These Guys Have Got To Go

When Cheney shot his hunting partner in the face my long simmering revulsion with the direction of things suddenly morphed into fearful apprehension. I don't know why I found this event so alarming. The Dark Lord, after all, has a history of actions more egregious than gunning down a friend . I think what it brought home to me was the breathtaking incompetence and lawlessness of those we have put at the helm.

These guys, ( and by "these guys" I'm referring to the whole of the current Republican administration, their Republican Congressional leadership, the lobbyists and other moneyed interests who feather their nests, the conservative "think tanks" that provide them with their faulty logic, the conservative media hacks, pundits, and other hangers on that blithely encourage their continued distortion of reality ) are literally unbelievable. The litany of failed policies, the unapologetic breadth of corruption, the calculated, bold face lying about almost everything that they don't choose to be secretive about, the arrogant belief that they can do any damn thing they want irrespective of the law, the demonstrated indifference to the well being of the citizens they were sworn to protect,.... well, it's more than a simple fella like myself can take in. As comedienne Lilly Tomlin aptly put it, "no matter how cynical I become, I just can't keep up".

On the rare occasions when our impotent media challenges one of their imperious actions they simply look the upstart in the eye and lie, or contend that black is white, or try to obfuscate the issue by blaming the Democrats. The truth is that the Republicans control everything. They control the Presidency, the Congress, the Courts, and through an unprecedented level of shameless cronyism, the administrative and policy making structures that undergird these institutions. There is truly no one else to blame for the mess we're in today other than the Republicans. This Administration is, without question, the worst aggregation of political swill to hold sway during my fifty five years on the planet.

Permit me reader, a partial, and admittedly incomplete recitation of the "accomplishments" of our current political leadership. They distorted the intelligence to justify an unnecessary invasion of Iraq. They grossly mismanaged their occupation once they'd shocked and awed the populace.. When the predicted outpouring of citizen appreciation failed to materialize they resorted to locking up anyone who looked suspicious. Determining that their providence inspired mission would not be constrained by the rules governing "others" they ignored International Law, flaunted the Geneva Conventions and permitted the torturing of those aforementioned suspicious individuals at the Abu Graib Prison. They dispensed with any adherence to the rule of law in establishing the black hole that is the Guantanamo Detention Facility. When too much light was shed on Guantanamo, they created secret prisons in far flung parts of the world where they could "render" their prisoners and be assured of secrecy. These actions have dramatically changed America's standing in the world. Where once we were only viewed with suspicion, we are now loathed almost everywhere.

I simply don't know what to say about the 2500 American and the 100,000 Iraq lives lost in this unnecessary Republican war. What a horrible, tragic waste! Now Iraq stands on the precipice of civil war and these guys have no plan to forestall the inevitable carnage. None of the fools who prosecuted this war ever served in combat themselves, nor did they ever believe this war important enough to risk their own children's lives. Only one member of the 600 in the Administrative and Congressional branches had a child on active duty in Iraq. They did, however, find the lives of others entirely expendable. New reports suggest that many of those killed would have been saved if they'd been provided with proper body armor. I don't know what our government is going to tell the parents of those dead soldiers in five years when the full depravity of this undertaking is clear to everyone. I suspect those responsible will, by then, be comfortably ensconced in the corporate board rooms of their grateful war profiteering buddies.
I'd like to see the lot of them held responsible, but I won't hold my breath.

Add to the debacle in Iraq the foreign policy failures in the Middle East, Iran and North Korea; the NSA secret wiretapping; the dismal non- response to hurricane Katrina; the ultra conservative appointments to the Supreme Court; the medicare prescription drug fiasco; and the neanderthal policy decisions relative to environmental conservation, pollution standards, protection of species, global warming, and stem cell research. The Dark Lord himself is reportedly responsible for "outing" covert CIA agent, Valerie Plame because her husband had the temerity to question his Iraq policy. This week's debacle is the Administrations plan to turn over the security of our seaports to a long time business associate of his father and brother in the United Arab Emirates. Is there anyone out there who really still believes these people are interested in protecting us?

