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THERE IT IS:  IF YOU NEEDED A CLEAR ILLUSTRATION OF THE ACTUAL PROBLEM IN OUR NATION, THE SCHIAVO SITUATION SAYS IT ALL PERFECTLY

If You Don't Understand How TV-Addiction Is The Single Most Powerful Force In Our Nation, Just Take At Look At What Is Occurring In This Case

by Thomas J. Bico

MARCH 20, 2005 - What was the news on Friday?  What was the news on Saturday?

If you watched TV or looked at the internet, you saw endless nonsensical ranting about a story that affects none of us:  the Terri Schiavo nonsense.  Many of you allowed yourselves to take time to discuss this or listen to the coverage, allowed yourselves to get angry about this or that aspect of it, the various arguments for or against.

On Friday, the budget for the year was passed.  Do you know what was in it?  Do you know about, in the middle of war and record deficits, the additional $134 million in additional tax cuts that are in the bill right alongside massive cuts for education, elimination of community hunger programs, a cutting nearly in half of funding for police - by $1 billion - and cuts for firefighter funding in the middle of a War on Terror?

Many people spent a lot of time watching TV "news" or reading internet "news" or even the newspapers this week and weekend.  How many of you who did that can name five line items in the budget that was passed?

This is what was meant when The Moderate Independent described in earlier articles that the news is not liberal nor conservative:  it is simply Vaseline.  It does not intend to inform you with any slant or none - it is there to distract you, to get you to accept them slipping things in that would be too painful if you weren't coated for protection.  

This weekend:  the budget was passed (with additional tax cuts included,) oil hit another record high and the first station had $3 a gallon gas, and it is the second anniversary of the Iraq War (with no end in sight.)

The Bush administration and the Congress that just passed this awful budget and yet more tax cuts doesn't want you to notice that, and they certainly don't want a big deal made about it being the second anniversary of the Iraq War, nor do they want proper attention paid to the oil crisis.

And so, as always, the entire media - not just Fox, every single station - falls in line and does not cover the stories that actually affect our lives but instead gives endless top story coverage to something that affects none of us.

If anyone wonders if the Bush administration would really calculate so coldly to try and slip things by people that they wouldn't accept if they were given proper coverage, there is indisputable, clear evidence that they choose willingly to do exactly that:  they won't allow photos of the coffins of our dead soldiers returning home, and they won't allow body counts of those we kill.

They know if we see the corpses returning or hear how many innocent people we are killing, we would realize what is happening is bad.  So they don't change the actions, they simply provide cover, make sure the story doesn't get aired, eliminate the body count number and the coffins, allowing them to continue getting Americans killed and killing Iraqis without Americans getting too worked up about it.

This is what happens in the media constantly.  It is constant.  Every week there is some cover story:  Michael Jackson, Scott Peterson, Robert Blake, Schiavo.  And this has been for years.  It doesn't matter what it is, whether it's Jon Benet or OJ Simpson or the Menedez brothers.  Remember when Paine Stewart's plane crashed?  Where I worked in Chicago, everyone would talk around the lunch table knowing all the details, what sort of plane, what the equipment of the plane was supposed to be able to handle, etc., etc.

Paine Stewart - most people didn't even know who he was or ever speak of him prior to the media making him the weekly cover story.

But they were loyal news watchers thinking they were being informed and having intelligent discussions about the important topics of the day.  Yet when, a short while later, the WTO riots occurred in Seattle, they were at a complete loss.  "What is the WTO they are rioting about?"

Every week there is a cover story that means nothing to our lives that distracts the entire nation from the coffins and corpses, so to speak; in this week's case, the budget, oil prices, and war anniversary.

The issue of Schiavo is nonsensical, of course.  As WRKO-Boston radio host Jay Diamond put it, these people are claiming to be so upset about one life, but 100,000 innocent people have been killed by us in Iraq and they don't protest that, they support it.  People who weren't brain dead, were fully healthy, who did nothing to us.

In addition, thousands of Americans who could live and be healthy are dying because these people supported rolling back pollution standards.  Children are being born retarded because they support rolling back emissions standards for mercury.

This is not about arguments over life and killing, this is about distracting the nation.

Witness the lengths the President and Republicans will go to create this distraction:  in order to make this happen, they summarily declared our nation a theocratic dictatorship.  Regardless of the law, they are acting as if we are in living in a monarchy:  the King sees something he doesn't like, he has an edict drawn up and signs it.  The laws that exist don't matter.  The King declares something unchristian, declares a person's actions unchristian, and he has the power above all existent laws to issue an edict to intervene.  In this case, a man is making a decision for his wife, he has done it through the proper legal channels, the proper courts have decided; and now the President is stepping in like a dictator and, not liking the the law, acting to have the law effectively discarded and ignored, his will be the de facto law of the land.

This is not how America works, this is not how democracy works.

