brainwashing continues

Let the brainwashing continue continue … 09-25-04

LET'S ALL SING A SONG:
“I’m so happy I’ve got Rush Limbaugh
To do my thinking now for me
Now I can kick back, pop my prozac
Vote for Bush and watch teevee …” ©2004 Al Chidester

Doctor Germ, Chemical Ali, sound like bad guys from a Marvel comic. Where’s Spiderman? Praise be to God we have BUSHMAN to save us now! Let the Holy War begin!

LET'S SING ANOTHER SONG:

SLEAZY POLITICIAN MP3 available by email request
c/o Leftneck Records
©2004 Alan Chidester, aka Fiddlin’ Big Al
Box 216
Oakesdale WA 99158
alchidester@juno.com

"CHO (use as needed)
I’m a sleazy politician, you bet I make a bunch
Give me million dollars maybe someday we’ll do lunch
Your gonna neeeeeeed my help somedaaaaaay
You can vote us out of office, but we’ll never - - - - go awaaaaay

"We’ve got to hunker in the bunker a suckin’ down the oil
While terror after terror plot our government must foil
There’s no room here for error, and it’s no time for dissent
And no time to ever wonder how our treasure’s bein’ spent

"Politicians talkin’ screamin’ say “You gotta VOTE FOR ME!”
But there’s so much mud a-slingin’ that your ballot you can’t see
There’s no time here to think much ‘bout a maybe better plan
And no way to guess on this Earth who may be the better man

"Lies and hype are flyin’ like a speedin’ bullet train
And issues without answer bounce around your fevered brain
One man says the futures dark and the other says it’s bright
But no one asks the questions to reveal which one is right

"I promise you NO TAXES and with that we’ll buy the moon
And give each and every one a taste from Uncle’s silver spoon
So line up and mark your ballots without ever askin’why
“Cause if you get an answer it will surely be a lie

"I’m a sleazy politician, when I started out I cared
Now seduced by power and money, I just gotta get my share
Now I vote my conscience with my wallet in my hand
If you follow in my footsteps you will someday understand

"CHO
I’m a sleazy politician, you bet I make a bunch
Give me million dollars maybe someday we’ll do lunch
Your gonna neeeeeeed my help somedaaaaaay
You can vote us out of office, but we’ll never - - - - go awaaaaay

"We accuse some bad dictator of an evil master plan
To possess all of the weapons that were made by our own hand
And then we send our troops a’marchin’ to another foreign land
To make another new dictator come under our command

"And were never ever learnin’ from this déjà vu again
As history repeats itself we just get fooled again
You push all of our buttons and we all line up to vote
And some sleazy politician grabs our futures by the throat

"200 years of history have made this country great
But Truth, Liberty and Justice just caught the midnight freight
I’ll accuse my fine opponent of some heinous traitor’s crime
And frame him as the culprit for errors that were mine

"If you’ve got a problem and want me to take a stand
Get a million dollars and put it in my hand
Your gonna neeeeeeed my help somedaaaaaay
You can vote us out of office, but we’ll never, never, ever go awaaaaay

"CHO (use as needed)
I’m a sleazy politician, you bet I make a bunch
Give me million dollars maybe someday we’ll do lunch
Your gonna neeeeeeed my help somedaaaaaay
You can vote us out of office, but we’ll never - - - - go awaaaaay"

Let the brainwashing continue ...

Let the brainwashing continue …

Remember the Carter-Reagan debates. Every time Jimmy opened his mouth, Ronny would exclaim “There you go again …”

Now we have the Bush-Kerry face off. Every time Johnny opens his mouth, Georgy says
“Flip-flop… he can’t make up his mind … he’s confused …” and on and on in that vein.

This deep (for George) intellectual analysis of his opponent’s position is all we are bound to hear from our President from now until the votes are counted or not counted as the case may be.

Today Donny (Rumsfeld) said an imperfect election (in Iraq) is better than no election at all. Perhaps he is drawing from our American experience of four years ago.

What I hear daily from John Kerry is the same consistent intellectual depth and facility that I first encountered when read his book The New War (published 1997) and discovered that there was a lot more to this man than had been presented to me previously. The New War is an alarming analysis of the security situation that we found ourselves in four years before the 911 attack. As we look back, Senator Kerry at that time possessed 20/20 foresight and all but predicted the situation we face today.

What I hear daily from George W. Bush is the tactic of “muddying the waters”, which is what you are supposed to do when you’ve got nothing else. Bush and his supporters in right-wing squawk-radio grind away on their “flip-flop” theme concerning Kerry, and do a full court press of ridicule against everyone who disagrees with them.

“Folks … you won’t believe, in fact I can’t believe it myself, what John Kerry said this morning! The Kerry campaign just continues to implode!” (Rush Limbaugh’s opening teaser 9/23/04)

The right-wing cheerleaders are telling us what to think everyday of the week with reruns on the weekends in case we’ve missed the point. Rush claims we need only listen to him to get our news. We are discouraged from listening to CNN, CBS, NBC, reading the New York Times, Washington Post, because they are the biased “Liberal Media” who, of course, can’t be trusted. At least Dan Rather admits his mistake. (I suggest that the memos passed to CBS may have been a Republican dirty trick designed to discredit the aforesaid “biased liberal media” and embarrass the Kerry campaign . The memos have not been proven false, just not able to be proven authentic.) George Bush has not and never will admit his numerous mistakes (both in policy and speech). - “I stand behind all my misstatements.”

The playground catcalls (flip-flop, flip-flop, Johnny is a flip-flop) and outright distortions of the facts on the ground both at home and abroad (in Iraq, etc.) constitute the Bush campaign.

