New Yorker: "A Clear Violation of Obama's Promise"

[woo me with science]

178. What surreal horseshit, day after day. An Orwellian carnival of propaganda.

Last edited Fri Apr 25, 2014, 04:02 PM - Edit history (1)

Just breathtaking, the constant bids to pretend that the corporate sellouts we witness in front of us EVERY SINGLE DAY are not really happening.

These INCREDIBLE posts that pretend the betrayals have not been relentless and consistent. That this administration has not sold us out, over and over, across virtually every area of policy in which the One Percent hold an interest. Betrayal after betrayal, we are met with shocked indignation that we would even dare to suggest that corporate politicians intended this all along. We are to pretend that each new sellout is a complete surprise, fluke, aberration, or misunderstanding.

That's how weird, creepy, and corrupt the messaging has become. The existence of this 24/7 propaganda machine shows how sick and corrupt our political landscape has become.

We are to deny this administration's own repeated, relentless actions. We are to pretend not to see the pattern that is glaringly evident before our eyes. We are to ignore the daily, proactive, aggressive efforts of this administration and all corporate pols on behalf of the One Percent. We are to nurse the ludicrous fiction that this administration and this President are merely obstructed by teabaggers or cirumstances beyond their control and are actually valiantly trying to represent us. We are to pretend all this, even though their actions on a daily basis - appointing corporatists and Wall Street traitors to every area of government and pushing policies that enact their predatory agenda in every policy area - scream a different agenda.

We are treated like fools by the propaganda machine. This ludicrous, reality-defying fiction that is dispensed like a drumbeat insults our intelligence. This constant fiction that attempts to detach the President and his administration from its own behavior and policies is shameless. And it doesn't sell anymore.

Let's be blunt and honest. This has been a corporate, Trojan horse presidency, just as the next one will be unless we can find a way to throw ourselves into the gears of the corporate machine. Barack Obama pretended to be a champion of the 99 percent during the campaign, but the overwhelming thrust of his administration has been to protect and expand Bush corporate policies in every single area of policy important to the One Percent. And that will be the thrust of the next purchased administration, too. This is the cancer that infests our system now. This is the effect of corporate money in politics.

Today's vicious betrayal is net neutrality. No, it's not just about internet pricing. It is the dismantling of perhaps our last opportunity to fight back against the corporate takeover of this country. It is a deliberate handing of control over information and communication to the corporations. Another campaign lie.

And it follows a long line of other critical, devastating betrayals re: protecting criminal bankers; installing corporatists at all levels of government; imposing vicious austerity on the people while protecting corporate wealth; deregulation; pushing for this massive, predatory "free trade" agreement that will sell out national sovereignty re: worker protections and regulations and force Americans to compete with Third World laborers; implementing corporate education policy; entrenching for-profit health insurance cabals; expanding drilling and fracking; growing the unconscionable private prison system and waging the marijuana wars and ugly deportation system to support its profits.

This administration has claimed the right to imprison and murder without due process; it campaigned on transparency but defends a system of secret laws and secret courts; it seeks to lie in response to FOI requests, even to the courts; it persecutes whistleblowers and has twisted the Espionage Act to criminalize investigative journalism and intimidate our free press; it criminalizes and responds brutally and militarily to Constitutionally protected protest, and it surveils and maintains lists of protesters. Our government invasively gropes those who seek to travel and maintains secret lists of those to be denied travel, that cannot be challenged and need not be defended in a court. Federal grants are militarizing our police forces. This administration defends the trashing of the Fourth Amendment and the transformation of the United States of America into a surveillance state. And a propaganda and smear machine has been put into place, targeted at Americans.

But the Third Way can depend on their army of propagandists to deny, minimize, deflect from it all. And to deflect from the result: the hollowing out of this country, the steady stream of people falling out of the middle class and into poverty, the doubling of the wealth of billionaires just since 2009 as a result of policy, and the steady plummeting of the US on virtually every measure of well-being.

We are to drift from betrayal to betrayal, smiling and pretending that it's all *only* the fault of Republicans. No Democrats, much less this administration, have had a hand in any of it, even though we watch those busy hands every day. We are to embrace delusion merely because the President has a "D" after his name.

War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. 2+2=5. The chocolate ration has been increased. And anyone who expresses concern about plutocracy...about corporatocracy...about the purchase of our elections and our government and our political parties by corporate interests can expect the immediate, predictable swarming and guffawing from the predictable, ever-present few who incessantly, robotically deny it all and mock that anyone would acknowledge reality.