Assessing The Mess

By Michael Bradley
Publisher
The Bradley Report

In the perhaps not so humble but at least unambiguous opinion of The Bradley Report, the United States of America is in a mess up to its armpits. America is in a political and moral quagmire and, as the saying goes, the jury is still out as to whether the nation can walk, wade, waddle, swim or battle its way back to the high ground.

The root cause of the muck and mire seem all too obvious, yet the three main rivulets of political thought, power and overweening arrogance that fed the creation of the mud pit must still be outlined if they are ever to be diverted or stopped-up.

First, it must be recognized that the nation has lost its voice. In that we mean simply, and bluntly, that the vast majority of the established American media, as The Bradley Report has stated many times before, is in the control of members of one political party, the Republicans. This is an easily established fact for anyone who wishes to spend the effort to learn who owns what in the media.

But what has happened in recent history is that the GOP ownership has found it no longer has to even attempt to provide balance in its news coverage. Of course part of this phenomenon is fueled by a Wall Street driven need to expand or be consumed, whereby local newspaper companies and small publishing groups must either risk everything to grow or wait for another company to accomplish the task for them.

When such consolidation occurs, as it has been doing for several decades now, the first cuts come in editorial, and this is complicated by advanced technology that encourages the Wall Street approved media barons to further erode actual story content by turning the remaining reporters and editors into quasi-compositors; that is, the editorial people must "make up" their own pages, which allows for reductions in production personnel and of course means the edit staff spends less time reporting, etc.

The problem is worse in the electronic media – radio and television – because it is government controlled through licenses. Anyone who doesn’t think this is susceptible to political abuse has left reality far behind.

That is why the only surprise involved in the ABC network’s "docudrama" abomination about the Clinton Administration’s history in fighting incipient terrorism is that network executives actually thought they could get away with it. That they were challenged is hopeful, but the fact that they went ahead anyway and the hard core right-wing has been defending them since should strike fear in the hearts of everyone who believes in honesty and integrity as defining factors in a free society.

It is a very disheartening truth that we no longer lead the world in illustrating what it means to be candid to and with each other. Our media is now unfortunately considered second-rate, and often third-rate, compared to the media of other nations.

Of course this is precisely what the radicals who have captured the GOP wanted in the first place, and they have obtained it. We are fed watered down and filtered news, and sometimes now, it is in fact what the intelligence agencies call ‘disinformation.’

It’s not surprising that the Internet has been seen as a saving grace, but whether it can offset the increasing perniciousness of the established media is still an open question.

Second, it seems abundantly clear that the Republican Party of today is, to paraphrase the old GM commercial that perhaps prophetically led to the demise of the Oldsmobile line of distinguished automobiles, this ‘Is not your father’s GOP.’

The Republican Party of today, with roots in the excesses of the Regan Administration, found its full bloom through its most cynical gardener, Newt Gingrich, a man whose morals, according to many published reports,* allowed him to pursue an extra-marital affair during the very time he was trying to impeach Pres. William Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal. And of course this is the man who discussed divorce with his first wife when she was in the recovery room after cancer surgery.

Such an upstanding radical bears no resemblance to the party of Abraham Lincoln, or William Howard Taft, or so many other distinguished Republicans.

Newt Gingrich, Tom Delay, Dennis Hastert, and so many other current GOP figures, and their behind-the-scenes associates such as Paul Wolfowitz, are not really Republicans; they are empire-minded iconoclasts.

These men, and some women, do not care about American history, much less the long and largely honorable history of the party they have taken over. They have one goal and one goal only: They want to push America into global domination without regard to principles, and certainly without regard to human cost.

And so far they have succeeded.

They have found their spokesman in George W. Bush. A failed man in every reasonably applied criterion, G.W. Bush has survived only because of his family position and his obvious malleability. Now, possibly, after two extraordinarily questionable elections, he may be the point man in the radicals failure. He may be the one who will take the fall for their overreaching and disastrous policies, and if so it will be a relief, albeit briefly. The problem is not Bush, as reprehensible as he has shown himself to be – likely standing as the worst president in American history – but it is in the people behind and around him. They are the problem.

If Americans follow current tradition and overwhelmingly push him aside through the mid-term elections, without concern for the structures that supported him, it will be like mowing the lawn over a particularly pernicious dandelion; without being dug out, it is bound to grow back.

