Will This Democrat Majority Turn the Tide of History? Why Would It?

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In a completely unsurprising turn of events, Democrats last Tuesday rode a wave of populist indignation all the way to majorities in both houses of the US Congress.

The talking heads on TV were quick to diagnose the seed of the discontent as lying solely in Iraq. But was that the case? Of course Americans by and large are disgusted with Iraq, as they should be, but Iraq is more a symptom of a destructive policy than it is the cause of anything. (That is, unless you count it being the direct cause of radicalizing millions in the region.)

Iraq is a single malignancy in a body riddled with cancer. Bush's never-ending "War on Terror" is the depleted uranium sparking the tumors.

Yes, on Election Day Americans were demanding an end to the quagmire in Iraq, but Americans were also repudiating everything else about the direction that Bush and the neocons have taken us these last few years – the domestic surveillance, the torture, the Patriot Act, the efforts to label dissenters "unlawful combatants," and so on.

Whether the election results were legitimate or manufactured (and that question will always remain as long as electronic voting machines are used), there's only one way to interpret such a stark course correction: a rejection of Bush's police state by someone.

If the Democrats do anything short of repealing the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act of 2006, it will be a betrayal. If they don't conduct new investigations into 9/11 and the alleged intelligence "failures" leading to the Iraq war, and if they don't hold the neocons accountable for all the death and diminishment that they've caused, they will prove, once again, how they are effectively no different than the Republicans.

Instead, the Democrats will demonstrate another completely unsurprising natural law: that the establishment protects its own.

Instead of honoring the mandate – and it's impossible to characterize the results any other way than as a mandate – instead of finishing the job, of utilizing the steam that powered their rise – Nancy Pelosi, Howard Dean, and John Conyers have instead each assured the American public, preemptively, that impeachment of George W. Bush is off the table.

Suddenly Democrats are interested in national unity, just days after declaring that Bush the unitary decider was destroying the universe? In spite of some polls suggesting that the public would overwhelmingly support impeachment proceedings? (Even mainstream Zogby polling supports this finding.)

Unprincipled, intolerant coffee-house liberals will prove all too willing to concede to the never-ending "War on Terror" and its collateral laws. They'll now characterize these laws as necessary evils, these pillars of our police state. As long as their team holds the reins, that is.

Democrats are outraged by the 4th amendment abuses built into the Patriot Act only if it's Bush, a cardboard cutout of a "conservative," whose Justice Department and FBI are abusing the law. But they're just fine with the thought of Hillary wielding that abuse of power.

For the Democrats to impeach Bush at this point – even though it's likely that whatever charges that might stick to him would clearly be heaped twofold on Cheney, thereby leapfrogging whomever the Ds choose for their Speaker to the fore – would threaten to topple the entire statist house of cards.

But Democrats have no problem with cards.

Once again we'll see establishment incumbent protectionism in motion: "No, no, we won't dismantle the agency/law/policy that you, the public, find so overwhelmingly objectionable – but we will paint it a different color." "Sure, domestic surveillance is bad – unless it's to root out people engaging in hate speech!" "Sure, sure, the government scrutinizing our financial transactions with a fine-toothed comb seems un-American, but there might be people out there buying unregistered handguns or cheating on their taxes!" And so on.

As the opposite side of the same coin, Democrats are every bit as dependent on government mythology as Republicans.

Sure, each side's myth has different bogeymen and varying definitions of vice and virtue, but debate between the two is inconsequential by design. It is just that, debate. If a substantive issue quakes the ground beneath their feet, both parties instead happily focus on irrelevant wedge issues like flag burning.

The compromise is always the reality that counts, and when the establishment parties reach compromise over anything, it invariably nurtures the police state.

Has a single government program or law enforcement agency ever been dismantled? Not simply renamed, but removed from the taxpayer overhead – complete with mass layoffs of all the former employees?

Without uncritical reverence to the establishment premise of 9/11, in spite of all of its proven, glaring flaws, the Constitution-destroying Patriot Act – nay, every government action of the last five years – becomes vulnerable to a populist demand for repeal.

Are Democrats now ready to recant every civil rights–based complaint they've launched over the last five years? Will they issue a group press release stating that they've changed their minds? Or will they just assure everyone that it's safe to leave the laws in place because they can be trusted not to abuse them?

