Should the Los Angeles Times and the New York Times apologize for exposing the Bush administration’s “secret” program of invading the banking privacy of Americans and other citizens — ostensibly to track handfuls of Al-Qaedistas buying plane tickets to terrorist conventions in Karachi?
Some call this “treason.”
Both US President George W. Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney say these journalists harm America’s efforts to combat terrorism, and embolden the already very bold Iraqi insurgency.
Are journalists “the enemy” of democracy?
Professor Bruno Etienne, a French religion expert who’s no neocon, also called journalists “the enemy” of democracy last week in Paris at the joint UNESCO and IIIT (International Institute of Islamic Thought) meeting, “Pluralism and Recognition.”
For both Etienne and Cheney, the question of whether journalists are “the enemy” can only be answered with another question: Is the journalist a voice, or an echo?
It’s not always an easy choice.
What journalist wouldn’t want to have private White House meetings or share coffees with assistant deputy secretaries, be fed a juicy info crumpet, and then grab the headlines and maybe a Pulitzer Prize along the way?
Just echo.
The sound Bush and Cheney like the best is the sound of their own voices, telling not only America, but the whole world how to live and most importantly, how to follow. They want the world to be their echo.
There’s no doubt that whoever did leak the secret banking oversight understands democracy and knows it is slipping away, every day, through the most startling, secret machinations that have very little to do with defending “freedom,” but lots to do with billions of dollars.
But such embezzlement of the public treasury cannot persist unchecked without simultaneously corrupting the public trust.
Tom Delay-style Republicans are shockingly well on their way to creating a state that can ultimately be described as totalitarian — if things continue as they are, or get worse.
Totalitarianism.
I use the word sparingly. But still, I’m using it. And I don’t think I’m wrong.
Five years ago, American torture was an aberration. Now, it’s official policy. White House lawyers write memorandums promoting its usefulness. What we can’t do at home, we do secretly abroad in secret prisons.
And supporting torture and secrecy doesn’t stop at the executive branch. The US Supreme Court recently decided police no longer need announce themselves when they come to call.
The court drew the line at Guantanamo Prison, but only barely.
The Bush administration replied it could hold Muslims prisoners indefinitely for national security reasons, as America interred thousands of Japanese-Americans in World War II after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. A legal police power? Sometimes, but also a singularly disgraceful event we vowed never to repeat.
America now has secret prisons, secret courts, secret judges and even then, our president feels fully free to search homes and seize papers and persons without a warrant (although the secret judges say they’d gladly issue secret warrants without too much fuss). America now traces infinite telephone calls and e-mails and keeps the country edgy, in a state of perpetual national emergency.
Even our national history is now corrupted after our National Archives were recently “re-reviewed” and documents formerly open to public view are now officially “secret.” But more troubling than this highly exaggerated state of insecurity is the Republican Party’s aim, according to Karl Rove, to reformulate American politics into just one party — an aberrantly conservative party that endlessly promotes and reinforces just one set of values (Christian, conservative values), promotes just one religion, which at the moment is best described as predominantly Christian (although many Christian denominations are not conservative enough for the new totalitarians), and repetitively elects just one kind of avowedly Christian leader.
How soon will we not even bother with elections, and just keep the same leader?
Who’s pushing the neocons’ agenda? Listen to the echoes of Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and now Ann Coulter, who dramatically increased her book sales by bashing some 9/11 widows who dared question the White House’s Iraq and terrorism policies. Is Coulter speaking authentically? Despite her stated rabid conservatism, it’s doubtful.
Her provocations are so absurd and so shrill that they can only be the echo of neocons who want to test the public’s perceptions. “How far can we go?” they wonder.
If you’re a journalist just echoing these smug, grasping, greedy, dissolute politicians who’ve plunged us into a bloody war and a frenzy of throwing billions of dollars to the already rich under the sham of “rebuilding” Iraq, Professor Etienne is right: You’re “the enemy.” You’re the enemy of dialogue, discourse, and true democracy, which involves an exchange of ideas with genuine freedom from retaliation. You’re an echo.
Who are the real enemies of democracy? Answer the question with a question: Whose voice are you echoing today?
