And who will tell the people
that free speech is a ruse;
The corporations run the country
and then they make the news.
Is it media or mind control
heroic victories or crime?
Who will tell the people . . .
that we are living in these times.
--Song by Willie Nelson

In his essay on "Character" Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "A chief event in life is the day in which we have encountered a mind that startled us." I've had such days, many of them through encounters with Emerson himself, but never have I been startled or even remotely surprised by anything belched out by the Barbie and Ken assembly line of today's corporate mind-control media.

George Orwell wrote that people who neither read nor ask questions will ultimately lose all desire to question "Big Brother." What is so frightening as we descend into the new world order fascism is not that we no longer read -- it's that we no longer can read.

Researchers estimate as many as 30 million Americans -- many of them college graduates -- cannot read. They're unable to comprehend news stories or even instructions. They said they were "stunned," but could offer no explanation for the steep drop in literacy. I don't know what's more depressing -- that Americans can't read or, after studying the phenomenon, researchers lack the critical skills to discern why.

Today, as in Orwell's 1984, the sound and fury of Big Brother's repetitive visual stimuli has apparently crippled our ability to think critically. If it's not on television, it isn't happening. Even then, we can't be sure of what is true until the paid TV "analyst" or pundit with the biggest stash of "Newspeak" talking points wins the debate. When there's no one left to tell the people the truth, Orwell said, "the people will believe what the media tells them they believe."

I had almost come to the sad conclusion that Orwell was right when, late one September night in 2004 as I was surfing for something "soothing" on the radio, the door of my mind was unceremoniously bashed in and I was startled by . . .

"I'm pissed off -- and I'm Mike Malloy."

Malloy, clean-up guy for Air America Radio (10pm-1am), rode in on the strident vibrations of Pink Floyd's Run Like Hell and, for the next three hours, relentlessly hit both spineless Democrats and Republican "sonszabitches" with the truth about the Bush crime family, pummelled them with the truth about spineless and quivering Democrats, bitch-slapped them with the truth about where we're headed if we don't wake up, stand up and speak up . . .

Then, with a friendly and quiet "watch your back," he was gone. I just sat there, grinning. Maybe we aren't doomed to slip-slide into fascist hell after all. By sheer luck, I had stumbled across a guy with the ability to see the truth and the courage to tell the people . . .

Who IS this guy?

Mike Malloy is the canary in the political coalmine -- the bane of the Bush administration and of hypocrites of all stripes. He is a liberal gadfly whose light shines so brightly on the truth that even Air America struggles to keep him hidden under its late-night barrel. Far from being a "loose liberal cannon," Malloy has a solid background of writing, reporting, editing and broadcasting. He is a former news writer and editor for both CNN and CNN-international, and a former publisher of Atlanta's Creative Loafing newspaper.

But it was in radio broadcasting in the '90s that Malloy literally came into his own. Malloy has been named "One of the Heavy Hundred" three times by Talkers Magazine, an honor given to only the top 100 radio talk show hosts out of more than 4,000, of which all but a handful are right-wing blustering liars like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Bill O'Reilly, et al.

Malloy has worked for WSB in Atlanta, WLS in Chicago and the now defunct I.E. America Radio Network. So, some may ask -- if Malloy's so damn good, why did WSB, WLS -- let him go? Why is Air America Radio afraid to stick him in prime time so more people can hear the truth?

Because he is so damn good, that's why. Because the truth Malloy tells is raw, straightforward, stripped of all spin -- every word shoved right in the faces of those who have seized power to destroy the democratic safeguards of the U.S. Constitution, to steal elections, to abandon society's most vulnerable, and to slaughter their own citizens as a pretext for war. But even Air America knows that not everybody can handle the truth, especially in prime time. Malloy can be heard each night on Air America affiliate stations, the Internet, and on XM Satellite Radio, Channel 167. Missed programs are available at the White Rose Society website.

Each night, Malloy exposes the Bush administration for what it is -- a murderous, evil, lying, fascist regime. Each night, I am amazed that he has somehow managed to slip through enemy lines yet again to shout truth to power. He asks no quarter, and gives none, regardless of the consequences.

"I'm like a cork," Malloy says with a laugh, "You can't submerge me. You push me down and I pop up somewhere else. That's a given."

