Democracy
Watching the news from Hong Kong this week as democracy protests filled up the screen, I contemplated what democracy means to me and all the bumps and bruises it takes to protect it once you get it. Here are my thoughts.
Your Voice
Your voice is the most powerful weapon you have. The very first amendment made to our Constitution is our most cherished and important one and the one most under attack from all sides every waking moment here. Freedom of Speech. It comes before the right to bear arms because it is so much more powerful and why the corrupt are constantly trying to silence it. Even here. In a democracy. Every single day.
Inspiration
Growing up here in New Jersey on the Palisades, my very first home was Fort Lee, NJ. A town made famous by a man who was unafraid to speak his mind, during a dangerous time to do so, who inspired the American Revolution and gave men the courage when it failed them even though it ultimately cost him. Thomas Paine is one of my heroes and is always in my thoughts whenever I take to the keyboard. His account of the fall of Fort Lee to the British begins “These are the Times That Try Men’s Souls”.
Years later when I ran for office in the small town of Tenafly just a few miles north, another hero inspired me – Elizabeth Cady Stanton. She had the audacity to visit the hotel in downtown Tenafly and try to vote in an election where women were not allowed that valuable right. She spoke up, tried to vote anyway, and boarded the train in the center of town and traveled around the country to inspire others. She never stopped speaking – and affecting people everywhere she went with her friend Susan B. Anthony. They had train tickets , and their voices. And they used them. And here I was over a hundred years later in the same town as a Councilwoman. Not just voting but making laws.
Over 114 years ago, the NJ State Federation of Women’s clubs, before they had the right to vote did something miraculous for us here. They saved the Palisades from destruction from the wealthy quarrymen simply because the Palisades are beautiful and they wanted to pass that on to their grandchildren and great grandchildren. It was pure freedom of speech that did that. They did not have the right to vote at the time, but they still did the impossible. The literally stopped a mountain from being moved.
A few years ago, when we had a corrupt politician in Bergen County as our “Democratic” party leader, who would not allow us to choose our own elected candidates, we spoke up and were able to fight him, with our voices, at protests and in print, on blogs, however we could before the newspapers would even cover the story. That man will be in court this November on formal racketeering charges.
Dissent
Democracy is not just a simple dream, even after you get it. It needs constant defense. Free speech. It is everything to us here. Everything. Without it, we have no democracy. Even the right to vote means nothing if you cannot raise your voice to those elected officials to remind them they are public servants, and they work for you. In some countries a right to vote is nothing if those elections are unfair, dissent is stifled and you only have one choice all the way down the ballot.
Freedom - Sort of
Sadly, America has not always so proudly stood up for the right to free speech. In the 1950’s actors, writers and directors and artists – the free thinkers of any society - were blacklisted and prevented from working by a campaign to root out any Communist “sympathizers”. It was a very dark time. At the same time frightening abuses of the right to vote were being endured by African American citizens. As we can see in Ferguson, those abuses are still taking place to this very day. At that time the right to free speech being abridged had a very chilling effect on the whole of American society that had just discovered TV and were exposed to together. It is demonstrated to comic effect in the films Pleasantville and Edward Scissorhands which were set close to that era. But it was no laughing matter. The backlash from those strictures in thoughts and behavior produced the 1960’s, an era that many of my older friends still wish they could go back and relive if just for a day. Somehow, according to those who remember it, the music was better, the colors were brighter, the friendships crossed barriers of race and gender, and freedom of expression was celebrated, not stifled. The adults had their hands full with the War in Vietnam and were too busy like my parents raising the babies (like me) that the 1950’s era had told them they all just had to have in lockstep. The 1950’s kids had no time for freedom of expression.
Some of the folks that we look back on now as safe role models were pushing the envelopes of acceptability in their day. Loretta Lynn, Johnny Cash, and a few other country music stars of that era were singing songs about real life, divorce, infidelity, alcoholism, prison, and gasp, even contraception. Today, if you are not singing about a truck, a beer (always being a good thing), misogyny, or a one night stand, you are considered edgy. The mindless use of sex to sell things is the oldest trick in the book, unfortunately now, it is used to mind-numbing effect to apparently keep folks occupied while real concerns pile up around us, unaddressed.
Corporate Trolls
One thing I have found alarming lately are attempts in the United States to silence folks who disagree with corporate interests. This is now the era of the internet – true, but it only took two decades for the corporate advertisers to realize how to troll the internet and try to disrupt free speech that they find a little too free. Free speech, unflattering to their products. Such as oil, and natural gas. The climate change skeptics are usually paid industry folks trying to confuse and obfuscate debate. They are good at it and have kept us from acting. We are now way too late.
Some websites are now ending the ability to comment on articles because the comments section has become ground zero for propaganda shoveling. I have been blogging here for a while now, and I usually get a few comments even though I get a lot of Facebook likes. However, the professional trolls woke up last week and attempted to completely hijack the discussion because of the topic of my post. Some of the comments so nasty that they actually had to be removed. I hate to do that, because I believe in healthy debate. But when the industry sends professional trolls to disrupt discussion and confuse the issue so much by battering the site with comments and links that ordinary folks can’t get a word in edgewise or are intimidated by the vitriol, something has to be done.
