The two party system. Another huge obstacle. How could any of us ever have given this system any credibility?! Even adding one more party (one that actually wins elections on a regular basis like dems and pubs do...) would confound things monumentally, making it statistically impossible to reign in public opinion. This is precisely why the media emphasizes (gives credence to) only two parties. With this mechanism in place, any initiative or legislation can garner significant public support simply by associating it - through the media - as righty or lefty initiative. In other words, having prominent lefties or righties endorse it publicly. A third (fourth, fifth ... ?? ) party would cut way into the efficacy of this mechanism for obvious reasons. The elite easily install their puppet in every election and subsequently whip up the requisite public support - through the media - for the initiatives they desire, which are drawn up long before the election. It is utterly impossible for a true grass roots candidate to gain any traction in this sort of system. The fact that President Obama has not addressed this represents a flagrant internal contradiction in his credibility, and clearly exposes his puppethood. Funny how candidates who do address it get marginalized by the media as sour grapes or as candidates who are not "serious" or "electable". In other words, they're not well connected, smooth talking whippersnappers trained in sophistry and rhetoric. Nor do they attend the secret meetings that heads of state and the corporate elite hold regularly. (http://www2.whidbey.net/zipmont/revamp/council.htm)

As children we are programmed for our role as consumers by our tvs, which conditions us to be self-censoring. Crowd control is much easier if you can get the crowd to censor itself, which is precisely what we have. The corporate elite, with their control of government policy and the media, pander to the consumer in us and the consumer in us does the rest. Give the consumer his line of credit and his obscenely, artificially low prices, and he will do the rest. He's more than happy to believe that the massive run up in his home value makes perfect sense and is well deserved. But then this is the same consumer that believes the onslaught of diseases like cancer, heart disease and diabetes have nothing at all to do with what he passes off as food. When confronted with the facts, the response is predictable and very similar to that of a heroin addict; denial. Sour grapes. If the truth is ugly or painful, deny, deflect or ignore it. Classic examples include the acceptance of the findings of the Kean Commission (http://www2.whidbey.net/zipmont/revamp/911.html) and Warren Commission. (http://www2.whidbey.net/zipmont/revamp/jfk.htm) Two of the most pathetic fleecings in our recent history.

The subtext emanating from the mass media echoes this sentiment perfectly. The subtext is: there's something at stake here that is more important than the truth. We all sense that rabble rousing media righties and lefties like Glenn Beck and Bill O'Reilly and Keith Olbermann are not reporting the news in a responsible, forthcoming fashion. Their righty and lefty hollywood editorializing is pathetic, yet we not only tolerate it, we embrace it. The reason is that we have been trained to accept imaginary, alternate realities in lieu of the truth. We live vicariously through Hollywood - why not get our principles in a similiar fashion, prefabricated like big macs? Hence we direct our frustrations at each other instead of the real source. Pseudo-principles, just like pseudo-food. It's just so easy and convenient.

The discourse between dems and pubs has come to resemble pro wrestling, and it serves a similar purpose - filling an empty void. We need diversion, entertainment, and distraction, and they give us that, but we also need principle. Having been manipulated into embracing our worker/consumer roles, and are no longer able to live our true principles, so they have been replaced, as if we were hosting a virus. We are increasingly dependent and beholden to the system. We spend far too little time doing what we love, and far too much time doing what the overclass loves. Our principles now come from without, instead of from within. They are artificial, like the food we eat and like the vicarious living. None of it real. It's just another Hollywood production - a cheap substitute for we really need and want. And underlying it all is a fake economy that no one understands or wishes to talk about.

Meanwhile the looters - the true source of our affliction who control both the private and public spheres - get off scott free. We defend them, ie, we defend the status quo, because we need the story to make sense. This is what matters most. Thus it's no surprise that the Nobel Peace Prize has just been awarded to a guy who uses fear and war mongering to push the agenda of the corporate elite - a guy who has been predicted to follow the same warpath of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld era (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wjGIzMN2MZ4&feature=channel) guy who is already doing just that - (http://www2.whidbey.net/zipmont/revamp/newwarplan.html) Nor is it surprising that legions of Obama cheerleaders continue waving pom-poms, even as their wallets are vacuumed out to the tune of trillions of dollars. The news reports one good story to10 fear stories, crime, perstilence, murder, disease, death ... Danger, danger, danger - from commies and evil-doers lurking on the horizon, to the threat of financial armageddon and swine flu. Scare the crap out of them and they'll acquiesce to just about anything. Same old story here. Apocalyptic overtones, to control gullible people. Terror alert yellow? Orange? Green? Purple? Periwinkle?

"[People] did not foresee what in fact has happened, above all in our Western capitalist democracies—the development of a vast mass communications industry, concerned in the main neither with the true nor the false, but with the unreal, the more or less totally irrelevant. In a word, they failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions….

But even in Rome there was nothing like the non-stop distraction now provided by newspapers and magazines, by radio, television and the cinema."