This is also the most fiscally irresponsible administration in history, spending 400 billion more each year than it takes in. If given a continuing free hand they are likely to bankrupt us, which many believe to be their actual goal. Bush, who inherited a budget surplus, has run up a 600 Billion dollar deficit that is projected to grow to five Trillion in five years. The war in Iraq has cost somewhere in the neighborhood of 250 Billion thus far. Fraud, profiteering, and colossal mismanagement are the continuing orders of the day. Ten BILLION has simply gone missing!. They don't know what happened to it. Philip Giraldi writing in the October issue of The American Conservative (hardly a liberal publication) contends that when all is known about the financial administration of this boondoggle, it will constitute the largest example of fraud and war profiteering in history. The scale of corruption is unprecedented.

Individually we haven't felt the financial brunt of this because our government has borrowed the preponderance of money to prosecute this war from China, Japan, Saudi Arabia and South Korea. The note won't come do until our children and grandchildren are saddled with it. I suspect that's why many of these Republicans are making off with all of the illicit cash they can get their hands on. They see the trouble ahead and want to be sure that they and their prodigy are comfortably insulated from the hard times. It will likely be less trying within the confines of their gated communities. War is an expensive undertaking. To insure that the financial burden is shared by all, Bush is determined to lighten the burden on the wealthiest by making his disastrous tax cuts permanent. But don't be alarmed, he intends to cut Pell Grants to college students and funding for Veterans Health Care to cover the red ink.

When I read these things I wonder, how did we come to this? How did we become people so easily hoodwinked by political propaganda?. How did we become people who would countenance torture? When did we become willing to dismantle our civil rights, to support any heinous foreign policy, to follow any corrupt hypocrite who cloaks themselves in religious rhetoric? Are these Republican "leaders" bred from the same genetic stock as the forefathers they so often and expediently trot out ? My father was a conservative and a life long Republican. He would have been nauseated by this crowd.

I suspect it's partly because we've been numbed by the onslaught of outrageous disclosures. Rather than prompting a public outcry, each outrage seems to expand our threshold of what's tolerable. The news flickers briefly in our awareness ( those that still read) and then is dislodged and relegated to the distant past by the next bit of troubling news. Where it might once have been unacceptable for the presidents press secretary to stand before the white house press corps and lie about most everything he's asked, we now seem to view it as "just politics". When the president decides, unilaterally, that he can eavesdrop on anyone and everyone, and that he has the right to because he says so, we meekly acquiesce. Why, I wonder in my more despairing moments, are those few true statesmen we have left not yelling "FIRE" and chaining themselves to the doors of Congress?

And what of the Republican Congressional leadership? Surely there must be some who recognize that our constitutional framework is under attack. I recently heard the Republican Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist raise his voice. He indicated that he will soon introduce a Bill seeking a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Does this guy even live on my planet? What can one possibly say in the face of such callous opportunism, such cynical demagoguery?. Not much. I cringe when I think of the success these hacks have had in convincing my fellow citizens that such questions are paramount to their lives.

Even in my more alienated moments I've had confidence that those running the country were capable of keeping it afloat, that they and I shared a belief in the fundamental principals upon which the country was founded. I trusted that even if my views were not reflected in public policy, the country was at least being run by rational people. I don't believe this anymore. I believe our country has evolved into a corrupt plutocracy, run by those whose only interest is promulgating their own self interest. They wreak havoc in one area, extract all of the profit they can from the failure, and move on confident that their disingenuous rationales will soon be forgotten or overtaken by new events.

I don't want these people fashioning the world my children will inhabit.What scares me is that given three more years these despots could take us so far over the edge that theres no coming back. I don't know the solution to this. They could be impeached, they could resign, I simply want them to go away. At this point, I don't much care who succeeds them. I'll settle for anyone with a modicum of honesty and a glimmer of concern for the wellbeing of the citizens they were elected to serve.