Fans of modern political cartoons in the NYC area may want to check out a “Laughing Liberally” event featuring Slowpoke creator Jen Sorensen and Tom the Dancing Bug creator Ruben Bolling this Wednesday, May 14, at the Tank. 279 Church St, 8pm.
Fuck the Election
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posted by Susan Stark
I have cared very little for elections ever since I realized that (1) they can be stolen, and that (2) even if my candidate wins, they don’t necessarily do what I voted for them to do.
But since this is election year, I thought I would give a present to all of you reading this blog. This is an article by a man named Joe Carpenter that I think every working and poor person on this planet should read. It is as follows:
I’ve never understood the idea of speaking truth to power. The truth, surely, is that in almost all countries of the world, political and economic systems are designed to benefit only the rich and powerful, at the expense of those with less money and power. This is how the world works, and I see no reason to think that the powerful don’t already understand that. After all, they designed it; they maintain it.
They steal our money, sacrifice our children in their wars, send the poorest and most victimized among us off to jail for petty mistakes, and crush those of us who might present a real threat to the arrangement. They know we don’t like it. They don’t care. They don’t need to care. They also control most of our avenues of dissent. It’s a very simple, very elegant design.
Meanwhile, we get angry and toddle off to tell the truth to the powerful. We have been telling them the truth for centuries. We travel to their great palaces by the hundreds of thousands, to express our anger and despair. We shout and sing and stomp and whine. We threaten. We plead. Sometimes we’re beaten up, or sent to jail. It’s a tradition of great courage and personal sacrifice, no doubt.
We go to tell them to stop using our money and our children and our energy and intelligence to further rob and rape and murder us. We tell them to be more respectful and compassionate. We’re like angry but terrorized children, anxiously scolding our stern, all-powerful parents. And, in the end, we look to the Democrats or to some congressional panel or to the Supreme Court and demand that they come to our aid. As my friend Harry puts it: “We’re left in the terrible position of trying to decide which elite group will be less likely to prey on us.”
Well, the government and their pals are not going to stop using and abusing us. They’re not going to stop preying on us. They cannot stop! Republican or Democrat, they are rich and powerful precisely because they prey on us. They are rich because they rob us. They’re robbing us right this minute. They are powerful because they dominate every aspect of our lives, because they’ve taken control of all the major social, political, economic, and communication systems in the world. These systems were designed to increase their wealth and power by taking both from all the rest of us.
But, we are not children, and they are not our parents. We’re not little people and they are not big people. We’re not insignificant and they are not significant. In fact, we do not need them.
They are very few and we, here in the US alone, are roughly 300 million. We don’t need to rush out to tell the few that they are abusing the many. They already know that. We need to stand upright and walk out to tell the many that they are being slowly devoured by the few, for — incredibly, they do not know. We need to look to our next door neighbors, and to their next door neighbors and to the folks all along the block. We need to tell the truth to each other — for we are the answer.
While hundreds of thousands of anti-war demonstrators gathered in Washington, DC, back in September, hundreds of millions of American citizens went about their business without even a vague awareness of the protests. The media to which most of them attend barely mention such things — obviously. And, most Americans don’t live in the DC area, so they didn’t see a thing.
Most Americans live in my neighborhood, or in your neighborhood. Most Americans eat breakfast right next to you in the local café. Most Americans get their car fixed at the same garage as you and I do. Most Americans visit my library, my bookstore, my grocery store, my local park — or yours.
But the rich and powerful have convinced us that we cannot — we must not — communicate with the people we can see and hear and touch, right here, right now. They have convinced us that we need to travel to some government office to persuade elected officials and bureaucrats to change our world for us. The government and media drone on, endlessly, hypnotically, and convince us that if we just elect the right leaders, they’ll talk to our next door neighbor for us.
Government programs, they promise us, will fix that gaping hole in the pavement right out beyond your driveway. Government will help poor Mrs. Wilson, languishing in the old, dilapidated house right across the street. Government will settle your dispute with that family right down the block. Government will take care of your neighbors who can’t escape the hurricane:
“It’s OK, just hop in the SUV and go, we’ll take care of everything!” Government will help; government will heal; government will bring us together.
