Your Insignificance Will Be Televised

The national media is quick to remind the American citizenry that their opinions don't matter.

Meanwhile, moments of democratic triumph go largely unreported. Take, for example, residents of California voting out all five members of a local planning group that had backed plans to allow Blackwater Worldwide to open a training camp in their area. Blackwater claims they hightailed it because of noise regulations and not the angry battle cries of the California residents, which is a lie. If the California residents had warmly embraced plans for the mercenary training facility, Blackwater's merry engineers would have rushed in overnight to start building. It was only the will of the people that prevented this from happening.

Despite this awesome moment of democracy trumping corporatism and the military-industrial complex, the national media largely ignored the story. Why? Because media deals in tragedy, not inspiration. The media portrays American citizens as perpetual victims -- pawns in a big, scary game where their votes are stolen, their jobs are shipped overseas, and their children are left to die in understaffed emergency rooms, while they scramble to take out a second mortgage from predatory lenders just so they can pay the hospital bills.

It's true that Americans are consistently exploited by uncaring government and corporate elites, but the amazing thing is that they have not surrendered under the pressure of such merciless onslaught.

The media injected Americans with their latest dose of morphine with their coverage of superdelegates. What might have been a rallying investigative breakthrough became the latest groan of "Can you believe THIS shit?!" heard throughout the country. Your opinions don't matter, the American people were reminded yet again. You're helpless, pathetic, and weak.

Few media outlets proposed a way to change this highly undemocratic system. Almost no one suggested rushing the offices of Congress representatives with collected signatures and demands to scrap unconstitutionally appointed representatives that ultimately decide the democratic nominee. No, there was none of that. Instead, the media patted Americans on their heads and tried to look sincere when they murmured, "Sorry, little guys. Looks like you got disenfranchised...again."

The story became that Americans are victims, not vehicles for change. Though, that may be because optimism and politics are strange bed partners. Just ask Obama's supporters, who are constantly accused of cult-like behavior because they have dared to invest in these weird things called "Hope" and "Change." But they can't, like...change stuff! They're Americans, for Christ's sake!

Why aren't they rolling over and taking it like they're supposed to?

Why aren't they still bitching about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, and Ralph Nader, and all those really bad things that turned Americans into perpetual victims rather than empowered citizens?!

Why are they smiling?! OH GOD! WHY ARE THEY SMILING?!

I have heard many young voters say they're not going to vote in the national election if superdelegates, and not the American people, decide who will be the Democratic nominee. This is the saddest kind of testament to how disenfranchised and victimized American citizens have become. Instead of organizing and rebelling like the citizens of California did with Blackwater, they're already bracing themselves for getting dicked over, yet again.

Americans have been conditioned to believe protest is a silly waste of time, that being a fringe candidate like Ralph Nader is annoying and bothersome, and that they are weak, helpless creatures that will forever be exploited by our big, evil government. They must accept, says the media, that their votes will not be counted, that their children will receive a poor education and poorer health care, and they will either die beneath a mountain of debt or from the retaliation of rebels reacting to our government's retarded foreign policies. Any way you spin it, the message is clear: You are all fucked. Stop trying.

Except, that's not true, and Americans know it. That's why Democratic turn-out for the primaries has been so high. Americans are protecting themselves by rejecting their status as helpless cogs in a corrupt machine. In order to change course, they must turn off the television and switch off the computer. They must politically organize in their own communities and take back their democracy.

Comments

[LucyC]

And they must stop drinking the water.

[DrPaulProteus]

"Why aren't they still bitching about Florida in 2000 and Ohio in 2004, and Ralph Nader, and all those really bad things that turned Americans into perpetual victims rather than empowered citizens?!"

Uh, they are still bitching about Ralph Nader. Bigtime. Write a pro-Nader post, and watch what happens.

I'm interested to see if all these newly energized voters stick around to enforce some "change" if their man Obama is taken down by the Clinton machine. Or if he gets to the White House and gets bought by Wall Street in the process and/or rendered impotent on anything remotely progressive by a thoroughly corrupt Congress. If Obama wins, that'd be the time for the giant to wake up -- my worry is that people will see it as a cue to go back to sleep.

[milo9]

Kilkenney your statement "Americans have been conditioned to believe protest is a silly waste of time,..." is so true. How often have we heard that your "letters of protest will go unopened, all politicians are the same, and there's nothing that you can be done". Like you say, all have the underlying message, 'You are all fucked. Stop trying." Maybe the goal is to instill the feeling of helplessness and vulnerability which makes the message that only the government can make you safe much more potent.

At this point in time it would seem to the critical observer, that the government, far from making us safe, is taking us right over the cliff. The only reasonable conclusion is that the people have to take their fate in their hands, and attempt to regain the democracy that has slipped away. It is regrettable that history has shown that for change of this magnitude to take place, good people have to go to jail.