He's uncomfortable with praise, and stresses often that he is there neither to educate nor entertain, but to "get together" with sane people in the evening and talk about the insanity. "I'm not arrogant enough to think I can educate you," he said. "I'm not that condescending, not that patronizing. Take what you want from this program and run with it."

"Truthseekers" get a fast-moving mixture of music selected by Malloy's producer-wife Kathy Bay, occasional interviews, self-incriminating audio clips straight from the mouths of right-wing rat bastards, raisin brain politicians, simple Scotty McClellan, and President Chuckle Nuts himself.

Malloy encourages listeners to call the show, although he warns Republicans they will get bounced if they start slinging Rovian "flying monkey" talking points at him. Most Republican callers, incapable of applying logic to the message, get their butts kicked off the air by the messenger in about five seconds -- seven tops.

Like most progressives, Malloy is disillusioned with the state of the Democratic Party, but maintains he will always be a "traditional" Democrat. Republicans accuse him of being nothing but a "Bush basher" or a "left-wing nutcase," but Malloy's late-night "Paul Revere" cry emanating from Air America comes straight from a man who is angrily committed to ousting the criminals who are hell-bent on destroying all that is good and decent not only in this country, but throughout the world.

Considering the wounds inflicted on this country in the last five years, Malloy has concluded that the Republican Party is now the American Nazi Party, and most of its members are vile deceivers.

"Republicans are liars, cheats, and sneaks; they are deceivers," he said. "They are immoral, and they have no ethical structure whatsoever . . . If they are Republicans, they are thugs. They have abandoned whatever moral sense they ever had, if any. They support mass murder. They support the destruction of this country."

Malloy is not known for pulling punches when addressing the administration or the Bush Crime Family either. "I hate you to the depths of my soul," he said. "I will hate you when I'm dead. I will hate you a million years after I'm dead . . . My hate will be a star in the firmament that will shine down on your Republican asses forever. That's how deep my hatred is, because of what you're doing to this country."

A good way to end the day

Malloy is not alone. His counterparts at Air America are all conversant with history and capable of critical thinking. Like Malloy, they struggle each day to tell the people the truth about what the Bush administration is doing to this country.

Scores of books have been written pointing out that Bush has arrogantly placed himself above the law and outside the constraints of the U.S. Constitution. He has bestowed upon himself a god-like superiority to decide who deserves to live or die. And Bush kills with malevolent, inhuman brutishness. Authors sound the alarm that what happened in 1933 in Hitler's Germany and in Orwell's 1984 is descending upon us today because we are losing the will to combat it. The Internet is throbbing with articles on the same subject.

The vigilance required to preserve our freedoms is impossible when we're whipped into submission by terror and convinced to give up a few freedoms we never use anyway, such as questioning those who are waging war to protect us.

But we are no longer vigilant. That's why Malloy and those like him are so important. Over and over, Malloy tells the people that their continued silence will soon crush all of us into a 1984 world so aptly described by Aristotle as being fit for "only the gods and the beasts."

Malloy is a modern-day Tom Paine, who told the people in 1776 that the time had come to break free from oppression. "Even brutes do not devour their young, nor savages make war upon their own families," Paine wrote in Common Sense, his little 47-page pamphlet that ultimately sparked a revolution and gave us our world. But people could read back then . . .

It's time to take that world back. Last week, Malloy began reading to the people, devoting a short six-minute segment of the show's second hour to Orwell's 1984. He will read the book in its entirety, and has completed Chapter 1 and a portion of Chapter 2. For those few chilling minutes each night Malloy transports us to London and into the dreary world of "Big Brother," a world much like Bush is striving for today -- constant surveillance and total obedience.

Malloy quietly records the slow, but steady eradication of individuality -- of humanity itself -- through fear. The parallels are obvious. Now, as in 1984, in the words of former White House Press Secretary Ari Fleisher, we must "watch what we say; watch what we do" lest we be found guilty of the heinous offense of "thoughtcrime."

Now, as in 1984, Malloy says there are three things we can take to the bank as Bush's "truth." He encourages people to not only watch Bush's speeches for amusement as he mangles the language while stammering and stumbling through one photo op after another -- but to listen to the words and phrases Bush repeats endlessly. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. After we accept that, the rest is easy . . .

Encountering Malloy may startle you; rock your world. You may even go to bed screaming. But hey -- it's a good way to end the day.