Occupying The Narrative Keeps Peace Candidates On Mute, Ensures War Spending Will Roll On

Jill Stein at a fundraiser in Portland, Maine October 30, 2015.
You will not see photos of Stein with a cute baby in corporate media, so I am sharing one here. 

The American Herald Tribune published David Swanson's interview with Green Party leader and presidential candidate Jill Stein this week. In it Swanson makes the audacious claim that, since Stein's platform most closely reflects the priorities of people rather than those of corporations, she has a better chance of winning than do candidates who kiss the ring of Pentagon contractors. Because a majority of people would actually vote for the platform Stein campaigns on.

But my inbox is clogged with letters and op-eds from people who should know better who are "feeling the Bern." Liberals are again hopelessly hoping for change from the Democratic Party. Why in the face of so much evidence to the contrary do they continue to be duped?

I think it's because they still get most of their information from corporate "news" -- a zone which blacks out any reference to non-corporate sponsored candidates.

In life under corporate government, it's all about hogging the narrative. Making sure people never hear from candidates who respond intelligently to what people really want.

Because people want the military budget to stop gobbling up over half the federal budget every year. They want to stop supporting 800+ military bases around the planet. The want the wars for oil and the resulting refugee crisis and the proliferation of nuclear weapons to cease.

"Refugee crisis: Pregnant woman and children among 40 victims after boat sinks off Turkish coast"
Mirror.co.uk  Jan. 30, 2016

People don't want the future inhabitants of the White House to have a blank check for waging war on "terror" with no geographic or temporal boundaries.

People want student debt canceled, and free university education like other rich countries have. Stein has an interesting strategy here. She told Swanson:

"I have yet to find a young person in debt who doesn't become a missionary for our campaign the minute they learn that we will cancel their debt...43 million young people – that is a plurality of the vote. In a three-way race, that's enough to win the vote."

People want universal health care like other rich countries have. Stein retired from practice as a medical doctor to promote the kind of environmental policies that human health needs dictate.

Also on board: Dr. Margaret Flowers, a Green Party candidate for the Senate in Maryland and a vigorous activist on behalf of a single payer health care system. (Actually, click here to read the article.)

People want the government to respond to climate crisis rather than continuing to pump out carbon and other pollutants at the taxpayers' expense.

People want to have a say in whether or not to live under corporate global government instead of having it shoved down their throats by fast tracking the Trans-Pacific Partnership deal through Congress.

From Black Agenda Report "Ethnic Cleansing: The Ultimate Environmental Racism" by Glen Ford

People want clean food and water, and real information in order to know if they are poisoning their own children unwittingly.

People want police accountability and an end to extrajudicial killing by guns at home and air strikes abroad.

People want the government to help poor families fleeing the murderous policies engendered in Central America by CAFTA and torturers trained at the taxpayer-supported School of the Americas. People don't want migrant children handed over to human traffickers after being housed in concentration camp-like conditions for weeks or months on end.

But even more than all these things, people want to believe in something. Anything that might pull us back from the precipice. Don't think corporate media doesn't recognize this. It's very important to manage this profound need of mobs in times of crisis.

That's why the demagogue with the bad hair appeals to so many frightened working class voters. They see enormous structural problems with our system as it stands, but they also have a compelling need to blame it on someone else. It couldn't be their fault, because they feel like victims themselves. They've lost faith in corporate government and most corporate media. Only "news" outlets that broadcast scapegoats appeal to them now.

Their news feed will make sure they never hear of Dr. Jill Stein or Dr. Margaret Flowers. How about yours?