Carolyn Baker: How “Progressives” Gave The Election To Bush

2004-11-13

Richard Moore

--------------------------------------------------------
www.globalresearch.ca 

Manufacturing Dissent: 

How "Progressives" Gave The Election To Bush 

by Carolyn Baker 
www.globalresearch.ca 12 November 2004 

The URL of this article is: http://globalresearch.ca/articles/BAK411B.html 

Only one week after the 2004 Presidential election in the
U.S., alternative media is buzzing with appalling statistics
regarding glaring voting irregularities and blatant corruption
of the electoral process. Yet it is unlikely that so-called
progressives who voted for Kerry will re-evaluate the paradigm
which compelled them to do so.

In Twelve-Step language, the definition of insanity is doing
something which has not worked a thousand times, but expecting
that next time, one will have different results. Meanwhile,
progressives displace responsibility for their mind-boggling
failure onto the ignorant masses in "red states" who voted for
Bush and against abortion, gay marriage, and stem cell
research. Even now, after three stolen elections in four
years, they look wistfully to 2008 with delusions of electing
a "silver bullet" candidate who will miraculously redeem their
putrid political system. Larry Chin, in his article "The
Stolen Election of 2004: Welcome Back To Hell," said it best:
"Criminals do not 'permit' elections."

Like children in an abusive family system, traumatized
progressive Americans have been desperately willing to "settle
for" a less odious parent who will beat them only once a month
instead of once a day. Uninformed and relying largely on
corporate media or ostensibly progressive journalists who
towed the "anybody but Bush" line with pit bull tenacity, they
were willing to sell their souls to Kerry rather than face the
excruciating reality of living in a country where clean,
democratic elections no longer exist (if they ever did), where
corrupted electronic voting or a Supreme Court can, did, and
will install a President. Rather than own that their
government committed the pre-meditated murder of 3000 human
beings on September 11, 2001 and used that homicide as
justification for world domination, or face up to the
realities of Peak Oil which will create a global energy crisis
unprecedented in the history of the human race, progressives
and their intellectual gurus have screamed in unison,
"Conspiracy theory! Paranoia!"

Rather than confront the full implications of a USA Patriot
Act, which has effectively nullified their Constitution and
Bill of Rights or call their present government what it
actually is, a fascist empire, progressives sentimentally
proclaim that they are living in a democracy where they still
hold a sacrosanct right to vote. Their reward for their
implacable denial? The candidate they have "settled for"
virtually bestowed the election on his Bonesman brother, and
one more time, they were handed over to the wolves, but not
before being toyed with and bled dry in the name of making a
better America.

Progressives in their "adult children of dysfunctional
families" syndrome, have failed to comprehend the authentic
nature of the New World Order, that is, the
corporate-sponsored, free trade global hegemony of the ruling
elite, whether packaged in the blatant neoconservative agenda
of the Bush Administration or the "Progressive
Internationalism" of the Kerry camp. In their compulsion to
choose "the lesser evil," their ability to decode the
doublespeak of either one of the two faces of empire has been
gravely impaired. As Richard Moore notes in his excellent
article, "Doublespeak And The New World Order,"

      Progressives must wake up to the attack, and somehow find a
      way to fight back. The Achilles heel of the NWO lies in its
      runaway successes: its high-handed treatment of nearly
      everyone has created an awesome potential counter-reaction --
      if people can be made to see who the real perpetrators are,
      those who are engineering the decline of democratic
      civilization. Even its doublespeak successes can be turned
      against it, if people can learn to read the NWO agenda by
      learning to decode the propaganda it dishes out. The NWO crowd
      actually reveals allbin their propaganda, so arrogantly
      confident are they that their doublespeak enigma device won't
      be seen through by the people.
      http://cyberjournal.org/cj/rkm/ND/mar96NWODoublespeak.shtml

Had Kerry won, we would have seen a continuation of the war on
terror myth played out with serial invasions of
petro-strategic areas of the globe, possibly a "softening" of
the Patriot Act at home, and the appointment of a few Supreme
Court judges who remained friendly to Roe V. Wade. We would
have also witnessed more NAFTA-like "free trade" agreements
and the further corporatization of the globe through the IMF
and the World Bank. However, because progressives did not
comprehend the new paradigm into which the hijacked 2000
election had catapulted the country, their ambivalence and
willingness to "settle for" essentially locked in an
interminable totalitarian regime. And as Webster Tarpley wrote
prior to November 2, 2004:

      "Š if Bush retains control of the White House, we can expect a
      neocon fascist dictatorship or martial law emergency regime in
      2005 or 2006, possibly as the result of synthetic terrorism.
      The neocons are in a desperate flight forward mentality which
      seeks to avoid the penal consequences of what they have
      already done with Valerie Plame, the Niger yellowcake
      forgeries, the Israeli mole scandal, and the Chalabi betrayal
      of state secrets. The neocon preference is for early war with
      Iran. War with Russia and China cannot be excluded somewhat
      further down the road."
      http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/TAR410A.html 

On Wednesday, November 10, demonstrators protesting the Iraq
War in front of the Federal Building in Westwood, California
were greeted with tanks in the street. Although the tanks
shortly went away and left them alone, the chilling reality of
their presence sent an unmistakable message: Protest in
America will no longer be tolerated and will be met with
lethal force.
http://inn.globalfreepress.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=1014 

