| Lolly
Depaulo
Shanghaied
by the Right!
One of my husband’s last coherent
sentences, uttered as he was being wheeled into
intensive care, was spoken in response to the news that the Supreme
Court had declared George W. the winner of the presidential elections.
“What, you mean they actually made that moron president,”
he blurted out. “I can’t believe it. What has happened
to American democracy?” My husband died about a week later
from complications of chemotherapy and I spent the next nine months
in a news blackout, unwilling or unable to read the paper or watch
television.
September 11, 2001 transformed that apathy into anxiety, as it
became glaringly obvious that we were in for some serious tribulation.
Not because of the threat of terrorism, although that was a worry,
but because it was apparent almost immediately after 9/11 that
the radical right was going to exploit our national tragedy to
promote their extremist agenda. However, at first I was still
naïve enough to believe that our vaunted system of “checks
and balances” was going to prevent the right-wing takeover
that has since been instated. It took repeated exposures to media
lies and distortions, self-aggrandizing nonsense from the White
House, and cowardly acquiescence from Congress and our judiciary,
for me to finally and irreparably wake-up and smell the napalm.
Which is why we have started this web magazine. I Want Change
is our way of not being good girls and boys, frightened by the
Patriot Act and other implicit forms of violence, into keeping
our mouths shut while the aspirations of our founding fathers
are being trampled upon. As a mother and a teacher, I want to
leave our children a legacy of more than a scorched earth and
diminishing expectations. I can not stand by and let THEM remake
the world in the image of corporate hierarchies, while the poor
and disenfranchised struggle to survive on less and less. I have
always told my journalism students, “our job as reporters
is to raise hell.” That is what this endeavor is all about.
We need to scream and shout and demand a respect for our democracy.
Yes, it is discouraging. The neo-conservatives have shanghaied
the United States and are hell-bent on taking over the world.
But, if we act now to defeat George II in 2004, it may not be
too late. |