As for the mythology, without adherence to the groupthink that a few genius Arabs in caves, without any inside help, had the supernatural wherewithal to circumvent the most sophisticated, layered defense system the world has ever seen, NORAD, the Democrats likewise won't be able to utilize the Patriot Act to root out gun-owning "domestic terrorists."

In other words, the Democrats are fully vested in the police state, too. One need only remember Waco for an example of the damage spawned by their style of zealotry.

We can reasonably expect for them to be just as threatened as Republicans by anyone questioning the legitimacy of our never-ending war. Because just like establishment Republicans, Democrats will be perfectly fine with using both the Patriot Act and the Military Commissions Act as de-facto law enforcement measures to silence their political enemies.

By so doing, Democrats will inevitably prove that there is no such thing as a political revolution in the modern era, as Lawrence M. Vance points out in his last column. Exactly like the so-called "Republican Revolution" of 1994, this latest uprising will prove short-lived, too, little more than a steam valve to distract the masses – a means of hijacking outrage and diverting the destructive energy safely away from themselves when they become inevitably implicated.

There is no hope for political revolution by working inside the establishment, not when the people continue to expect nothing more than a false choice, a rigged political paradigm.

Everyone must vote third party. Not just those of us on the fringes. Everyone who is interested in saving what honor remains of this place must never cast another ballot for Republicans or Democrats.

But back to the conventional perspective for a moment: if Republicans have anyone to blame for their losses – which have been a blatant, smoldering guarantee since they goose-stepped to the polls to cast ballots for Bush in 2004 – it's themselves. For selling their souls and going along with the police state, for not contesting the illegitimate and intellectually insulting premise of never-ending war, and for buying the BS defining "free trade" as wholesale government manipulation of markets, these Republicans deserve whatever they got.

That's what I'd like to ask those Republicans out there right now: how do you feel about yourselves?

Considering the "thumpin'" that was undeniably headed your way, don't you feel in retrospect that it would've been preferable to suffer such a demoralizing loss for at least having stood on actual conservative, Constitution-fearing principle?

Instead of standing on principle, you engaged in leader worship. If Bush does have principles, they aren't oriented anywhere near libertarian-conservative planks of smaller government, free markets, autonomy for the individual, and avoiding entangling alliances, interventionism, and empire-building around the globe.

Bush's principles certainly aren't oriented around the notion of enumerated powers and the Constitutional supremacy of the individual over the state. How do his remaining self-described "conservative" supporters reconcile that?

My hope is that any person who considers himself a conservative – as he smoothes the bubbles from his "W: The President" bumper sticker – is given pause by this turn of events, and that it sparks a moment or two of reflection.

Is it worth it to you to hang your hat on the lone peg of fighting the "War on Terror"? Do you now still stake your reputation, your wholehearted endorsement, on the government's fervent fear-mongering about the immediate threat of terrorism?

As conservatives, do you not see any irony in that? You preach that when it comes to economics, there is "risk in life," and further, you view the government's word as inept or duplicitous when it comes to any other subject. Yet you elevate the government's word on terrorism to an unquestionable gold standard.

It's those characteristics of modern Republicanism, that of moral ambiguity and flexible principles, that make it seem very much like a party not worth saving.

It's so bad, so depraved, so fallen, that it almost takes the fun out of me now saying to them, "I told you so. Repeatedly." (Of course I'll continue to say it anyway.)

But now the Democrats will accomplish what Bush, the flaming globalist, the big-government liberal, has desired all along – but failed to pass through the few political conservatives who obstructed in the House: amnesty for illegal aliens, expanded and legitimized welfare subsidies for their families, and the eventual merger of the US with Canada and Mexico into a "North American Union."

Those goals will be first priority for the incoming Democrat congress. The only remaining objectives of the Democrats for these next two years will be to raise taxes and to marginalize and ignore any within their ranks who are so crass as to demand investigations into Bush's last five years of unconstitutional high crimes and misdemeanors.

So for you Democrats out there, I'll say this preemptively: congratulations. This is what opting for the "lesser of two evils" buys you – evil. I hope you prove me wrong.

But because we know that won't happen, let me go ahead and relish this now, while I have your attention: I told you so.

November 14, 2006