We can expect similar and more dramatic displays of force
against protest given the drastic militarization of urban
police forces in the U.S., superbly revealed in the must-see
documentary, "Urban Warrior." ( www.etspictures.com )
Furthermore, just this week, USA Today reported that the CIA
has assigned dozens of case officers to work inside police
departments of major U.S. cities. The report states that this
"represents the CIA's broadest association with federal law
enforcement since the CIA was created after World War II.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2004-11-07-cia-us_x.htm 

The "need" for a police state agenda becomes all the more
urgent when we consider Peak Oil. In April, 2001, The Council
on Foreign Relations (CFR) and James Baker, former Secretary
of State for George Bush, Sr., published a study of world
energy issues. The report can be read at:
http://www.rice.edu/projects/baker/Pubs/workingpapers/cfbipp_energy/energytf.htm

Analysts from The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times and
Asia Times have understood and written that recessions can be
used and managed to reduce oil consumption. In recessions
people use less petroleum than during economically prosperous
times. Furthermore, one month after the CFR report,
Vice-President Cheney's National Energy Policy Development
Group stated that "America in the year 2001 faces the most
serious energy shortage since the oil embargoes of the 1970s."
( www.whitehouse.gov/energy/Overview.pdf )It is absurd to
believe that John Kerry, long-time member of the Council on
Foreign Relations, would not also be aware of Peak Oil and its
implications.

The Bush neocon police state is superbly prepared to meet both
protest and massive civil unrest and disobedience stemming
from a global oil crisis with military force, incarceration,
and biowarfare. As is always true of an empire, it devours not
only its external "enemies," but its own citizens as well.

In addition, it is irrefutably the direct intent of neocon
advisors such as Grover Norquist to bankrupt the U.S. Treasury
and destroy all public services in order to privatize as much
of the infrastructure as possible so as to shrink the size of
government in half over the next 25 years, in Norquist's
words, "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in
the bathtub." 
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_402.html 

Upon leaving her position as Assistant Secretary of Housing
and Urban Development (HUD) under the first Bush
Administration, Catherine Austin Fitts stated and continues to
state unequivocally, that "the United States government is
being run as a criminal enterprise." This criminal enterprise
transcends party lines or loyalties, and no candidate can even
be nominated for President unless he is well within the good
graces of the godfathers. How effective are U.S. Presidential
elections in the twenty-first century? About as effective as
municipal elections in Chicago during the reign of Al Capone.
To progressives I say: Think "mafia", and stop thinking that
you have a shred of hope for change by pushing buttons on a
hacked voting machine. Again, criminals do not permit
elections.

The criminal enterprise of both political parties MUST
continue to make war for oil in every part of the world where
the last drops remain, and it MUST make war on its own
citizens by increasingly suppressing domestic civil liberties.

America's enormous trade and domestic deficit can only result
in economic catastrophe-a reality of which the ruling elite of
both parties is profoundly aware. An unemployed, impoverished,
population at the end of its tether with protracted wars and
ravaged by a global energy crisis is an unruly, volatile
population that must be "managed" by any means necessary. Yet
progressives continue to chant their mindless mantra: "Maybe
in 2008."

Mark Scaramella in his article, "Kerry's Enablers" concludes
that:
      Democrats can blame Ralph Nader, moral-issue-Republicans, Karl
      Rove, black box voting and unpunched Ohio punch cards all they
      want. Certainly these were factors. But until the Democrats
      abandon their slavish devotion to candidates who are
      vacillating funhouse mirror reflections of Republicans,
      they're likely to keep losing, and risk irrelevancy. 
      http://www.counterpunch.org/scaramella11112004.html 

Most assuredly, I will be asked: "What can be done?"

My answer is first, stop giving any credence or energy to the
thoroughly deceitful American electoral process.

Secondly, I submit that we are finding ourselves in a
situation similar to that of an earlier era in U.S. history-an
era considered no less dangerous and hopeless by its citizens
than the one we currently face-an era when an obscure writer
and entrepreneurial loser named Thomas Paine wrote a pamphlet
that changed an entire society. No one stood up boldly and
said "Do this" or "Elect so-and-so." Rather, people- ordinary
citizens of all classes, out of their own pain, when their
situation was sufficiently severe and agonizing, found their
own way and created a movement that transformed their world.
British troops and taxes were their "police state" and their
"peak oil," yet they produced, over and above the opposition
of white, ruling elite landowners, a Bill of Rights. Yes, I
know only too well the subsequent unfolding of U.S.
history-Native Americans were genocided in the name of
Manifest Destiny, and it took a Civil War to force the country
to deal with slavery. But any and all subsequent gains on
behalf of justice-the labor movement, the civil rights
movement, and the anti-war movements for decades after the
Bill of Rights was forged, were created and empowered by it,
and without it, no further strides on behalf of social justice
could have been made.

The American Revolution only erupted and succeeded because
citizens were experiencing the anguish needed to make it
happen. I believe that, tragically, the courage and clarity
necessary to transform our political and social landscape in
order to generate the kind of justice embodied in the Bill of
Rights will only evolve as a result of the kind of misery a
neocon, totalitarian regime will most certainly produce.

Although the neocon mind only understands "revolution" in
terms of bombs and bullets, Jefferson spoke incessantly of a
revolution of ideas and that he hoped to see one every twenty
years. Most importantly, he, along with a number of other
founding fathers, was adamant that revolution in the face of
tyranny is our divine right. How a long-overdue revolution in
the U.S. might unfold, I have no idea. What I do know is that
it will never occur as a result of "manufacturing dissent."

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