One possible hope is that if George Bush and his radical Congress are denounced at the polls, enough "true Republicans," of the ‘not your father’s GOP’ stripe, will come together to prevent the radicals from regrouping and coming back within the party again.

But it is a long, long hope.

Republicans have shown themselves to be very susceptible to prejudices, and the radicals know how to play that organ chord exceptionally well. It would require a great deal of fortitude, a reawakening and an adherence to the memory of their distinguished past, before the rank and file GOP could turn out these corrupt and vile liars and cheats who clothe themselves in righteousness while in fact they undermine every American value worth holding.

And finally, there is religion. This rivulet flows deeper than the others, and therefore is more potent, filled with more rapids, and always it is more dangerous.

But in all the years of America’s rich history, albeit short by the standards of other world powers, religion has been a factor. Yet what is forgotten, or conveniently overlooked, is that it was a determinant for the Founding Father’s in assuring that the rule of law was more absolute and in fact overshadowed all religious conceptions, even those of the majority.

This was the great and unusual difference about the American revolution.

Nowhere else in the world had such an approach been taken in establishing a national government. The United States was unique. This was to be a nation that understood and recognized that people from all walks of life were, by and large, likely to believe in some afterlife. But unlike all other nations then, and ironically later, America was founded by people who understood that personal or even collective beliefs relating to mortality should not dominate political life.

It must be remembered that this criteria was sustained from the inception of the American Republic up until the so-called Reagan Revolution. After that, religion in American politics became something of a litmus test, and the radical Republicans not only capitalized on every imaginable, even hackneyed Christian prejudice, but moved far beyond the norm and essentially declared that anyone not a "born again" zealot was somehow deficient in patriotism and the moral zeal needed - they had the gall to suggest - necessary to uphold the values of the nation and its Constitution.

These people are charlatans!

They proclaim one thing while meaning another. Of the smartest and most cynical of them, their purpose is to mislead; of the others, they are believers who cannot, will not, or are unable to look deeply into whether their value system is based on historical bedrock or the quicksand of current opportunism. They are pathetic, but they currently, and arrogantly, have thrust themselves forward into the American political dialogue as though they have the only insight, the only correct view of the role of the nation.

And they are about to squander every attribute the United States has achieved, through intense and often bloody struggles this nation fought to the betterment of so many people at home and in so many parts of the world.

GOP radicals such as George Bush and Richard Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, William Frist and the Congressional majority are willing to squander everything gained by such history in a personal, subjective and greedy effort to dominate everything around them! They are drunk with the idea that America belongs to them and that they can dominate the world for their personal goals.

If they fail, which they are currently doing on virtually every level, they will point to others as the cause of their failure, and seek to rebuild their power in the shadows, basing everything on prejudices and false religious premises. The only way these people can be stopped is for the vast majority of Americans to stop being quiescent and laugh them off the national stage while simultaneously taking an active part, finally, in setting the national agenda.

As Americans we are currently losing the greatest nation in recorded history because the majority is sitting quietly, complaining to each other, while base manipulators are glorying in their ability to manipulate the prejudices of the unthinking and the plainly stupid to create a mob that looks intimidating, but in the end is just what it appears to be; that is, a shallow collection of loud-mouthed bullies relying on hollow viewpoints and hoping they will not be challenged while they scare the unwitting into following their lead. All that is needed is the courage to stand up and puncture the right-wing’s assertions, bluntly and without apology, to watch the whole ugly construction collapse of its own fatuous weight.

If average Americans finally stand up to be counted, showing that this still is the land of the free and the brave, rather than the calculating and the craven, the recovery of America’s values and its role as a leader of a free world can be regained. But the alternative, which increasingly seems like the reality under Mr. Bush and the radical GOP, is to watch as America slides downward towards history’s wastebasket, all the while clinging to power by seeking authoritarian dominance here and everywhere else.

Those are the three primary rivulets leading to the quagmire currently trapping the United States. It is up to the so-called ‘silent majority’ to no longer be pawns in the right-wing’s power games, but to instead stand up for the historical values of America. If that happens, the egotistical power brokers hoping to stand atop an American colossus, striding at will and without concern over everyone on the globe, will be finally deflated, and perhaps banished to a footnote in the nation’s ongoing history.