Re: Ted Rall Subscription Service (fwd)

[robert <http://dummy.us.eu.org/robert>]

It's odd that 47% of everyone is against abortion (according to Axios),
yet 37% consider themselves socialists.

 > From: Noelle <http://dummy.us.eu.org/noelleg>
 > Date: Thu, 16 May 2019 09:32:12 -0700 (PDT)
 >
 >  > From: Ted<http://www.send.mailchimpapp.com/~tedrall.aol.com>
 >  > Date: Thu, 16 May 2019 15:36:11 +0000
 >  > 
 >  > The Ted Rall Subscription Service
 >  > Thank you for supporting independent political commentary Here is
 >  > this week's column. Thanks for subscribing to the Ted Rall
 >  > Subscription Service.
 >  > 
 >  > 1-3-18 Thirty-seven percent of American citizens are socialist or
 >  > communist
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=7581715b73&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > . That’s far more people than voted for either Hillary
 >  > Clinton (28% of eligible voters) or Donald Trump (27%) in 2016.
 >  > 
 >  > The majority is voiceless. A privileged minority rules. The United
 >  > States is a political apartheid state.
 >  > 
 >  > If the Left were allowed on the ballot
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=7d7f4bca9b&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > in this fake democracy, given space in newspapers and on
 >  > television, invited to join political debates
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=9bf4f49676&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > and if it wasn’t brutally suppressed by the police
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=869573ea9d&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > and FBI
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=9110f4c761&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > the Left wouldn’t need to wage a revolution in order
 >  > to take over the country. Leftists could easily win at the ballot
 >  > box if America were a real democracy.
 >  > 
 >  > Media censorship plays a major part in the conspiracy to deny the
 >  > majority Left its rightful role as the nation’s
 >  > rulers. Socialist and communist Americans read newspaper editorial
 >  > pages and draw the false conclusion that they’re
 >  > members of a lunatic fringe. More than 1,000 papers—yet
 >  > not one single leftist opinion columnist or editorial cartoonist
 >  > on staff?!?
 >  > 
 >  > Leftist Americans exist by the millions but many are isolated from
 >  > one another. They watch CNN, MSNBC and FoxNews and figure
 >  > they’re all alone. None of the three major cable news
 >  > networks employs a single left-wing commentator. They go to the
 >  > polls but there’s no left party on the ballot. Or if
 >  > there is, they’ve never heard of it and
 >  > don’t want to waste their votes.
 >  > 
 >  > To be a Leftist in America today is analogous to how black people
 >  > felt until recently while watching TV: you don’t see
 >  > anyone like you. The powers that be want you to feel like the
 >  > Invisible Man, as though you didn’t exist. You know you
 >  > exist. But you can’t the system’s message
 >  > that you don’t matter.
 >  > 
 >  > American politics is a party to which you have not been invited.
 >  > 
 >  > This has been the state of affairs for as long as I can
 >  > remember. Even as more Americans became disgusted by runaway
 >  > capitalism, censorship of the Left has become increasingly
 >  > thorough and ferocious.
 >  > 
 >  > There used to be a little space. In the 1990s lefties like me were
 >  > granted occasional mentions in The New York Times, Washington
 >  > Post, CNN and NPR. Even FoxNews had us on to serve as punching
 >  > bags. Shortly after 9/11 we disappeared along with the Twin
 >  > Towers, relegated to a few blogs and alternative weeklies. Now
 >  > newspapers and cable TV news and corporate news websites never
 >  > give space or air to representatives of the
 >  > Left. (Don’t email me about AOC. She’s a
 >  > Democrat, not a leftist.)
 >  > 
 >  > Censorship of the really-existing Left is impressively
 >  > thorough. You’ll find exactly as much opposition to the
 >  > government on the media here in the U.S. as you’ll find
 >  > in North Korea.
 >  > 
 >  > Ashamed and afraid, the gatekeepers used to have the decency to
 >  > keep secret their suppression of people whose political sin is
 >  > that they really, truly believe that all humans are equal. They
 >  > didn’t even think they were biased. They thought they
 >  > were reasonable. Moderate. Middle of the road.
 >  > 
 >  > Censorship with a smile is no longer enough for
 >  > America’s corrupt news media. Now they’re
 >  > brazenly contemptuous. The bastards even seek to elevate
 >  > censorship of the Left to a proud American value!
 >  > 
 >  > On May 12^th the Times ran another in a string of hit pieces on RT
 >  > America, a television network it described as “the
 >  > cat’s paw of Russia’s president, Vladimir
 >  > Putin.” RT, the Times complained
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=a909fc4843&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > “amplifies voices of dissent, to sow discord and
 >  > widen social divides. It gives the marginal a megaphone and
 >  > traffics in false equivalence.” Imagine that: giving
 >  > airtime to people we’ve always censored!
 >  > “Voices of dissent” must never be
 >  > “amplified.” They must be silenced.
 >  > 
 >  > This has become a standard talking point.
 >  > 
 >  > “RT America has a modest audience, exploring stories of
 >  > dissent, injustice and poverty within the U.S. that it says
 >  > American news outlets ignore,” NPR
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=4377c20da5&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > sneered in 2016, as if dissent, injustice and poverty were
 >  > standard fare on corporate media outlets. Anyway, if
 >  > RT’s audience is so small, why is the political
 >  > establishment so worried about them?
 >  > 
 >  > The formerly-liberal Guardian
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=51b83c925c&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > has gotten into the act: “Fringe opinion takes centre
 >  > stage [on RT],” it wrote in 2017. “Reporting
 >  > is routinely bolstered by testimony from experts you have never
 >  > heard of, representing institutions you have never heard
 >  > of.” It is true that RT rarely interviews
 >  > “experts” like John Bolton and William
 >  > Kristol, neocon architects of the Iraq War who despite their evil
 >  > idiocy pop up everywhere from CNN to the Bill Maher show. Far more
 >  > often, they interview people who have been right year after year
 >  > about issue after issue—people like me.
 >  > 
 >  > I get interviewed by RT often. (Disclosure: I am a frequent guest
 >  > on RT’s sister radio network Sputnik News and draw
 >  > cartoons for them too.) Never once have they told me what to say
 >  > or not say. I wish I could say the same about many
 >  > “mainstream” U.S. media outlets.
 >  > 
 >  > Many attacks against RT originate with the
 >  > U.S. government’s national security apparatus. The
 >  > Times piece
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=dbb4b33ec7&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > blithely cites the RAND Corporation, Molly McKew, a right-wing
 >  > lobbyist for the anti-Russian
 >  > (https://rall.us18.list-manage.com/track/click?u=317c94f76a09aa357140ea82c&id=1f2e5d7aa0&e=c3adcc1cdb)
 >  > government of Georgia, and the Director of National Intelligence
 >  > to support its allegations. A 2017 report issued by the DNI
 >  > groused: “RT’s reports often characterize
 >  > the United States as a ‘surveillance state’
 >  > and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police
 >  > brutality, and drone use. RT has also focused on criticism of the
 >  > U.S. economic system, U.S. currency policy, alleged Wall Street
 >  > greed, and the U.S. national debt.”
 >  > 
 >  > Notably, the report did not question the accuracy of those
 >  > assertions.
 >  > 
 >  > It certainly didn’t suggest that the U.S. stop doing
 >  > all those things that make it look so awful.
 >  > 
 >  > To U.S. corporate propagandists the solution is clear: censor more
 >  > and censor better.
 >  > 
 >  > Make censorship good.