Polls and Policy from TV Guide?

The neo-con effort to establish security necessities
justified by television scripts

Dreary psychopaths reinventing their integrity, their torture
and their sexual fantasies 90

A brief glimpse of the scandal as seen by MeanMesa:

As more and more details emerge from the now “out of control” scandal of the Bushite Autocracy’s torture habits, we have to wonder: “How could they (we) have been drawn into this disgusting mess?” Of course, they somehow have found the last, allegedly justifying shards of their subhuman, caustic vitriol to trot out as their last frantic vestiges of their claims to humanhood slowly disintegrate. Of course, they make desperate, whiny cries that all their midnight pornography torture episodes were effective -- and in their (our) twisted issue of odorous dishonor -- hence, justified.

It’s time to “kiss the girlfriend!”

Pundits across the air waves, both reactionaries and progressives, have tried to salve the horrifying national embarrassment with an endless addition of more and more “discussion,” always convincingly presented as if the speaker were privy to actual observation of the practices or enjoyed some other kind of credible authority about them. As with so many other matters, none of us is -- any longer -- particularly surprised to find that massive campaigns of lies and misdirection from the Bush regime have left us stunned and remorseful, again. All those who hold up the honor of our country hide our faces and ponder -- “Will there ever be an end to this disgrace?”

The psychopathies of the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeldt-Gonzales “horror family” seem to emerge into the light with the sickening regularity of an episodic series of television shows, each one more hideously depressing and outrageous than the one before.

One hundred eighty terrifying, water board driven sensations of death by drowning to “uncover” the same information available on Khalid Shaik Mohammed's previously broadcast Al Jezeera television interview?

The details of these gruesome, sexual gratification fantasies and other facts are still developing, but there is an aside which may be “ripe” enough for MeanMesa’s attention today. What could have inspired this terrible indulgence on the part of someone like Dick Cheney? Although an interesting question, we now face the unnerving material task of trying to rectify the consequences of the matter. Still, we remain curious. What was the motive for all these acts? What was the source that provided the insane motives for these subhuman escapades carried out in our name?

The answers are worse than the questions. Raw vengeance can carry the day only so far. Can we discern the reasons? After all, what else would satisfy the appetite for power and ascendance amid the otherwise humiliating, self crushing boredom of being overweight, effeminate cowards armed -- thanks to us -- with the world’s most powerful army?

Now to the point of this post:

Let’s talk television. (We can painlessly include movies and novels, too. In this case, the medium is NOT the message.) A sinister cycle of carefully grooming the public, both here and abroad, with deceptions disguised as news by the likes of the Foxes and Murdoch’s is no longer a “shocking revelation” to anyone any longer. But what about the fiction? Are the equally carefully crafted themes of fictional plots designed to slowly reconfigure the glacial consciousness of the viewing masses?

For example, the codependent narcotic of CSI reassures us that police investigations can reveal the “truth” necessary to catch any criminal, no matter how ingenious or cautious he might be. We ignore the fact that prosecutors from all across the country now complain that jurors expect this fictional expertise before they convict defendants. Perhaps they simply don’t realize that the popular CSI equipment is more akin to Star Trek technology than fact.

In any event, the message is clear. “Eluding the power of the state is hopeless.” Does it have to do with deterring crime or establishing submission? "Resistance is futile!" (... the BORG...)

Fox’s Jack Bauer -- 24 Hours -- establishes the fictional foundation for the now famously cited H-bomb, anthrax, death ray, insane terrorist in Los Angeles, New York or Atlanta which justifies the necessity of ripping someone’s arms and legs off in order to “foil the plot.” We wonder if Sean Hannity has found a way to watch these films twenty-four hours every day.

The question is, “Did shows like 24 Hours successfully embed this crazy idea into the minds of the electorate? Or even, part of the electorate?”

El Cartel, broadcast here in Albuquerque on the Spanish language Telemundo Network, presents the vindicating tale of government efforts to quash drug cartels. Are these (rather entertaining) tales a move to prepare citizens of Mexico and the Untied States with a fictional model which persuades them that such programs are worth the sacrifice of enduring the inevitable violence they will precipitate? They may be effective. El Cartel may even produce a positive image and acceptance of the value of the policy. But wait, is this the rational approach to prepare a populous to take the right action?

Isn’t it a bit cynical to assume that the citizens of any country can only be convinced that the right course of action is the dramatically simplified motive presented in a fictional construction? What about the mature, educated citizen who is naturally inclined toward governments and policies which reflect his individual interests in doing the sensible, reasonable things necessary to sustain an orderly civilization consistent with his own values -- that is, values which haven’t been predigested, simplified and presented as caricatures of solutions to the real challenges he and his country might face?

