What chance is there that the Old American Republic is GONE FOREVER

[tom_paine]

Poll question: What chance is there that the Old American Republic is GONE FOREVER

You know, the American Experiment? Government Of the People By the People For the People? Has it died or is it in the irrevocable process of dying out under repeated hammerblows from the Busheviks or the VRWC or the Confederate Broederbund or whatever the hell you want to call it?

Or is everything fine and this is one of those customary "pendulum swings" that have occurred throughout American History and everything is fine and it's only a matter of time until the pendulum swings back?

[sangha]

1. I went for 25%

I'm an optimist when it comes to human nature

[nostamj]

2. voted 75%

but am afraid it should be higher...

a win for arnulled, another * term... the country and the planet are finished. we joke about * but the thugs manipulating him are pure evil.

[BurtWorm]

3. It's not just the Bushists

It's the Cheneyites. They're actively corrupting the shit out of the American republic, remaking it into their own corporatist image. A sign of the hopelessness: The American people have gone along with the Bushist programm for Iraq. They don't fully approve of it or understand it, but they grant it to the imperial class. It's a fait accomplis. The imperialists have a blank check from the American people to do what they will whenever, wherever, however and to whomever they will.

[tom_paine]

4. Sad to see so many 100% votes

We CANNOT give up hope! If we give up hope it's over and we might as well report to the Heinrich A$$croft Memorial Re-EDucation and Re-Christianization Camps.

(or whatever the hell it will be this time that Totalitarians Take Over a Great Republic and Threaten the World)

[havocmom]

8. keep reminding us, we all get a bit weary at times

And, speaking of A$$croft, here is a fun plan:

Go to http://www.ulc.org and click on 'free ordinations'.
Yes, now every evil DUer can become an ordained minister! Rally the truly moral and ethical. Tweek the Rad Right where it hurts! No more shall they claim to speak for god and country. Take back the flag, take back god and leave them standing bare assed, buck naked with all the lies there for anyone to see!

Can I get an Amen?

[tom_paine]

22. You got it, havocmom!

Just remember the next time you see me a bit blue and pessemistic, that you return the favor.

:-)

[havocmom]

25. you bet..

It'll be Big Sky blue I'll send for you!

[BurtWorm]

15. My pessimism probably comes from having read the Cicero bio

by Anthony Everitt and seeing a lot of parallels between the end of the Roman Republic and the present situation. Empire and democracy don't seem to mix, and I fear that the clique that can make such a decision will not be choosing democracy if they personally can benefit from empire. And I doubt the American people have the nerve or the will to resist. Or that they'll have the sense to see through the sham democratic Republic that's steadily replacing the one the founders constituted.

[alaine]

24. The worst sign is our acquiesce to the neo-cons by

calling our country a republic. I call it a democracy because that's what I was taught in our great public education system. But now I have added impetus because it pisses off the freepers to no end.
DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY DEMOCRACY
(what ever happened to no retreat, no surrender...)

I voted 50%. Maybe naive, but I could not bear to give the pukes more credit than that. I'll never give up hope.

[tom_paine]

28. Good point, but it IS in fact a Republic

A democratic-republic. Andy Jackson changed that in 1828 when the common (white) people got the direct vote. It was strengthened in the late 1913 with the XVII Amemdment. And very temporarily extended to virtually ALL members of this society in the 60s and 70s, and now ending gradually, from the top down, beginning with the Bloodless Coup of 2000

So you are partially right and (gag) the Freeps are partially right (once in the bluest of moons, and of course the grains of truth around which they wrap their lies).

I, however, believe the meme to be more accurate, in that it draws parallels to the great Roman Republic and the Weimar Republics before us who suffered differing degrees of this fate.

And of course the Old Republic/Senator Palpatine/Governor Tarkin meme which I enjoy so well.

As someone mentioned above, aside from dramatic exaggerations, Star Wars does tell this story, which is becomimg OUR story :scared: :grr: :mad:, and which of course is a story as old as the hills having occured, I'm sure, long before Rome many times already.

So sue me. But I always point out that it IS a democratic-republic.

(well, actually it is trending toward an Orwellian Corporate Imperial Oligharchy Theocracy)

[Emboldened Chimp]

12. It's not just Bush or Cheney

It's the corporate elite. Corporate power now rules this country and seeks to control the world. The only thing standing in their way are the world's banking interests. We the People won't ever have control, unless the system collapses; that's why I vote 75%. Otherwise, it's hopeless.

[atreides1]

5. There is Still Hope

But we must all be willing to fight to keep the Republic if it becomes neccessary.

[Captain Absolut]

6. Parallelism

Well this seems like Star Wars, which was based on the fall of the Roman Empire. It's just history repeating itself.

