Op Ed:
Malign Motives
Deny and Damage
Democratic Process

Distortion/Perversion Producing Predicted Consequence.

Image Courtesy: deviantart.com

(SALEM) - In 1776 the Founders of this nation came forth with the conscientious collaborations which brought on a very difficult consensus, resulting in the radical concept of our Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and our American Constitution.

First thing they then did was an Amendment!
An action to become characteristic of all democratic dialog leading on to governance decision ever since.

That First Amendment --rightly chosen as “the First” since it mightily defines, extends, protects and can preserve the precise choices and consequential actions on which the entire edifice of our liberties depends-- is now long regarded as the wisest, and yet most winsome, in world history.

But the Founders, perhaps driven by those very intensities which produced the extremely-controversial Federalist Papers leading to these historic consequences, then pursued the whole concept of democratic decision-making still further.

They warned us in many ways what would follow, fast or slow, if we permitted such damaging flow as we have now experienced, in both depth and desperate denigration of our remaining democracy, now felt by many to be only in remnant.

They warned us in detail and depth of permissive permutation and progressive damage to their Principles. (See any standard American History: specific-incident documentations, too numerous to list here, available.)

They foresaw those furious attacks which would, in time and under pressure of private-interest pursuit, allow the purchase --as for pernicious product for personal pleasure-- of legislative decisions, shaping and thus permitting precisely those parameters of aristocratic arrogance at the heart of many ruling-class suppressions against which they had Revolted.

(See for update several recent Oregon-press stories relating “transactional lobbying” in our Legislature.)

There have been many legislative actions negating those attacks --most memorable those resulting in the rugged actions taken by the two Roosevelts as President-- and the highly consequential Congressional responses now enshrined in our history as major advances for the average man-and-woman/and family.

Those advances long ago defined the “middle-class dream of the American way“, in turn becoming the fanciful image of democratic advance for the rest of the world.

(See historical accounts, continuing ever since, regarding women-working, rising wages, union growth, health-care, vacation and other components of “middle class” life.}

What they saw was the inevitable return-over-time of the same selfish motivations to “manage” --and where possible malignly manipulate-- the purified process, bettered by bitter experience, that they put into place; for concentrated consideration, on their merits, of controversial issues of-the-day and of-the-century, too; AND of any who chose to place themselves vulnerably as “leaders” looking for recognition and legitimacy.

When they set forth the Principle of representative governance by a chosen elite made-so by citizen vote, that major advance in governance pattern and protocol was based on credibility and trust; established by open and honest communications.

They already knew and fully understood difficulties sure to develop; demanding precisely the honest dialog and deeply conscientious concern for cooperation and shared mutual control, essential for any civilized society, then-or-now.

After the furious and fiery debates of the Federalist Papers --made possible by their 18th Century ideals of civic concern leading first to civility, and then to ongoing civilization, recounted in the literature of the period-- how could it have been otherwise in all reality?
(See REVOLUTIONARY CHARACTERS; Gordon S. Wood;Penguin Press; 2006; ISBN 978-159420-093-9)

They knew --all too well and intimately, from their own life-experiences-- what they then-faced, including “the rope” if, indeed, they were wrong in their estimation of what the many might be able to do to manage and govern the few and the furious, even then equipped with the wealth of the world.
(See any history recounting the reign of the British Empire, continued after our Revolution and currently.)

They knew, too, what we inevitably now-face, in the same way, but with precisely their prescience to guide us; given the strong ongoing protection provided by their own highly-valued First Amendment.

Communications research underway ever since the early days of newspaper coverage commemorates, time-and-again, large leaps of work relating to canny propaganda, simple perversion of content for private gain, and distortion via choice and emphasis in coverage; and multiple ongoing anomalies of time-and-records manipulated both for political and commercial reasons; ever since the first printed pages in this nation.

But nowhere, at no previous time-or-era, will you find the dangerously concentrated, calcifying, coagulating and coalescing factors assembled in fierce display, so openly flourishing, as in today’s radio, television and printed-page “open channels in an ostensibly still “free-press environment”.

We have allowed these current circumstances to seduce, segregate and abort the absolute requirements for ongoing open and honest democratic dialog --as intended by our Founders.

In Oregon in the last few months, we’ve had the most pernicious and perhaps the most damaging of such political environments enforced upon us willy-nilly --ranging from first-shot open-smear statements fired in reckless abandon at every and all conscientious and concerned public agency employees-- to visibly perverted and cannily contrived single-line prevarications precisely so-placed as to “lose visibility” for the average privacy-invaded viewer.

(See “Truth in advertising ?”, David Sarasohn, on The OREGONIAN Edit Page, 10/13; also see several Steve Duin columns over the past months; specific list on request.)

SO here we are --only a few days from perhaps the most crucial voter-choice responsibility we’ve faced since early World War II times.

Then we felt “the fate of the world” hung on decision for leadership --with the whole world wobbling and our fleets, armies and air fury first posed for what has become a paramount problem, again --with the current constellation of open and concentrated political attacks on democracy again “the heart of the matter”.

Feel the same to some of you?
Same stomach-quivers?
Can you find it in your cosmos to summon up some of the same sensations, from memory and close experience --
and some of those cogitations demanded of you back then ?

If so, then all will be well with our nation, our State and our democracy, as in our oft-repeated past.

If NOT -- what else is there left --in the face of a truly-forbidding “leap of faith”-- except:

“Happy Landings !!”

Please note that the emphasis here is entirely and only on the process for democratic decision set up by our Founders, for your further information and cogitation. Clearly now we are all under concentrated dollar-driven private-gain propaganda-attack --by a political cult so drawn to 19th Century political philosophy that it is willing to use any level of malign confrontation and public conflict of common folk, including elected representatives, to fulfill malign private purposes and highly-controversial questionable corporate goals.