The Politics of Distraction in an Age of Gotcha Capitalism

New Ralph Nader essay via CounterPunch:

In this year's presidential campaign, the major media want you to focus on the candidates' gaffes, their tactics toward one another's gaffes, the flows of political gossip and four second sound bytes.

Over and over again this is the humdrum pattern. Is Obama an elitist because of what he said about small towns in Pennsylvania? Why do Hillary and Bill exaggerate? Will Bill's mouth drag Hillary down? Will Barack's pastor drag him down? What about the gender factor? The race factor? Will they figure?

Who has more experience on Day One? What is McCain's wizardry over the reporters on the campaign trail? Can McCain project any human warmth? Which state must Hillary win and by what margin to continue in the race?

And

Corporate criminals laugh all the way to the bank and back. Eighty percent of the workers have been falling behind while the growth of the economy, until last October, made the rich richer and the hyper-rich go off the charts.

One of three workers lives on Wal-Mart wage levels. Nearly fifty million Americans are without health insurance. Eighteen thousand of these Americans die each year because they cannot afford health care, according to the Institute of Medicine. The recession deepens.

The corporate giants are abandoning millions of American workers as they move whole industries to dictatorial regimes abroad where political elites dictate wages, ban independent trade unions, and given sufficient grease, reduce other costs for these companies. Only American CEOs are not outsourced in this mad dash for greed and profits.

And

Now turn on the television and radio coverage of the presidential campaign. How much of the above is reflected in the incessant distractions about tactics, gaffes and the fervid money-raising race?

More here.

Any one of the three surviving candidates could at any moment put a stop to all this campaign trail bullshit. But McCain won't because, as a Republican, he's all for corporate rule totally replacing democracy. Ditto for Hillary. Obama, who I want to believe is much more liberal than he's letting on, won't either, no doubt because he's afraid that actually talking about issues will leave him wide open to a slew of relentless attacks in terms of these trivial news media narratives listed by Nader.

But wouldn't it be wonderful if the next time some dumbass TV journalist goes after Obama on "Bitter-Gate" or "Scary-Black-Preacher-Gate" or "Flag-Pin-Gate," the young Senator from Illinois responded with something like "That's bullshit; none of that matters; what matters is..."? It could conceivably change everything. Staying on message with issues. Using all the media attention, using the bully pulpit power freely given to bigtime candidates, to directly change the course of the conversation. Obama really could do that.

Yeah yeah, I know. Ain't gonna happen. He's too much of an establishment player to change the rules in such a dramatic way.

So I'm still planning on voting for Nader come November. At least he knows what needs to be talked about.

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