The Fear Merchants
The 2004 Election
A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but wrote off the black vote. Many black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white Christian conservatives have set, knowing only that the president is against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default.
Part
2: Hijacking The Black Vote
“If we make the wrong choice...we'll get hit again.” The
president's campaign released a new commercial showing a pack of
wolves racing to attack an unseen victim, presumably us. It is a
blatant and insulting scare tactic designed to send our children
to bed frightened that wolves will eat them if John Kerry is
elected president. It insults our intelligence and, for me, it
tells me what this president thinks of his own constituency:
that they're too stupid to think for themselves. That we need
this Blair Witch project TV ad to motivate our thinking. The
president wants to make us afraid. Be Very Afraid. Re-Elect Me
Or Else. The convenient timing of the color chart terrorism
alert bumps— timed almost precisely for each significant event
or announcement of the Democratic campaign (don't take my word
for it, look it up for yourself)— and the dire warnings like
this one from the vice president is all designed to make us
afraid. Afraid of bin Laden, to be sure, but mostly, afraid of
John Kerry.
The 9/11 attacks have been the essential soul of the con-servative
movement for nearly four years now. Every cause they have, every
belief they embrace, is tied to “national security,” which is
code for 9/11. It has formed the rationale for most everything
they have done, from tax cuts for the top one percent of income
earners to invading Iraq to opposing stem cell research to
allowing the assault weapons ban to expire (they have a spin for
everything, including their decision to allow the ban to expire,
thus making it easier for terrorists to get their hands on
machine guns). The Christian Right is in lock-step with the
Republican conservatives because of the conservatives' “moral
stance” on “family values” such as abortion and gay marriage—
seemingly ignoring the whole assault weapons thing and the
heinous and hypocritical marketing of 9/11 to scare America into
re-electing the worst president in modern history. It's as if
the church feels like, as long as we get what we want, we'll
turn a blind eye and deafear to the clearly unscriptural,
unethical and un-Christian record of this administration.
The conservative right has made 9/11 into a product. Like a bar
of soap or a cheeseburger. They've wrapped it up and hired ad
agencies to sell it to us. Like Pearl Harbor or the Alamo, 9/11
is being prostituted to manipulate us into doing one thing:
re-elect a president who has done unprecedented harm to this
country. A president who has ruined this economy, who has
brazenly handed out hundreds of billions of dollars in gimmes to
his pals. Who has seen thousands of U.S. servicemen killed or
maimed or amputated for a war nearly every industrialized nation
on the planet has condemned as unjust. A president who has
sullied this nation's reputation and good name abroad, who has
lost us allies and lost us respect. who has created thousands of
potential bin Ladens by murdering innocents in Iraq and
Afghanistan. The entire purpose of The New Patriotism is
transparently self-serving. It is about keeping these men in
power and continuing this pattern of misery for another four
years.
Many of us Christians feel especially unpatriotic when we do not
support our president in time of war. But, it is important to
remember, this is a war he started. A war we never asked for. A
war that serves no purpose in the war on terrorists, other than
in that it will, absolutely, CREATE MORE TERRORISTS, as the
entire world condemns us and fatherless children grow up hating
us.
So, perhaps, putting 9/11 and patriotism in general in some
perspective might be a good way to spend an afternoon.
“Your security is in your hands.”
On the heels of the president's condescending and misleading
“Wolves” commercial, wherein a pack of wolves is seen racing to
attack an unseen victim, presumably us, while a narrator informs
us John Kerry voted to cut $6 billion for intelligence spending
(misleading: these are the very same cuts prominent Republicans,
including Dick Cheney, recommended), who should pop up for an
October Surprise but Osama bin Laden. The nation has been
bracing itself for a pre-election major terrorist offensive for
months, now. This administration has strategically raised the
terror alert at key stages of the Democratic party's
presidential campaign (I'm not making this up) to short-circuit
news about the Democrats and get us cowering and hoarding
bottled water and duct tape. It's been awhile since the
administration has raised the alert level, though I assumed they
would shortly before the election.
