by Rod Amis

AMERICAN TRADITION - Rod Amis's third post in the May Contagious Festival gets down to issues of lies and truth.

20 May 2006: It is shoddy journalism when we fail to challenge the myth put forth by atavistic politicians and other demagogues that there is a unitary American tradition. No thoughtful person would argue that the most ethnically diverse, polyglot nation on Earth, one sprung from wave after wave of immigration, could have only a single tradition. Yet, there are certain people on the right - and especially those people who Salon senior writer Michelle Goldberg refers to as "Christian nationalists" in a recent article at In These Times - who posit this myth of one American tradition all the time.

As Bill Moyers has repeatedly pointed out in his speeches and writing of recent years, there is also a strong tradition of progressivism in America, along lines represented by Thomas Paine, Henry David Thoreau, Frederick Douglass, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Eugene Debs and Martin Luther King, Jr. But there are other quintessentially American traditions, as well. There is the American tradition represented by Latino barrios in our major cities; the American tradition that led to what we call "the mafia," a shadow government if there ever was one; there's the American tradition of Jewish/Yiddish culture and its wonderful contributions to our humor, and; there are so many other traditions woven into the patchwork quilt of this country that the very notion of a single American tradition - and certainly one that is only the "Christian Nation" - is patently absurd.

Yet, for the most part, we journalists shy away from challenging this bullshit. In the new model of "he said/she said" journalism that does nothing to inform or enlighten, simply repeats this and compares it to that, we don't go that necessary step further. We don't analyze and then present the most accurate information we can provide. Sports writers do a better job of getting to the facts than anyone else in the newsroom. Imagine, if you will, a sports writer reporting, "Well, Tiger Woods claimed to get a hole in one but Bob Davis of the Aryan Nations says that never happened." Period. He'd be out on the street in a Tokyo minute. The foregoing style of reporting is accepted at the New York Times and CNN every single day of the week!

Campaign Ad A smart satire of political campaign ad tricks and techniques used by mudslingers of all political persuasions.

Here's one example: the "official" gauge of determining poverty in these United States hasn't been adjusted since 1967. According to this metric, a family of four is not officially poor unless they make less than $16,700/year. Think about that. A family of four, according to our official standard, can provide for housing, transportation, clothing, food, childcare, healthcare, etc. on less than $20,000 a year. DO YOU BELIEVE THAT? Yet, our so-called "objective" journalists continue to report the official government statistics for poverty in America as though they were reporting facts. Any thoughtful person must realize that, to the contrary, the journalists reporting the government statistics are doing little more than reinforcing a lie. A lie.

Nonetheless, all of our organs from the New York Times to ABC News report this lie year after year with a straight face and nary a word of commentary or objection.

By the lights of Yours Unruly, the only way to pursue truth is to object to the government propaganda statistics. I've done so many times in my own journal. Lou Dobbs, over at CNN, constantly rails about the destruction of the middle class but then never digs deeper to report to us about the extent and depth of poverty in this country. Why not?

I would posit the argument, in this my likely last post of this Manifesto, that the only way to produce anything close to objective reporting any longer in the United States is to produce what must be adjudged as heresies against the official and corporate lines that inundate the vast majority of what we are provided by the Mouthpiece Media (MM.)

A LIST OF HERESIES

1. If HILARY CLINTON is the Democratic nominee for President of the United States in 2008, the Democrats will have ceded the White House to the Republicans once again.

   Senator Clinton is busily attempting to take over the base of the Republican party in the United States rather than work with the base of her own party. This much is obvious from all of her statements about the war in Iraq, among other issues. Like her husband, her main allegiance is to Wall Street rather than Main S treet and its typical concerns for dinner table issues. She has made no effort to act otherwise because her strategy seems to be that of the so-called New Democrats who brought us the bombing of Yugoslavia, welfare "reform," and the explosion of privatized prisons in America.

   Even further, she is as much a lightning rod as her husband was when he left the White House. A more disastrous choice for the Democratic party could not be imagined.

   That, in and of itself, means she's the likely nominee of that benighted party and Senator McCain is the likely next resident at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, barring the rise of some other Republican star.

   Person to watch among the Democrats? John Edwards.

2. The relationship between the PEOPLES' REPUBLIC OF CHINA (PRC) and the world's largest corporation, Wal-Mart, is so collaborative and interdependent, and the amount of Chinese capital propping up the American economy as we sink further into debt so great, that this nation's foreign policy into the future shall have to be to treat the PRC with kid gloves. Bottom line, we need the Chinese to keep the flagging dollar from tanking altogether.

   If anything, rather than focus on the on-going violations of human rights or the reprehensible domination of reproductive practice perpetrated on that country's people, more and more we shall focus on the market relationship between our two countries. More and more, as a counterbalance to the North Korean threat in the region and dependent on the moderating influence of China, the United States will make concessions to the PRC regime.

   As one Indian journalist friend of mine has observed, "The United States does not have allies, only interests."

3. THE MILITARIZATION OF THE UNITED STATES will likely result in a nation that once aspired to be the modern Athens becoming more like the modern Sparta.

   The economic and educational realities of this country make this transition practically a fait accompli. Those of us who have begun to mourn the fate to the republic are already reduced to contemporary Ciceros. The republic died long ago, while we slept.

   With a large and growing under-educated populace, increasing class stratification and an economy comprised of "knowledge worker" courtiers to multinational corporations with no national allegiances and other service workers, a dying manufacturing base - with the exception of the Military/Industrial complex - the next logical step is a militarized population. The only route to opportunity and class mobility that we have to present to the vast majority of our young will be the armed services.

   Resource wars are an inevitable part of our future. It won't only be oil over the next decades. Potable water, arable land and the last mining of the seas are on the horizon. If, as all indicators seem to predict, the oceans will both continue to warm and rise, vast relocations - by force - of coastal and island populations will also need take place.

   If our policy of perpetual war continues, the pressure to have mothers advise their children to come back carrying their shields or on them will also increase. Welcome to "Starship Troopers."

One might think, reading this Mesopotamian handwriting on the wall, that we would not have to wait for a documentary on the state of our planet from former presidential candidate Albert Gore or the constant hectoring of a DemocracyNow! crying like voices in the wilderness to inform and inspire us. One might think, being an optimist, that a Bill Moyers would not have to flail in reminding us of our progressive traditions. One might even think that our major and prosperous news organizations and energized journalists would offer us the depth and breadth of the conditions that underpin the list of heresies I have provided you here.

Thinking so, one would be wrong. It's blood simple: American journalism needs a blood transfusion. It needs new voices. It need to finds its guts again and get over its gout. It needs the challenge of your reinvigorated attention and your impatience with pabulum and fluff.

At least, I can always dream this will happen.

Good night and good luck.