What Mike Gravel Meant

What I learned from Mike Gravel are lessons ignored, even mocked, by the establishment, writes Joe Lauria.

[consortiumnews.com]

A day or 2 before his death I post an article about Gravel's trials with outing the Pentagon Papers. I just want to reiterate something I placed within that commentary.

Mike Gravel is also a member of Consortium News VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) and a Board of Director.

Mike Gravel is what Bernie Sanders should have been in 2016 when he ran in the primary for the democratic party! By the end of the 3rd debate it was becoming obvious to me that Sanders was part of our problem. He had no intentions of becoming a president. He was just playing a lame duck part.

{“Our country needs a renewal–renewal not just of particular policies, or of particular people, but of democracy itself…. Representative government is mired in a culture of lies and corruption. The corrupting influence of money has created a class of professional politicians raising huge sums to maintain their power. These politicians then legislate later in the interests of the corporations and interest groups that put up the money.

Are today’s politicians any more corrupt than those of earlier days? I don’t think so. Most men and women enter public service and begin with an attitude and a concern for the public good. It’s the power they hold that corrupts them. Throwing the rascals out–Democrats or Republicans, or for that matter any party may make us feel a little better, may give us some therapy, but reshuffling the deck won’t make any difference….

Equipping Americans with deliberative lawmaking tools will unleash civic creativity beyond imagination. A partnership of citizen-lawmakers makers with their elected legislators will in fact make representative government … more responsive to the needs of people.”}

{“Iraq has never been a threat to us. We invaded them. I mean it’s unbelievable. The military-industrial-complex not only controls our government lock, stock and barrel,” and here he looked over at the other candidates all in government at the time, “but they control our culture.”}

Our culture is profoundly sick. And our men and women dying for the benefit of the military industrial complex and the ruling class is criminal.

{That crystallized it for me. Like every other American I grew up under the sway of heavy propaganda that portrayed the U.S. as a victim of other nations’ aggression, rather than being the perpetrator of it. It was one of many, many things I learned from Mike Gravel, and that others would benefit learning too.

When the debate was over I joined Mike on the stage. All the candidates and their wives were glad-handing each other. Mike said he had no time for that so we retreated to the green room. On the way I told him I hadn’t figured out Obama yet. But Mike told me, “He’s a fraud.” It turned out he was right about that too.}

{To the end the establishment hated Mike Gravel. And Mike welcomed their hatred. He told the American people what they did not want them to hear.}

I'm here to tell you what you don't want to hear. Swallowing the truth is tough, but we all have had to do it at times. The resistance only makes the psychological aspects tougher to get over when you finally realize all it took was a little work to find the truth.

When someone has been providing the right information all along.

Watch the ruling class puppets laugh at him for the truth he speaks.

What Sanders should have been!