That’s not going to happen, of course. The elites are too busy dividing us, setting us against each other, exacerbating every animosity, every misgiving, every anxiety, however slight. They insinuate themselves into every new crack and crevice and offer convoluted, expensive legislation and bureaucracies to bring us back together again. “There oughta be a law,” says the old complaint. Well, there will be, to be sure — but it will just make things worse.
We’re all looking in the wrong place for reason and compassion and justice. It’s not anywhere to be found in Washington, DC. It’s not in governments or state houses. It’s not there in that prestigious gathering of experts and big brains.
It’s right here. It’s wherever you are, and it’s right next door and it’s everywhere along your street and all around your neighborhood. It’s in the cars that pass you on the roadways and in the shops where you buy your dog or cat food. There’s no need to travel a thousand or even a hundred miles. It’s not necessary to make the climb up to the penthouse. Our hope, our possibility — our only hope, our only possibility, lies in the ordinary people who compose our world, who are the very stuff of our lives.
Want to change the world? Tell the truth to the plumber. Begin with the lady who hands you the stamps at the post office. Talk with the checkout people at the grocery store. Chat with the waiter at your favorite café. Speak with the cops who sit down at the next table. Gab for a few minutes with the guy who changes your oil or with the elementary school teacher with whom you’ve been discussing your child’s future. Lean out of your window while stopped at the light and tell the truck driver some truth he’s certain to recall and ponder.
Feel the need to march? Gather a bunch of folks and wander about your neighborhoods with signs and leaflets. When people walk by, stop and gab with them. When that huge guy with the Hemi-powered Ram pulls alongside and tells you to “love it or leave it,” ask him to stay and talk. Smile, offer your hand, make nice. He’s one of us. He’d make a wonderful ally. When a carload of high school jocks slows to offer some single-fingered communication, hand them some cold colas and tell them about the probability of a draft. They’re our people, too. Convince yourself that this is so, then convince them.
Get together with like-minded people and think of simple, brief, meaningful ways to communicate with the folks all around you. Think about little things, easy things, immediate things. Think about what you can do together, and what you might accomplish alone. Think about your real day-to-day life, and how many opportunities there are to educate and enlighten, every day. Blab and babble and blunder and tell the truth, one ordinary person at a time. We’re all ordinary people, and we are our only hope. Tell the truth to the guy who pumps out the septic tank — he’s one of us! Forget about telling the government, forget about the hot shots.
To the extent that we believe we need them, exactly to that extent will we continue our dependence upon ruthless, murderous plunderers, people entirely opposed to our needs and deepest longings. As long as we believe we need them, exactly that long will we live life on our knees, begging — as Mickey Z.
The depth of our apparent need is the measure of their height above us. The nightmare of our poverty is our dream that they have a right to take our money. The illusion of our impotence is the chimera of their monstrous strength. We shall be slaves as long as we’re convinced that we have masters, and not one moment longer.
Time to wake up, time to grow up. We’re not children. We do not need to ask permission to live like sane, reasonable, thoughtful, compassionate human beings. We do not need to beg or bow or kneel. We do not need to look to government or to experts or to the rich and famous. Whatever we need, we can get it ourselves. Whatever we want to stop — we can stop it ourselves. Whatever must be done, we can do it ourselves. We do not need them; we need each other.
All else is distraction and delusion.
Joe Carpenter is a guy living in Southern Oregon who has traveled extensively and kept his eyes open. He can be reached at: joecarpenter@charter.net.
And now that you’ve read this article, I’d like you to send it to every friend, co-worker, family member, and neighbor you can think of. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/Nov05/Carpenter1102.htm
SYNDICATED COLUMN: Obama: The Other White Meat
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Wright Fuss Weakens Dems, Squanders Chance to Get Serious
I argue with my friends. Some of them thought invading Iraq was a good idea. Almost all believed that Afghanistan was “the good war,” the one from which Iraq distracted us. (They’re starting to come around.) A few are even bigots. We disagree about these issues, often vehemently. But we’re still friends. I would never diss a friend in public (or, in politicalese, “distance myself”). Even a former friend deserves respect.
Crisis reveals character. In politics, it reveals judgment.
Barack “Uniter Not Divider, This Time We Really Mean It” Obama was praised for dumping (“distancing himself from”) Reverend Jeremiah Wright. (“What Barack Obama did was a profile in courage,” said the Reverend Al Sharpton.) But the McCain campaign’s silence indicates that it is quietly editing its fall attack ads. Obama’s apology, they’ll say, came too little, too late. Obama has fallen for one of the hoariest old tricks in the political playbook: guilt by association.
