GUEST: Thorne Dreyer, writer, editor, and political activist who played a major role in the 1960s-1970s New Left and underground press movement, talks about the Rag Blog and Rag Radio on KOOP 91.7-FM in Austin Texas.
Eli and I had a great time with Thorne. I worried for a time that the conversation was getting too technical, comparing how we do the sound board and book guests. But listening to the interview afterwards, I think our focus was on presenting alternative views to a listening public, always denied critical analysis by the major media.
Even Bernie Sanders can't talk about empire, possibly the single most important national issue of the last sixty years. More than half our national revenue goes to fighting wars abroad. Our record of killing millions of people and destroying the countries we invade always escapes media criticism. At most, wars like the ones fought in Vietnam and Iraq are deemed "mistakes" made with the best of intentions. But what if these wars were fought for the benefit of oil companies and weapons makers, and had nothing to do with idealism or democracy? That is the question that just can't be asked by our corporate controlled media.
Independent media thus has an oversized role to play in challenging American military aggression and the exceptionalism that allows this war making to be accepted by the majority of our citizens. Without independent media, most Americans passively accept the consensus that is presented to them by the corporate elite.
Rag Radio and Activist Radio both interviewed Eva Spangler whose recent book exposes the criminality of the Israeli state. Of course, that is another subject that Bernie can't bring up. Major party politics only go so far, and what gets left out is the really important stuff. Americans are a people denied the chance to really consider their alternatives. That's how the one percent can get away with making all the decisions, and talking all the profit.
So we talked about radio a lot, but as part of the emerging resistance.
