A few less-than-fully-prostituted members of our media are beginning to remark the implications of Obamas drone addiction.
In the seventh chapter fourth section of Democracy in Americas second and final part Alexis de Toqueville has the following to say about the press:
In aristocratic times every man is always tied in a very tight manner to several of his fellow citizens so that he could scarcely be oppressed without his peers rushing to his aid. In times of equality every individual is naturally isolated. There are no hereditary allies on whose support he may draw no class whose sympathy with him is assured. He may easily be set apart from others and then ground under foot with impunity. In our day then an oppressed citizen has only one means of defending himself: that is to appeal to the entire nation and if it turns a deaf ear to the human race. There is but one means furthermore of doing this: the press.
Thus the freedom of the press is infinitely more precious in democratic nations than in all others. Only that freedom can cure most of the evils that equality produces. Equality isolates and weakens people but the press places at the side of each individual a very powerful weapon. Equality removes the support of his neighbors from every individual but the press permits him to call to his aid all his fellow citizens and all humanity. Print has hastened the progress of equality yet is also one of its best correctives.
… All of these things political assemblies parliamentary institutions popular elections conduce up to a certain point to the servitude of the individual; but this servitude will never be complete as long as the press is free. The press is the democratic instrument of liberty par excellence. (my translation)
It is no indifferent measure of our nations ruin of course that the press as a whole has betrayed the role described by Toqueville. Instead of giving a voice to the lonely victim it whitewashes the abuses of the oppressor; instead of crying foul upon official propaganda it manufactures supporting evidence" to give substance to lies. When a corpse rots and fumes in plain sight our journalists shift the wind with effusive bombast and redirect attention with glister and inanity. In a crowning disgrace our mainstream media have adopted this servile role not because resisters among them have been blacklisted jailed or beaten up but because they themselves long to advance the cause of progressive despots as a hot-blooded harlot longs to add a prince to her client list.
Yet perhaps we are about to sound the bottom of the abyss. I wrote recently of the mainstream American medias obstinate refusal to report the truth about President Obamas drone attacks which had already exceeded George Bushs by a factor of six to one as of early last fall. Our media have not suddenly risen from the dead; but the Administrations hubristic determination to expand the parameters of its strikes still further have lately nudged its arrogance onto our creaky wobbly journalistic radar. Alex Mangini writes of a rare red alert" from a most shocking source:
Renowned Liberal MSNBC talk show host and political commentator Rachel Maddow spoke out against President Barack Obamas divisive drone program last night describing the tactic as the wholesale embrace of a secretive psuedosic-legal deniable Orwellian means of raining death from the sky all over the world even in places where were not technically at war."
The fact that we know that these things are happening and that our government considers these things deniable is frankly one of the more Orwellian things about being an American in the 21st century" Maddow said. (1)
I dont know if its possible to discern from a TV broadcast that a verbal commentator cant spellonly P.G. Wodehouse could make such a call; but nobody at the planetary information ganglion called MSNBC can think straight on a given day so Ms. Maddows remarks are indeed cause to stop the presses. Shes actually getting it or beginning to. She and her peers have elevated to executive-order dictatorship a cold-blooded killer with megalomaniac ambitions. As a mere senator this man contented himself with voting (on a rare occasion when he voted more than present") to allow the ambush of a fully viable fetus induced to exit the birth canal the attending physician" ready with a syringe big enough to suck out the childs brain. Now this sociopath has graduated to designing his own techniques of child-murder. He who saw in Treyvon Martin his own son does not hesitate to order the vaporizing of children much younger than the strapping Martin because their father happens to be on his kill list". He who insists that all assault weapons" (a.k.a. firearms) should be banned if a single child may be spared the nightmare of Sandy Hook has no compunction about the toddlers who become the collateral damage of his drones.
Finally… finally a fewa very fewmembers of the American Fourth Estate are starting to get it. Progressive ideologues thought they were electing Captain Kirk to steer the Enterprise beyond the known universe using the Constitutions ashes as accelerant. Single professional women of a certain age thought that they were acquiring a rich benign uncle who would spread the safety net once provided by that despised and exterminated species the virtuous husband. Welfare queens thought that the Supreme Sugar-Daddy had arrived in a shiny Cadillac with silver hood-ornament and mammoth tailfins. The wandering groping souls of the fantasy-tainment industry like Jamie Foxx thought that our lord and savior" had deigned to occupy the White House. (2) In the same vein but more pitifully Chris Rock though that he had at last found himself a worthy father and mother. (3) Jim Who Speaks for God?" Wallis and other self-appointed custodians of societys tortured conscience thought that they had at last found the perfect swarthy brother to flagellate them for sins they had never committed but had assumed Christ-like because of their whiteness".
Everybody who ever yearned for a secular savior thought that He had come. But a fewat least among the babbling and scribbling class whose profession actually forces its members to connect ideasare beginning to see that a man who walks on small corpses cannot be Jesus.
Where are the rest? Will they follow soon… will they follow later? They were eager enough a few years ago to defend the Taliban as having been baited into terrorism by American intrusions. Several suicide bombers last month in Pakistan left explicit word that their motivation was the Obama drone attacks and specifically the slaughter they are wreaking upon non-combatants. (4) Can those who see such stories coming over the wires almost daily continue to ignore them? Or rather let me ask the question another way: how long can our journalists continue to ignore Obamas own acts of terrorism while viewing themselves as anything other than Joseph Goebbels heirs?
I mentioned the tale of the Blue Jackal last week from the ancient Indian Panchatantra. In the story an ordinary jackal named Fierce Howl tumbles into a vat of indigo while fleeing the village dogs. Upon his return to the forest he finds that all the animals view him as heaven-sent because of his celestial coloring. Even the mighty tigers serve him abjectly: all do his will without question because his hides unique tint makes him a virtual god. One evening however a nearby pack of jackals begins to raise its characteristic racket and the call of the wild proves too strong for Fierce Howl. From his throne he lets loose with a wailing whine in answer… whereupon the other animals suddenly recognize him for what he has been all along and tear him to pieces.
The Blue Jackal is beginning to howl. He wants more authority to execute his kill list. He wants more drones over domestic air spaceand he wants by the way all weapons rounded up that sit in the hands of private citizens. His salivating warble can be heard around the world. Is the American press completely deaf… or do its ranks perhaps contain nothing but smaller jackals? We shall soon find out.
Notes
(1) Alex Mangini Rachel Maddow All Media New York (11 Jan 2013) http://www.allmediany.com/news/7050-rachel-maddow-criticizes-obamas-orwellian-drone-strikes.
(2) No Jesus Is: Jamie Foxx calls Obama Our Lord and Savior during Soul Train Awards Twitchy.com (26 November 2012) http://twitchy.com/2012/11/26/no-jesus-is-jamie-foxx-calls-obama-our-lord-and-savior-during-soul-train-awards-backlash-erupts/
3) Chris Rock: Obama is our boss dad of our country Glennbeck.com (7 February 2013) http://www.glennbeck.com/2013/02/07/chris-rock-obama-is-E28098our-bossE28099-E28098dad-of-the-countryE28099/.
(4) Anschlag auf Militrposten in Pakistan" Der Welt.deutsche (2 February 2013) http://www.dw.de/anschlag-auf-militC3A4rposten-in-pakistan/a-16571447.