Permissable Debate

In a related news bit, Alex Pareene at Salon.com has a great article about the daily conduct of Members of Congress in the US. Starting with a Huffington Post article about the time Members spend fundraising, and how this comes at an opportunity cost (article via Mother Jones) for Members to actually learn about the issues. Politicians spend about 4 hours a day (this may actually be low-balling it, as the Mother Jones article says) calling sponsors and lobbyists.

This is in line with the article from NPR detailing how it's become a seller's market for lobbyists. Politicians stalk them now for contributions and fundraisers. And if politicians do not spend this much time, they will lose their next election, 85% guarantee.

This is how American democracy works. What I personally cannot shake is that by talking about these issues, namely campaign financing and the attendant patronage/conflict-of-interest/revolving-door-practice issues, is that it makes me feel like a throw-back to the 60s talking about the military-industrial complex, man. And how they like, control everything. Even the boundaries of permissable debate.

In a roundabout way, this Young Turks segment below accentuates a point I want to make.

 

Citing a MediaMatters study, during a record heat wave in America, only 14% of the news stories mentioned climate change. Of those who mentioned climate change, of the politicians, whom we entrust great responsibility over the future our world, 100% were Republican.

Now, who contributes to those Republicans? Whose interest do those Republicans represent? In whose best interests is it that meaningful action over climate change not be taken to their even slight detriment? The answer is obvious. The Federal Election Commission reports (via Examiner) that oil companies contributed $30M in 2010 in the Congressional elections. 77% of that money went to Republicans. As the author for the Examiner article writes, "every special interest contributes money to candidates, not for good government, but for government that is good to them."

Never mind that this is all connected. That the reason politicians shill for oil companies is because they'd be out of a job if they did not. The point I want to make is about how all these players, involved in the Great Political Forum of television, control the boundaries of permissable debate either explicitly by what they talk about or tacitly by what they choose not to talk about.

These are the people on television, these are the people who occupy our mainstream forum on politics and they dominate the conversation on where America is headed as a country. Revolving door politics? Corruption? Torture, climate change, war crimes, those are all weeded out of the discussion so necessary for the vitality of a nation--any nation--and the consequences are deep and manifold.