"The moment the door clicked shut, Dominic felt a rush of claustrophobia. It made no difference that the walls were see-through. This was a vacuum-sealed room. That meant there was no outside source of air. What was already present inside when they shut the door was it. There was no background noise whatsoever. The silence was so absolute that Dominic could hear himself breathing. It gave him the creeps."
When I wrote that passage for a thriller called Tightrope (Penguin Putnam 1999), I was referring to a specialized room called a Faraday cage, a Plexiglass, acrylic-lined, copper-wire mesh encased room specially designed to completely shield all radio frequency transmissions.
In other words, a bug-proof room even Dick Cheney would be proud of.
Recently, I had a flashback to that scene while sitting in a darkened den with my conservative Republican dad and step-mom, watching Bill O'Reilly on television.
Trapped, in a claustrophobic vacuum-sealed room where free-thinking ideas and intelligent discourse are shielded from going out or coming in.
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"Have you lost your rabbit-ass mind?" is what my daddy used to say to me, but no, I'm serious.
You should all read, "White-Haired Guy Gets Mad," a last-page essay by Pulizter Prize-winning conservative Republican columnist, George F. Will, in the August 13 edition of Newsweek. It's a flattering piece about Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd.
Yeah, Dodd I said.
But the essay isn't really about Chris Dodd, though he doesn't forget about him. The point is that Dodd's dad was apparently a prosecutor who assisted Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson at the Nuremberg trials, and Dodd is about to publish a collection of letters written during that time period from his dad--a future senator from Connecticut--to his mom.
Then, Will takes the improbable step of recommending another book: Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy, by Charlie Savage of the Boston Globe. (That's right. He plugged a book by a Globe writer. Would I steer you wrong?)
Read More »It can also be found at my blog: http://deaniemills.com
I took a quote from a high-ranking Bush administration official, who said, "The heart of darkness is the president," and compared him to the character in the Joseph Conrad novel whose unchecked power drove him mad--and I updated it, using recent Washington Post articles from their psychiatric columnist, Shankar Vendantam. What emerges is a chilling portrait of the timelessness of the Conrad classic's study of a man and a society driven mad by power, corruption, ego, and greed.
Come see me at either site and feel free to leave comments. I look forward to seeing you there.
Guys, they've just put up another one of my blogs on the Huffingtonpost.com page, "Off the Bus." It's called, "The Problem With Hillary," and I'm proud that it's featured above the fold, like my first one, "Maybe It's Time" was.
It's about the Hillary-haters out there and my surprising discoveries when I looked into just how many there are, how much they hate her--I even asked some neo-con friends of mine for comments--and examines the question: Do we really want to put America THROUGH this, once a bitterly-fought general election campaign heats up and the 527's go to work?
Come see me at "Off the Bus" and leave comments! Thanks, guys.
Michael Gordon wrote a very fine book about the Iraq War, called COBRA II--I read it--but anyone who has read his dispatches to the New York Times for any length of time knows that he is the Bush administration's preeminent mouthpiece on the war. Whenever they want to sell something to the American people, they give Gordon all kinds of access and he dutifully reports exactly what they want people to hear.
It's not that Gordon doesn't care about the troops; he does. It's just that I think he is a True Believer, and as such, his reports must be considered suspect. However, the TIMING of this report or that one is often much more critical to knowing what the White House is doing re the war than what the article actually SAYS.
Exhibit #1: His July 24, 2007 roadside bomb: "U.S. is Seen in Iraq Until at Least '09."
Read More »The clearest indication of that can be contrasted by two incidents; first, the bizarre dog-and-pony show Bush put on for loyal conservative mouthpieces, in which his upbeat, even jocular, mood seemed to fool most of them except for Peggy Noonan, who thought that, in a time of war, it was not only unseemly, but a possible indication of mental instability. (Not like we haven't tried to tell you, Peggy.)
The second took place when our new secretary of defense, Robert Gates, broke down in front of a roomful of Marines at the annual Marine Corps Association dinner while talking about "the Lion of Fallujah," Maj. Douglas Zembiec, who was killed in Iraq during his fourth deployment, in May. Read More »
I was excited to be invited to participate, but when they selected my blog to feature above the fold, as they say in actual real-true journalism, I was thrilled enough to actually respond to their e-mail like Chandler on "Friends:" "Oh. My. GOD. Could I BE any more thrilled?" Read More »
She was a great Texas broad in the truest sense of the word: strong, fearless, great-hearted, smart, and not reluctant to stand up to her larger-than-life husband, who was variously described as "difficult," "driven," "headstrong," "ambitious," "powerful," and who could be bullying, unfaithful, and crude.
You know, I've read quite a few accolades about the indomitable Lady Bird Johnson today; all about her contribution to conservation and the environment and the "beautification" of the country. They paint a powerful portrait of a strong-willed political wife, married to a veritable force of nature in the midst of very troubled times, who went on to leave quite a legacy in her own right. It's all true.
But I remember how it was back when she first started to draw attention to the cause she loved so fiercely and to which she dedicated her life, and it wasn't such a bouquet of compliments, back then.
They laughed at her.
Read More »"In Mosul, in 2003, it felt like we were making the city a better place…(but now, on his third deployment), "We killed a man who was setting a roadside bomb. And when we searched the bomber's body, we found identification showing that he was a sergeant in the Iraqi Army.
"I thought, What are we doing here? Why are we still here? We're helping guys that are trying to kill us. We help them in the day. They turn around at night and try to kill us.
"If we stayed here for five, even ten more years, the day we leave here these guys will go crazy. It would go straight into a civil war. That's how it feels, like we're putting a band-aid on this country until we leave here."--Staff Sgt. David Safstrom, Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 325th Airborne Infantry, 82nd Airborne Division.
"In 2003, 2004, 100 percent of the soldiers wanted to be here, to fight this war. Now, 95 percent of my platoon agrees with me." (that we should get out.)--Sgt. First Class David Moore, platoon sergeant., same unit, self-described "conservative Texas Republican"
"The Iraqi Army would not fight with us. Some actually picked up weapons and fought against us…Before that fight, there were a few true believers. After that, I don't think you'll find a true believer in this unit. They're paratroopers. There's no question they'll fulfill their mission. But they're fighting now for pride in their unit, professionalism, loyalty to their fellow soldiers, and chain of command."--Capt. Douglas Rogers, same unit.
"I don't believe we should be here in the middle of a civil war. We've all lost friends over here. Most of us don't know what we're fighting for anymore. We're serving our country and our friends, but the only reason we go out every day is for each other.
"I don't want any more of my guys to get hurt or die. If it was something I felt righteous about, maybe. But for this country and this conflict, no, it's not worth it."--Sgt. Kevin O'Flarity, squad leader, same unit
(source: "As Allies Turn Foe,Disillution Rises in Some G.I.'s," by Michael Kamber, New York Times, May 28, 2007.)
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The catastrophic damage caused by the Bush administration to everything from our standing in the world community to a bankrupted budget, from inaction on global warming to the plundering of national parks, from the theft of American civil liberties to the Bible-izing of science and enforced morality from high school sex ed to foreign aid, from the selling of the United States to the highest bidder to the lockdown of the congress, from the polarization of the population to the death and destruction caused by an unneccessary war--I simply don't have the space here to enumerate all of the Gordian knots that will have to be untangled by whoever occupies the Oval Office next. Read More »
(I could not have imagined that this would happen before his successor had even finished out two terms. The noise was so deafening at the time that I figured it would take several generations.)
But no matter how stressed and upset about it all I would get, Clinton himself would always smile and say that he trusted the American people because they were smarter than the media realized. He repeated it in his autobiography. And indeed, no matter how scurrilous and utterly absurd the wild accusations hurled against him by the Right, his approval ratings remained strong for a president under seige--even after he admitted his own wrongdoing.
It was as if the vast majority of the American people could somehow see through all the smoke and mirrors to the truth, and could realize what really mattered.
After 9/11, I think most Americans literally suffered from post traumatic stress syndrome, and a cunning and opportunistic Republican machine took advantage of that by hyping fear and dread rather than inspiration day after day after day, which explains why their skillfull seduction of the mainstream media acted as a sort of siren song to people who would normally have had more sense, thus leading us into a disastrous horror of a war and four more miserable years of Mad King George.
They're getting it now, though. They're beginning to realize that they were not only lied to, but manipulated in the most crass of ways, and they are pissed.
And yet, the media keeps getting blindsided and blinkered by a Republican talking machine that is still very good at framing debate and dominating discussion--even so far as Democratic presidential debate questions, which seem to come straight out of a Right Wing instruction booklet, and a media that continues to project either-or absolutism.
For instance, you either "support the troops" or you "voted for a phased redeployment." That kind of thing.
And at first, I felt my anxiety growing again, thinking, Here they go again. We're screwed.
But then I started to do a little research, and what I found out surprised me and actually encouraged me. And that's what I want to talk about today. My next post, I'm going to discuss how the Democrats can capitalize on that in this campaign season--not just the candidates, but activists and bloggers as well.
In a March 23 Huffingtonpost.com blog, Mark Buchanan wrote:
"Something seems a little out of whack between the mainstream media and the American people...The pattern is familiar. Polls show that most Americans want our government to stop its unilateral swaggering, and to try to solve our differences with other nations through diplomacy. But when...Nancy Pelosi visited Syria...a poll had 64 percent of American in favor of negotiations...Yet this didn't stop the outpouring of media alarm.
"I wonder whether this media distortion also persists because it doesn't meet with enough criticism, and if that's partially because many Americans think that what they see in major political media reflects what most other Americans really think--when actually, often it doesn't."--A New Silent Majority, Mark Buchanan, May 23, 2007
Buchanan writes about a psychological term called "pluralistic ignorance"--a type of social misperception. He uses one example of college kids thinking everybody else drinks much more heavily than they do.
The problem with pluralistic ignorance is, of course, that the noisiest minority dominates media attention, and do it in such a way that lazy journalists will report the myth with absolutely no research or basis in fact, such as when Andrea Mitchell reported numerous times on the NBC evening news that the majority of American people wanted Bush to pardon Scooter Libby--even though polls consistently showed that ONLY 18 PERCENT REALLY DID.
In the New York Times, Paul Krugman writes in "Lies, Sighs, and Politics":
"...So far as I can tell, no major news organization did any fact-checking of either debate. And post-debate analyses tended to be horse-race stuff mingled with theater criticism: assessments not of what the candidates said, but how how they "came across."...
"News organizations should fight the shallowness of the format by providing the facts--not embrace it by reporting on a presidential race as if it were a high-school popularity contest.
"For if there's one thing I hope we've learned from the calamity of the past six and a half years, it's that it matters who becomes president--and that listening to what candidates say about substantive issues offers a much better way to judge potential presidents than superficial character judgments...
"I don't know if this country can survive another four years of Bush-quality leadership." (June 8, 2007)
And yet, listen to Chris Matthews wax rhapsodic about how Mitt Romney has "shoulders you could land a 747 on" and the supposed sex appeal of Fred Thompson. (Good lord.)
In another NY Times op-ed, "Authentic? Never Mind," Krugman exposes how a swooning right-wing machine emphasizes how "authentic" Fred Thompson is, even though the red pickup they claim he drove in his senatorial campaign was only rented for a photo-op. He actually drives a black Lincoln Continental.
And don't even get me started on how Rudy Guliani has become a tragedy profiteer par excellance--making millions giving speeches about how heroic he was during his 9/11 photo op--a myth the media, so far, continues to propagate.
There are many myths built up to legendary status by the media, but if you look at the stats, you see that most Americans are not as obsessed with, say, Anna Nicole, as FOX news appears to have been.
I mean, literally.
To give just one example of a cable news report--CNN devoted one-fourth of its broadcast news time on the Iraq war; MSNBC, fully a third. But FOX news spent barely 15 percent of its time on the war, preferring instead to emphasize stories on Anna Nicole Smith and various sensational crimes.
