FW: Bush has taken us to the brink of ruin--how? Our democracy is moribund

[Guest guest]

" Mark Hull-Richter " <mhull

Thu, 14 Jul 2005 11:23:46 -0700 (PDT)

FW: Bush has taken us to the brink of ruin--how? Our

democracy is moribund

 

 

I have sent the following article to the DNC with the intro line, " This

is why I can no longer support the DNC. "

 

It was an overstatement to garner some attention, but a) I doubt that

they will pay any and b) I doubt that I will pay them anything.

 

The Party and its nominee should have been able to make ugly, poisoned

hamburger out of the current regime, but instead they stuck to the

usual stupid, " safe, " " centrist " approach that has lost us the last two

Presidential elections and much political ground because the outrage

that an honest, no-BS campaign could have engendered would have

overcome the narrow margins that allowed the Republicans to win (or

cheat).

 

I do not believe that we will get legislation or action in time to make

the 2006 elections even remotely fair - ES & S, Diebold and Sequoia will

be counting the votes even if they aren't collecting them all. The

only way to win will be an overwhelming majority that small sleights of

hand cannot overcome. Will we see that? Not if the Democratic Party

continues its policy of the centrist-as-the-center-moves-to-the-right

shimmy and slobbering up to the Republican minority of the loud.

 

But, enough of my blabber - this article is better.

 

 

 

 

D

Wednesday, July 13, 2005 5:17 PM

Bush has taken us to the brink of

ruin--how? Our democracy is moribund

 

Killing joke: The day the American Republic died

July 13, 2005

 

By Chris Floyd, Empire Burlesque

 

Bob Herbert, who has been incandescent for months now, usefully

reminds us of the comedy routine that Bush performed for a

sycophantic audience of TV and radio " journalists " back in March

2004: the infamous " hunt for WMD " in the Oval Office. As you'll

recall, this was a series of cutesy shots showing Bush peering

behind the office curtains, looking under the rug while cracking

wise: " No weapons of mass destruction under here! Maybe they're

over here? " and so on.

 

I thought then - and still think - that this performance was one

of the most revealing - and sickening - episodes in American

political history. The cynicism of it defies belief, outstrips

all comprehension. Imagine sending men and women to die - and to

kill - in a war over weapons of mass destruction, then joking

about the fact that no weapons were ever found. All this, while

thousands continued to die, including your own soldiers.

 

The fact that Bush would engage so openly in such murderous

cynicism was a telling revelation: it showed, or rather

confirmed, that America was being led by a brutal, mocking,

heedless Caligula, a spoiled, shallow, vain and selfish fool, a

moral psychopath incapable of ordinary human empathy. The

reaction of the " journalists " present was another soul-sinking

revelation: they laughed. Oh, how they laughed. " What a kidder

this Dubya is, eh? What important insiders we all are - real

players, tough and savvy - sharing this special moment of

" knowing " laughter with the president! " As far as I know, not a

single person walked out in protest, not a single " journalist "

refused to take part in this open mockery of the dead - our own,

and the tens of thousands of Iraqis who had died for the WMD

chimera that Bush now found so funny.

 

All this was bad enough: Caligula ruled us, and the press were

nothing more than fat, lazy poodles dozing at his feet. But then

something even more extraordinary and equally disheartening

happened: the Democratic Party simply ignored the incident in the

months of presidential campaigning that followed!

 

Imagine the devastating effect of campaign ads showing Bush's

silly, mincing clown act to the general public, over and over,

along with shots of the war's destruction, of American wounded,

etc., with grim voiceovers: " President Bush thinks the war in

Iraq is funny. He thinks it's a joke that there were no weapons

of mass destruction there - none at all - even though that's why

he said we had to go to war. Ask the hundreds of our sons and

daughters who have died in this war if they think it's funny. Ask

the grieving parents, the grieving wives and husbands, the

grieving children, if they think it's funny that we went to war

for a fantasy, for a joke. Then ask yourself: is this man really

fit to govern our great nation? "

 

(Other versions could have used the footage while stressing the

fact that the war had increased terrorism, that Bush had diverted

mass resources from securing ports, chemical/nuke plants, and

hunting down those who attacked the country on 9/11 in order to

pursue the fantasy of Iraqi WMD.)

 

Imagine having such a political weapon in your hand - and not

using it. It would have touched all the bases: striking a chord

with the uneasiness about the Iraq war felt by much of the

population; educating the general public about Bush's true

nature, " getting around the filter " of the national media that

continued to paint him in the heroic colors of a " war president " ;

underscoring the blaring fact that Bush was not the " national

security " president, but was in fact a palpable danger to our

national security. Everything the Democrats said they wanted to

do - particularly neutralizing the security issue - could have

been done by using this revolting performance as a cudgel to beat

Bush with, every single day of the campaign. It would have been

100 times more effective than the ludicrious gung-ho military

drag that John Kerry was festooned with ( " Reporting for duty! " ).

With such a weapon, they could have swept to a margin of victory

great enough to swamp the extensive but not-yet universal Bush

machinery of vote-fixing.

 

(And I haven't even mentioned the fact that the words " Abu

Ghraib " never once passed Kerry's lips during the campaign. They

couldn't even attack Bush for staining the honor of our military

by involving it in his foul torture regime, his gulags and

hell-holes.)

 

A party that could not summon the insight, the vision and the

will to exploit such horrendous weaknesses in their opponent - in

a race that was not just an ordinary political contest but a

desperately important turning point in American history, a

chance, perhaps the last chance, to save the Republic - is a dead

thing, a useless dangling appendage, a collection of

time-servers, lickspittles, bribe-takers and morons.

 

And they have proven this over and over in the months since the

2004 election. How could you have those White House " torture

memos " in your hand - and not mount an all-out war, using every

last weapon you have as the minority party, including the

filibuster -- to stop the nomination of Al Gonzales as attorney

general? How could you simply lay down before Bush's threat to

break 200 years of Senate law with his " nuclear option " on the

filibuster by allowing some of the worst judges in American

history to sail through to lifelong sinecures - all for a " deal "

that Frist and the Bushist appartchiks said they would break

whenever they felt like it?

 

More and more, I have come to think that the March 2004 press

dinner was in fact a wake for the American Republic. Given the

reaction - or rather, the non-reaction - of the Establishment to

this slathering little killer's mockery of his victims, his

strutting, preening celebration of the scam he had put over on

the country, it seems clear that not just the Democratic Party

but our democracy itself is moribund.

 

Can it be revived at this point, at this late stage? I don't

know. Perhaps Bob Dylan laid out the course we must now take

almost 40 years ago: " Strike another match, go start anew: It's

all over now, baby blue. " Perhaps from the ruins we'll be able to

construct a new republic one day. But for now, the agonizing,

world-churning death-agony of the old republic goes on, with no

end yet in sight.

 

 

 

Mark Hull-Richter, U.S. Citizen & Patriot

U.S.A. - From democracy to kakistocracy in one fell coup.

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0416-01.htm

http://verifiedvoting.org http://blackboxvoting.org

 

 

 

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