A political and media onslaught is about to be unleashed
with the indictments of a whole host of key White House officials
(including you-know-who) caught up in the Plamegate coverup. The
unraveling of this potentially treasonous scandal -- which began with the
outing, for political reasons, of a covert CIA officer -- could well
provide the tipping point that will allow the Democrats to retake the
House in the next election, initiate Congressional investigations of Bush
Administration crimes, and possibly even pass an impeachment resolution.
So, before all the craziness begins, it might be useful to remind
ourselves how far we've come in the battle to remove the extremists who
currently rule so recklessly and incompetently in our names. And how the
work we've all been doing in the political trenches, unearthing the
corruption and incompetence and dangerous initiatives of the Bush
Administration, has helped weaken that crowd of crooks and liars to the
point where impeachment is a serious possibility. Of course, the
Republicans these days -- with their never-ending exploding scandals and
bare-knuckles infighting -- are not doing such a bad job destroying
themselves without our help.
We here at The Crisis Papers, along with other progressives websites and
organizations, deal so often with the negative high crimes and
misdemeanors of the Administration, and with the cluelessness and
cowardice of the ostensible Democratic opposition, that it's easy to be
swept totally into that Bush shadow world and lose sight of the strength
and powers at our command, and the hope they represent.
So I'd like today to recognize the heroes of our battle, who, ultimately,
are helping to lead our country to a restoration of Constitutional rule
and the banishment of the worst of the Bush&Co. miscreants either to
political exile or, for a good many of the worst participants, to jail.
HERO #1: A COURAGEOUS U.S. SENATOR
But first some history:
Four-plus years ago, in the wake of the Supreme Court's 5-4 installation
of Bush into the White House, it looked as if we progressives and
traditional Republicans were in for total defeat. The Bush neo-cons and
power mongers who had hijacked the Republican Party controlled the House,
the Senate (by one vote), the Executive Branch, and most of the corporate
mass-media.
But then a courageous U.S. Senator, Jim Jeffords of Vermont, Hero#1,
stepped forward to resign from the Republican caucus and, as an
Independent, side most of the time with the Democrats, giving them a
one-vote majority in the Senate. The Rove/Cheney governing plan was thrown
badly off-balance, and had unusual difficulty getting its regressive
agenda passed.
That situation would have maintained itself for the rest of Bush's term
except that 9/11 happened, and deadly anthrax was unleashed into the halls
of Congress (directed mostly, let us not forget, at Democrat leaders).
Suddenly, thanks to al-Qaida and whoever distributed the anthrax, the Bush
program went zipping through a frightened Congress, with barely any
serious opposition.
Certainly no questions were asked about why the Bush Administration was so
ill-prepared for the terror attacks even though they had received explicit
warnings about them in the weeks and days prior to 9/11. No Democrat
politicians wanted to risk being tarred with the epithets "soft on
terrorism," or "unpatriotic" for not supporting the president during
"wartime."
When more Bush Republicans were elected, tipping the Senate back into GOP
hands, the Democrats became even more timid and disorganized. And so,
devoid of a questioning political opposition and a mass-media willing to
dig for answers, it fell to others to try to keep the flame of liberty
(and realistic thinking) burning. By and large, this task was taken up by
websites and their writers and editors on the internet, this generation's
"alternative press."
THE HONOR ROLL OF COLUMNISTS
Despite the overwhelming pro-Bush fawning of the corporate media, radio
talk-shows, newspapers, broadcast networks, cable TV "news" shows and
pundits, a relative handful of writers remain willing to speak truth to
power in the mainstream outlets. Their courage and perspicacity shine like
beacons in an otherwise dark world of pseudo-journalism in the current
era, even when their own editorial pages cave regularly to Bush&Co.
The columnist Honor Roll includes: Paul Krugman, Bob Herbert, Frank Rich
and Maureen Dowd, for example, at the New York Times; E.J. Dionne Jr.,
Eugene Robinson, Harold Meyerson, Dan Froomkin, at the Washington Post;
Tom Oliphant, Robert Kuttner, James Carroll and Derrick Z. Jackson at the
Boston Globe; Seymour Hersh and Hendrick Hertzberg at The New Yorker;
Robert Scheer at the Los Angeles Times; Jay Bookman and Cynthia Tucker at
the Atlanta Constitution-Journal; Marie Coco at Newsday; Jon Carroll, Mark
Morford and David Lazarus at the San Francisco Chronicle; Joe Conason of
the New York Observer; Robyn Blumner of the St. Petersburg Times; Warren
Strobel and Jonathan Landay at Knight Ridder; the incomparable Molly Ivins
in syndicated release, the irrespressible veteran White House
correspondent Helen Thomas and a few others. Plus, on the broadcast waves,
Air America, a few lonely liberal radio talk-show hosts around the
country, plus Keith Olbermann, virtually the lone cable-TV pundit willing
to ask penetrating questions about Bush policy.
One is tempted to say that these few prestigious journalists gave
supportive courage to those outside the mainstream media also to speak
truth to power, but I think it probably was the other way around -- or
perhaps a serendipitous joint venture in standing tall. The so-called
"fringe" journalists and commentators on the internet and elsewhere have
never wavered in keeping the feet of the powerful next to the fires they
had set with their determined research and incendiary critical analysis.
In many cases, these internet journalists and bloggers even forced
mainstream editors to cover political stories they had shied away from.
THE PROGRESSIVE CYBERSPHERE
When so many millions of readers had learned of important stories via the
internet writers and websites and blogs, but hadn't run across them in
their local papers or on their nightly TV news, it behooved mainstream
editors to start paying attention and not looking totally silly or "bought
off" by ignoring those same stories.
