White America still belongs to Bush

With the new Eminem music video "Mosh", Marshall Mathers joins millions of people in the very active fight to end the most anti-democractic, corrupt, oppressive, and war-crazy (all at the same time, anyway) administration in United States history.

These millions include a few famous people who, like Mathers, have connected with large parts of the white population.  The bad news is that the majority of whites in the United States would deliver George W. Bush unto themselves and the world again and again. Director Michael Moore, singer Bruce Springstein, some fellow named Bill Clinton, and another named John Kerry are people, like Mathers, who speak to, or for, lots of white people and who are working to save their country from Bush.  Paul Krugman has a slot in the New York Times, if not the ear of the masses, to deconstruct Bush and warn of discriminatory election fraud.  Gonzo journalist Dr. Hunter S. Thompson, writing in the Rolling Stone, has also weighed in with the fun-hog vote.

"Who is the authentic spokesperson for, ahem, White America?" asked Giordano in 2002 after listening to "The Eminem Show."

Until now, I would have answered that question without hesitation: George W. Bush, the spokesman for the White America that I know and fear; of the commerce-hypnotized techno-tranced wound-up mechanical clones whom I escaped, five years ago, by ducking South of the Border. I hate those people! That post-human species that - whether their presidential election is stolen or their airplane is hijacked by knife-wielding mafiosos - they sit still, they dial 911, they wait for inept authority figures to save them, they don't rock the boat, and thus they have allowed a kind of media-induced fascism to now send the former United States of America hurtling toward its final suicide mission.

But Giordano had listened carefully to "The Eminem Show": "Meet the new spokesman for White America, Marshall Mathers," he announced.

With Mathers latest broadside of Bush's and Rove's election hopes, the tight race energized by huge intense mobilizations by progressive and labor groups, and the other high-profile white men with mass appeal mentioned above, a white guy could feel pretty good about the people he's classified with on the Census.

Then there's the Black Commentator to remind one that "White America" would have put Bush in office in 2000 with a huge mandate.  And whites would do it again in 2004.

The large majorities in favor of a living wage, universal health care, and guaranteed social security and the majorities in favor of an end to the war on Iraq, the right to form a union without getting fired, and the other dreams people hold onto
would not be large majorities or even bare majorities without people of color.

Without the votes that (especially) Blacks do succeed in casting, the United States political landscape would be unabashedly fascist, except with fewer social services.

The Black Commentator discussed damning polling data indicating that whites live in a parallel moral universe opposed to reality.

One statistic cuts to the core of democracy:

Harvard Professors Michael C. Dawson and Lawrence Bobo report that 63% of whites believe that efforts to disenfranchise Blacks in Florida in 2000 were either "not a big problem" (20%), "no problem at all" (18.5%), or a "complete fabrication" of the Democrats (24.5%).  This, in answer to questions posed in 2004, as evidence mounted that the election nightmare was about to revisit the state.

Speaking from the real world, 76% of African Americans described the events of 2000 as a "big problem," 15% as "not a big problem," and 5% as "no problem at all."  Just 3.7% believe the Democrats made the whole thing up – a sliver of Black folks who must be considered mentally incompetent, since they do not have the excuse of living in the white parallel universe.

(It has just hit this reporter that when he went to a Halloween party at Wellesley College as a Republican Election Official -- 15 minutes to come up with a costume, so give me a break -- one of those "well-educated," seemingly intelligent college girls didn't believe disenfranchisement of Blacks had occurred.)

Another statistic cuts to the core of humanity:

As BC reported in February, 2002, Zogby pollsters elicited damning evidence of white disregard for Iraqi lives in the final weeks before the invasion:

Zogby pollsters asked: Would you support or oppose a war against Iraq if it meant thousands of Iraqi civilian casualties? A solid majority of white men answered in the affirmative, as did more than a third of white women. Only seven percent of African Americans favored a war that would kill thousands.

Black people watch even more television than whites, but feel no great compulsion to kill thousands of civilians.

It's not feeling so great to be a white guy who isn't totally ignorant, selfish, stupid, or all of the above.

The spokespeople for "White America" remain the like of Bush, Rush Limbaugh, and the increasingly pathetic Bill O'Reilly.  Al Franken, who isn't even famous enough yet to make my list of potential authentic, sane spokespeople, can beat up O'Reiglly with one hand tied behind his back (in a C-Span book show, in court, and in the ratings in New York City).

The Black Commentator article is not perfect.  It doesn't give the white minority it's due for showing as much intelligence, compassion, and democratic patriotism as the vast majority of Blacks.

The real flaw, though, is not asking why the majority of whites lack empathy and large numbers even regularly vote in opposition to their own economic and material interests?

Instead, the Black Commentator attacks Howard Zinn for writing "that the American people's natural compassion would come to the fore if they truly understood that we are terrorizing other people by our 'war on terror.'"  Whites in the U.S. seek the deaths of Native Americans, Asians, and Arabs in their entertainment as well as at the ballot box, the writers respond, and have no "natural compassion."  This description of the movies is only partly true -- people killing each other in general is quite popular -- and it doesn't prove this is what people want.  More important, it is quite useless as analysis.

All human beings, whites included, have enough natural compassion to oppose the slaughter of innocent human beings, regardless of the skin color of the victims.  We must ask, then, what is it that contains, subverts, and destroys this natural compassion in so many white people in the United States?

Racism, fear, ignorance, lies, manipulation, and diversion all play a role, much of it intertwining and much of it going back to the media.

The spokesperson for all people of the United States may well be Marshall Mathers and others who speak to the need for regular whites and Blacks to join together to struggle for their common needs and dreams, but the spokesman for White America is still, amazingly, George W. Bush, who just lost three debates in a row to one of those spokesmen for all the people of the United States of America.

How can people of conscience wake up White America?  Their most popular and eloquent musical spokesmen, Mathers and Springsteen, are speaking loudly; why can't more people of this reporter's skin color hear?

We must start a real war on the media, a war that will take down the false wars on drugs and terrorism along with the corrupt media, allowing people to build better lives with and for all people.

That war has to start right away.  We probably won't have such a nasty, inept, pre-fascist regime to unite us in the future.  True, people in the United States must unite with the forces for autonomy around the world to form the overwhelming majorities that will defeat military and economic terrorism sponsored by the U.S. government, but the attack on (and replacement of) the media can, should, and perhaps must be started before such networks reach full power.  (Also printed at the Black Commentator this week, computer genius Philip Emeagwali warns about the effects of Western media on youth in Africa: "We lost the war on decolonizing our minds.")

This increasingly non-impartial reporter is looking, begging for specific tactics to attack the media, especially from the man who's already writing the book on this, the people who did write a book on a lot more, and from all the co-publishers of the NarcoSphere and the people who give a damn beyond.

How do we take down the media?

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