The Kos Machine and the Political Left

I've referenced the excellently run and brilliantly conceived and set up, Kos site before.

While a bit left leaning, there seem to be many strong thinkers that visit, and write at that site (and a multifold greater of casual and devout readers both, some of whom may be fairly left leaning and/or vitriolic for popular taste, but many of whom exhibit reasonable enough sensibilities). So I found it rather odd that after posting the following brief article as a diary entry in the wee hours of the morning, that scores upon scores both prior and after (all rolling in over the minutes, hour after hour), my fairly humble, modest piece received not one comment. Yet the dozens preceding it, and what were probably close to a hundred that came after, today alone, almost all if not all received comments.

If nothing else, it would seem that this piece has at least the fact going for it that it covers pretty vital issues. They may have been explored, as well they should be, and as the most important issues repeatedly are, on the Kos report. But this fundamental issue covered below certainly is vital enough to demand as much attention as can be given -- which, by the popular perception of the issue, and the coverage of it by the mainstream media, has clearly not been enough.

So I try, here, to give it a little more, and perhaps someone else can take these general points, and express them in a way so as to help get them the majority of America and mainstream media attention that, for our democracy to properly work, they require:

"As noted:

The [Bush] administration has established that it believes that it has the right to undertake any action in the name of "combating terrorism," including the action
itself, the classification of it, and now the persecution and prosecution of anyone who leaks it.

The Soviet Union would be proud.

Those in America, however, need to write to their local and national media, and courteously, with well reasoned facts and logic, ask them to cover this and other issues objectively, and to stop kowtowing to the right and far right.

An excellent analysis of the issue was done by Glenn Greenwald, part of which could be used to send directly to media sources. For example:

It really is hard to imagine any measures which pose a greater and more direct
danger to our freedoms than the issuance of threats like this by the administration against the press. If the President has the power to keep secret any information he wants simply by classifying it -- including information regarding illegal or otherwise improper actions he has taken -- then the President, by definition, has complete control over the flow of information which Americans receive about their Government.

With respect to the reporting on the Abu Ghraib matter, and similar issues, as I noted here:

In America, our government, under our founding documents -- and I suggest, very
correctly -- derives its sole power from the consent of the governed. This has to involve consent of its policies, as well.

Additionally, people are also responsible for their own government, and for their own country. This also includes, first and foremost, its policies. [And, since this was the liberal leaning Kos site, I even took out the line here that "this also includes the people of other countries, including, by the way, Mexico.]

Therefore, it is anti-American, to have not reported this information, when it represented policy that was not only (apparently), in violation of international law, and in violation of our own stated policies, but potentially against the will of a majority of Americans as well. .

The unfettered flow of information regarding what its government is doing, makes a democracy work. It impedes an autocracy. While we hear all this rhetoric about democracy abroad, we need to start focusing on it here at home."