The 1980 film Brubaker starring Robert Redford, based on a true story, had one scene that told it all. Reform warden Henry Brubaker gets fired for seeking to uncover past corruption surrounding the penitentiary. As he is walking away down the hallway, his friend Lillian, who works for the governor and actually got him the job, runs after him. She doesn’t understand why he could not take the deal offered him, which would have given needed funds to upgrade the place, in return for his silence on the corruption he was uncovering. He turns to her and says it all in one fell swoop: “You DON’T play politics with the truth!”
Anyone with even half a brain should realize the outright evil of the entire Trump administration and the bulk of the Republican Party. This writer need not have to list the myriad of facts of what these people, led by this Pied Piper, have done to undermine both our republic and any sense of decency. As a proponent of Karma, or ‘What goes around will come around’, I can only assure those diehard ‘Untrue believers’ that they too will have to account for their demented feelings. ‘What ye sow so shall ye reap’. My concern is with all those so called Liberal (Neo Liberal?) media darlings on CNN and MSNBC who play politics with the truth… all in the name of tarnishing Trump and Co. , who deserve to be tarnished. What pisses me off is when they, CNN and MSNBC hosts and phony journalistic minions, seek out the ‘Scum of the scum’ to make brownie points:
* John Bolton, warmongering and vicious Neoliberal, going on these shows and dissing Trump after sucking up to him for years. Bolton was urging the US to attack Iran for decades… and was conveniently, by the way, absent from serving in Vietnam in the late 60s even though he was a stalwart hawk.
* Madeleine Albright, former Sec. of State under Clinton- In 1996 Madeleine Albright said on national TV that 500,000 Iraqi children dead from sanctions was “worth it”. A few months later she was confirmed by the US Senate as Secretary of State and nobody even questioned her about this statement.
*William Kristol -Kristol was key to the defeat of the Clinton health care plan of 1993. In the first of what would become many strategy memos written for Republican policymakers, Kristol said the party should “kill,” not amend, President Clinton’s health care plan. A later memorandum used the phrase “There is no health care crisis,” which Senate Minority Leader Bob Dole used in his response to Clinton’s 1994 State of the Union address. Kristol was a leading proponent of the Iraq War. In 1998, he joined other foreign policy analysts (The Project for the New American Century) in sending a letter to President Clinton urging a stronger posture against Iraq. Kristol argued that Saddam Hussein posed a grave threat to the United States and its allies: “The only acceptable strategy is one that eliminates the possibility that Iraq will be able to use or threaten to use weapons of mass destruction… In the long term, it means removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. That now needs to become the aim of American foreign policy.”
These three are just a sampling of the slew of right wing ideologues who turn up on those two channels to pine against Trump. The list is so long that I won’t waste your time. Did these folks forget what really occurred in March of ’03? The illegal invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, along with the ongoing ditto for Afghanistan, was the worst foreign policy decision in generations! The Bush/Cheney Regime used disinformation, supposition and outright LIES! With the exception of talk show host Phil Donahue, who was cancelled off the air (with good ratings by the way) before the dirty deed, the so called ‘Liberal news hosts’ fell in line like the ‘Good Germans’ they were. Two examples of the disgraceful cheerleading were MSNBC’s Lester Holt, now NBC’s top news anchor and moderator for presidential debates, and little Katie Couric from NBC . Holt almost smiled as he showed viewers our ‘Shock and Awe’ bombardment of Baghdad. Little Katie walked through the halls of her station shouting ” Marines Rock!!” Of course, the right wing machine had too many news and television celebrities to name them all. Remember Larry Kudlow, now economic advisor to Trump? Larry was a big time supporter of the disgrace. How about Joe ‘Morning Joe on MSNBC’ Scarborough? He was another big time cheerleader for the illegal invasion. Now, he is such a nice warm liberal host. Nicole Wallace, who finds herself as a MSNBC hosts nowadays, was actually Bush Jr.’s Communications Director. She was all over the need to invade then. Sad.
The hypocrisy that Henry Brubaker railed against in the story is more prevalent in our current empire. What these Wizards of Empire have successfully orchestrated, for generations, is this Two Party con job that seemingly pits each against the other. Yet, when all the smoke clears, in most cases, it is just ‘More of the same’. Now, having said that, to me this current conundrum is a bit different. We have a far right wing Neo Fascist/ Neo Nazi culture that has been emboldened by the Trump Team, with help from his party. Thus, and as Woody Allen would say ‘With all due respect’, offering us a political lightweight and lifetime servant of empire like Joe Biden was the ONLY way to separate us from Trump. This was the ultimate example of ‘Lesser of Two Evils’ you will ever see. When you are knee deep in **** you don’t worry about the weather. All we of good conscience, who see through all this, can do is wait until the new year, when the obvious Neo Liberal policies of ‘Team Biden’ begin. Perhaps, finally, working stiffs nationwide will walk away from both the Republican and Democrat parties and realize where ALL our interests lie. This empire has been so thorough in tarring even the thought of socialism. Imagine suggesting that the current Democratic Party is just that? They have done this for decades, calling the Clintons and Obamas as Marxists, and now Biden and Harris et all. Sad.
If we would only begin to move toward a socialistic program, you would see the nurturing of small business over the usual pampering of corporate Amerika. All those white and blue collar ‘Trump thumpers’ and rank and file Democrats should realize how Medicare (and dental care) for all would alleviate many of their worries. Taxing the mega millionaires while instituting a regular ‘Universal Basic Income’ could keep many from despair while truly stimulating the economy. Community mortgage banks and community owned rental property would see we with not so much being able to live better lives. The bare truth is that ALL those we view on the screen or listen to on our radios are for the most part NOT even the dreaded 1%. In reality they are maybe 1/4 to 1/2% . We should know that a very rich man or woman cannot teach us anything. Thus, Henry Brubaker was correct.
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