You may be of the same mind as I am regarding tonight's State of the Union speech. It has a dead-skunk-in-the-road factor. It's going to be ugly to look at, but so, so hard to look away from.
As of January 31st in the Year of our Lord 2006, the mask has come off of the Bush presidency. No more pretence about compassionate conservatism. No more hokum about uniting-not-dividing. This administration is about absolute power, Machiavellian power that exists for its own purpose and an end for which all means are justified.
The true state of our Union is a sad one. America has become a theocratic military empire.
As of this morning, with the confirmation of Sam Alito to the Supreme Court, we are a one party political system, and that party exists for the sole purpose of supporting the emperor. If the legislature accidentally passes a law the emperor doesn't like, the emperor can simply interpret it in a way that suits him, and the Supreme Court will affirm the emperor's constitutional right to do that as a wartime commander in chief.
The emperor will always be a wartime commander in chief because we are in a war against terrorism, and there will always be terrorism, so we will always be at war against it.
War is the core tenet of all American foreign and domestic policy. Like nineteenth century Prussia, we have become a country that exists to support its military force. We spend as much on the Department of Defense as the military spending of the rest of the world combined. That doesn't even include what we spend on homeland security. Our economy is dependent on a half trillion dollar a year dump into the military industrial complex. Our civilian service secretaries, who control weapon systems acquisitions, are former senior executives of the country's largest defense contractors and will ensure that we never kick our fiscal addiction to the machinery of war. Our diplomacy, such as it is, merely exists to deliver official threats of military action.
All federal social and health services are being outsourced to government sanctioned religious organizations. It won't be long before the faith based mob runs all secular charities out of business, and the day is coming when you'll have to go through an ordained minister to get so much as a freaking flu shot.
We'll maintain some vestiges of representative government. You'll still get to vote, for example. But if you don't vote for whomever your minister tells you to vote for, you'll burn in hell. And your minister is going to tell you to vote for the folks who are pouring federal tax dollars into his collection plate, and those folks will all be personal friends of the emperor.
Scoff all you like, but don't say I didn't tell you.
Yeah. Yeah.
ReplyDeleteMy fear is that the only practical solution--an electoral reversal of power in congress--won't work either. The legislature may not be able to reassert itself if the executive and judicial branches are in total cahoots.
"The pendulum always swings."
ReplyDeleteI'm not sure, Scott, I'm just not sure any more. And I don't think this kind of talk is alarmist any more either.
The pendulum will swing again, though it will be difficult if the Supreme Court has a say in any of it again like it did in 2000.
ReplyDeleteScott,
ReplyDeleteYou're just wrong. And it's ostrich behavior to think the people in power are anything but pure Macheavellians.
"I'll talk to this Humongous, he's a reasonable man."
No, he isn't.
Michael,
It appears to me that the neo-cons have are using the courts to put a governor on the pendulum.
I'm with Jeff on this. I fear it isn't about parties or swinging pendulums, anymore. So what if a horde of Dems get "elected" in the next 4-6 years? The checks and balances don't balance or check anymore. "If there's a Dem president, they'll have the unitary executive power" -- that ain't no comfort.
ReplyDeleteWe'll have just as few rights, and they'll probably become fewer and fewer. They are above and beyond the law, and the rest of us aren't. Feel safer now?
So it doesn't matter if the party in power is called Dem, Repub, or the Holy Roller Do-Gooders for Jesus® -- we'll be just as oppressed.
I just want to close my eyes and not watch. its like a scary movie. And i cant leave the damn theatre.
ReplyDeleteI'm not scoffing. Our military is run by a bunch of theocrats. Anyone who scoffs has been pickin' lint out of their belly button when they should've been doing their homework.
ReplyDeleteThere is no pendulum to swing. The average voter in this country is so damn dumb that by the time they figure out that the modern conservative bowel movement is nothing more than a load of crap, it'll be too late to flush it out.
Kerstin
Oh, regarding the faith-based mob? The day is surely coming when the hate that has been stoked among them will build into a nationalistic frenzy that will spell doom to any non-white, non-"Christian" living in this country. There is a bloodthirsty lust for revenge against the "liberal elite," whatever the hell "liberal elite" means.
ReplyDeleteAmericans love a good enemy, never mind if it's a neighbor.
Kerstin
The doom and gloom is not far from reality.
ReplyDeleteNot long after Bush was installed in the WH, I heard him described as "a profligate son-in-law who has run through the family estate and maxed out the credit cards."
He has done that and more by arrogantly interpreting the law of the country to fit his whim and needs. It would take just a puff of wind to shift us to a dictatorship run by big business and the Christian right.
And the people rising up to stop it? Not when they are under the narcotic of consumerism, fear and TV. It is to much effort to listen and think these days.
Meribeth
In Hamdi v. Rumsfeld the court ruled There is no bar to this Nation’s holding one of its own citizens as an enemy combatant.
ReplyDeleteSounds like end of rights to me.
As the old saying goes, "Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you".
ReplyDeleteAre the republicans consolidating power and trying to force their political will onto the country? Of course they are. That's what they do. If the democrats were in power, they'd be trying to do the same.
Will the United States become a third-world s#!thole led by a dictator. I doubt it. Too many people wouldn't stand for it. That, though, is the very nature of the problem. The divisiveness that our "great uniter" president is causing can result in permanent damage to our country.
That swinging pendulum is being pushed higher and higher to the right, right now. We have two options. Try to ease it down, so it comes back relatively close to the middle, or allow it to swing free.
If the republicans contine as they are doing, there will eventually be a swing hard to the left, where the democrats will feel justified to put their own bush in, and the right will be screaming about lost freedoms, and left will be reminding them that "the people" voted them out, so their opinions don't count. The divisiveness will continue to grow till it tears this country apart.
Facsism or civil war, which do you prefer?
Scott leans right, but he's far from being a freeper. I see too many of them on other blogs. Shrill and unreasonable trolls, whose arguements consist of absolute and unshakeable faith in republican talking points, and ad-homenim attacks on anyoue who won't join the chorus.
ReplyDeleteThat doesn't describe Scott.
Don't get me wrong. I don't concider a dictatorship to be an absolute impossibility, but the existance of sites like this are my evidence that it is unlikely. As long as enough of us are vigilant and actively fighting it, it won't happen. That pendulum has to be slowed down, though, either way, or it will damage this country.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to plant a quick word of thanks to everyone who posted on this piece.
ReplyDelete