years in the making, putting all of her covert agents and contacts at risk of getting killed. And they have yet to be held accountable for it. What could they not do?
And today's conditions are far worse than in the '60s. Today, the fascists are bent on reducing us to slaves and cannon fodder. They are impoverishing us, and destroying everything we hold dear. They have no respect for human rights or civil rights or the US Constitution. These global predators have no interest any more in the "golden goose" of the American middle class. In fact, they are deliberately looting and killing it, in favor of Chinese and other markets, and are actively selling our country's assets and humongous debt to foreign governments. And today all major news organizations are war profiteers and global corporate predators themselves, and cover up for this fascist government. The scandal of Bushite controlled vote tabulation, for instance, would have been all over the newspapers and TV news in the 1960s. This incredible news story has been black-holed by the current news monopolies.
These are difficult, dangerous times, like nothing else I have seen in my lifetime--and like nothing I know of in history (although there are instructive similarities to the fall of the Roman Empire, to Hitler and to Stalin). I have nothing but compassion for someone whom I think is trying to work for the good in these circumstances--as I think Howard Dean is--and I feel pity for some whom I think have mixed bags of motives (like Kerry). But I think it is a very big mistake to regard these as normal political times, and to think that a normal political game is being played. We need to address this situation, and strategize, from a position of truth and reality--not pipe dreams of taking over the Congress this year, or the White House in '08, with rightwing Bushite corporations having gained "trade secret" control over the tabulation of all of our votes. The 2004 election was not an election. It was a coup. Non-transparent elections are not elections. They are tyranny. That's what we have.
Dean is speaking some truth, but he is not speaking all of it. I admit, though, that it is refreshing to hear SOME truth spoken--and spoken well--in the Bush junta "news." I do admire Dean for his courage and tenacity. It takes a very sturdy person, and a true patriot, to do what he is doing.
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