Republicans are smart. They close ranks behind a senator caught trolling for gay sex in an airport restroom, ignoring the homophobic platform of their own party. Mr. Wide Stance keeps his job; they keep his vote. In contrast, when New York’s governor hooks up with a prostitute, the Dems–whose politics, after all, are sex-positive–sell one of their brightest lights down the river.
You’d think Democrats would have learned a big lesson in 1972. It seems quaint in this age of Zoloft, but when it came out that vice presidential nominee Thomas Eagleton had been treated for depression (with electroshock treatment, standard care at the time), the media went nuts. If George McGovern had stood by his running mate, the issue would soon have died. There were, after all, plenty of other stories to talk about–say, Vietnam and Watergate. But McGovern got spooked. He dumped Eagleton. Voters asked themselves: If a guy throws his own running mate under the bus, how will he defend the United States? McGovern lost by a landslide.
Rule One of political survival: Never, ever apologize. Even when you’re wrong. Especially when you’re wrong. Rule Two: Don’t comment. Defending yourself keeps the story going. Corollary One to Rule One: Stand up for your friends. Especially when they’re wrong.
But what if they’re right?
“You cannot do terrorism on other people and expect it never to come back on you,” Reverend Wright said in his appearance at the National Press Club.
Pronouncing himself “offended” by such “ridiculous propositions” as “when [Wright] equates the United States’ wartime efforts with terrorism–there are no excuses,” Obama said the next day.
What is truly ridiculous is that, six and a half years after 9/11, many Americans still think the attacks were motivated by crazy freedom-haters out to forcibly convert them to Islam. The rise of radical Islam resulted from what Chalmers Johnson termed “Blowback”–CIA jargon for the unintended consequences, in this case of arming and funding Islamist fighters against the Soviet Union. But Wright was right. “America’s chickens are coming home to roost,” the Reverend said after 9/11.
It wasn’t an original thought. Ward Churchill said the same thing. So have countless analysts in other countries. Only in the U.S. is it prohibited to say something so obvious–particularly in a public forum.
Osama bin Laden and the 19 hijackers didn’t think flying planes into buildings would make Americans join the local mosque. They were motivated by a desire to bring America’s wars home to its people, to ensure that it would suffer the consequences for having “supported state terrorism against the Palestinians and black South Africans,” as Wright said. Like Wright, bin Laden has referenced these issues.
The Al Qaeda founder has also talked about the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, one of the greatest war crimes in history.
“Bin Laden has said several times that he is seeking to acquire and use nuclear weapons not only because it is God’s will, but because he wants to do to American foreign policy what the United States did to Japanese imperial surrender policy,” the Washington Post noted in 2005.
9/11 wasn’t an attack on a legitimate target. It wasn’t justifiable. Except for the Pentagon, the victims were civilians: clerks, cooks, office managers and bike messengers, the vast majority of whom probably opposed such foreign policies as the trade sanctions that killed 100,000 Iraqi children during the 1990s. But pretending that the killers of 9/11 were driven by motives other than to avenge American foreign policy in the Muslim world further delays a conversation we needed to have ages ago, and increases the likelihood of more attacks.
One of Wright’s most bizarre statements concerns his “suggestion that the United States might have invented H.I.V., the virus that causes AIDS,” in the words of The New York Times. There is no evidence to support this accusation. Yet paranoia can reveal truth.
“Based on this Tuskegee experiment and based on what has happened to Africans in this country, I believe our government is capable of doing anything,” Wright told the NAACP last week. (In Tuskegee from 1932 to 1972, illiterate sharecroppers with syphilis were left untreated so that white doctors could observe the progress of the disease.) “In fact, one of the responses to what Saddam Hussein had in terms of biological warfare was a non-question, because all we had to do was check the sales records. We sold him those biological weapons that he was using against his own people. So any time a government can put together biological warfare to kill people, and then get angry when those people use what we sold them, yes, I believe we are capable.”
It shouldn’t come as any surprise, given what the U.S. government has done and continues to do to African-Americans–a recent study shows, for example, that blacks are 12 times more likely than whites to be sent to prison for the same drug offenses as whites–that many of them consider it “capable of doing anything.” What is surprising is that African-Americans–or anyone else–still believes the government.
