“Every revolution begins with the power of an idea and ends when the only idea left is power” writes Karen Tumulty for Time Magazine. That’s the kind of line I wish I had written and perhaps it’s close to being true, but was the idea behind the “Republican Revolution” really an idea about how to make this a better country or was it about a way to control the country; appealing to its discontented and disaffected in order to better exploit America’s wealth and productivity and creativity for the benefit of a coalition of plutocrats, crooks and demagogs? Was the idea only power right from the start?
The Newt Gingrich insurgency of 1994 made much of (and made up some of) Bill Clinton’s background as a womanizer and thus brought hordes of crackpot casuists and legions of the sex obsessed and repressed into the fight against what they saw as moral decay and others saw as liberty. I think I am permitted to identify the irony in noting that Gingrich himself was engaged in precisely the same activity and to a greater extent while flaying Clinton for it, and that the Republican chosen to succeed him also was an adulterer.
Again, was it all about smaller government; less intrusive, more fiscally responsible, less likely to engage in foreign wars or nation building, or was all the fiery rhetoric, the vaunted “Contract with America” another cynical attempt to rabble rouse a party’s way into power? Judging from the immediate and opposite results, it would be hard to believe there was ever any attempt to make it all come true.
Those who genuinely hoped for moral improvement, whatever their definition of it, received the same old sex and money scandals and cover-ups but got legalized torture to boot. Those who looked for that “less intrusive government” got unsupervised surveillance, the end of probable cause, habeas corpus and the right to a fair trial.
We got massive corruption and more cover ups. We got massive incompetence, cronyism, nepotism and more cover ups. We got fear and trembling. We got massive secrecy, indiscriminate classification of all records past and present. We got a government that confuses freedom of speech and the right to assemble and petition with treason. We got one party control of the media. We got a shrinking middle class, falling standard of living, worsening working conditions and a war that we are told may go on indefinitely. We got the suppression of science and the substitution of religion for history. We got stolen elections and rigged voting machines and more cover ups. Did anyone notice any trend toward any of the promised goals, no matter how briefly?
I think it’s time for America to admit that we fell for the most expensive long con in history, that we’ve been led to the brink of ruin by a gang of grifters and flim-flam men and that the Emperor has a dagger under the cloak he never had on in the first place.
Even if we manage to turn out sufficient votes to rid ourselves of the bandits next month, we may yet fail. It’s impossible to recount too many votes to be sure of the results, but I am sure of one thing. If we don’t get rid of them now, we will never get rid of them.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
It was a sham, pure and simple.
Hopefully we'll look back on this period as an ruinious but temporary episode of mass insanity.
But I fear that it will forshadow something even more terrifying. If 9/11 was enough to result in Iraq and the revoking of basic American rights, what would a second, more lethal attack do? A suitcase nuke, perhaps? Would it be the end of our democray?
The worst part is that the more Bush continues his insane policies, the greater the chance of this attack happening.
It worries me. Bush has that cornered rat look about him and I'm not so sure either his wife or his dog still support his precious war.
I read that Hitler, in his last hours, had the Berlin bomb shelters in the subways flooded to punish the people for their lack of resolve.
Whatever his reaction is, it will be entertaining for sure.
Whatever his reaction is, it will be dangerous for sure.
Yes, certainly. The analogy of the Berlin bunker is apt.
Bush is a man throroughly isolated from reality. Yet the physical and psychological wall he has constructed is crumbling.
I predict Nixon-level paranoia.
Post a Comment