April 2008 Archives

This week I have been wondering, "What happened to me?"

The cops who shot Sean Bell were acquitted late last week and there was protest going on at the Queens Courthouse, which is only a subway ride away.  Normally, I would have been happy to grab a picket sign, chant and take a stand against police brutality and growing police power in our country. 

However, finals are coming up and I couldn't afford to waste any time. 

But wait a minute, waste?  Is that what I think of protesting nowadays? 

Since I have started law school, I have yet to go to a single protest.  It could be because the American Bar Association has scared with the prospect of not passing the bar if I prove to be unfit for the profession; after all, I have already been arrested before and it is in my permanent record that I was nearly expelled from my undergraduate institution not once, but twice.  But I can't help feel that there is something else going on. 

I suddenly came to the realization that I am on my way to becoming a professional, the same kind of people I used to sneer at and say that they weren't hardcore enough to make change happen.  Shit, I'm one of them now!

It's no surprise that I feel more and more alienated from the anarchist, feminist bookstores I used to hang out in.  As I continue into this professional track, I feel as if I lose more and more ties to activist circles.  While I keep reminding myself that I want to get a law degree so that I can fight within the system, I still can't help but feel as if I have lost my street cred.

For instance, back in February, I went to a public interest career fair to try to find a summer internship.  (Don't worry-- despite the fact that I am going into law, I'm going into public interest law.  Public interest means legal aid, public defense, impact litigation for the ACLU, etc.).  At any rate, I had to wear a suit for the numerous interviews I had.  However, the interviews were spaced out over several hours and I had a three hour break between my two sets of interviews for the day.  I decided to kill time by going to one of my favorite coffee shops-- it is complete with indie music and flyers for radical poetry nights. 

But I forgot that I was wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase. 

It was almost like a scene from a movie. I walked in and the place became quiet.  Obviously, I am being dramatic, but I am not exaggerating that my coffee order was screwed up and my bagel and cream cheese took forever, despite the fact there was no line ahead of me.  I also noticed a few glares.  Yes, of course, I thought, I appear to have either 1) infiltrated your "too cool for school" spot and/or 2) am obviously in the wrong place. 

I wanted to speak about how much social justice work I had done in the past. About how I threatened to sue my undergraduate university more than once and about how I canvassed door to door to defeat an abortion parental notification bill.  I wanted to explain that I was only wearing a suit to play the part, but that I was hoping to get a job with the Drug Policy Alliance, Brooklyn Legal Aid, Center for Reproductive Rights or the Sex Workers Rights Project.  I wanted to explain that I, too, wore beat up converse and torn jeans and that my hair was usually wild and curly and not as gelled and tamed. I  wanted to explain that I had a job once that only paid for 2 out of my 3 bills and I took turns rotating which bill would be paid late, which screwed up my credit and resulted in creditors calling my house (and then my job) every day.  I wanted to tell them about how I cried when George W. Bush was elected (sort of) in 2000 and again in 2004 and how I was interviewed once on NPR about student activism.  I really was the true thing-- it was just under the suit.

Unfortunately, there is no way to say this.  I just grabbed my coffee and burnt bagel to go and then headed over to the Starbucks around the corner.  Sure enough, I walked in, and no one gave me a second glance. 

You know what bothers me?  You never hear about truly liberal political think tanks.  All you ever hear about are these big Republican think tanks that are creating language and foreign policy that allows the media and government to dupe everyone into war. 

Even the liberal think tanks aren't all that liberal.  That's the problem with the media.  They've got people thinking that CNN is "liberal" and that the Democratic party is "liberal".  NO! The media is not liberal.  It's extremely centrist.  Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are not liberal.  They are centrists. 

 
The two-party system is an illusion.  It's an illusion of polarity, and an illusion of choice.  In America, it's not left vs. right or liberal vs. conservative.  It's some moderately centrist folks against some less moderately centrist folks.  There is no choice, and only an illusion of opposition.

This is where I fall:

I want a leftist, libertarian think tank.

I want a political system that isn't a hotbed for people who claim to be "liberal" or "conservative" who are really just centrists all day long.  The American people deserve true choices.  True choices among a slew of political candidates.

Here's Ireland's political landscape. 

Wow.  Amazing.  More than two major parties.

