What happens when you add something to a super-saturated solution? Cause me, I’m feeling super-saturated. Though I’m not a solution. Heck, I’m not a problem, a solution, a liquid or gas. Just a dude with a big hat.
Anyway. I feel as if our political deflation has reached a point at which something is going to break or, I hope, dissipate. And "political" isn’t really an adequate word. I don’t mean Republican vs. Democrat, or Bush against reality. I mean a higher level, the barely-breathing struggle to maintain the very foundation of governing, the Constitution which codifies our system.
Of the many offensive things George W. Bush has said, perhaps only one is so clearly a revelation of high crimes. Here’s the relevant passage from Doug Thompson, writing in Capitol Hill Blue in December 2005, reporting a meeting based, he says, on the reports of three eyewitnesses, all of whom, it bears noting, had to be Republican congressional leaders, hardly the folks likely to misrepresent Bush:
GOP leaders told Bush that his hardcore push to renew the more onerous provisions of the [Patriot] act could further alienate conservatives still mad at the President from his botched attempt to nominate White House Counsel Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court.
“I don’t give a goddamn,” Bush retorted. “I’m the President and the Commander-in-Chief. Do it my way.”
“Mr. President,” one aide in the meeting said. “There is a valid case that the provisions in this law undermine the Constitution.”
“Stop throwing the Constitution in my face,” Bush screamed back. “It’s just a goddamned piece of paper!”
This is a man (or a facsimile of one) whose sole constitutional duty is to "protect and uphold the Constitution." Clearly, he’s doing a bang-up job of that. If by "bang-up" you mean "making go bang."
He’s the centerpiece. Add to that the broken Congress, suffering from its self-imposed impotency, unwilling to stop the war, unwilling to impeach a man clearly guilty of ignoring his only sworn duty (see above). And if there’s another attack, Bush’s executive order (here) spells out exactly how American democracy will come to its end, and Congress will likely be dismissed to go back home until they’re extraordinarily rendered. This could happen at any moment. And how do you stop an executive order? Legislate it?
Add to that the overwhelming, endless march of the Republican party to retain power despite the will of the people. That would be the great new initiative in California to dilute Democratic electoral power there by apportioning the Electoral College votes differently (a great idea, but only if the whole nation does it at once). If that initiative succeeds, Democrats won’t win in 2008.
And we have Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury under Reagan, still saying Bush and Co. are ready, willing and able to look the other way while terrorists hit America again, institute martial law and declare the Bush child dictator.
Meanwhile, America watches television. We’ve tried, so many of us, for so long, to bring the horrors going on behind the scenes to light. And, thank heaven, even with all that TV going on, most of the country has indeed turned against Bush and his style of governing, which consumes and destroys as it grinds ever onward.
But now the question inevitable arises–how, working within what is left of the system which has served us so well since 1789, do we keep this dangerous, dangerous group of people from completing their coup d’etat?
This is all too real. It’s going to reach a boiling point, or the heat is going to dissipate. Will anyone with the power to stop all of this actually impeach, or even impede, Bush? Heaven knows we the people have nothing approximating the cash it takes to produce change in our government.
What can be done? That’s not a rhetorical question.
