No Discourse For Americans
By Timothy V. Gatto
16 June,
2008
Countercurrents.org
There is no “Left” and “Right” in the mainstream political scene today. There are nuances of liberal thought in the Obama campaign, but that is terribly overshadowed by the “thought police” in his campaign that don’t want to give the McCain people any “talking points” that they can use against him. This particular episode in US history is very unfortunate. The fact that the Democrats must play the role of the quasi-belligerent and bellicose imperialists, in order to thwart the rhetoric of John McCain is a crime in itself. This type of behavior and rhetoric dooms the American people to a campaign that disallows the type of discourse that we so desperately need in this nation.
The articles I’ve written in the past few weeks have garnered e-mails from people that I never expected to hear from. My series on “American Complicity” have been published on many progressive sites and the response has been overwhelming. The outpouring of sentiment that this writer has received makes it very clear to me that the Mainstream Media has failed to provide the type of dialogue that the American people need to have with each other. Correspondence that I’ve received has not just come from Americans; I have received heartfelt letters from people in Israel, Mexico and Canada that decry what has happened in America in the last few decades. I wish I could write to all the people that have written me and tell them that the American people are indeed waking up from their long slumber and see what this nation is doing in the name of “The American People”, but I can’t. The dialogue between not right and left, but right and wrong, just isn’t being discussed with the public at large.
There is in this country since 9/11 a disturbing and dangerous perception in this country that it’s “us against them”. The same incident has spawned fears for some that our own government has been in some way either complicit or actually involved in the attacks. This incident and the feelings that people have about the causes and involvement of whomever was responsible are rarely talked about in public. The War in Iraq is also a subject that many Americans don’t speak about in mixed company, not wanting to lay their cards out on the table for their neighbors and co-workers to see. We discuss “polls” and articles we have read to gauge what others think. The only time we hear strong anti-war sentiment is on the internet or from speeches made at rallies and protests. The truths we hear and read stay in our minds and are very rarely brought out in public. The silence is deafening.
We have a chance at discourse and debate about where this nation is heading. Like so many others I have hoped that this Presidential election would bring out the thoughts and aspirations of Americans that want to turn this nation around and bring it back to some type of sanity. We hear phrases about “The wrong War at the wrong time”, and in the second breath we hear that “All options are on the table” in regards to Iran. Sometimes I wonder if this nation hasn’t developed a nationwide form of schizophrenia. I watch us encircle Russia with a missile defense system. Their protests go unheeded not only by our government, but the American people. I see this nation’s currency devalued day by day as the price of everything rises. Gasoline, heating fuel, electricity, commodities rise while paychecks remain stagnant and many are out of work altogether. All of this occurs while no-bid contracts to war contractors and war appropriations take their daily toll from the lives of working American’s in our attempt to “Americanize” the Middle-East continues.
There are no real debates on the merits of our foreign policy that tries to enforce a Pax Americana on the rest of the world. There are no real debates on the Mainstream Media about the 35 counts of Impeachment that Rep. Dennis Kucinich valiantly brought to the floor of Congress, unless that is, you are on the e-mail list of progressive organizations that are fighting for true justice that is being ignored by the major media outlets. That this current President has broken the law many times and lied to the American people, is being pushed to the background because it may interfere with the political aspirations of the Democrats. This in itself is a travesty of justice.
Someday the American people will indeed wake up and see what this nation has done in their name. They will see what we have done in the name of this “Global War on Terror” that was invented to keep our Military-Industrial-Complex running. We have replaced the Soviet Union with Muslim fanatics. We have replaced our own national interests with political aspirations of those inside of Washington. We have replaced commonsense with our common fear. This cannot continue forever, I can only hope that we can come to terms with what we have wrought before it is too late to recover, if it isn’t too late already.
