Reply #7: Look. According to the issue polls, 60% to 70% of the American people

[Peace Patriot]

oppose every major Bush policy, foreign and domestic. You name it. The Iraq war (since FEBRUARY 2003, before the invasion!). Torturing prisoners (63% opposed to it "under any circumstances"--May '04). The deficit (that's like 90%). Social Security. Women's rights. And have held these opinions, despite relentless propaganda, for several years now. And that's not even to mention Bush's approval ratings--so low before the election that Zogby said he couldn't win--and 40% or under all year long after his supposed 're-election.'

This is a VERY IMPORTANT strategic question. Are the American people "fooled," or are they depressed, disempowered and DISENFRANCHISED?

I'm fairly convinced (oh, say, 99%) that's it's the latter, not the former. Most Americans are not fooled on Bush or Bush policy. They don't agree with it, and they can suss out the lies. And most Americans are quite progressive in their views. But the one thing they HAVE been fooled about is that most members of this great progressive American majority think that they are in the minority, and consequently feel alone and isolated. On TV, radio and in print, they get a constant barrage of rightwing views. The war profiteering corporate news monopolies are creating an ILLUSION of rightwing power, by giving the rightwing a big trumpet to promulgate their views way out of proportion to their numbers.

And let me give you an example of why I think this is conscious and deliberate--i.e, a corporate news monopoly program of disempowering the great progressive American majority. Late on election day 2004, the corporate news monopolies, acting in concert through one polling organization, DOCTORED their own exit polls (Kerry won) to force them to "fit" the official results that were coming to them from two Bushite electronic voting firms, Diebold and ES&S (Bush won). These two voting firms arrived at their results by means of 'TRADE SECRET, PROPRIETARY programming code--code so secret that not even our secretaries of state are permitted to review it--and concerning which there were virtually no audit/recount controls. Basically, Diebold and ES&S could say anything they wanted to. There was no check on them at the precinct, county, state or federal level. The only tool we had for verifying that election was the exit polls (exit polls are used worldwide to verify elections and check for fraud), and they were deliberately FALSIFIED to confirm a Bush win, and to squelch all protests and calls for investigation.

They denied the American people major evidence of election fraud. So, they are into messing with our minds. And I think they mess with our minds every day, not to convince us of anything, politically, but to convince us SUBLIMINALLY, by the proportion of rightwing views they give time to, and by the way they "edit" and create "news" (black-holing everything that doesn't serve war and other corporate profits) that we are alone in our progressive, anti-war, pro-justice views, and that support for such views is dwindling, when it is, in fact, GROWING.

THEIR OWN POLLS are telling us the truth. But they rarely comment on the issue polls, and when they report Bush's incredibly low approval numbers, they never connect the dots to either the stolen election of 2000, OR to the non-transparent election system that was put into place for 2004 to manufacture a Bush win.

And that is the other thing that Americans have been slow to grasp: that the electronic election system that was put into place in the 2001-2004 period, with a $4 billion boondoggle from Bush's Congress that went right into the pockets of Bush's buds at Diebold and ES&S--is completely non-transparent and fraudulent. Of all the black-holed stories of the last four years, THAT is the one that was most deeply sent into oblivion, where never a light can shine.

Americans are having to get the real news by word of mouth (supplemented by the internet--our modern "Committees of Correspondence"--Tom Paine would be proud of us!). So it's a slow process. Most people are constantly bombarded by war profiteering corporate news monopoly broadcasts, which paralyzes their thinking minds. It shuts them down. (They think: "How can anybody be buying this crap? I must be the only sane person left in this world." --and their anger and helplessness fills their minds.) It takes time for real information to penetrate. They have a native distrust of Bush (reflected in a 58% disapproval of the Iraq war BEFORE the invasion--that is, before all the lies were exposed). But a struggle is going on, within Americans, not having to do with the facts, but having to do with what people think that OTHER Americans think (i.e., Is there any hope for change?). And the corporate news monopolies have been playing this subliminal game very successfully, in tandem with Karl Rove's game plan--at least for temporary, looting-type profits, and for items like getting as many fascists on the Supreme Court as possible, as hedges for the rich against the coming backlash. They won't be able to hold onto elected offices much longer. The American people ARE finally getting the word--on election fraud, and on news fraud. And there is going to be a great reckoning, I think.

So, I would say, in conclusion: Have faith! Have faith in the American people--all those lonelihearts out there who right now have no country. Have faith in the great idea upon which our nation was founded--revolution. The Founders totally intended for that revolution to be on-going, and for their progressive views to be more and more perfected over the centuries. We're in a trough here, for sure. I am confident that we will rise out of it, and will become an even better country.