It’s easier for the lazy mind to simply be frightened into agreement with the radical actions taken by a desperate, yet imminently -- and artificially -- honorable television star. This seems to be the case whether a government wishes to vindicate torture or campaigns to defeat drug lords.

Good old Jack Bauer has made legitimate all these responses as unexamined, gaseous justifications for non existential, hypothetical terror threats. Once that was accomplished, the justifications went directly to the neo-con wing nuts in the government even as the hypothetical terrors were left behind on last week’s show.

Good old Jack Bauer laid the groundwork. And from that insane foundation, after Fox “innocently” participated in its introduction, propagation and justification, there emerged all sorts of even more bizarre and grotesque further refinements. For example, Cheney’s torture program, since it apparently never produced much in the way of information, can be assigned to the ambition of terrifying the terrorists, perhaps extracting some sort of vengeance. Vengeance? Useful for national security? In the world of Cheney and Rove, any kind of outrage represented the possible utility of its use for political expediencies. That isn’t news to anyone currently still breathing.

Heh, heh, heh. Tune into channel 69. We are now listening to this same, hopefully rather nervous, idiot (Cheney) insisting that our torture techniques are national security secrets. How do we intend to frighten terrorists with his exquisite torture accomplishments if they remain secret? In his next breath, the old crook insists that the Justice Department has intentionally refused to release the documents supporting “all the lives saved” by this violent extraction of terrorist “information.” Naturally, something like that might assist in his defense in court, in his mind, even if it had to be quickly fabricated at the last minute (maybe in a way similar to the official lies he spread like sunflower seeds to start the war in Iraq...).

We must disabuse ourselves of the trash these television scripts have insinuated into our thoughts. The first step will be to finally reveal that they are no more than cheesy manipulations of our fears, vomited out to make us more accepting of the horrors of our actions and more accepting of the necessities of abandoning our ideals and our Constitutional protections.

If the neo-con monsters who so craftily deceived us before can reinvent themselves into something even remotely coherent, we will have been destroyed by our own televisions! Thanks to them, we now find ourselves not resisting external forces intent on our destruction, but instead, sorting uncomfortably through our own thoughts to detect and eliminate the toxin which has been placed there.

Yes, the Bushites created immense poison all around the world, but our first mission will be to cleanse what their incredible network co-conspirators have placed in our own minds.

Not familiar with the al Jazeera network? It is part of our world and definitely worth knowing about!
http://english.aljazeera.net/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Al_Jazeera_English

Any appetite for Chris Matthews? Here he speaks about Cheney's torture justification:
http://www.ecofactory.com/community/green-tv/cheneys-defense-torture-addressed-chris-matthews-hardball

Have we been neglecting our appropriate attention to 24 Hours or El Cartel?
http://www.fox.com/24/
http://foro.univision.com/univision/board/message?board.id=telenovelas&message.id=1135221

Finally, for those with an "appetite" to see a "fictional" representation of an extremely troubling traditional example, may I recommend a movie. The important feature of this movie has no particular relevance to torture scenes or techniques, but rather to the outrage of the attitudes of those in charge.

CAUTION: This film is EXTREMELY PROVOCATIVE. DO NOT FOLLOW THIS LINK UNLESS YOU ACCEPT AND UNDERSTAND THIS WARNING!

http://www.criterion.com/films/532

The Astonishing Innocence of Alaska Senator Ted Stevens

The Elephant in the Parlor

How to extend the toxin of the Bush Justice Department beyond the collapse of the autocracy. BD86

The question arose some time ago. The longest serving Republican in the Senate was facing a serious corruption problem. One might consider such a problem, at least in the Republican sense, to present itself simply. That is, for them a corruption problem might imply, in one sense, “not enough looting,” and in the other sense, “to much looting” to either hide or ignore under investigation. Republicans worthy of the name are expected to graft and connive their way to a certain, minimum amount of ill gotten gains then successfully conceal it under the guise of “tax cuts,” “no bid contracts” or other similar criminal mechanisms.

Poor old Ted Stevens, however, wound up with a house. There were no bills, payments or ownership clouds for distraction or protection. His down to earth, folksy style of corruption delivered itself in this particular case as a a massive, material house renovation, contributed by his “friend,” Bill Allen, and constructed by Mr. Allen’s oil field services firm, VECO. Aside from the obvious question of why anyone would want anything built by this band of Sanford and Sons style hillbillies, the precise compensation provided to the thoroughly “for sale” Senator Stevens for this “pay to play” arrangement has little to do with this MeanMesa posting.

This posting deals, instead, with the startling exoneration of the old Senator previously convicted of no fewer than seven corruption charges and headed for jail. By the way, when we say “previously,” we, of course, are speaking of his conviction in September, 2008. Those were the dark days when Autocrat Bush Jr. was “hunkering” in his bunker waiting for the Russian troops to enter his Berlin on the Potomac.

