Electric Monkey Pants

Even as the grassroots impeachment movement gathers steam, the mainstream media and the Democrats are doing to their best to mock, derail, ignore and sabotage the efforts of concerned Americans across this great country.

Did anybody choke over the preceding paragraph? Did you think that Democrats would be eager to avenge the impeachment of Clinton? Well, you’re wrong. The Democrats are avoiding the issue like it was radioactive. And the media, well, we all know the liberal media is… liberal. Right? Wrong. The media is not left or right, it’s corporate. The media does whatever sells, folks. Their only true ideology is profit. As the Propaganda Model states, the media does not sell news — they sell us, the consumers of news, to the businesses that pay for ads and PR. We are the product.

Who perpetuates the myth of the liberal media anyway? Oh, that’s right… The media does! Especially the Bill O’Reillys and Sean Hannitys and Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world (there seem to be a lot of these folks. How did they manage to find employment in the big, mean liberal media machine?).

Despite their lies, the media is certainly not liberal, but the lie has become self-perpetuating so that people think “if the media does it, it must be liberal!” thereby allowing conservatives and corporatists to define liberals with their own labels and bias. It’s a really neat trick. Goebbels would be proud. The left-wing is so weak and pathetic that it mostly just nods its head and cowers in the corner lest Bill O’Reilly raise his voice again (of course, these are just the liberals the media allows us to see). In reality, the media skews conservative on many things, including the war, the economy and the prospect of impeachment.

Let’s take a look at this Reuters article on Vermont’s grassroots impeachment effort and see how the media distorts things to serve a certain point of view.

More than 30 Vermont towns passed resolutions on Tuesday seeking to impeach President Bush, while at least 16 towns in the tiny New England state called on Washington to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq.

Known for picturesque autumn foliage, colonial inns, maple sugar and old-fashion dairy farms, Vermont is in the vanguard of a grass-roots protest movement to impeach Bush over his handling of the unpopular Iraq war.

Notice how Vermont is portrayed as pastoral. The subtle message is: “These backwards-ass hicks think they can impeach the president. Isn’t that cute?”

Now that we’ve established that Vermont’s voters are bunch of tree-hugging, bean-curd-eating hippies we proceed to “The Big Lie”, which Reuters needs to work on a bit since it really sticks out like a sore thumb in this piece. See if you can spot it:

After casting votes on budgets and other routine items, citizens of 32 towns in Vermont backed a measure calling on the U.S. Congress to file articles of impeachment against Bush for misleading the nation on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and for engaging in illegal wiretapping, among other charges.

Five Vermont towns passed similar resolutions last year.

The idea of impeaching Bush resides firmly outside the political mainstream.

The new Democratic-controlled Congress has steered clear of the subject, and Wisconsin Sen. Russell Feingold’s call last year to censure Bush — a step short of an impeachment — found scant support on Capitol Hill, even among fellow Democrats.

Did you find it? It’s the mostly-unsupported argument in the middle. “The idea of impeaching Bush resides firmly outside the political mainstream.” THIS IS A LIE. A big one, too. If the reporter/propaganda-spewer (Jason Szep) had done any research (and I believe he must have), he would’ve noticed that Americans overwhelmingly support impeachment. From the Zogby poll:

By a margin of 53% to 42%, Americans want Congress to impeach President Bush if he lied about the war in Iraq, according to a new Zogby poll commissioned by AfterDowningStreet.org, a grassroots coalition that supports a Congressional investigation of President Bush’s decision to invade Iraq in 2003.

This is “firmly outside the political mainstream”?!!

Well, in the reporter’s defense it must be said that the Democrats and the Mainstream Media (MSM) have done everything in their power to keep it out of the political mainstream. This is done via articles such as the one we’re talking about, wherein people supporting accountability are mocked as pastoral peasants, slandered as left-wing nutjobs or talked down to like illiterate boobs. So much for the free and impartial press.

The Democrats are certainly party to this travesty. They have betrayed the very Americans who voted for them.

Not surprisingly, Democrats supported the consideration of impeachment by a broad margin (76 percent) while Republicans opposed (66 percent). However, 29 percent of Republicans told Zogby pollsters that they supported Congress examining impeachment over Iraq.

It should be noted that AfterDowningStreet.org had to commission this poll because the Media certainly wouldn’t do it themselves. If we had waited on them for such a poll, we’d still be waiting.

Despites the media’s lies of omission and distortion impeachment is gathering steam across the nation, not just in Vermont as the article tried to imply. New Mexico, Washington state and cities across the nation are moving towards, or have already passed, resolutions supporting impeachment. The Media doesn’t want you to know this.

As for the Democrats, their spinelessness is appalling, especially considering what happened less than 10 years ago. Funny, I don’t remember people taking to the streets to demand Clinton’s impeachment. In fact, polls showed most people opposed impeachment for Clinton. I would’ve liked to see Clinton impeached for other reasons, but the charges he was impeached for were pretty trivial, and it was clearly a political witch-hunt. This time around the polls favor impeachment, but the Media is nowhere to be found whipping up impeachment fervor, and the Democrats, far from leading the charge, are carrying up the rear. They’re being dragged into this fight by the common folk, and many of them show no signs of supporting impeachment. It’s as if Bush were there best buddy all of a sudden. Suspicious, wouldn’t you say?

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The Mainstream Media is a corporate-controlled institution that the oligarchy is using to promote and maintain fascism. Bush, as a fascist, is their hero. The MSM and Bush led us into this bloody war in Iraq, hand-in-hand; t
hey’re practically attached at the hip. They would sooner spit on their own mothers than encourage the impeachment of their pretty-boy fascist führer. The Democrats are controlled by the same oligarchy and their part is to basically “rollover and play dead” for the fascist Republicans. We must feed the war machine with our babies. The economy depends on it, since so much of it is rooted in the military-industrial complex.

So what can you do about it? Well, start by supporting the organizations out there that are spearheading the impeachment effort. Quite frankly, there are so many that I have a hard time keeping track of them all. Here’s a quick list of some of the bigger ones:

AfterDowningStreet
Vote To Impeach
Impeach Bush Coalition
Impeach For Peace
ImpeachPAC
The Four Reasons
The World Can’t Wait

Apathy is not a strategy. What are you doing to change the world?