I had written a piece a while back wherein I hopped on the Impeach Bush bandwagon, but I became discouraged about its pertinence when I read that GWB was out on the fund-raising trail raking in easy millions toward the 2004 election. I thought to myself, impeachment of this fellow is an idea that's going nowhere. I still think so. But then again I wonder. . . .
I notice that the headline on a July 11 lead story in the Dallas Morning News reports that Powell says critics are "reaching" in their attacks on Bush. This feeble response to the recent heavy criticism of GWB warrants the lead down here in Bush Country? And Robert Scheer in an LA Times story on LRC also on July 11, locates the smoking gun of the Iraq war in Cheney's office. It seems Cheney did not tell GWB what he (Cheney) already knew before the State of the Union speech, namely, that the "evidence" of an Iraqi attempt to purchase enriched uranium in Niger in Africa was forged, and rather crudely at that.
Back in mid-June when I Googled "Impeach Bush," I got 42,600 hits. Today I just got more than 56,000. There's a lot of impeaching sentiment out there. The line about Iraq's seeking to buy African uranium in Bush's most recent State-of-the Union speech is focusing criticism currently. That's what Powell was responding to. But where will the criticism take us?
I predict not very far. Nothing takes us very far. There's that damnable thing of the cut-off between the Beltway and the people, between the White House and the truth, between the media and any residual sense of the commonweal. We are living now in a total cultural and political slum, with no effective communication between slumlords and slum dwellers.
Some features of the slum:
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Lying politicians, but then that is not new.
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Raw political and military power lawless power used to destroy a nation that was no threat to us. Our military is now assigned a task that according to Gen. Franks could go on four years. (Why not 60 or so? That's what it has taken in Germany, Japan, Korea, etc., so far.)
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An economy sinking steadily deeper in the tank on what appears a permanent basis, thanks largely to federal interventions and federal phony money games that are always the wrong thing.
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The Blob in D.C. swelling and heaving and emitting gross gasses while sucking into itself more and more of the substance of the citizenry; nearly everyone (excepting maybe those 56,000 websites and some others, like LRC) dead asleep to the fact that It Is Happening Here.
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Home-delivered newspapers that bring the paperboys and the citizens of all ages up to date on the latest permissions on sodomy. (How eagerly everyone waited for the indication of what's OK from the Nine Buzzards in Black. I always think of the Nazguls when I read about SCOTUS).
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Ubiquitous pornography and the related plagues of unlimited abortion and wrecked marriages. Recall, please, that Aldous Huxley wrote in the preface to a new edition of his Brave New World that in our brave new world increasing and officially approved sexual license goes along with disappearing political freedoms.
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Horrible "music" everywhere that nobody "listens" to. It's just unpleasant shrieking and hollering in restaurants, doctors' offices, gyms, on "hold" on telephone lines, etc.
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I could go on, but you know the rest of the litany, including huge prison roll calls and even here and there knocks on the door at midnight by various Gestapo stand-ins; budget madness at all levels of government; gun control campaigns; corporations awash in criminality, real or imagined by government; towering amounts of debt, public and private; jobs vanishing into the ether and overseas; the dollar fading. . . . The miracle is, it isn't worse than it is.
Don't ask for whom the bell tolls, baby, it's got our name on it. It's playing our tune.
Out of this, the will and tactic is to emerge to impeach Bush? I doubt it. We know that all governments study to manage their peoples. We know in particular that the governments of the "developed" nations have, since World War II, invested heavily in techniques of psychological warfare against their own subjects. We know that the media and the Bushies are in close league. We know that the big oil and munitions corporations are standing by with buckets to catch the cash as it flows their way from any and all wars. We know the taxpayers are subjected to a laser stream of hypnotic messages about things they can buy to achieve physical and psychological fulfillment, and told not to fret themselves over things they can't possibly understand, such as the need to permanently occupy Iraq, send billions to Israel, and stash our troops all over the world. This despite the fact that the world increasingly would like them all to go the hell home. And so on. I weary as I try to recite this stuff.
None of this of course is the result of a conspiracy. OK, then let me just say that it looks planned. I see no way all this awful stuff could be going on if it were not being sedulously pushed, financed, and to some extent, at least, coordinated.
We now know the recent war was a put-up job, just as so many of us suspected before it happened. What makes you think the sodomy decision, that further power grab by the Malignant Nine, is not just another item in a deliberate destabilization campaign that meets with huzzahs of approval in the highest places? It was an accident? It just came out that way, the way you toss a coin? The court was going to turn down a chance to void a state law and insert itself as Ultimate Ruler? If you think that, then I have a bridge to sell you. Ditto for the Michigan race preference case. All of it wretched bad law that serves some agendas but not yours and mine, not if you are reading this.
Of course if we could succeed in impeaching Bush, another World Conquering Hero would emerge to take his place and probably prove him or herself worse, on the principal that you have flown from the devil you know to the devil you know not of. Hillary anyone? Jefferson was right; we have gone way too long without another Declaration, another Tea Party, another brave stand by the Minutemen.
Perhaps we're not up to it anymore, but I refuse to think that. I have great faith still in my countrymen, bamboozled and bedazzled as I hold them now to be. At some point they will get their backs up I think that will finally happen when they at last realize that the present manipulators mean them and their families dire harm, no kidding, right here at home, in their workplaces and playplaces and schools and domiciles. Then I think the stand will be made.
Meanwhile, if there is any voting to be done (and I am very nearly at the point of abstaining on moral grounds from all voting) I'll cast one vote: impeach Bush, and if there is any chance of getting a two-fer, throw in Cheney. Then those two can settle the question of who knew what, when, at their leisure.
July 17, 2003