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I don’t know how many FDL’ers read the ‘News Dissector’ so I offer Danny Schechter’s latest blog for your consideration:
“Hi from Berlin where it is sunny and cold. It is going to take some adjusting for me to get cranked up, so I have asked David DeGraw to share two passionate essays he did for his other site AMPED STATUS — which you should subscribe to. David is always there to get us out of trouble and I am pleased that he is willing to share his work with Mediachannel readers. Please share your comments with david@mediachannel.org.
How Much Longer Will You Remain Passive?
I work for two news websites and spend 12 hours a day, six days a week analyzing the news. My eyes are strained and bloodshot, I fight through constant headaches, and the icing on the cake, I now work more hours while making less money then I ever have. Such is life in the online news business these days, during the greatest economic crisis of our lifetime.
I’ve had family and friends ask me why it is that I do this, “Why give yourself headaches and an ever-declining paycheck?” they ask. The answer to this question is found in the essence of what I’m doing.
When you spend your time analyzing the news, researching vital issues, you realize the immense disconnect between the average person and the HORRIFYING REALITY OF THE DESPERATE STATE THE WORLD IS IN RIGHT NOW.
I’m not here to take the moral high ground, god knows that is a losing proposition, I am here because my survival instinct has kicked in! Plain and simple, humanity has reached a breaking point.
If you’re reading this right now, you are probably a news junkie and already aware of the disconnect between the average propagandized mind and reality. This disconnect is a primary cause of our current crisis. However, this disconnect has begun to unravel, as Americans are starting to be confronted by the harsh reality that they have been taught to disassociate themselves from.
How much longer can people remain passive?
When reality is smacking you in the face, you have to eventually reach a point where you begin to act, where you fight back. You cannot continue to be passive when you are working harder than ever, for less money and benefits (if you’re fortunate enough to still have a job). You cannot continue to be passive when your medical bills are piling up as your health declines. You cannot continue to be passive when inflation is outpacing your buying power and your home and bank account are being sucked dry by ever-increasing interest rates. You cannot continue to be passive when your debt is growing faster than your income. You cannot continue to be passive when the environment is getting more destructive with severe storms and mass devastation all around you. You cannot continue to be passive when you voted for change, and ended up with more of the same.
You cannot continue to be passive when thousands of your dollars have been taken from you and your family and given to the billionaires who caused the economic crisis to begin with, and these thieves are still giving themselves multi-millions in yearly bonuses.
The bottom line is… You cannot continue to be passive when your very existence is threatened.
I see this as an opening and opportunity to reach a formerly passive populace with information that is vital to our survival. As we already know, the mainstream media is a vast propaganda system designed to keep people uninformed and isolated from each other. However, this delusional propagandized state that US citizens have been bred into is crumbling down. It is now obvious to most that we need to drastically change course, yet our diseased and corrupted political system is still trying to restore the status quo, still trying to continue on a path of devastation.
The American populace was briefly awakened during the last two elections cycles, they came out in record numbers to elect leaders they thought would make the vital changes necessary. But now, once again, popular political cynicism is reaching a critical mass, as the elected change-makers bow before the corporate elite and give away trillions in taxpayer money to those who are already obscenely wealthy It’s as if those who run the country are so addicted to power and greed that they will destroy the overwhelming majority of humanity, and ultimately themselves, in the process of trying to save this obsolete system. Shortsighted greed is a human disease that urgently threatens the lives of billions, literally BILLIONS.
This is a serious illness we are confronted by. We need to focus immense resources on combating issues more dangerous than the human species has ever confronted.
We cannot simply vote for bought-off politicians in a rigged two-party system where both Democrats and Republicans serve the same corporate masters. We must look beyond the mainstream media and modern day political discourse. We must create popular movements and alternative political parties that actually work for us, for the long-term betterment of the masses, which will be the long-term betterment of our own lives, our family’s lives and our life sustaining environment.
