The Exception to the Rulers - Excerpt

And imagine if the U.S. media showed uncensored, hellish images of war -- even for one week. What impact would that have? I think we would be able to abolish war.

Instead, after our loved ones and neighbors followed orders and marched off to war (unlike the children of the top warmakers), the networks showed us a colorful, video-game version of what was going on.

In Iraq, the U.S. government discouraged independent coverage of the war -- sometimes at gunpoint. And when the remains of dead soldiers began coming back, the Bush administration ordered curtains to be erected when the planes off-loaded the flag-draped coffins at Dover Air Force Base. In fact, the administration has enforced a ban on any filming of returning caskets. As of early 2004, with more than 500 dead Americans and over 11,000 wounded or medically evacuated, Bush had not attended a single funeral for a soldier killed in action during his presidency, either from Afghanistan or Iraq. The Bush team has invoked a basic principle of propaganda: Control the images and you control the people.

The lesson had been learned from Vietnam -- a lesson in manipulation. In Iraq, there would be no daily television images of the human toll of war. The government and the media would portray a clean war, a war nearly devoid of victims.

Breaking the Sound Barrier

It is absolutely critical right now to break the sound barrier when it comes to dissent. The U.S. government has used the war on terror as its rationale for the biggest crackdown on civil liberties since the McCarthy era of the 1950s. Right now, people are being thrown in jail without charges. Men from the Middle East and South Asia are being singled out as enemies. Lawyers defending dissidents are under attack.

These are the first warnings. You could be next.

The U.S. Constitution has been swept aside by myriad draconian measures that are part of the USA Patriot Act. When George W. Bush and his foot soldiers can't build an airtight legal case, suspicion and xenophobia will suffice. Prisoners classified by the U.S. president as "enemy combatants" can now be tried by military tribunals on ships docked in foreign waters, beyond the protective reach of the Bill of Rights. Some are being tortured to pry information out of them. Hundreds of foreign nationals are presently being detained by the United States -- at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan -- without knowing the charges against them. We don't know the defendants' names or their purported crimes, and they don't hear the evidence against them. According to a November 13, 2001, presidential order, their trials can be held in secret and they can be found guilty by a tribunal of military judges chosen by the secretary of defense. If the tribunal unanimously sentences the prisoner to death, he or she can be executed. We would know nothing of the case, and those with knowledge of the tribunals' actions are forbidden to speak about them.

If there was an honest discourse in the mainstream media, if we really did present alternatives to kangaroo court justice and war, people would be able to imagine a much wider range of options. That is one of the media's most serious responsibilities, to open up the discussion.

The silenced majority is chafing behind the corporate media muzzle. Lines are breaking down between Democrats and Republicans, conservatives and liberals. Conservatives, like progressives, care deeply about privacy, about corporate control of their lives. People across the political spectrum are outraged by the profiteering corporations -- Bush's corporate criminal sponsors, including Enron, WorldCom, and Halliburton -- robbing our treasury, raiding our pensions, ravaging our wilderness areas, and running away with the loot.

More and more people are saying no to government lies, corporate greed, and a slavish media.

The silenced majority is finding its voice.

Excerpted from The Exception to the Rulers by Amy Goodman. Copyright © 2004 by Amy Goodman. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hyperion. Available wherever books are sold.

Copyright © 2004 Amy Goodman with David Goodman