Oh gosh, silly me. I forgot the earthshaking issues of gay marriage, “in God we trust” in the pledge of allegiance, the plague of flag-burning, the “abortion holocaust” … all those wedge issues designed to bamboozle the Christian right into ignoring the deep ignorance and incompetence of the present administration and voting for more of the same … “He’s against abortion and those horrible immoral gays and he’s for God!”

We are smarter than this.

Let the brainwashing begin

I write leters to the editor and I'm trying to quit. I really need to stop. Maybe blogging will save me. The newspaper audience is so small and narrow minded here in Eastern Washington. Here's my typical "edlet". This writing was in response to a series of weird conversations I've had over several years with a random sampling of folks. I should perhaps take more care in posting this initial BLOG - think about it, put my best foot forward and promptly into my mouth.
Here's a quick account of one of those weird conversations followed by a letter I wrote quite recently: When House Speaker Tom Foley was running for re-election I, being a trade unionist (American Federation of Musicians) and Democrat, dutifully put up his signs at my home (I live in an old 1892 saloon/drugstore in the middle of a wheat country town south of Spokane WA) and business (I run a bookbindery and publishing company for words and music).

One of the older ladies in town stopped by the bindery and pressed a fat envelope in my hand as she asked "Did you know that a vote for Tom Foley is a vote for Satan's World Government?" I professed my ignorance of this factoid, took the proffered envelope (vowing silently to find out if I could henceforth succeed in business with the front door locked.) Its contents were a Revelation to me! Thank God, my eyes were opened at last. There in my hands was a chart of the membership of all the national administrations dating back to Kennedy/Johnson era and beyond which identified every powerful politician from that time forward (with ONE notable exception) as a member of the Trilateral Commission or the Bilderbergers, and thus a willing participant in the plot to establish Satan's World Government. I was much releived to discover that ONE brave young man had resisted the proffered blandishments of the Evil One and had held on to his political soul. The only exception to this list of the demon possessed was DAN QUAYLE, though his boss, GEORGE H. W. BUSH, was guilty as sin and a Conductor on the hellbound midnight flyer. Suddenly it all became clear - this was wheat country and Dan was okay because he couldn't spell "potato". I started writing "edlets".

TYPICAL "EDLET" I recently sent to the local paper - circulation: who knows?

Consider an old saying about conversation: if you want to get along with folks, don’t discuss religion or politics. Nowadays we have mixed the two to such a degree that we’ve got no chance at all to get along with one another, and while we are shouting our sloganized religious and political beliefs at our neighbors, we’ve got no chance at all to remember quaint old Bible sayings like “Love thy neighbor” and “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” Lately I’ve been so busy fending off radio broadcast attacks on my sanity, I can’t remember who said these things, Jesus or Charlie Sack. [Charlie Sack is the resident street philosopher of Palouse WA, though he prefers lager beer or whiskey to the traditional Socratic hemlock. He also writes letters to the editor.]

I called my brother one afternoon while driving around the Palouse and made the mistake of bringing up a subject I’d heard discussed minutes before on a squawk-radio program. I strongly disagreed with the President of the United States’ stand (everything has become a “stand” nowadays, like we are laying in wait for a deer to wander into our sights) on some issue I dare not repeat here for fear of being stalked and shot at, and innocently said so to my brother. Wrong move. He and I were raised by the same parents in the same town, went to the same schools, were taught by the same teachers, went to the same Sunday school and church. He said, “I don’t know how you became so twisted?” and I thought to myself “How did he become so twisted?” I’ve got the same ideas and beliefs about America, her Constitution and government, about fair play and fair dealings and Liberty and Justice for all that I’ve always had. I learned all of this in civics classes in junior high and high school. In Sunday school and church I heard how wonderful America was because we have freedom of religion and freedom of speech. I believed it all and still do. Experience and observation has taught me that we continually fall short of these ideas and ideals.

In exercise of these two freedoms we hear lots of talk about “values” i.e. “family values” “Christian values”. Most of this free speech centers around things like ten-ton tablets of the ten commandments in an Alabama court house, prayer in the schools, the phrase “under God” in the pledge of allegiance, “in God we trust” on our money and whether or not we’re allowed officially to deny certain dignity and rights to people whose “lifestyle” and “orientation” we disagree with. We quote scripture as if it were part of the Constitution and Bill of Rights. We plot to elect certain candidates for Senator and President so we can have a chance to get Supreme Court justices who will overturn decisions we disagree with. We’re really “turned on and tuned in” to politics, to echo a phrase from Tim Leary, whose ashes are now orbiting 300 miles above Earth - and we are absolutely out of our minds.

America is our baby and we’re arguing with one another over who has more of a right to call this baby their own. We go before wise King Solomon who says “we’ll cut it in half” and to his great surprise and dismay we say “okey dokey!” As a result we are so divided politically that there is no middle ground. “If you’re not with us, you’re against us” is the political thought for our day. We are egged on daily by the squawk radio “entertainers” who create and advance controversy because it sells. As it turns out, my brother and I have been listening to the very same radio show. He swallows it whole – I spit it out in disgust. We’ve both been twisted. I suggest we untwist ourselves. It’s the last thing the people who have twisted us want. Again echoing Tim Leary, now passing over Bora Bora, let’s “TURN OFF, TUNE OUT and DROP OVER” to our neighbors and talk about the things that unite us – our real and true God given human values of your family and my family that have nothing whatever to do with the spurious controversies fomented by the righteous hucksters of our current worldwide political and religious manias.