Popular outrage is at the highest level in a generation. The mainstream press seeks to defuse it, while the rightwing is cleverly hijacking it through outlets like Fox News and with corporate shill pundits like Glenn Beck. We cannot let them get away with it. We must present the facts to the formerly passive and uniformed. We must seize this moment and begin repairing the world before it’s too late. The window of opportunity is closing fast!
So I will be here, doing my part by updating the two sites I work on with the most vital information we can find – information that we need to know and will empower us. In addition to that, I will now use this bit of cyberspace to write a post several days a week that calls attention to some of the more intensely urgent news and information as it becomes available.
You can subscribe here to keep up on my posts and receive our daily newsletter, which features links to the most suppressed and vital news available.
Email us and let us know what you are doing to fight back: FightBack@AmpedStatus.
10 Comments
It is an attitude that has been bred into us since our earliest childhood. I was raised in Germany, however, I am fairly certain the practice was roughly the same in the United States (although in those days I fervently believed that America was sanctuary.) I recall crawling underneath our little desks in school, as we were taught to do, in order to remain safe from the atomic bombs that were sure to arrive any moment, presumably by the Russians. Now even at the age of 7 or so I was perfectly aware that this would not save me from a nuclear blast, but you couldn’t just say no.
I was pretty traumatized, and spent a good deal of time dwelling on the fact that my life could arbitrarily end at any moment, that there were monsters in the shadows, and there was no safety. I then deliberately decided to live as though these dangers did not exist. It took enormous amounts of emotional energy, but I eventually succeeded in banishing my fears largely into my unconscious, making it possible to continue living, rather than hiding under my bed. I believe most people operate on that level, we cannot allow ourselves to see the dangers, because then we might have to do something, and we feel helpless, powerless, and plain don’t know what to do. Our present situation, worldwide, is so fraught with danger that we prefer to dissociate, and pretend that all will work out in the end. If we begin to think, really think, then we might easily be overwhelmed and paralyzed by naked fear.
Do you have answers? I do not wish to remain passive, but I don’t even know where to start.
“we prefer to dissociate, and pretend that all will work out in the end.” ; as Stevie Wonder sang, “when you believe in things you don’t understand, then you suffer”.
“If we begin to think, really think, then we might easily be overwhelmed and paralyzed by naked fear.” ; I am of the perception that is the case for most people, especially when it comes to their mortality.
It is ONLY by confronting the existential reality of our being that such fear will be dispelled.
“Do you have answers? I do not wish to remain passive, but I don’t even know where to start.” ; “the longest journey begins with a single step”; start with that which you are most passionate about, whether it be the financial fraud beimg perpetuated by the Obama Admin and Congress, or healthcare/insurance reform, or freedom of the press or net neutrality or…….sign petitions,write letters,be a civil disobedient actor, give money to causes or organizations you research and trust,talk to others about what’s going on,get involved in election integrity,whatever as long as it is not a passive ‘stand on the sidelines’ action.
I, too, remember “crawling underneath our little desks in school, as we were taught to do, in order to remain safe from the atomic bombs that were sure to arrive any moment, presumably by the Russians. Now even at the age of 7 or so I was perfectly aware that this would not save me from a nuclear blast, but you couldn’t just say no.” ; but when I said no, such won’t help, I was sent to the principal’s office for being ‘disruptive’.
Never did get a ‘good citizen’ award *G*
edit function ran everything together; apologies, no control over that.
Refresh separated sentences thankfully.
Hey! Someone else who got the point I have been trying to make for years.
You see our Forefathers didn’t want us to be passive, that’s why they set up participatory government of the poeple by the people and for the people.
This meant that the people would actively as representatives, be part of our Government.
It was so easy to be passive and allow these people to to take representation and turn it in to our deciders. We now have politicains no longer our representatives, who go to Government thinking their job is to decide what’s best for us.
We are passive and found it easier to let them do this then to have to try and influence them as to what we want.
The question is. Are things to far gone to even by now getting active to turn things around?
These people we elected are now are so powerful that they decide our lives for us, and care very little what we think and want. Healthcare is a fine example.
Voting can’t and won’t change things. Activism hasn’t worked well yet. Revolution is dismissed as not an option. So that leaves a miricle, or some higher power or event doing for us what we will not do.