Censorship in the United States - A Case Study
Last week, what disturbed me almost as much as the unprecedented rise in autism cases in the United States, were the attempts to censor parents who have concerns about vaccine safety. Whistleblowers in the United States now seek protection, because free speech is not so free here. I had the audacity to mention one whistleblower from the CDC who was an author on the most cited study used to dispel any link between autism and the MMR vaccine, now cooperating with a Congressional investigation into the fact that data was omitted from the study purposely because it showed a dramatic increase in autism among boy babies of African American descent who got their MMR before 36 months. Over a thousand documents have been turned over the Congressional investigators. That story made the Twitter sphere go crazy because most news outlets were pressured into not covering the story. Epoch Times covered it, but the mainstream media did not. Until yesterday. ABC news and Ronan Farrow of MSNBC covered it as did Time magazine who did an opinion piece calling parents who disagreed with him “dangerous”. However, they all appeared to intentionally try to discredit the story while mis-reporting or cherry picking the facts about it. That was disturbing. I think they felt they had to address it after the obvious embarrassing media blackout for nearly two months, because parents were resorting to the only outlet they had available to them – Twitter. It appears Ronan Farrow was chosen to deliver the blow because he is famous for marshalling his Twitter army for different usually worthy causes. But he was not given the proper facts. He mistakenly stated that the CDC Whistleblower story had been debunked, when it was just getting legs.
Here is what they got wrong and tried to conflate. There are two main doctors mentioned in this story. One is the CDC researcher Thompson who still works for the CDC and who took part in a study reported in 2004 that is used as much of the basis for the CDC declaring that the MMR does not cause autism. He reached out to another doctor, Dr. Hooker, who is an activist with an autistic child. CDC Researcher Thompson was disturbed and guilt-ridden because he says he was asked to omit data from the 2004 study that showed an effect in a subgroup of the population. It has haunted him for over a decade. Hooker then took Thompson’s information, reanalyzed the data using all of it, and published his own paper recently showing the same effect Thompson explained he saw before the CDC revised their conclusions by omitting 41% of the study group. So, TWO studies – one official, manipulated study by the CDC in 2004 and one 14 years later published by Dr. Hooker including the omitted data. Hooker also secretly recorded what Dr. Thompson had to say and released videos of it. Thompson admits that was him on the recordings, where he also offers his opinion on the Flu vaccine and that pregnant women should not receive it because it may result in tics in the child.
As soon as the story broke, the CDC Whistleblower was outed and Dr. Thompson had no choice but to release an official statement that admitted his role in the fraudulent 2004 CDC study. Whenever I post that particular document, the professional trolls descend like crazy. If you only want to read one thing to get a sense of what a big story this is, you need to read Dr. Thompson’s own words. However, the media is cherry picking Thompson’s confession and only posting the glowing things he says about vaccines in general. You need to really see the entire document. It is not long, it is easy reading, there is no reason the media can’t post the whole thing in it’s entirety. I think this one document is giving the professional trolls nightmares because it is everywhere and they are playing whack a mole to stop it.
At the same time, for no other apparent reason than censorship, Dr. Hooker’s recent paper was taken down. That is the paper media reporters are alluding to but it was censored without cause. The CDC Whistleblowers statement still stands. The 2004 study is still being cited and the Journal is not retracting the CDC study even though that paper should be retracted in light of CDC Researcher Thompsons (one of the authors on the CDC study) admission of unethical data manipulation. The media reporting the CDC Whistleblower story has been debunked is either confused or intentionally obfuscating the facts. It almost appears that the Hooker paper was censored so that the media could say that Dr. Hooker’s allegations of CDC fraud were not valid. That worked to discredit Dr Wakefield, and it appears they were trying that again here. If not for the official statement of Dr Thompson who admits it is all true.
After this came out, the CDC had no choice but to admit they omitted large amounts of data but gave a false reason for the change. They said they needed information that could only be gotten from a birth certificate. However, the information they stated they needed was easily available in the school records they already had and was not all available on the birth certificates. The CDC did not appear to realize reporters would check it’s veracity. One former CBS reporter who interviewed Dr. DeStafano and actually got him to admit on tape that it was possible for a vaccine to “rarely” cause autism and that since that 2004 study the CDC decided not to investigate the effect of the MMR on “subgroups”. A disturbing thought because autism affects roughly 2% of the population. A subgroup in itself. If vaccines affect autism it would not cause it in every child but for the CDC to just stop looking is extremely odd and why Dr. Thompson regretted the waste of ten years where they could have been going forward with discovering more.
The vitriol expressed to parents concerned about vaccine safety has reached a fever pitch. I am often branded unfairly with the anti-vax label simply because I am concerned. I don’t have kids, I have cats that I vaccinate. I am not worried they will contract autism. I spent years getting immune therapy shots to end a terrifying allergy to bees. I am not anti-science. But, I also am severely allergic to egg yolks used to make vaccines. I am the 2%. About the same proportion of children with autism. I am not allowed to have vaccines made with egg yolks. Why is it so hard to imagine that there is another 2% group out there who can’t have them either? Right now, the vitriol and anger and the attempts to suppress parents voices are extremely disturbing. Former HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius openly admited pressuring media outlets to censor voices that are not pro-vaccine. The First Amendment being undermined by a member of the Obama Administration is not a comforting thought. These are parents. Ordinary citizens not allowed to have an opinion. That is more frightening to me than measles, which I actually had. The fever pitch is now resulting in children with egg allergies winding up in the ER because of the mistaken position that all vaccines are safe while all other voices are silenced. That should concern everyone.
Freedom of Speech - Cherish it
As for Freedom of speech anywhere in the world, I'd like to ask that you cherish it, and protect it and give folks you disagree with the same respect you would like in return. Be kind to each other. We all have been wrong at one time or another, and conventional wisdom changes daily. It wasn’t that long ago that doctors advocated smoking and dismissed the idea of washing their hands. Don’t even get me started on their “refrigerator mother” theories….
