By Michael Arvey
The law of political diversion locates its survival roots in nature. For example, the common killdeer, in order to divert an intruder's attention, will fly off her nest and feign injury, and will continue to try to divert the intruder away from her nesting ground. In the process of this distraction display, she will voice aloud and noisy "kill-deeah", thus hoping to save her brood of eggs or chicks.
Homo Politico Americanus well knows this tactic of distraction and frequently employs this stratagem when the fires under its feet get hot, although it does so for far more sinister reasons than merely to save its offspring. The present administration frequently uses this tactic to save itself from embarrassing exposures that would uncover suspicious and specious behavior and most probably even criminal liability (the rubric of national security falls under the law of diversion as well).
Recent examples in point: A few weeks ago tens of thousands of protesters marched against Bush during his visit with the U.K.'s ever-faithful Tony Blair, Bush's imperialistic partner in the Middle East. That same weekend, thousands of Americans demonstrated their displeasure over FTAA trade policies and tactics at its conference in Miami, during which they got the snot soundly pummeled out of them for exercising their First Amendment rights. Police violence was calculated, massive, swift and ugly. The message was clear--First Amendment dissent will not be tolerated in Bush's (Mr. "I love free speech") America. Remarkably, the protests in London bore little resemblance to Miami's unleashing of vicious guard-dog enforcers, funded, incidentally, by monies appropriated for Iraq.
Bursting onto the scene as if out of nowhere, pop star icon Michael Jackson suddenly got splashed across news screens. Allegedly for child molestation, a warrant had been issued for his arrest, and a moral shudder, consumed the American public-- an event that quickly flooded and dominated the news. British and U.S. protest coverage collapsed into a media black hole. Interestingly enough, at the same time, protests against Georgia President Edouard Shevardnadze received extensive media coverage--another despot notorious for committing election fraud and who was befouled by corruption. (The alternative press reported the protests were actually engineered by U.S. elites fearing Shevardnadze would stray back into the Russian fold, nixing U.S. geopolitical interests.) Nonetheless, the law of diversion is strongly evident here--democratic protests were eclipsed and then stealthily replaced with a set of different eggs--Jackson and Shevardnadze--demonstrating how criticisms and exposures of Bush disappear down a hole. Kill-deeah, Kill-deeah.
It gets worse
On December 13, President Bush signed into law H.R.2417, which expands the FBI's power to investigate and to reduce the privacy rights of American citizens. Prior to its passage in Congress and now Bush's imprimatur, Congressman Ron Paul (D-TX) remarked on the bill, "It appears we are witnessing a stealth enactment of the enormously unpopular 'Patriot II' legislation...Perhaps the national outcry when a draft of the Patriot Act II act was leaked has led its supporters to enact it one piece at a time in secret. Whatever the case, this is outrageous and unacceptable."
Does this information foment riotous discussion and outrage on the nation's news networks? Kill-deeah. Suddenly it is reported that Saddam Hussein had been captured on December 14. According to an Axis of Logic chronology, "Reports say that U.S. forces captured him on Saturday night." Hussein's apprehension immediately commandeered the media's attention. Furthermore on Monday, December 15, "Sen. Bill Nelson reported 'the Bush administration told senators Iraq had [the] capability to hit [the] U.S. East Coast with WMD, leading to their vote to use military force.'" And on Wednesday, September 17, "CBS Evening News reports that for the first time, the chairman of the independent September 11 commission is 'saying publicly that 9/11 could have and should have been prevented.'"
Is it mere circumstance that negative data regarding the Bush administration quickly vanish in some new Killdeeah shuffling of imagery? I maintain otherwise--this is a stock-in-trade tactic of deceit the Bushites employ frequently, and without fail, delivered to your living room by a fawning and tacitly complicit media.
Also, the powers oh high have frequently used the umbrella of darkness as a kind of diversionary tactic to hide and work under as seen for example in the passing of legislation in the wee hours of the night when few people watch C-SPAN. For instance, according to a recent commentary (12-11-03) by Congressman Sherrod Brown (D-OH), on a night in March at 2:54 a.m., the Republican-led House cut veteran's benefits by three votes; on a night in April at 2:39 a.m., the Republican-led House slashed education and health care by five votes; on a night in May at 1:56 a.m, the Republican-led House passed the tax-cut bill by a few votes; on a night in June at 2:33 a.m., the Republican-led House passed the Medicare drug bill by one vote, essentially representing a coup for the privateers. Brown writes,
"But what did the public miss? They didn't see the House votes, which normally take no more than 20 minutes, dragging on for as long as an hour as members of the Republican leadership trolled for enough votes to cobble together a majority. They didn't see the GOP leaders stalking the floor for whoever was not in line. They didn't see Speaker Dennis Hastert and Majority leader Tom DeLay coerce enough Republican members into switching their votes to produce the desired effect...In other words, they didn't see the subversion of democracy."
What can one say in the face of such onslaughts of diversion and of actions sans public oversight except "Kill-deeah, Kill-deeah, Kill-deeah." The ancient lawof diversion operates throughout this administration, cloaking its culpability in an illegal war engineered through a bombardment of lies and deceits that these so-called government representatives continue, without remorse, to perpetuate upon the populi.
Michael Arvey spiritmed@rocketmail.com Freelance writer, author, poet, teacher Boulder, Co.
