BlakeHuggins.com

I was re-reading some selected parts of Michael Mann’s Incoherent Empire this week and I ran across this timely quote:

“Like all imperialists, American ones are self-righteous. The politicians utter impeccable ideals of freedom, democracy, and humble rights for the world, and they promise it material plenty. They say they have achieved this ‘American Dream’ in the US and that they are now bring it to the world.. . .[But] American democracy today does not even seem in especially good shape. Only between one-third and one-half of American adults vote in national elections. Most members of Congress have to raise over a million dollars from business interests to get elected, and so inequality widens to a degree unparalleled anywhere else in the world. The media, especially television, from which most people get their news, are generally deferential to authority and rarely critical of their leaders in foreign affairs. American politicans rarely submit to sustained critical questioning from each other or from reporters—and the president almost never does. In Bush administration press conferences journalists typically ask a single question. When the question is evaded (which is always the case with difficult questions), they do not follow up. Questioning by the most famous TV interviewers, like Larry King and Diane Sawyer is sycophantic by European standards.. . .NBC did promptly fire Phil Donahue, the one television network host who opposed the Iraq invasion. It also fired veteran war reporter, Peter Arnett, who appeared on Iraqi television suggesting to the Iraqis that they tolerate foreign journalists in Baghdad on the grounds that their reports aided in US anti-war movement. All this self-censorship muzzles American democracy.”

This seems especially poignant now, when we’re in the middle of the chaotic, media masked whirlwind that is the current election cycle. What do you think?

~bh ><>