Here are some of the leading progressive websites that deserve our
plaudits for fighting the good patriotic fight for so long:
AmericanPolitics.com, AlterNet.org, AntiWar.com, BushWatch.com,
BuzzFlash.com, CommonDreams.org, Consortium News.com, CounterPunch.org,
CrisisPapers.org, DemocraticUnderground.com, Democrats.com,
DemocracyNow.org, HuffingtonPost.com, Independent-Media.TV, JuanCole.com,
MakeThemAccountable.com, MediaMatters.org, MotherJones.com,
OnlineJournal.com, OpEdNews.com, OldAmericanCentury.org, Salon.com,
Scoop.co.nz, SmirkingChimp.com, TheAmericanProspect.org, TheNation.com,
Progressive.org, TomPaine.com, Truthout.com, WorkingforChange.org,
ZNet.org, et al. (For a fuller listing, see
The Dissenting
Internet).
But the presence of daring websites would mean little without an immense
corps of fine researchers, columnists and bloggers willing to put their
reputations, and in some cases careers, on the line, usually for little or
no compensation. Thankfully, the liberal/progressive left and
libertarian/traditional conservatives are numerous and unafraid -- doing
the work the opposition Democrats should be doing -- even in the presence
of McCarthyite threats from Bush&Co. and their rabid supporters.
HONOR ROLL OF ANALYSTS & BLOGGERS
Here, in random order, are just a few of these regularly producing writers
who keep alive hope and intelligent resistance; this Honor Roll includes:
Arianna Huffington, Sidney Blumenthal, John W. Dean, Jonathan Turley, Bill
Moyers, Evelyn Pringle, Greg Palast, Howard Zinn, Amy Goodman, Ray
McGovern, Naomi Klein, David Podvin, Scott Ritter, Robert Parry, Jim
Hightower, Ralph Nader, Karen Kwiatkowski, Jason Leopold, Georgie Anne
Geyer, Paul Craig Roberts, Chalmers Johnson, David Swanson, Tom Engelhardt,
Bill Van Auken, David Lindorff, Alex Cockburn, Jim Lobe, Ted Rall, Elaine
Cassell, Thom Hartmann, Gary Leupp, Jennifer Von Bergen, Bob Fertik, David
Corn, Ted Kahl, Will Pitt, Jeff St. Clair, Rob Kall, Ivan Eland, Norman
Solomon, Paul Lukasiak, et al. (At the risk of seeming self-serving, I
would think that Ernest Partridge and Bernard Weiner might well be
included in that list.)
In a separate category I put the professional bloggers, those who walk the
daily news tightrope, instantaneously trying to figure out what it all
means, and thus helping to guide us in the hunt for what's important. They
shine bright light into the dark caves of ignorance and apathy that is too
much of American politics these days. My favorite blogger heroes include:
Josh Marshall at TalkingPointsMemo, Markos Moulitsas ("Kos") at DailyKos,
Duncan Black ("Atrios") at Eschaton, Billmon at the Whiskey Bar, Juan
Cole, Steve Gilliard, Digby at Hullabaloo, Kevin Drum's Political Animal,
the Corrente collective, David Neiwert at Orcinus, Brad Friedman, David
Sirota, James Wolcott, John Aravois, et al., along with the video/audio
compilers at Crooks&Liars.com. (For a much longer list, with the linked
URLs, check out our
Recommended
Blogsites).
ELECTORAL FRAUD SPECIALISTS
And then there are the writers who have educated all of us on the
all-important topic of electoral integrity and electoral fraud. It doesn't
really matter how correct our analyses are, and how much activism we can
generate, if the voting tabulations remain easy to manipulate and corrupt,
which is the case today and was the case in 2004, 2002 and 2000. American
democracy owes an enormous debt of gratitude to the groundbreakers in this
field: Bev Harris and the late Andy Stephenson of Black Box Voting, Mark
Crispin Miller, Greg Palast, Alastair Thompson at New Zealand's Scoop
website, and such researchers and writers as Lynn Landes, Rebecca Mercuri,
Bob Fitzrakis, Harvey Wasserman, Steven Rosenfeld, Steven Freeman, Pokey
Anderson, Ernest Partridge, Steven Hill, Kim Zetter and others.
One must not neglect the progressive online activist organizations that
have used the internet so successfully for organizing and raising funds,
such as MoveOn, True Majority, AfterDowningStreet, Codepink, and the like.
(For a fuller listing, check out the
Activists'
Page).
And, finally, though this article is concentrating mainly on U.S. writers
and editors and websites, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the vital
online contributions of non-Americans who help to educate us, and often
are the first to discuss the dirty little secrets of the Bush
Administration. Such as: the Guardian and Independent and Times Online in
the U.K., Scoop in New Zealand, Outlook India in India, and such writers
as Robert Fisk, John Pilger, George Monbiot, Julian Borger, Andrew Gumbel,
in the UK, Arundhati Roy in India, Salam Pax and Riverbend in Iraq, Eric
Margolis and Linda McQuaig in Canada, William Pfaff in France, et al.
These lists of names could have gone on much longer, and no doubt I've
inadvertently left out many of your favorites -- for which lapses I assume
you'll be alerting me, for future updates.
I hope you weren't bored with all those names above, but so often we take
for granted the good, solid, provocative work of those struggling daily in
the fields of journalism and commentary, especially those who match our
values. Their contributions become our daily political wallpaper, so to
speak. But it's difficult, dangerous work, I can assure you, and all of
those listed here, and many of those omitted, are true patriots and heroes
in the struggle we're all in to stop the international imperial slaughter
abroad, and the march toward a militarist police-state at home -- and, in
so doing, to help rescue the moral soul of America.
