I like it a lot, and, as I have written before, I compare the country to a human body. Why should some organs or tissue cells get more nutrition than others? Why do we think it is good for the whole to let organs compete with each other? [I think that part of the answer here is that ’scarcity’ is beloved by power/money brokers]

In the human body, any cells which feed themselves at the expense of the whole are called cancerous. Why can’t we think of special interest narrowness as pre-cancerous? Why can’t we think of certain short-term-gain policies [like allowing more toxins in the environment] in the same way we understand that smoking shortens life?

However I was impressed by an article I read which recommended the phrase / meme “The Common Good” as a unifying principle for Democrats (or, I suppose, other parties opposed to the current corrupt regime). Hopefully, such a meme could not be misused against “good” politicians. I think it’s very hard to actually smear or libel an individual person or candidate while at the same time making a coherent argument for “The Common Good”. I suppose it might be done, but it just seems to me like any such attempt would be too transparently self-serving and voters would see the hypocrisy.

Thank you for depersonalizing my above comment and steering me back towards positive thinking and positive memes.

Thanks for the reminder to be alert to shame-on-us destructiveness in intra-party primary cycles as well as the two-party system election cycles. No wonder we get more of the same sloganeering leadership rather than new effective leadership.

Can we come up with a powerful antidote to such campaign destructiveness…..a phrase that could sink deep within the consciousness to innoculate citizens against absorbing and holding and repeating vicious memes?

See: http://www.publicintegrity.org/report.aspx?aid=194

A million dollars. A million dollars. Spent by Democrats to defeat a popular Democrat who threatened to upset the status quo. If I got five percent of a million dollars as a gift in the mail, I could parlay it into savings and investments and probably be set for life. You could comfortably employ 30 people for a whole year for one million dollars. And this one million dollars went for no other purpose than to defame a good, honest candidate on TV.

Torricelli is gone now, but most of the people responsible for that ad are still walking the halls of power (content with their minority status so long as it brings in the bucks) right now. Worse in my opinion, a large number of Democratic leaders as well as rank-and-file Dem voters, who found out later about this funding — yet sat back and remained silent because “Well, Dean is unelectable but Kerry is going to win!” … those people still think they aren’t harming America nor helping move the mainstream further Right.

As I say, we face a double gauntlet. Rage against Bush and Rush and the rest of the Republicans is a #1 priority, but getting rid of these Vichy Democrats is a very close #2.

They do it through language by mental imagery….” I don’t want the smoking gun to be in the form of a mushroom cloud”.. Now, who said there was a strong potential for a nuclear attack from Iraq on the United States?..certaintly, not Condi or Cheney. I just don’t know how I drew the conclusion that Saddam had to be taken out.

Seeing how Rush Limbaugh is so eager to confess his guilt as a fraud, I think I’ll be big enough to confess my ignorance in not understanding how I was conned by Bush and his political machine..prior to getting educated online from writers like Maha and Digby who understood the dynamics of rhetoric and where able to illustrate the snares that the Bush machine were setting for chumps like me who prided themselves in their ability to reason. I didn’t know how to identify a strawman, I didn’t understand the concept framing an argument so that reason would bring you to the place the presenter of the argument wanted you to be.And I didn’t understand the entrapment of hypotheticals(you know, the nuclear suitcase bomb..the one that justifies torture). Anyway, I have no shame in admitting I was duped and I’m thankful for those who set me straight to the con job that Bush pulled on me and the American public.

God bless America!

Seems to me that your statements about the media are based upon a premise that a ‘24hr bullshit news cycle’ is and will always be all-powerful, like some severe/authority father who decides ‘truth’ and controls the minds and actions of the whole family. Will the wife and kids never question his ‘word’ or learn of other perspectives about what ‘father’ tells them? Will the public never get beyond what is ‘fed’ to them?

The steady and slow change I see is that citizens are questioning what they have been led to believe by politicians or by the 24hr news serving up what politicians say. It takes a while for trusting or immature [those you call ‘not that smart’] people to comprehend how con artists ply their trade, just as it takes some experience for a starry-eyed bride or groom to learn that honeymoons are not the whole reality of marriage.

Last comment for you…..having grown up in severe poverty [not enough food, cardboard in shoes….], I personally resent and most want to admonish you for ‘and the poor had their drug dealers’ prejudicial flippancy.

Steadily and slowly will not do in the 24hr bullshit news cycle. I read your post and you have some good things to say but unfortunately you are mostly wrong. Don’t fool yourself; we are not that smart (you’re included). I believe Maha’s question was really is there a media left? My answer is no. Citizenship=Algebra? Blogspeak=Orwell=bullshit. There is no media left. Only corporate ConArtists and bloggers. I like to think of the media as the used to be middle class. Remember when we had rich, middle and poor? The rich didn’t need media, they had money, the middle class had the networks telling us what we wanted to hear, and selling soap, and the poor had their drug dealers. Our lack of media is going to take some time to really make a difference, but it will.

Yeah, they’re gettin’ wise to his act!