I'm moving to Ireland and building my think tank there.

Images courtesy of politicalcompass.org.

For the powers that be, our ignorance is their bliss.  It is easier to hoodwink American citizens if they have no idea what is going on, and if they don't know how to engage in democracy.  I'm not sure who the "powers that be" are, but I'm pretty certain that we can say that it is a group of politicians, corporate interests, and the media.

 
Consider a statement that Hillary Clinton made earlier on the campaign trail.  She essentially said that citizens should hold her accountable to promises that she is making during her campaign.  If they don't see her doing what she has promised, that they are to hold her accountable.

[The crowd cheers.]

Wait a second.  Does anyone actually know how to hold a president accountable for promises made on the campaign trail?  Does anyone actually know how executive accountability works in this country? For that matter, does anyone actually know how the national budget is created? How a bill is passed? How legislation is vetoed? Overturned?

Not really.

The average American citizen doesn't know much about how the government was created, how it functions, and how to engage in the democratic process.  For most people, this ignorance is cultivated early on.  Consider this: in the county that I live in, high school students only need 1/2 of a credit in American Government.  When I was in high school, I was only required to take one nine-week course in American government. (I was fourteen, and my only memory of that class was writing an essay on "The Missing Piece" by Shel Silverstein.) By my own volition, I took advanced classes in American History, Political Science, and American Government. I'm so glad that I did.

The only way to ensure a democracy as intended by the founding fathers is to make sure that people understand the procedures of the government.  When left to the discretion of the individual voter, most citizens will not learn the rights and responsibilities guaranteed by their citizenship.  The less we engage in our democracy, the less control we will have over the processes that dictate our lives.  We must start educating our children, and ourselves.  Knowledge is power, and we must not grow up in institutionalized ignorance.  To combat the brainwashing media, the lying politicians, and the powerful corporations, we must give ourselves and future generations the tools necessary to truly hold the government accountable.    

"People should not fear their government.  The government should fear its people." - V for Vendetta

I really can't stop listening to Fox News Radio.  Yes, it leaves me feeling a little ill, but I think it's important to figure out how the 'right' is doing such a fabulous job of brainwashing citizens.

People who listen to talk radio are, on average, more politically involved than most citizens.  They like to be informed, and are rather knowledgeable of current events.  Unfortunately, they don't actually report on current events on Fox News.  They typically take a single talking point and repeat it over...and over...and over...and over.  For the past three months, they have been talking about the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. I'm done listening to that.  Apparently they have been talking about this for a while.

I really recommend watching the documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism. In the documentary, they show how a memo is sent out each day to everyone in the Fox world as a topic for the day.  Then, the "journalists" and "reporters" repeat this idea over...and over...and over...and over.  This is not reporting.  This is repetition. What is worse, other media stations, papers, and broadcasts will eventually pick up this "talking point" and do the same thing, to a lesser extent.  A prime example of this was the Jeremiah Wright story.  Eventually, other networks picked this up and it became mainstream news.  In theory, this isn't completely bad.  I believe that it's important that anyone aspiring president should be vetted for the company that he/she keeps.  In the end, we were left with a nice speech on racism in America, and some people have reopened dialogue on this topic. 

Other media networks do this sometimes, too.  They will latch on to a topic until they finally convince people through repetition, rather than persuasion. However, other news outlets don't have the type of clout that the Fox spin machine does.  Here is the list of assets owned by News Corporation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/News_Corporation. The sun never sets on the Fox empire.

This is not journalism.  This is a noise machine.  This is not holding politicians accountable.  This is finding something negative about a candidate or a candidate's affiliations and spinning until you're blue in the face.  If our current president's pastor had made any inflammatory remarks like the Rev. Wright did, Fox would not be repeating it months on end.  If this election cycle wasn't already infused with racial tensions, Fox would not be capitalizing on these events. This is not journalism.

Dissonance. The clash of two opposing sounds, which generally results in auditory cacophony. When this idea is applied to matters of the mind, it is loosely defined as two diametrically opposing ideas being processed by the brain, which generally results in cognitive discomfort.  For the sanity of the thinker, one of these ideas is summarily dismissed. It is a result of the mind's inability to process two pieces of information that are in direct opposition to one another.

