Dennis Kucinich gains MAPA endorsement for President

An interview by Chris Hedges, posted at AfterDowningStreet.org explores Dennis Kucinich’s Fight to Bring Credibility to the Democratic Party.

The U.S. Supreme Court won’t hear Kucinich’s appeal, and that means that although he’s fulfilled all other requirements besides signing an oath to “fully support” the party’s nominee, his name still won’t appear on the Texas primary ballot. OpEdNews has more to say about the shutout from the ballot in Texas.

Elizabeth Kucinich has begun a campaign tour of California, and Dennis Kucinich has gained an endorsement from the Mexican American Political Association (MAPA).

Today I’m including two videos. The first is from April 24, 2007. Remember that day? Thanks to Whazgoinon for the link:

KUCINICH: Takes House Floor, Moves for Cheney Impeachment (YouTube video)

The second video is Dennis Kucinich’s response to the Nevada Supreme Court ruling that resulted in him being kept out of the MSNBC debate in Las Vegas:

Dennis Kucinich - Statement from Las Vegas 01/15/08 (YouTube video)

These videos remind me yet again of the quality I admire most in Dennis Kucinich, one that I wish I possessed in greater abundance. Aside from his integrity, his consistency, and his willingness to fight for what he believes is right, even if he has to fight alone, I admire his calmness in the face of what to me are often discouraging and disheartening failures of American democracy, mostly due to greed and power brokering that have nothing to do with the citizens’ will. He remains calm, and he’s even forgiving and willing to keep moving forward with a positive outlook, to not let anger get in the way of his steady work toward a goal. Me? I get so angry about all this, or so negative, that I could spit nails, or just give up. When I’m that upset, I sometimes don’t make sense even to myself. Dennis Kucinich’s strength of character in that regard is one of the most Presidential things about him. I find it totally inspiring.

I’m sure most readers, even if you plan to vote for Kucinich, by now at some level doubt his ability to win the Presidential nomination. But we’re still only four states into this process, and some of them not very populous states at that, no matter what pundits and the media want you to believe. Besides that, I think it’s important to understand that Kucinich is nonetheless having a significant impact on how people think about our democracy and the powers that attempt to corrupt it — and too often succeed.

Mainstream media has had the ability to manipulate our perception for decades, on TV, and longer than that through radio, and print. It’s no secret that William Randolph Hearst had more political pull as a publisher than he had as a politician, and he used it. Probably the best illustration of that is a famous instruction to war correspondent and illustrator Frederic Remington:

“You furnish the pictures and I’ll furnish the war.”

What we’re seeing now as regards back room manipulation and biased reporting, the kind of reporting that only appears to viewers to value flash and rhetoric over the candidates’ real messages and track records, is only the tip of the iceberg — an iceberg we’re only aware of now because of the Internet. I wonder if there aren’t a lot of people in this country who know only of Kucinich that he saw a UFO, a type of experience that Presidents Carter and Reagan also shared, and which 14% of Americans have experienced, including a long list of credible people. I wonder how many people assume things about that experience that Kucinich has never claimed, who don’t realize that seeing a UFO only means that one saw something flying in the sky and couldn’t identify what it was. It seems as if that kind of surface, sensational information — he saw a UFO, or some other surface detail — is the most that many people know about any candidate, or bother to know, and that says something very sad about how many voters rely on mainstream media to inform them. At the same time it says even more about the media’s massive failure to do just that — inform the public.

That is the media’s job, after all, to inform us. Yes, it’s also entertainment, more so now than ever. But if the news is only entertainment, even to those who provide it to us, then without consulting other sources we could, for all we know, live in a fantasy world where no one has died in Iraq, where we don’t have to pay taxes, and where unprotected sex can’t make a woman pregnant or give anyone AIDS. Such ideas about what’s fantasy and what’s real are dangerous. So is relying on mainstream media for all our information about the candidates, one of whom will be our next President. That’s why it’s important to know more about the candidates. All of the candidates. It’s important to share information, and urge others to learn more on their own, to not make this decision lightly.

I also think it’s important that everyone who believes in what Dennis Kucinich stands for resolves to vote for him in the primaries, no matter how the rest of this nomination process goes, so that we make the strongest statement possible to the other Democratic candidates, and the eventual nominee, about what Americans expect of them. As long as there is a percentage of votes going to Kucinich, it will always be there in the numbers, a part of the voting record. We value legislators’ voting records, whether they succeed or fail in passing bills. We should value our own votes every bit as much. They carry a message about who we are and what principles we stand for.