Where's a Jedi Knight when you need one.

So I know the curse of presidents dying when elected in "0" years kinda stopped with Reagan...I hope it picks up again with Bush.

And I hope I get an FBI file for that comment.

[tom_paine]

10. Bushes don't get assasinated

They are the ones ordering the assassinations.

[DinahMoeHum]

19. Remember, though, you reap what you sow. . .

Karma's a motherf**ker, right?

:evilfrown:

[tom_paine]

30. Don't say that Frank

No one is advocating violence here. And Emperor Chimpy is not the disease. He's merely the pustulent rash it's broken out in.

No, our disease is systemic.

The Busheviks have give the country "AIDS", metaphorically speaking.

Think about it.

[DagmarK]

29. Welcome to DU Captain!

:-)

I bet like the rest of us, you already have an open FBI file......

[Davis_X_Machina]

7. Bush = Ceaucescu n/t

[WilliamPitt]

9. This, too, shall pass

[tom_paine]

14. From your lips to God's Ears

n/t

[QuietStorm]

11. Hope and pragmatism is all very well and good.

However, when does it become just plain old denial and/or a buffer for the status quo and get in the way of action by way of being slow on the take?

[proud patriot]

13. 50/50

that's my vote

[Eloriel]

16. IT ALL DEPENDS ON THE VOTING MACHINES -- and CA Recall too

If Arnold wins CA, CA will amazingly vote "R" in 2004.

The ballots are going to be a nightmare. There'll be a great hue (hew?) and cry for something simpler -- COMPUTERIZED VOTING MACHINES!

If we don't fix the voting machines problem, we're toast. All that will be left is the ILLUSION of democracy.

They already started the backstory a week or so ago, just before Arnold announced, in a WP article that Bush thinks they can win CA and NY.

Let's get busy, folks. This is the final crunch. Californians, you CANNOT ALLOW THIS RECALL TO PUT ARNOLD or any Repug in office. You can't. Everyone else: we've GOT to fix the voting machine problems. What is your state doing?

Eloriel

[RichM]

17. I voted for 100% but would've chosen 90% if it was an option. You see,

I'm not really such a pessimist!

The situation, though, is not really of the "pendulum swing" type. The better mechanical analogy would be to a "train off the rails." The difference is whether or not restoring forces exist.

Consider only 3 of the biggest outrages of the last 5 years: the Clinton impeachment, the Stolen Election, and the Iraq War. All 3 proceeded with the zealous & vociferous support of the media. None of these 3 could possibly have happened in a society where there was the slightest high-level support for democratic principle.

Our media, and through it, our entire public dialogue, is thoroughly contaminated with a corporate type of fascism. When you've lost control of the very language of public discourse, you've really lost. There is no coming back from that -- it's like a broken rubber band. There is no restoring force.

Let me tell you a short story about what I saw 2 days ago. MoveOn sent out an email to Bay Area members, to tell us that 2 of the bravest & best of Democratic congresspersons, Barbara Lee & Pete Stark, were going to appear at a press conference at Oakland City Hall. They were going to announce their support for legislation, authored by Henry Waxman, calling for an independent investigation of the pre-Iraq-war intelligence. MoveOn wanted us all to show up & yell and holler enthusiastically, so I went down there.

And indeed, it was a good event. Several hundred thoughtful people showed up, & we asked articulate bright questions, & cheered loudly for everything that Lee & Stark said.

The point, though, is that several times, both of them used phrases like, "and now we have to fight, really fight, to preserve whatever democracy we have left in this country..." When Barbara Lee said this, her handsome dignified strong-charactered face showed plainly that she knows damn well that there isn't much democracy left in our country, and she's scared. And with good reason.

I've seen the same look in the faces of visiting literary celebrities -- for example, the liberal Lewis Lapham. He spoke here some months ago, & didn't try to hide his fear about where he sees the country moving. Brilliant radicals, such as the writers for the WSWS, have noted that

"The elevation of the lie to the pinnacle of American politics is the surest sign that the existing system has come to the end of its rope. The entire political set-up has become so dysfunctional that no serious question can be openly discussed. Among the topics that are banned from official political discourse and may not be broached by the media are: the impeachment conspiracy against Clinton, the stolen election of 2000, the events of September 11, 2001 and what led up to them, the anthrax attacks in the fall of 2001, corporate corruption and its connection to the leading personnel in the Bush administration, the litany of lies used to justify the war in Iraq, the social implications of Bush’s tax windfall for the rich, the war on democratic rights...."