“Revolution is dismissed as not an option.” ;
“When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, IT IS THEIR DUTY, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
Gee! You read and understand these things to.
I said it was not an option, because in this very venue I have been told that I was trying to ferment revolution, when I even suggested we stand up and take our Government back.
Basicaly I was told to shut up no one wants to hear these kind of things.
So it sounded to me like these people have wrote it off as an option.
So you don’t have to convince me, but there are alot out there that need to read those words, in your reply to me.
Thanks for sharing this post. Sometimes for all our work we seem to be shouting into the darkness but at least we know there is a darkness and at least we are trying to shine light into it. If we can not effect change, then at least we can bear witness.
I seldom post, being new to blogging as I am. I loved this post and I thank you. IMHO we are standing amidst all the variables that,once locked into place, have historically led a society into civil unrest and instability. But they are not locked into place…. yet. Again, IMHO, how the reform of the health care “cartel” goes, so too will the finance reform go …. if there is no real reform of health care we will, more than likely be disappointed in the attempts at finance reform. And that’s when things may make their way into being “locked into placed”. Whilst we, The People, stand having been stripped of certain civil liberties that Americans have always counted on. These things I find very scary. (I am choosing not to get started on the whole global warming issue) So what I have been doing is donating, signing petitions, sending articles to those of like mind. I have been meeting in person with my elected officials (sometimes referred to as “bozos”). I have put up with being patronized, condescended to, minimized etc.etc. I have called my senators office so much over the last 3 years, that I am literally on a first name basis with one of their staffers. I have written to the newspapers large and small. I have taken my money out of BofA and placed all accounts in a credit union, writing a letter to BofA stating that I have done this b/c I will not let them use my money to lobby congress to avoid re regulation. (I did this with both personal and my small business accounts). And I am have become a loud mouth. My family is ready to shoot me. The good news is that over the last 2 months as I am reading the news from various sources on line, I am “hearing” a change in the tone and timbre. There is more passion, anger, and frustration than there was 3 years ago. And there is more action occurring. More letters to the editor. More petitions. Louder demands for change. So I am feeling less isolated, and more optimistic. There are others who, like me, refuse to let this go down without a fight. Again thank you for the post, and for the great comments that followed. If this does require hitting the streets, and I am not “hearing” enough anger yet to expect it any time soon, I’ll probably be there too.
Hey@iremember54,
Who said revolution is not an option? I quote for you the fourth President of the United States of America, James Madison. Who is traditionally regarded as the father of the Constitution of these United States: In the Federalist (Papers) No. 10,
“Besides the advantage of being armed, which Americans possess over the people of almost every other nation, the existence of subordinate governments, to which people are attached, and by which the militia officers are appointed, forms a barrier against enterprises of ambition, more insurmountable than any of which a simple government of any form can admit of.
Notwithstanding the military establishments of the several kingdoms of Europe, which are carried as far as the public resources will bear, the governments are afraid to trust their people with arms.”
Don’t anybody sell James Madison so short as to suggest that he did not weigh the costs of an armed citizenry against the benefits, and conclude, for himself, that the goods were worth the price.
Hell, I reckon! Twenty-five million unhappy Iraquis with small arms and some improvised explosive devices brought the US (all volunteer – eg. European style professional, standing) Army to a grinding stalemate. Of course, the trogs occupying the White House recognized PDQ that this wasn’t working and started deploying National Guard units to CENTCOM (to minimal effect). The Bedoin tribes got the red-ass at al Quida for killing their hereditary sheiks and decided to throw in with us, or we’d still be hangin’ there rotating. What the hell would they do with a few hundred million pissed-off Americans? They’re scared to death of us.
And @ubetchaiam; I would like for you to note: Those European Kingdoms that are afraid to trust their people with arms include Germany and the British Empire. Be careful who you sneer at, you son of passivity.
“Be careful who you sneer at, you son of passivity.” ; what the hell are u talking about?
pas·siv·i·ty (p-sv-t)
n.
The condition or quality of being passive; inactivity, quiescence, or submissiveness.