C-SPAN: Public Telesthesia? by Don Harkins C-SPAN is very dilligent about televising congressional hearings--no matter how embarrassing they may be to the federal government. Panels of people testify before House committees, Senate committees and before the entire country. They tell believable, documentable stories of government abuse, corruption, conspiracy and lawlessness. Some committee members appear aghast and horrified and disgusted by the often tearful testimony of people who have been brutalized, by a government that has obviously overstepped its Constitutional boundaries and moral authority, to ruin their lives, take their property or murder their loved ones. Other committee members question the veracity of the testimony in defense of the government in what is nothing more than a good cop/bad cop routine to create the facade of representative government. Millions of people have seen the Waco hearings, the Ruby Ridge hearings, the Gulf War "Illness" hearings on C-SPAN. More recently, millions of people have religiously pointed their remote controls at C-SPAN to watch the IRS hearings and the campaign finance "investigations." Though evidence clearly indicates that illegal, unconstitutional, immoral and despotic government actions executed the Branch Davidians and their innocent children without a trial, no action has been taken. Though the general public is convinced that the government illegally and unconstitutionally entrapped Randy Weaver into a silly firearms violation and then invaded his remote mountain home with the intention of murdering him and his family, government employees were given medals for their bravery and valor. Though it is horrifyingly evident that the government covered up troop exposure to chemical and biological contagions in the Gulf and possibly infected our Desert Storm troops with an experimental "antidote," nothing has been done to hold anybody accountable for lying to the public and experimenting upon our young men and women. Now we have congressional hearings into the IRS' activitities. Now that Congress finally knows that the IRS has been using tax-collection tactics that would make Midas smile, are we going to see the IRS and federal income tax exposed for the unconstitutional fraud that it really is? Not bloody likely. Now that the whole world knows, through documentable testimony, that American politics are bought and paid for by the rich and that the Clinton administration accepted campaign contributions that allowed the communist Chinese government to have access to American soil and secrets, is "our" president going to be held accountable for what most intelligent people would define as treason? The track record established by C-SPAN televised congressional "hearings" would indicate that Hollywood Actor Senator Fred Thompson's Campaign Finance Committee's investigation will turn up nothing--even though Clinton and Gore and Harold Ickes have as much as admitted that the DNC broke campaign finance laws. One can only conclude that C-SPAN's purpose is to telesthetize the American public. If the entire world can be told through testimony before the United States Congress that "our" government can lie, break laws, murder American citizens, invade their homes, steal their money and their property and experiment upon them like lab rats--and nothing happens to it, then we have little choice but to become indifferent. C-SPAN is helping Americans to realize that it doesn't matter that the whole world knows "our" Congress is allowing a handful of evil people to ruin our country and that there is not a damn thing we can do about it. © 1997 The Idaho Observer