Turns out they didn't have to. bin Laden himself appeared, out
of the blue, calling the president names and extending a
half-hearted olive branch, the undertones of which being, If you
get rid of Bush and leave us alone, we'll leave you alone. The
whole thing seems so clumsy and so contrived, I can't help but
wonder (1) is bin Laden an onion? Have we overestimated his
intelligence and his savvy? (2) is this some cheap Democratic
ploy to win votes? Or, most cynical of all, (3) was this event
manufactured by the president to, as is his usual process, scare
us? This president has kept this nation on edge for four years
now, in systematically contrived reminders and warnings, to keep
us afraid. Be afraid, Be scared. I will protect you.
THE DRUDGE REPORT
CRONKITE: KARL
ROVE BEHIND BIN LADEN TAPE?
Sat Oct 30 2004 16:31:19 ET
Former CBS NEWS anchorman Walter Cronkite believes Bush adviser
Karl Rove is possibly behind the
new Bin Laden tape.
Cronkite made the startling comments late Friday during an
interview on CNN.
Somewhat smiling, Cronkite said he is “inclined to think that
Karl Rove, the political manager
at the White House, who is a very clever man, he probably set up
bin Laden to this thing.”
Interviewer Larry King did not ask Cronkite to elaborate on the
provocative election eve
observation.
Developing...
Any rational thinking will tell you that, regardless of who wins tomorrow, we'll be no safer than we are today. And, any honest thinking will tell you we are most certainly less safe today than we were on September 11th 2001, because this president has alienated our friends and made new enemies. Many Iraqi people were killed by Saddam for rising up against him at the urging of the first president Bush, who then abandoned those Iraqis after first urging them to fight. Under the current President Bush, tens of thousands of innocent Iraqis have died in his grab for the oil fields and big contracts, and in his single-minded revenge fetish towards Saddam, This president has turned moderate Muslims into hateful radicals, and tearful orphans into future bin Ladens. This president, in his clumsy and disingenuous mishandling of he war on terror, has created thousands of bin Ladens, while ignoring the actual one.
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COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) - President Bush on Saturday directed
his national security aides to take the necessary steps in
response to Osama bin Laden's sudden reappearance on tape,
a video that sent the Republican and Democratic Sen. John
Kerry into a sharp final round of argument over which one
can defeat terrorism. |
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Bush has caused more damage and human suffering than 9-11 did.
As of October 29th,
2004,
1,111
dedicated Americans in uniform have died in Iraq. |
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TAmong likely Bush voters are two close friends of mine. Black
men. Ministers. Career military men with more then twenty years
apiece of duty in the U.S. Army. Neither of them like the
president. Neither of them think Bush has been a particularly
good president. But, tomorrow, they and millions of men like
them will vote to re-elect him.
“I'm not a Bush fan but I think Kerry is such a liar, I just
can't bring myself to vote for him,” one told me. “And I never
know where he stands. Every time I think I understand him, he
switches positions again, and I'm lost.” “I agree with president
on gay marriage,” the other friend told me. “Bush is right on
social issues, on moral values. I really don't know what I'm
going to do.”
I could probably talk to these men, close friends, until I am
blue in the face and it wouldn't make any difference. The
Republicans have gotten their message out. Both men are
reciting, line for line, the Republican party line while not
having a whole lot of information about who John Kerry is and
what he actually stands for. And I have to blame John Kerry for
that. Blaming George Bush for the 2000 election has been
convenient fun for Democrats, especially black democrats. but
the truth is, Al Gore's biggest problem was Al Gore. And John
Kerry's major impediment in this trace has been John Kerry. He
has not communicated well. He greatly underestimated how low the
president's campaign would stoop (and they'll stoop pretty low).
He has not adequately distinguished himself or his record from
the president's. And, although I believe he has corrected most
of those faults in the ninth hour, John Kerry and his team still
speak in elitist Northerner tones while the president, like him
or not, speaks with an inarticulate eloquence we used to call Straight Talk. Never mind that the
president is lying most every time his lips are moving, my point
here is about the power of communication, not necessarily the
content. We know what Bush is saying, while we are guessing
about Kerry, who is running on a platform of I Am Not George
Bush. And the senator seems startled that that fact, in and of
itself, is not sufficient to win him the White House.