[timm0]

HuffPost's Pick

You truly capture the essence of what's going on, but you make it sound like the media is just a capricious band of jerks. I don't think that's a fair characterization and misses a more egregious construct.

Sure, the media is about tragedy - but only insofar as it facilitates a sensationalized story-line, to step on the other "news" outlet faces to rise above the noise of everyone else's twisted take on all the sensationalized stories. There are plenty of tragedies every day that they choose to ignore. It's not just tragedy - it can't be, otherwise, stories of every soldier killed in Iraq would be aired every day.

It's about selling advertising. And as such, the advertisers help in driving the content with the carrot and stick of their over-priced buys. Advertisers are very happy to put money into fux news... Air America? Not so much... so all the geniuses on commissions or bonuses trying to drive ad sales via programming do what? Veer more and more to the right.

[Rule Of Law]

timmo, the Media are far from capricous--they are premeditated! The problem that has evolved over the last 7 years, especially, is that our famous "free press" is no longer free. It has been purchased and subsumed into the international corporate behemoths that rule our television, radio, and print mediums. When only 7 major corporations own all the information outlets, and the News has become just another product in their diversified holdings, then the Press/Media, will answer to the people who dictate their salaries and job security, not to the people or freedom of information.


Allison's point holds: Our media ignores stories that will empower the public, preferring to focus on issues that divide, anger, and create fear--all the things that work to make us feel helpless and afraid. And the reason the media has for focusing on those stories is simple: If the corporation that owns you (the Media) has an agenda that includes gutting our Constitutional protections and passing laws that deregulate business to make looting the Treasury even easier. then having a fearful and divided populace distracted by threats of terrorist destruction, loss of food, shelter and employment, works to your advantage. Oh, and the reason we don't see dead or dying American soldiers on the News, is that they learned their lesson from Viet Nam. Nothing upsets a country or creates an activist populace faster than having that death in the home every night at 6pm!


Yes, advertising dollars are the name of the story in any media, but the Left advertises just as readily as the Right! When your choice is between a hugely profitable Network backed by billionaires, versus small time Air America, then, yes, it looks like you have a point. But let's compare apples and apples Fox vs CNBC or CNN. Then the dollars flow much more evenly and the political bias of the network is minimized. No, I'm afraid that what FOX and a few others are really selling us is Fear. And it is Fear meant to disable us, take us out of the equation, minimalize our effect, and remove our voice from the public discourse on the issues that affect us most!

[Rule Of Law]

Yes we can! American's stopped an illegal and immoral war once, in a much more conservative era. American's created equal rights in that same era. American's questioned authority and then provided the answers to those questions. The answers and the power behind them scared the government and their Corporate handlers so much that they commissioned "The Crisis in Democracy" paper, written for the Trilateral Commission, 1975, New York University Press Michel Crozier, Samuel P. Huntington and Joji Watanuki.


In this paper the authors propose that there is too much freedom in contemporary democracies, and that it is necessary to curtail personal freedoms in order to preserve the governability of democracies.


Stop and think for a second: TOO MUCH FREEDOM! Their answer to us was that freedom was the threat. THAT is what an involved citizenry can cause to happen. A reaction of unparalleled anti-democratic destructive force originating right at the top of our corporate government, and aimed at us. Operating under cover for the past 38 years and coming to fruition in the Bush Regime!


Of course the MSM wants us to believe that we are powerless. Of course education in this country has suffered since this paper was implemented, wages have not kept pace with inflation; unions have been destroyed; millions of Americans have been cheated by predatory loans and forced into the streets; and the level of fear keeps us at each other's throat, when we should be taking each others back!


It's not paranoia when the Paper exists for all to read that outlines exactly this scenario in order to control the citizenry and protect corporate profits. You don't need a tin foil hat to read. And the Media, owned by 7 International conglomerates that control our reality by printing only the news that fits the meme is the tool they use to keep us off balance and distracted from their business of destroying our Constitution and our way of life.


We have this internet. We have bloggers like Kilkenny who still write the truth, for those who can be bothered with reading it. A movement takes only 12% of any population to succeed. The numbers on this site and others like it far exceed that total. We Do have the power. We need to shake off the fear and fog of manipulation and begin acting in our own interest. We Can stop Blackwater, we can stop this war, and we can stop the Bush crime family and regain our Country.

[jamiekilstein]

This one is my favorite.

[baltimore6101]

awesome post as usual- i think i'm surrounded by those people you're talking about- who've been "conditioned" to believe that protest is silly and we can't change anything. i hear people complain about the way things are, so i suggest- hey, let's do something about it- and they laugh at me. i'm not giving up though- there has to be somebody out there that's willing to try. how angry do we have to get before we do something about it?