The old Senator was always full of insipid bluster. (Research his explosive threats of retaliation against his Senatorial buddies when they humiliated him by exposing his $250,000,000 “bridge to no where” as a new, all time low in earmark quality. The bridge didn’t, of course, actually go to “no where,” at all. It went to some inaccessible real estate with an interesting possibility of profit for its equally interesting, eager and enthusiastic owners.) Stevens had delivered a veritable Philippic as to his inevitable innocence along with his demand for a “speedy trial.” By "speedy trial" we have to assume a trial so "speedy" that legal certain errors could be understandably committed by hurried prosecutors.

At this point the Bushies found themselves facing a quandary. The old bird from Alaska, having been a very visible ranking member during their years of tax extraction, had to be saved the humiliation of a prison cell. Yet, unlike the more collegiate forms of loot accumulated by the more sophisticated Republicans during that period, old Senator Stevens had wound up with a house -- a real “elephant in the living room.” Worse, his bourbon soaked, hillbilly coconspirator, Mr. Bill Allen, had confessed to every category and item on the Grand Jury’s list of indictments in an effort to mitigate some of his own consequences.

Judicially, Governor Palin had already, by this time, clumsily transformed Alaska into a “wet dream” of neo con principles of “free market” opportunities embarrassingly beyond even her “drill, baby, drill” fiasco. Now, the meat handed state judicial monster had staggered out of even her gaseous control.

The Alaska State Senate, equally contaminated by the numbing Senate Presidency of Ted Steven’s son and joyfully lubricated with vast oil money was running for its own cover under the humiliating embarrassment of Palin’s recent Vice Presidential campaign. The sole Alaskan Congressman, the well aged and well paid Don Young, was scampering for his own cover from the now free range indictments.

Alaska has had its own legacy of notable Senators. Ernest Gruening stood as one of the first voices against the war in Vietnam. Mike Gravel followed that brave stand and delivered the VSW (Village Safe Water) legislation to Alaskan Natives. Both solid, albeit moderately zany, Alaskan Democrats, offered the promise of a mature, forward thinking presence for the state before the greediest Alaskans assigned that promise to this sink hole thirty years ago.

The Brain of the Bushites, Mr. Karl Rove, issued his marching orders to the Justice Department. The trial could not be swayed with the same cheap tricks as, for example, the kangaroo court which had placed the duly elected Governor of Alabama in an isolation cell in a Federal Prison while the election results were purloined and delivered to a mindless Republican monkey who had just lost. No, the “Stevens-matter” had to be handled differently.

The rescue of this -- possibly talkative -- old crook had to be effected after his conviction. Rove correctly estimated that the details of the crimes were too sleazy for even a Bush pardon, and the Stevens conviction had already delivered the Alaska Senate seat to a Democrat, Mark Begich. So, the full investment by the administration became targeted on keeping the old man quiet. A book of memoirs scratched out over the years in the penitentiary by Stevens’ ghost writers could capsize the final stinky remnants of the Bush legacy more severely than the whispers of an affair with Secretary of State Rice.

The Federal prosecutors were instructed to blow it. Coasting below the surface of the media’s infatuation with the election of Obama, the case could be quietly dismissed as a mistrial based on mistakes made by the prosecutors of the most fundamental rules of evidence and discovery. By the way, mistakes which a new law school graduate would never make. By the way, mistakes so suspicious as to be described as “perplexing” by both Krauthammer and Toutenberg on the weekly PBS yelling match. "Outrageous" and "egregious" were not ever words which caused Carl Rove to lay awake at night. "Perplexing" elicited no more than one of his furtive, mischievous smiles.

A legitmate, sincere and duly elected President and his administration may eventually return the Justice Department to its traditional, internationally envied state of honor and respect, but the new Attorney General, Eric Holden, finds his formidable sworn allegiance to Constitutional rule compels him to dismiss the case -- regardless of the compelling facts of guilt and conviction -- based on the sabotage engineered into it by Rove and the Bush cronies.

Yes, the screwtape twists and insults of the Bush autocracy live on beyond the grave. Happily, once cleansed and rectified by our return to democracy, the odor will not last forever.

The author of MeanMesa enjoys the credentials of having lived in Alaska for thirty years and having been intermittently employed by VECO as an engineer and designer. For a more complete version of the VECO story,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VECO_Corporation

for a more complete account of the Justice Department attack on Governor Siegelman,

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/02/21/60minutes/main3859830.shtml
http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1627427,00.html

and for a more complete account of the Ted Stevens trial

http://alaskacorruption.blogspot.com/2009/02/prosecutors-in-ted-stevens-trial.html
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-stevens12-2009apr12,0,1940960.story
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6054711.ece