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We have to invent new words for these people. "Hypocrite" just doesn't do it. "Corrupt" doesn't come close. Words fail.
The Caligula Presidency. Waterboarding for fun and profit. The Congressional Pimp and Page Service.
Hugo Chavez was right. They leave the smell of sulfur behind them.
It's interesting to assess what, of our democracy, is still in working order, by the scandals revealed. By where the "Devils" put their energy. So, the lower level of the DoJ was still in fairly good working order, even with Alberto "torture memo" Gonzales in charge, until recently. Some people were still doing their jobs. Some people were still honest professionals, making objective judgments about what and who to prosecute. Then the boot came down on them. And the focus of the purge was elections. Hm-m. Diebold/ES&S weren't enough. People--if they really get their dander up--can outvote the machines. And, of course, due to the truth squad at DU, Scoop.co.nz, and other places, those dreadful Bushite-electing devices are in some disrepute. Not enough to give the Democratic leadership much alarm. They, of course, want to give Diebold/ES&S billions more taxpayer dollars to "fix' the voting machines. Har, har. But the People are alarmed, and thus, the ability of these rightwing Bushite corporations to deliver their "service" on cue is somewhat hampered. And the "Devils" actually have to compete for scandal space in the war profiteering corporate newsstream, and, as we know, they don't like competition--they like unfair advantage. Get Gonzo's guys to make us some Democratic scandal headlines we can use, dammit, now!
That's another thing that's still working: the war profiteering corporate news monopoly love of scandal. American journalism may be broken, as an institution, on all other fronts. But they still have to "sell newspapers" and attract advertisers. And, in that sense, and that sense only, they are bipartisan. Bushites make better scandals. Oh, boy, do they! Congressmen getting their rocks off, writing emails to page boys, while they vote on important matters of state (like a flag-burning amendment). Taking junkets to the slave labor prostitutes in the Marianas. Taking bribes from Indian tribes. The VP blowing his shotgun off in another Republican's face. His company "losing" billions of dollars in Iraq. Naked bodies piled up at Abu Ghraib. Dark scandals. Funny scandals. BIG scandals. The Democrats are boring. The best we can do is a blow job between consenting adults. But the Republicans, wow. They are fun. And when the Corporate Rulers want to get some cache back, with the American people, and decide to take the leash off their "reporters," the show never stops.
And there is a certain democratic leveling value in low-minded, "yellow journalism" type scandal. It's something anyway. Something is working.
Then there's the CIA. We can measure just how much the CIA had reformed itself--after the dreadful things they were doing in Latin America and other places in the '80s--and how far this secret organization had gone in changing its job description to preventing war, rather than manufacturing it--by how much energy (not to mention risk) the Bush Junta put into destroying them. Something was working right in the CIA. Honest professionals. Believers in the rule of law. Believers in the truth. That was all working better than we know. And that's WHY the boot came down on them.
FEMA. Our emergency services. Working quite well. Until...hard to figure why the Bushites would destroy that. But Halliburton getting the first no-bid contract in New Orleans surely had something to do with it. The people on the ground, both citizens and responders, trying to do their jobs, hampered from every direction by Bushite officialdom. I remember reading about a US battleship off the coast, ready to ride the storm in. Food, hospitals on board. And they couldn't get the order from the White House. And repair crews working through the night to restore electricity to--they thought--several local hospitals, only to find out that what they were doing was restoring the Texas to east coast oil pipeline, the result of a direct order from the VP. Hospitals be damned.
The EPA, and its climate change scientists. Trying to do their jobs. Our school system, our teachers--ordered to stop teaching minds, and start teaching tests. Such a pitiful waste of dedicated professionals, with such an important job to do. In any case, despite the difficulties of their job, and harassment by Bushite flat-earthers, and budgets drained thin by the Bushite killing machine in Iraq, they return every day to their classrooms and their students, and make the effort to open the world to them.
In fact, a lot of things are actually working in our democracy--despite all this Bushite Republican effort to demoralize, loot and destroy them. Somehow enough information is getting to enough people that 75% now oppose the heinous, illegal, unjust, insane Iraq War, and want it ended. They can't get Congress to stop it. They were seriously hampered in electing enough good representatives to do so. But they tried, and tried hard. So American word-of-mouth communication systems, and our new "Committees of Correspondence"--the internet--are in working order. And wouldn't you know--the Corporate Rulers (the true puppetmasters of the Bush Junta)--want to restrict and control internet communications. Surprise, surprise. Whatever still works, that favors democracy and progressive values and good government, be ready for the boot to come down on it. Be ready for scandal. Be ready for bribes. Be ready for filth. Be ready for the Republican/Corporate wrecking crew.