And remember, this clearly has nothing to do with actually pushing a godly agenda to save lives, because this President is knowingly killing tens of thousands of innocents entirely without conscience.  This is just about distraction.  Don't notice the destruction of your nation, the President is saying, let me abuse God's name to distract you so I can continue to bankrupt the nation, destroy its infrastructure with more tax cuts and horrible program cuts, and don't notice that for two years now we have been slaughtering 10's of 10's of thousands of people entirely without justification.

To abuse God's name and good word like that is a sin beyond others.  The people may be distracted, but God certainly isn't.  He notices every child given asthma, every wife and mother given lung cancer, every Iraqi mother and son and father slaughtered.  He knows we have killed over a hundred in our custody, killed using torture.  He is not tricked to thinking there is godly concern by this one publicity stunt meant to distract.

And he knows what his Commandments say.  And, in the end, he holds all people accountable for their actions.

What is occurring here is the central problem in our nation.  It has been going on since long before Bush took office, and it serves both parties, whoever is in charge.  People have wondered how people accept the record debts, bankruptcies, oil prices, etc., etc.  It's the Vaseline.

Fox News is Vaseline.  Rush Limbaugh is Vaseline.  Indeed, what we call the non-Moderate Independent media and others call the mainstream media should - and will from now on by us - be referred to as the Vaseline media.  They all serve to get people to accept the most violating, painful things without a whimper.  They provide a special brand of advanced Vaseline, one with a massively powerful anesthetic; the powerfully narcotic pain-killing lube known as TV.

As we have said, TV is a highly addictive drug.  Among the things it causes is detachment from reality bordering on insanity, along with obesity, lethargy, and anti-social behavior.

People will accept the distractions like the Schiavo nonsense because they just don't want to be disturbed from their using; they have plans to sit on their asses and watch March Madness, and they don't want the raping of the nation's finances or the killing of 100,000 innocent people by us to ruin that plan.

So the media feeds them the Schiavo story.  It is, indeed, what TV-addicted Americans on both sides of the political aisle want and by now expect.  Both sides can get angry, make an argument that let's them feel they are participating in some moral cause actively.  One side feels they are applying energy toward the will of God, the other that they are defending freedom.  Both are really sitting on their asses watching a lot of TV and being distracted from the reality that is destroying them both - and their nation - rapidly.

I have personally had a situation in my life where we had to make the "do not resuscitate" or "resuscitate"-type decision.  There is a great movie out about that now called "Million Dollar Baby," won some awards this year.

That is where topics like that belong.

The Terri Schiavo situation is not a discussion about the subject of right-to-die, nor is it a debate about the subject.  It is the President and Republicans in Congress - with the Democrats accomplices by inaction - going even so far as to declare America a theocratic dictatorship with their actions just to keep up the distracting of the American public, just to keep Americans from being able to see the coffins and the corpse counts, the cuts and the continuation of debt-increasing tax cuts, the complete failure of the President to develop alternative energy which has left us still fully dependent on oil.

Americans everywhere will be discussing all this week every detail and perspective about something that affects nothing, while basically none will be able to name 5 items in the budget that was just passed by Congress that affects everything in the nation.

People used to ask me when I said I didn't watch TV, they'd ask how do I stay informed if I never watch the news?  I would ask them if they watched the news, they'd invariably say yes, and some news magazine type programs.  Then I would ask them to name five things Congress had voted on in the previous year.  Silence.  Literally hundreds of hours of watching and watching news on TV and they knew nothing about anything.

"Tell me," I would say, "are you really being informed, or being distracted?"

Almost all Americans are TV addicts, and this plague is destroying our nation.  This week you will hear the hordes of these drug-induced insanity-suffering addicts talking about a brain dead woman name Terri Schiavo and her personal family matters, which affect none of us in any way.  Realize, anyone you hear taking time to discuss this case is a drug addict, has allowed the media to control their brain to talk about something that affects them in no way; absolute mind control.  When you hear the talk, realize, they are very, very sick and in need of help.

To help them out, don't respond with any input to the story - to do that is to be a part of the problem.  Instead, trying asking them if they know that on Friday, $1 billion dollars was cut from police funding, community hunger programs were completely eliminated, numerous education programs were slashed, and firefighter funding was slashed, while another $134 million in tax cuts was passed in the middle of a war and record deficits.  And then just walk away, knowing there is no helping addicts until they can see the problem themselves - and by not participating in their insanity but, instead, helping to point out how insane they are being, you have taken an important step in reclaiming our nation from the drug-induced malaise it is in.

UPDATE:  In case any more evidence was needed, ABC News even finds a smoking gun in this case:  "ABC News obtained talking points circulated among Senate Republicans explaining why they should vote to intervene in the Schiavo case. Among them... the "pro-life base will be excited," and that it is a "great political issue -- this is a tough issue for Democrats."

Yet they still have given it hours and hours of coverage instead of things like the budget.

From the husband via CBS News: "Tom DeLay should be ashamed of himself," Michael Schiavo said in a broadcast interview. "... He's found a cause to hide behind, to lighten the load of his other problems."

And yet look where the quote comes from, within one of their many hours of coverage of this non-story, which forced this man to leave his dying wife's bedside.