By Ernest A. Canning/Common Dreams
In his book Failed States, preeminent linguist Noam Chomsky described the significant gap between the policy positions of the U.S. electorate and their elected “leaders” as a “democracy deficit.” That gap, he concluded, is the product of the deceptive manner in which “elections are skillfully managed to avoid issues and marginalize the underlying population . . . freeing the elected leadership to serve the substantial people.”
At its essence, the Bernie Sanders-inspired “political revolution” entails a substantive, issue-driven strategy designed to eliminate the “democracy deficit.” It offers a unique vehicle for societal transformation from what President Jimmy Carter described as “an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery” to the realization of the promise offered by President Abraham Lincoln in his Gettysburg Address: “government of the people, by the people and for the people.”
As a movement, the “political revolution” can succeed only if progressives come to understand the symbiotic relationship between the corporate public relations industry, commercial media outlets, and the politicians who have been subsumed by corporate wealth and power. This includes the need to identify and expose the methodology deployed by that unholy troika (corporate PR flaks, commercial media and corporatist politicians), to wit, the adroit use of select words and phrases (“talking points”) to frame public discourse and to conceal the deceits utilized to persuade the electorate to vote against its own interests.
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Posted on August 9, 2019
