Reply #8: we are such a corrupted culture

[pretzel4gore]

we cannot even see it. Shortly after Saddam Hussein was murdered (execution? bullshit, it was murder) there was a rerun of Tonight Show, with jay leno doing his nudgewink spiel....mocking clintoon, the gores and of course, Saddam. It seems that even the foolish busheviki dupes at nbc would realize mocking Saddam right after he quietly went to his death would expose the ugliness of bush etc, but....or maybe they picked the rerun outta a hat! Most people don't notice these things, but... In 1926 Sinclair Lewis published 'Babbitt':

>"The drift of our commercial culture in the forty years since ‘Babbitt’ appeared suggests that Lewis did little to alter it, perhaps, but he was the first novelist to tell us explicitly into what stupid, and finally devastating social damnation we were drifting. Have we landed?
Mark Schorer, University of California, 1961 AfterWord to ‘Babbitt’
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Here's another piece from during the time leading up to the '04 pres. election:
>
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/dec2002/gore-d21.shtml
snip>
The former vice president and nominal head of the Democrats, who captured the votes of 50 million Americans and won the popular vote in the 2000 presidential race, chose a December 15 interview on the CBS program “60 Minutes” as the venue for publicizing his decision. That Gore, by far the best known of all likely Democratic presidential aspirants, should remove himself from contention at this early stage shows the degree to which the political system is controlled by an elite of media and political decision-makers, who are themselves answerable to the American financial oligarchy.For several months Gore had been aggressively preparing the way for a rematch with George W. Bush, making speeches on foreign and domestic policy, appearing on television interview programs, and conducting a national book tour with his wife. According to opinion polls, he was, by a wide margin, the first choice of Democratic voters to challenge Bush in 2004.

But the critical constituency for a viable presidential run was to be found not in voting precincts, but rather in corporate boardrooms, network office suites and the top echelons of the Democratic Party apparatus. Among the few hundred individuals who really “count” in shaping American electoral politics, Gore was decidedly out of favor. Their verdict was reflected in sluggish fundraising and what Gore associates called the “skeptical media coverage” of his book tour. The blow to Gore’s presidential aspirations was softened, according to press reports, by the former vice president’s new-found wealth, gained in part from a vice chairmanship at a West Coast investment firm.

In explaining his decision, Gore has offered only one political motivation—but it is a highly significant one. Referring obliquely to the 36-day battle over the Florida vote and the Supreme Court ruling that ultimately handed the presidency to his Republican opponent, Gore told his “60 Minutes” interviewer, “I think a campaign that would be a rematch between myself and President Bush would inevitably involve a focus on the past that would, in some measure, distract from the focus on the future that I think all campaigns have to be about.” In other words, a second Gore-Bush contest would inevitably raise the overtly anti-democratic manner in which the 2000 election crisis was resolved, and bring into question the legitimacy of the Bush administration. In his desire to avoid such issues, Gore reflects a preoccupation of the entire ruling elite and both political parties.
<snip

Unfortunately, mentioning the larger picture seems distracting, causing a look away from an issue where we gottem by the balls, but, they are going to laff it off anyway, or even use it as justification (ie: it's 'us or them!') ....the underlying flaws in our society, that allow pigs to get away with murder, that allows fuxnews to lie incessantly, that allows a mindless type of coarse cruelty to prosper routinely, must end, and we have to end it (though it's a fukkin hassle)
cheers!