The Wright controversy offered us an opportunity to talk about the need to create a government that tells the truth, that doesn’t torture or kidnap or wage unjustifiable wars–a government worthy of its people and its trust. What we got instead, courtesy of Mr. Change We Can Believe In, was the usual pablum. “They offend me,” Obama said of Wright’s comments. “They rightly offend all Americans.”
Let us all hold hands and be offended. Whatever it takes to stop us from thinking.
COPYRIGHT 2008 TED RALL
Hate Mail
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After a year or two of relative silence, the right-wingers are at it again. Here, for your weekend reading pleasure, are two choice entries from today’s mail bag:
First, from “Mike Crowe” at crondo1@sbcglobal.net:
I HOPE YOU GET IN THE WAY OF A BOMB THAT WAS PLANTED TO KILL AMEARICANS.
BETTER YET, I’D LIKE TO SEE YOU GET WATERBOARDED.
IT MIGHT GET SOME OF THAT LIBERAL SHIT OUT OF YOUR HEAD.
FUCK YOU!
I’m confused. I am an “Amearican.” So if the bomb planted to kill “Amearicans” went off, I wouldn’t so much as be getting in its way as…never mind. Also, how would getting waterboarded make me more politically conservative? Is conservativism literally watered-down liberalism? And if it works that way, aren’t all the Gitmo detainees Republicans by now, which means it’s safe to release them?
Then, from WolverB@aol.com, there’s:
Ted, You should be shot. You are a worthless person taking up good air that someone else could use. It’s people like you that have caused this nation to be the cesspool that it has become. Leftists have no discipline, no logic, no sense of right and wrong. You think its wrong to force a killer to give us important information that might save lives but you don’t have a problem with murdering millions of unborn babies every year on a whim.
Again, I’m confused. Who are these “killers” who are being waterboaded? They’re not convicted murderers–they haven’t seen a lawyer, much less a judge or a jury. So they’re innocent, right? Also, I’m wondering where I ever wrote that abortion was awesome.
Oh, and note that this rightie things this nation has become a cesspool. He hates America!
P.S. A reminder to right-wingers about my E-mail Rules: anything you send me can and will, especially if it’s obnoxious, appear in the . Including your email address.
Shoutout to Angelenos
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If you want me to give a talk or sign books in the L.A. area, please get in touch at chet@rall.com. I’ll be there in a few weeks.
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Ted Rall in NYC
I’ll be doing a joint book signing, with “Minimum Security” cartoonist Stephanie McMillan twice next week. The first event takes place this coming Monday, April 14th.
Here are the details:
Where: Bluestockings
When: Monday, April 14, 7 pm
Admission: $1 to $3 Suggested
Resistance Through Ridicule
with Stephanie McMillan and Ted Rall
Kickin’ ass and taking names, political cartoonists Ted Rall and Stephanie McMillan show their newest comics and lead a discussion about politics, ecocide, the evil-in-the-system, and resistance. Ted Rall’s editorial cartoons are published each week in our nation’s papers, and “America Gone Wild” is his newest book. Stephanie McMillan is the creator of the strip “Minimum Security,” and co-authored the graphic novel “As the World Burns: 50 Simple Things You Can Do to Stay In Denial” with Derrick Jensen.
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Three More Hours
Just a reminder that the original for this cartoon is about to be auctioned off on eBay, three hours from now.
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Here We Go Again, Again
I have a question for Jeff Gordinier. Is it weird to get paid to write a book someone else has already written?
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Podcast Interview
I was interviewed by the Philadelphia Daily News on Saturday. You can listen to the podcast
Canny Comment The first decline is at 1994-95. This represents when people started using the Internet for their information. The second sharp decline begins at 2002, when the NYT started lying about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. There continues to be a steady, continuous decline from there to 2006. Unfortunately, we don’t have stats from 2007-8, but the article states that the Times had to lay people off recently, so it’s not getting any better. This is what happens when you become a Mouthpiece of the State, instead of a newspaper that investigates and reports the truth.
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posted by Susan Stark
Take a good look at the graph above. This represents the New York Times circulation from 1993 to 2006. The article that this graph was printed in did alot of hand-wringing about the cause of this decline, but of course they didn’t mention the obvious:
