Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Own Your Reality? (forwarded from Geri Wittig)

[Michael Arnold Mages <marnoldm@du.edu>]

----------

From: Geri Wittig <gwittig@adobe.com>
Date: Thu, 07 Oct 2004 08:35:17 -0700
To: soft_skinned_space <empyre@lists.cofa.unsw.edu.au>
Subject: Re: [-empyre-] Do You Still Own Your Reality?

I completely understand the sentiment of this post - the Bush opposition
movement in this country has been critiquing the power of the misinformation
and fear mongering that comes out of the Bush administration - this is not a
new observation and has been duly noted for years. I watched the
Cheney/Edwards debate and had the same analysis of Cheney's uncanny ability
to hypnotically put forth inaccuracies that an uninformed public would take
at face value without question, but to lump all of "America's reality" into
one basket is a disservice to the many in the trenches who have been
fighting the good fight to oppose the Bush administration in all of it's
varied negative policy impacts upon the world. For example, in these last
few weeks of this campaign, the work that many grassroots voter registration
efforts have been doing are showing results - the late voter registration
has been surging. A friend of mine who recently moved to North Carolina, a
Republican stronghold, informed me that late voter registration is running
60% Democrat, 12% Republican. Yes, we need to continue to critique and point
out the insane "reality" that the Bush administration is trying to pull over
the uninformed American public's eyes, but we need to also acknowlege where
the work in action is gaining some ground. On a psychological level it's
going to be important to help boost any momentum that is being gained by the
Bush opposition, as it's going to be very important for getting out those
left leaning voters who do not support Bush's policies, but who haven't
voted in years because they've become disillusioned with the system and have
gone into inaction. Critique is vital, but without action and
acknowledgement of the successes that that action may be attaining, the
critique is futile.

geri wittig



> (((((((((( We the Blog Update: Do You Still Own Your Reality? ))))))))))
> 
> October 07, 2004
> 
> The Republicans are heightening the attack, ramping up their spin
> strategies to reinforce disinformation in order to fool the country
> into re-election.
> 
> Straight out of the playbook from Orwell's 1984...
> 
> They continue to retool their highly refined doublespeak tactics to
> maintain a stranglehold on the reality of unsuspecting Americans.
> 
> Have the Republicans co-opted your reality?
> 
> According to columnist Tina Brown in the Washington Post discussing the
> VP debate:
> 
> "Cheney found a more primitive way to bluff with a bad hand... In a
> culture of blatherers, Cheney intimidates with his silences, his
> stingers, and above all his awesome capacity to stare down the evidence
> and assert that black is white."
> 
> Despite the fact that this week, the administration's own Paul Bremer,
> Don Rumsfeld, and the weapons investigator Charles Duelfer have all
> declared the reason's for going to war were deeply flawed,  as well as
> the so called follow-up plan, Bush and Cheney not only stand their
> ground, the tighten their tenuous grip on a fictional narrative
> designed to disguise their true ambition to control the oil-rich middle
> east.
> 
> The real issue in this election though, is America going to wake up to
> the dream (or nightmare) it finds itself in? Can we lift the veil on the
> disinformation pouring out of the White House. Can we take command of
> our own reality?
> 
> Or has America's reality been permanently hijacked by the Republicans
> and their media propaganda machine?
> 
> 
>