A lot of black Christians, obsessed with gay marriage and
abortion rights, will be voting for the president, who all but
wrote off the black vote when he snubbed the NAACP earlier this
year and with whom most black Americans are dissatisfied. Many
black Christians are, ironically, following an agenda white
Christian conservatives have set. Most black religious voters
know almost nothing about John Kerry but know the president is
against abortion and gay marriage, the only two issues the
religious right seem to care anything about. It's an unexpected
bonus for the Republicans: black votes by default. Black votes
that come their way simply because the Democrats have taken
blacks in general— and black conservative Christians in
specific— for granted. It is a mistake from which the DNC may
not recover.
Most black religious voters know almost nothing about John Kerry
and are asking almost nothing about John Kerry. It's like we
want the information to flow to us; we want the senator to do a
better job of pursuing us. And that thought may actually be
correct. It's entirely possible the senator has taken the black
vote for granted, fairly assuming blacks will vote in large
measure for the Democrat, so why reach out to us? It may be a
fatal miscalculation. The poll numbers we are inundated with,
week after week, are, like IQ and SAT tests, biased towards the
white middle class, which is near universally considered the
bench mark. I have never met a black person who has EVER been
polled for election results Though, of course, black people have
been and are being polled, my instinct tells me the numbers we
see, the Likely and Register Voter Polls, are 80-90% white
middle class.
Black folk change their phone numbers. Black folk hang up on
computers and telemarketers and bill collectors. Black folk
don't like their privacy invaded. There's been little or no poll
work done in the black church community here in town— at least
not that I or any of my dozen or so minister friends are aware
of. Perhaps the pollsters think they know what we are going to
do. But they'll be quite surprised to find many of us voting for
the president— a man most of us disapprove of and most of us
have been harmed by— simply because the commonly accepted
beliefs about Senator John Kerry is the information being
promulgated by the National Republican Committee.
We do not ask questions. We do not, statistically speaking, go
online as much as whites. We do not seek out information. We
wait for it to fly thru the air and hit us through television
commercials and print ads. In the black community here, I am
hearing an awful lot of parroting of talking points. Republican
talking points. John Kerry Is A Liar. John Kerry Changes
Positions Too Much. John Kerry is Pro Abortion. My efforts to
counter this thinking are universally intercepted by a
dismissive hand wave. I am cut off, waved off, blown off. The
line is, We Don't Like Bush, but We Don't Trust Kerry.
And I can hold only one man responsible for that: John Kerry.
The Democratic National Committee has all but ignored us as a
demographic, seeing hegemony where none exists. The African
American community in this nation is, as all others are, a
plurality. The DNC has, however, terribly underestimated the
moral backbone of the black community. By not speaking to moral
issues, or perhaps by not speaking loud enough to moral issues,
they have left many blacks out in the cold, stuck between a
political decision and a moral one.
We are not any more ignorant than conservative Christian whites,
whose agenda this truly is— this Re-Elect Bush Or Kerry Will
Make You Have An Abortion nonsense. The Republican platform is
based entirely on scare tactics. Their mission is to make us
afraid. And the black Christians who have told me they may vote
for the president have expressed, to a person, that they may
reluctantly vote for Bush because they are AFRAID of what Kerry
might do.
It's the Republican message. We, the black community, have heard
it. from the Republicans, from our brothers and sisters in the
religious right. And we now accept it as Gospel because the
Democrats have made almost no effort at all to properly inform
us, their core base, about their core beliefs and core values.
It's interesting to me that Reverend Jackson calls Reverend
Falwell “Reverend Falwell,” while Reverend Falwell calls
Reverend Jackson, “Jesse,” which is patently offensive to most
black church goers. I have to imagine Dr. Falwell is certainly
smart enough to realize his chummy sneering, calling Reverend
Jackson “Jesse,” would be off-putting to blacks. I therefore
choose to believe Dr. Falwell doesn't care, that he has written
us off as a demographic, as people who deserve dignity and
respect. Much as his candidate has.
These are the people many of us are following. These are the
people we are allowing to form our ideas for us, since we are
forming no opinions of our own. What good is having morality
about gay mar-riage and abortion if we ignore the immoral,
unjust and unnecessary war and the president's ever-shifting
justification for it? What's the point of our pious stand with
the pious president while children and impoverished people in
this country continue to go hungry, while schools continue to be
under-funded, while the nation sinks into trillions of dollars
of debt— but say nothing while this president sends hundreds of
billions of dollars to Iraq and Afghanistan, with plans to ask
for billions more?