In a simple example, we have been taught from an early age that two plus two equals four.  If you are told instead that two plus two actually equals five, your brain will reject it.  The brain does not allow for this contradiction [George Orwell demonstrates changing this learned fact through the use of torture, but we'll save that topic for another day].

We have been taught from an early age that the American government is honest, reasonable, and just.  From the pledge of allegiance every morning before our math lesson, to the middle school history lessons in which we learned we are granted life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. We have been taught that the government is for and by the people. 

Cognitive dissonance says we will reject those thoughts that create a clash of ideas in the brain. Despite isolated articles or news stories about a corrupt government, many Americans do not independently inform their perception of the Republic. Most accounts that are in opposition to our ideas of our democracy are swept aside.  The mind is a powerful thing, and our brains will even go so far as to build imaginary bridges that explain the factual disconnect. 

I was speaking with a friend about the events of September 11.  As shereadschomsky alludes to previous blog post, the investigation itself was gossamer thin (see The Commission: The Uncensored History of The 9/11 Investigation by Philip Shenon).  Evidence is withheld to this day, and much of the facts reported by the Commission have been proven false. 

I was telling my friend about some of the inconsistencies of the events of that day.  As an example, most plane crashes of airliners leave a significant amount of debris, none of which was present in the crash in Shanksville, PA (the crash site of United Flight 93).  This evidence (or lack thereof) would indicate an alternative explanation than that provided by the government.  The physical evidence lends itself to the alternative explanation of the shooting down of the plane.  But the account of the renegade passengers and their subsequent takeover of the controls was what the media presented as fact: no real criminal investigation was carried out to arrive at these conclusions.  Available data was presented to support these claims.

I'm not arguing for the veracity of these accounts, but offer them as an example of the power of cognitive dissonance.  My friend said that she distinctly remembers seeing a plane in the picture of the PA crash site.  She has a doctorate, so she has been trained to systematically extrapolate meaning from the available data.  She thanked me for enlightening her.  Right or wrong, she realized that she had never thought to question whether or not a plane was visible at the crash site.  Her mind had always pictured a plane clearly in the field.* 

Nearly every single entity of the mainstream media has become a government megaphone, rather than a questioning body that was created to ensure a formidable democracy.  The cognitive dissonance that results when we hear anything different from "official accounts" can be overwhelming, because you have been conditioned think the media cheerleaders are actually journalists and, thus, investigators for the truth.  It's not "we report, you decide," but "we report, you believe."  In order to uncover the truth about our democracy, we must stop dismissing alternative news. We must keep our minds open to more than one message.

*Please let me know if you find a picture of a plane at the crash site.  I would like to see it myself.

We are in an environmental crisis.  There is no doubt about this, unless you happen to be one of those people who ignores scientific evidence and believes that fossils are the footprints of the devil. 

As we have heard from news stories, public service announcements and Al Gore, the time has come for us to reduce our impact on the environment.  A simple way to do this is to drive less (or not at all).  I'd also like to think of driving less as an anti-war effort too. 

I also live in NYC, as in the best public transit system in our entire country. Admittedly, DC and Boston have good metro transit as well, but NYC has got to be the best.  After all, it is one system for everything and $2 gets you all the way from Coney Island to the Bronx and from the Lower East Side out to the Far Rockaways.  You just can't beat it.

That's why it surprised me so much to be asked where someone could find parking in downtown Brooklyn.  Are you kidding me?  You are actually going to drive?  There are 7 trains that go to downtown Brooklyn and more buses than I can even keep track of.  Really, you have to drive? 

I am challenging anyone who lives in a large enough city to have mass transit to use it.  I promise you, it is not nearly as scary or difficult as it seems. After all, it was built for the masses.  So get a move on already, grab your bus/train schedule and truck your way to where you need to go by bus/train/foot/streetcar/monorail.  You'll do something good for the environment and you'll never have to worry about a parking space ever again. 

P.S. I have heard complaints before about people not using their city's mass transit system because "it sucks" or "it doesn't go anywhere" or "it's inconvenient," which might very well be true.  If you want your transit system to work, however, you need to use it.  As a whole, cities normally won't spend money on things people are not using.  So yes, it might suck for a bit, and yes, you may have to still use your car a bit to get around, but public transit is still worth it.