It’s A Landslide Victory

   
for the People

By Hank Edson

After the worst presidency in history, during most of which the Republican Party controlled all three branches of government, we, the people of the Democratic Party are going to win a landslide victory in November over John McCain and the Republican Party. We need to begin every thought with this sentence. We need to test every opinion we hear against this sentence too. We need to use the heft of our conviction on this point in responding to the voices that thrive on confusion.

The corporate media has two agendas. One is ratings. The other is aiding corporate control of the American people’s government. Both agendas are served by projecting a “tight” race for the presidency.

We’ve got to be more sophisticated if we, the people of the Democratic Party, really want control of our government. We have to know our truth and their lies.

Even when appropriately angry, liberal commentators like Keith Olbermann, host the broadcast platform, they still needs corporate advertisers and therefore they still need to magnify small details to suggest a degree of drama that simply doesn’t exist if you look at the big facts that make the race for the presidency no contest.

Sorry, Keith, every time your talking heads deviate from our truth, we have to turn you off. We don’t need your drama anymore than we need Hillary Clinton’s “Big State” argument. We are so tired of all your panelists, of all those cable faces, spewing insincere perspective simply to collect their pay check from the pundits’ union. We know what you are all about and it’s not politics and its definitely not anything we want or need.

What we need—what our country needs—is to look hard at what we’ve just been through under the likes of George Bush, Dick Cheney, Tom Delay, and Mitch McConnell. What we need is for the press to hold the Republican nominee to account for the disastrous policies of the Republican Party over the last seven years.

Better yet, what we need, is for Cable News and the corporate press just to go silent for the next eight months.

The corporate media is projecting a lie. The corporate media wants us to believe the race is close because it boosts ratings and gives legitimacy to a Republican platform that slavishly serves corporate interests.

It used to be that the Republicans tried to intimidate the referee into making calls in their favor by throwing false tantrums about a “liberal” media—as if the media that broadcast President Bush’s war propaganda could really be “liberal.”

The spin this time is the same, but different: the media is being used to call the contest “close” when there really is no contest at all.

In both scenarios, however, the strategy can have the power of a self-fulfilling, toxic prophesy. After a while, if the lies are constantly shouted over and over and over again, people begin to accept them as legitimate opinions.

“The earth is flat! The earth is flat! The earth is flat! The earth is flat! The earth is flat! The earth is flat!” Fox News tells its viewers every night and because Fox News says so, it is an opinion that at least deserves consideration in the public discourse.

We, the people of the Democratic Party, need to reject the lie that the race for the presidency is close. If we voice our conviction in the overwhelming superiority of the Democratic Party’s appeal to a people still suffering the consequences of the worst presidency in history, during which the Republican Party controlled all three branches for the overwhelming majority of the time, we will see that this conviction has the power of an incredibly beneficial self-fulfilling prophecy.

This is our job. We must not leave it to our candidates. We definitely must not leave it to the press. We must broadcast our own conviction. The Republican Party’s gluttony and abuse had caused that party’s self-destruction. The people of the Democratic Party have a platform that will begin to restore democracy and prosperity to our nation. The race for the presidency isn’t even close. The Democrats are going to win by an overwhelming majority.

And we will all be so much better for it.

Copyright © Hank Edson 2008