There is a force at work, in all these systems that are still functioning, however fitfully, despite every effort of the Bush Junta to destroy them. It is the American people, in all their different capacities, as citizens, parents, voters, small business people or employees, bloggers, campaign workers, members of non-profit groups, and as government workers, as lawyers, or spies, or soldiers, or scientists. The American people are still in working order, still believe in democracy, still believe in Constitutional government, still want honest vote counting, and still expect government to be of, by and for the people. It is our leaders who have gone off the deep end.
To the American people, when a system stops functioning--as with the Bushite purge of federal prosecutors, or the breakdown of FEMA--it is still a scandal. It is not to be tolerated. And another system kicks in, to expose it, to remedy it. With the Bushites, of course, there is so much malfeasance, it can be overwhelming. We reel from the destruction of the military, to the destruction of the CIA, to the destruction of our school system, to the destruction of our emergency services, to the destruction of our election system, to the destruction of our justice system. It never stops. But I have to say that I am impressed with our resilience, and with the rock solid principles upon which our country and our unity as a people are founded. We have not yet weathered this storm--the most vicious, ill-intentioned regime in our history, wherein the 25% of stupid Cromwellites who seem always to be with us, gained power over the rest of us, and, at the instigation of the Corporate Rulers, convinced us for a while that they were the majority. We now know that they never were. It is painful to think of them--our fellow and sister Americans, after all--sneakily inserting bad code into voting machines, or phoning black voters and telling them they will go to jail if they show up at the polling place, or pressuring prosecutors to concoct cases against Democrats. That it wasn't all Karl Rove. That a lot of folks colluded with him to destroy other peoples' rights, and to "elect" false and traitorous and criminal leaders. What can have happened to these people, to make them turn against their country, and its principles of fairness and honesty in government? Were the '60s that traumatic to the puritans and witchburners among us?
I dunno. Maybe it's just that the Corporate Rulers unhinged them and they thought that they were back in the 10th century. We have a flawed gene, in the human population, which gets triggered in this minority when they smell unmerited power, and concepts of fairness and reasonableness just don't register with them, in their frenzy to control the rest of us. They lose it. Power consumes them. The notion of Bush slaughtering tens of thousands of innocent Arabs, and us sane people being unable to do anything about it, was their wet dream. The dream of the Grand Inquisitor. The notion of forcing women back into a submissive role as baby-machines, against the will of the majority, stoked them. Stealing votes to accomplish that is not wrong, in their crazy view--a view as medieval as that of any ancient Pope. And using these sort of people was, of course, a cakewalk for the Bushites. They only had to crook their fingers and the loony 'christian' wingers would do anything they were told, and would even do it without being asked. They knew the drill. There is no crime in serving Jesus. Nutjobs, with their finger on the nuclear trigger. What a lesson for us all--both that we have unreconstructed 'christian' jihadists in our midst, always lurking in their tiny sour corners, ready to spring Armageddon on us, if we let them--and how very precious are our democratic mechanisms for keeping them out of power: our right to vote, our right to government transparency, the principle of majority rule, our commitment to reason and evidence in our justice system, and the precept that "power corrupts" and that the powerful are never to be trusted, not for one minute.
Majority rule is not just a passing fancy--some sort of pie-in-the-sky leftist ideal. Majority rule is essential to survival. With majority rule, the best ideas will rise to the top, and the worst will be discarded; and the best leaders will rise to the top, and the worst will never gain sufficient power to destroy us. The fascists always fear "mob rule." But that is not what happens when the majority rules. Interestingly, the majority ruling almost always protects minority views. But not the other way around. When a minority gains power--which is always, necessarily, by devious means--they ALWAYS suppress the majority. You can tell the majority by their largesse, by their trust in free speech and dissent, by their willingness to grant rights to all viewpoints. And you can tell that a minority has gained power by their unwillingness to play fair. By their calling prosecutors and soliciting prosecution of Democrats, in order to poison the newsstream with the false impression that Democrats are as corrupt as Republicans. By their willingness to break the law, to their political advantage. Those who hold power legitimately--by consent of the majority--don't have to do this.
The minority has shown us its ugliest face. Now we know that they are still with us--these malevolent witchburners--and how dangerous they are. The Corporate Rulers have shown their hand--their true fascist hand--their willingness to use stupidity and intolerance to loot and oppress us, and destroy our democracy. They have revealed themselves to be medieval institutions that need dismantling, if enlightened civilization is to continue, and, indeed, if life on earth is to be preserved. For all the damage that our Corporate Rulers have done, our democracy is still functioning, and most Americans still believe in it, because it is the best means of survival. It replicates the mechanism of evolution itself, the ability to change. It's no wonder that the wingers and their Corporate promoters hate both evolutionary science and democracy. The ability to change means the ability to throw these deadenders out of power.
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Well, Michael, you got me off on a rant today. Thanks for the inspiration!
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