Irrelevant

The Holy office in Washington can't tolerate criticism, but because nearly every negative criticism one might make has a good chance of being valid and because to all appearances, the ineptitude, corruption and blind pursuit of a fable deliberately created to promote tyranny, involves more ineptitude, blindness and corruption than we can imagine, they have no choice but to rely on good old argumentum ad hominem.

It's hard to bring the standard charges of unpatriotic thought against former president Jimmy Carter. The customary swift boat might just be so excessive that the attempt would backfire. His moral credentials are pretty good and his dedication to improving America and promoting honesty and justice in the world aren't easily dismissed, so the only practical fall-back position open to the White House Wizards of sleaze is to lump him and his angry denunciations into the same category they put us all in. It's the category of Irrelevance. It's a club called "we don't care what you think."

If Carter calls the Bush administration the worst in history, it's close enough to the truth for all purposes. An administration that is willing to denounce the opinion of about three quarters of the electorate as irrelevant if not treasonous, makes Carters case for him. In fact all that keeps George W. Bush from irrelevance is the fact that he is armed and we are not. He holds the gun to the heads of our troops - criticize and they will die. He has the power to make us disappear into the gulag, to hire his own army, to spy, to torture, to set aside the law. He alone is the State and we, along with our principles, laws and aspirations are irrelevant.

Jimmy Carter is right and most of us know it. The only relevant questions are about how long we will permit this to continue. Will we have to wait until 2008 and hope that we will be allowed to vote him out of office or will we be able to say sic semper tyrannus sooner by impeaching him now?