In a Media Matters report, "Special Report: A Conservative America is a Myth," some TWENTY YEARS of independent, nonpartisan polling revealed the truth:
69% of Americans believe that the government "should care for those who can't care for themselves"
77% think Congress should increase the minimum wage
61% support embryonic stem cell research
62% want to protect Roe v Wade
60% are in favor of some kind of gun control
75% of Americans would pay more for electricity if it were generated by renewable sources
79% want higher emissions standards on American automobiles
69% think it is the responsibility of the government to make sure all Americans have access to health coverage and
76% find access to health care more important than maintaining the Bush tax cuts.
In other words, the country is NOT moving steadily to the right, as most media claim. Most of us fall toward the center, to be sure, but the majority are far more in line with Democratic ideals and principles than Republican.
Meanwhile, in a brilliant essay by Naomi Wolf in the Washington Post, "The Image of Helplessness," Ms. Wolf points out that even as women are achieving an all-time level of success and achievement across the board in male-dominated fields, and even though there are scores of actresses who are active in all kinds of worthy causes while they work and start families and run production companies--
This kind of empowered, right-on female role modeling scarcely registers in the pop culture landscape. There, a young woman sobbing helplessly in the back seat of a police car as she's hauled off to jail is the new Miss America--the new mass icon of popular fascination.
But I maintain that it is not our culture that is obsessed with these images, but the male-dominated media culture that is. After all, if a full three minutes of serious newscasts out of eighteen available minutes is devoted to the faux-story along with round-the-clock entertainment news...what else is there to watch? Does it mean we all WANT to see it just because we turn on the news? Or does it mean the corporate structure buying advertising time THINKS that's what we all want to see and so crams it down our throats?
When Dan Rather simply pointed this fact out, referring to the dismal failure of Katie Couric's tenure as news anchor at CBS, he was only stating what we all knew. After all, what do ratings actually measure?
That's right. ACTUAL VIEWERS. And right now, Couric's ratings are lower than at any other time in CBS news HISTORY, even as her news director was fired and the new guy threw out all her warm-and-fuzzy infotainment segments in order to bring back in the hard news she ran off.
Oh, and sat her behind the desk, rather than perched on the corner, showing leg.
Low ratings aren't the only barometer to the American frame of mind these days.
In a fascinating piece by William Rivers Pitt, "A Time to Reap", he writes:
"There is something hapapening today in America. With the right kind of ears, you can hear it in the sound of millions of brows slowly furrowing in anger and disgust. It feels like those tense moments just before the eruption of a summer thunderstorm, those moments when the air is electric, the ozone reek of spent lightning fills the world, and you know something very loud is about to happen.
"What is happening, what can be heard and smelled and sensed all across the land, is the cresting wave of rage, betrayal and fury that is, finally, roaring across the shores of our collective American heart. After more than six years of lies, theft, graft, corruption, manipulation, and misconduct, just about every living person wtihin these borders finds themselves today gripped by the slow seethe, directed inward as much as outward, of one who has come around to see just how much of a fool they've been played for."
He points out to a poll showing a whopping 81 PERCENT of Americans who think the country is headed in the wrong direction.
Pitt calls it An Awakening.
He feels that this outrage crosses all political spectrums, starting with disillusionment over the war and moving on to you name it, and says that no matter how many differences divide us, it is this sense of betrayal and outrage than unites us.
He holds Democrats accountable for taking charge:
"Potential must become actual, actions must have consequences, and our faith in each other and what binds us together must be restored. Enough of talk. The subpoenas must be sent, the oaths must be required, the truths must be told, and the consequences of betrayals must be felt."
And Republicans, he says, must take their medicine:
"Matters have progressed beyond the pettiness of parties, because teh problems before us can no longer be deflected with spin and blather. Enough of talk. The subpoenas must be welcomed, the oaths required, the truth embraced, and the consequences suffered."
Pitt's essay effectively nails the disconnect between media talking-point regurgitation and trivia-flooding and the real anxiety and anger and frustration at that same media by the American people, who are, after all, so much smarter than they are given credit for.
Only a handful of times in our nation's history has one election held such a crucible of importance to our country and her people.
As Democrats, we can't blow this opportunity because so much more is at stake than individual careers or ambition-trajectories or party loyalties.
In my next post, I'll discuss some ways we CAN take charge--of the debate, of the political framing, of the media spin, and of our collective future.
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