Church, we are either about something or we're not. The blind
march towards the present's re-election is the ultimate
hood-winking of America. The hijacking of the Black vote is so
insidious, so brilliantly planned and executed, that it borders
on genius. Your vote is being stolen and you don't even realize
it. Stolen by the religious right, who themselves follow this
president both blindly and foolishly, and stolen by a weak and
inept Democratic party and its nominee, whom I still regard as
the far lesser of two evils.
Since many of us do not ask and do not seek answers (seriously:
have you even been to Kerry's website? Most people in this town
don't even go to this web site), allow me one last stab at
bringing the information to you:
Is John Kerry a liar?
I think we all are liars. We all have certainly lied. The better
question might be, is John Kerry a worse liar that George Bush?
The president is exploiting the religious conservatives,
positioning himself as a born-again man of faith. But he has
knowingly and deliberately misled this country in his rush to
war. 40 times an hour now, I hear this president lie, and lie
knowingly, on John Kerry, repeating things the president himself
knows are not true, in an effort to embed those untruths in our
collective conscience. The president has said, “John Kerry will
say anything to get himself elected.” The same is most certainly
true of the president, who lies and lies blatantly and knowingly
at each and every campaign stop. Maybe John Kerry is a liar, I
don't know. But I DO know the president most certainly is a liar
and a hypocrite. He is using the Gospel, perverting our core
beliefs, in an effort to get himself re-elected. And we are not
only letting him do it, but are cheering him on. The Bible
speaks of our “Crucifying [Christ] afresh,” when we knowingly
sin; when we fail to defend this precious Gospel of peace. In
that context, Christians who vote for this president on the
grounds of “moral principal” should hang their heads in shame.
Is John Kerry pro-Abortion?
No. He's said so. Did he vote against partial-birth abortion
ban? Yes, because the ban did not include an exception to spare
the life of the mother. Did he vote against an abortion parental
notification bill? Yes, because there was no judicial test
involved that would waive the requirement in the case of rape or
incest; a child raped by her father would have to get that same
father's permission for an abortion.
Did he vote against the $87 billion for the troops?
Yes. And he was right to. The Democrats were backed into a
corner by the president and, cowards that they were, they caved
into political pressure, fully knowing the president would use
this vote against them— regardless of which way they voted. Of
the $87 billion, only a FRACTION of that money actually went to
body armor and supplies. $7 billion went to the president's
friends at Halliburton (the corporation Vice President Dick
Cheney headed and still maintains a financial interest in (his
dividends and pay are held in trust) and United Defense
Corporation— an arms manufacturer the Bush family has a
financial stake in.
Is John Kerry a flip-flopper?
Let me help you: ALL POLITICIANS ARE FLIP-FLOPPERS. This is the
biggest load of foolishness the Republicans have sold us. They
act like John Kerry is the first politician to change his mind
about something. The sitting president told us he was invading
Iraq because (1) Saddam was an “imminent” threat (he wasn't),
then he said he was invading Iraq because (2) Saddam has weapons
of mass destruction (he didn't), then he said (3) he wouldn't
ask Congressional approval, but changed his mind and asked for
Congressional approval (for political reasons; to set up the
weak Democratic leadership for the hammering they're taking
now), then he said (4) he would not seek UN approval but changed
his mind (for political reasons) and went to the U.N. to make
his case for war, a case resoundingly dismissed by the world
community, a community this president in turn dismissed when
they couldn't be bribed or cajoled into doing what he wanted to
do. Then the president decided we were invading Iraq to (5)
liberate an oppressed people, a flag-waving goody-goody. But
there are oppressed people in Sudan, where more than half a
MILLION people have been slaughtered in ethnic cleansing.
Neither the president nor Senator Kerry even MENTION the Sudan.
This president, wagging his finger at Kerry, has changed his
mind and changed his motive for this war repeatedly— something
the Kerry campaign has failed to point out.
Is it wise to change leadership in time of war?
This is a war George Bush created. This is George Bush's war.
