Monday, March 06, 2017

Truest statement of the week II


George W. Bush vowed not to criticize Barack Obama. “He deserves my silence.” He added for good measure, “I love my country more than I love politics. I think it is essential that he be helped in office.” If anyone needed additional proof that Obama was a servant of the ruling classes Bush certainly provided it.
But Donald Trump is getting less love from his fellow Republican. Bush could have exercised the same self-imposed silence in regards to Trump but instead he made a thinly veiled critique of his remark that the press are enemies of the people. "I consider the media to be indispensable to democracy. That we need the media to hold people like me to account. I mean, power can be very addictive and it can be corrosive and it's important for the media to call to account people who abuse their power, whether it be here or elsewhere."

Fine words but they don’t mean much to a man who used a compliant corporate media to wage war and attack our civil liberties. Media were certainly indispensable to Bush. They wouldn’t even use the word torture when describing American brutality. “Harsh interrogation techniques” and other such weasel words appeared in order to keep the press in his good graces. Bush and Obama certainly knew the media were essential in helping to normalize their agenda of American aggression and the enactment of neo-liberal schemes at home. 



-- Margaret Kimberley, "Freedom Rider: Liberals Expose Themselves" (BLACK AGENDA REPORT).