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/jul2003/grey-j21.shtml

Essentially, the WSWS Marxists, the liberal Lewis Lapham, the Democratic congresspersons Lee & Stark, & even the lifelong Republican (now turned quasi-independent, by virtue of his unusual intellectual integrity) Kevin Phillips are ALL in essential agreement: we live under a corporate oligarchy that despises democratic principles, & is destroying all semblance of meaningful democracy at a breathtaking pace.

I believe that we are indeed near to the "end of the rope." Things cannot get much more corrupt than militarily stealing a country for its oil, yet being wholly unable to acknowledge it in public discourse.

We are at the stage where either we will simply allow ourselves to become wholly enslaved by the rightists, because we are too soft, poorly-organized, & cowardly to fight -- or we will have to fight, to save our own skins. There is no chance whatever, IMO, that the pathetic sellouts of the Democratic Party (ie, the whole party except for the Kucinich wing) are going to be helpful at all. Anyone who thinks there is some painless or riskless cure for this situation is dreaming. The system is wholly disfunctional; completely broken. There is either going to be a fight, or just a surrender.

[tom_paine]

20. As always, RichM, you make a lot of sense

And, no offense (you know I respect your intelligence and perspicacity) to me it is also a measure of how badly we're in trouble that extreme leftists like yourself are in fact making so much sense.

As we've often discussed before, their is no way that I would ever buy into more than mild socialism/regulation. I stand with the Constitution and Bill of Rights and their accurate assessments of human fallibility and how to counter said same and insure some modicum of True Freedom. I stand by Regulated Capitalism for the same reason I stand for Refereed Football Games (back to the human fallibility aspect). And I believe that people who bust ass should be rewarded more than those who sit on theirs (I am right in the middle of that scale, too, perhaps on the non-striving side a bit...and I have no problem with people who work harder and stay later being rewarded for that).

(not that I mean to open up that can of worms or am asking to be convinced)

Having said that, if we lived in a healthy Republic, Communists/Hard-core Socialists couldn't possibly make that level of sense to moderates of the 1st kind like me. There would be nothing that out of whack worth criticizing that would lead someone who strongly disbelieves the promises of Communism (because, to my mind, you all don't make enough of an effort to account for human fraility and fallibility as the Founding Fathers did).

The fact tha WSWS makes a tremendous amount of sense to me is less indicative that I am ready to embrace Communism/Hard-Core Socialism (I'm not) but rather how badly off the track we are to one side's extremism that the opposite exreme can then make sense in their critique to people like me who disbelieve in EITHER EXTREME.

But either way, Rich, I agree, and I'm afraid I also agree with your assessment of the Democratic Party as it stands (don't discount the Bushevik Moles option for why the DLC is seemingly trying to wreck the Party)

Also, I considered adding a 90% option but figured that would add too much nuance to a straightofrward question...

[indictrichardperle]

26. i agree with alot of that Tom

i am probably more conservative in the past than alot of DUers, and amazingly, the left is making alot of sense these days. Im open-minded, whatever the truth is, i will agree with it.

If you are well informed, and open to the truth....i really dont see how you could be supportive of what is going on right now. Its not always a strictly "republican" vs "democrat" issue either, Buchanan and Novak oppose the neo-con cabal, alot of the old right does.......the DLC is on the neo-con side of the fence. Im shocked by how many independents and fairly conservative people are against what is going on.

[AntiCoup2K4]

18. The sad fact is....

That the Bush Criminal Empire has been behind every Republican ticket since Eisenhower. Prescott Bush himself chose Ike and Nixon as the GOP ticket for 52. It's true that Ike wasn't exactly compliant to their entire agenda, but they chose him none the less. Nixon was totally compliant with the agenda.

What makes Junior worse is that they have now given up all pretense. The people know he wasn't elected. They know he's a lying piece of shit. Anyone with a functioning brain could see that the PNAC'ers surrounding him are the living embodiment of Satan himself. Yet millions of people watch FAUX News and pretend nothing is wrong.

And if the people don't do a damn thing about it, then why would the criminal fascists ever give up power?

Make no mistake, the 2004 election is more critical than any other in our lifetime. The Bush Criminal Empire must be evicted from office by a margin that is unmistakably the voice of the American people.

[nemo137]

21. i voted 25%

we've survived a civil war, a century of aftermath from that war, labor problems, foreign wars, people like maccarthy, oil crises, and terrorist attacks. we'll get through this. americans are a generally good hearted and good minded people, and won't stand for shit.

[leftofthedial]

23. adios

time to start over.

[DagmarK]

27. wow, I am amazed at the optimism.......

I voted 100% gone.....

They are just filling the rest of us in at this point......

[tom_paine]

31. "filling the rest of us in?"? I don't understand what you mean

Please elaborate.