It's main objectives are reducing our dependence on OPEC and
Saudi Arabia by establishing a friendly regime and U.S. military
presence in Iraq, and boosting the U.S. economy by creating
bullions of dollars in investment and no-bid contracts for the
GOP's well-heeled corporate supporters. Oh, and tidying up the
president's father's legacy by finishing the job his dad started
(but note even bush Sr. thought invading Baghdad was a bad
idea). As Christians, as Americans, we are constantly put upon
to cut the president some slack because the country is at war.
It is important to remember this president STARTED this war.
Unwisely, against all sound advice (even from his own
administration; Colin Powell's Pottery Barn Rule: “You break it,
you own it”). Calling the president a patriot for supporting a
war he started is as hypocritical as calling John Kerry
unpatriotic because he criticizes it.
Is George Bush the moral choice?
Christian conservatives certainly want us to think so. Many of
us reluctantly conclude that he is. Regardless of whether you
think the president is a decent or moral or chummy guy, the fact
is neither Bush nor Kerry are likely to have much impact on the
moral issues the Christian right are most obsessed with at the
moment: gay marriage and abortion. Regardless of who is elected,
there will be little or no change in these issues. The notion
that the president will ban abortions and gay marriages is a
patent lie, Anyone who believes otherwise, even in a visceral
fashion, is foolishly casting a vote— for a desperate and
unscrupulous man who has ruined this economy and led us to war—
just because you think he can stop abortions (he can't) or end
gay marriages (he can't).
Are doubts about John Kerry enough to justify a vote for
George Bush?
That's up to you. Trillion-dollar surplus turned to
trillion-dollar deficit. Using 9/11 to justify a war he intended
to start all along. Billion-dollar no-bid contracts to his
friends and former business associates. Eleven hundred dead,
eight thousand wounded and climbing. Millions of manufacturing
jobs lost. Millions of jobs outsourced to India and other
nations. Millions without health care. Skyrocketing gasoline and
home heating prices. Families having to choose between heat and
food. Constantly-shifting justifications for the war and the
desperate state of our economy. And this president has never,
and I mean never, admitted having made even one mistake. Ever.
But he's anti-abortion and anti-gay marriage. And that's
apparently enough for Christians to vote for him; turning a
blind eye to three dozen sins to support the president's
opposition to two. That's the bill of goods we've been sold by
this administration and by the religious right.
By the time you read this, the voting may be all over. If things
are as close as they seem to be, the end of voting will trigger
the lawsuits and squabbling until the U.S. House of
Representatives or Supreme Court inevitably awards the
presidency to George W. Bush. The fix is most definitely in, and
thousands of ballots are being lost, invalidated, burned and
discarded— most of which in key battleground areas and among
minority voters. The president's allies are the chief vote
counters (secretaries of state) in most key battleground states.
Voter suppression efforts targeted by racial profiling in key
states overwhelmingly favor the president, as thousands upon
thousands of minority ballots disappear or are invalidated.
Thousands of lawyers have been dispatched to these battlegrounds
to file immediate lawsuits in an effort to not count black
votes— votes more likely to benefit challenger John Kerry. In
the unlikely case of a tie in the electoral college, the
election would be decided by the U.S. House of Representatives—
where the Republican party enjoys a majority and a certain win
for George Bush. Legal challenges will inevitably lead to the
U.S. Supreme Court— which awarded the presidency to Bush the
last time.
The wider the margin of win, the less likely challenges will be
successfully mounted. Once challenges are successfully mounted,
all manner of back-room conniving is and will be possible, as
powerful forces— corporations, political and religious interest
groups— will have unfettered and unrestricted access and
influence on the post-election process. And this president has
already demonstrated his ruthless and naked ambition to achieve
and retain power.
I have no doubt whatsoever the fix is already in: that forces
have made every effort to rig this election (including denying a
paper trail to the new electronic voting machines— many of which
failed during tests and most of which have no uniformly
verifiable way to achieve a recount).
The one hope we actually have is neither in Bush nor in Kerry
but in Christ. Seek His will for the choices you make, and seek
the anointing of discernment to know the difference between a
man who claims Christ and a man who knows Christ. People of good
will and good faith and real fellowship with Christ can make
every difference tomorrow.
It's up to you.
Christopher J. Priest
1 November 2004
editor@praisenet.org
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