Letters to the Editor
had_enough
Published Letters: 817 Editor's Choice: 48
-
man, that was depressing.
[Read the article: Why Bush hasn't been impeached]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Brilliant piece Gary. But, jesus, depressing.
You're right in every particular. Btw, nice try at a happy-ending, but, given the general American penchant for denial, I'm guessing Bush and Cheney go off to sweet retirements, never answering for any of the terrible things they've done.
And so the voters will not have to answer either. Not directly, anyway.
Nothing new in that, of course, but it still rankles. Badly.
We have shown, as clearly as can be shown, that we do not deserve this Republic, flawed as it is. The tension between capitalist rapaciousness and the common-good has, it seems, been resolved, and capitalism has won. For now. Until the resources are all gone. By then, of course, it won't matter who's on top. Everyone starves.
Makes me sick to be human.
I'm going to go cry quietly for awhile now, thanks.
-
good letters all, but....
[Read the article: Why Bush hasn't been impeached]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]...someone wrote:
And part of what makes the album timeless is that we can see it's still true. Gary points to this, but it bears being stressed: Americans, in fact, don't really think war is a big deal. It's a crying shame, and difficult to imagine the circumstances under which we'll see the necessary changes come about.
**********
Three thoughts:
1) what the American people think probably doesn't matter all that much, if it ever did. And if it did, the hysterical Right, the 35% who believe Bush is a Great Leader, they would make enough noise that impeachement proceedings would probably get no further than the investigations. The truth is, the Redneck South, Midwest, and West, has been fighting the Civil War for the last 150 years, and with Bush, they finally won. You want to know what would have happened if the South won? Now we know. Disaster.
And, as another poster most usefully pointed out, Ben Franklin predicted all of this, in detail. Things have been ever thus folks. Marcus Aurelius would have understood the American Public with perfect clarity. We scream and yell about this current immorality of our leaders. But they have always been this way. Always.
2) As several other posters have noted, America is, and has long been, in the hands of Corporate masters. And impeachment of this president would be bad for business. Or, at least, it is perceived as bad for business. Usually amounts to the same thing, in any case. The corporate masters of Congress, and the MSM have no interest in impeachment. They like this President. He makes them money, and that is the greatest good for most of Corporate America. I do not imply any conspiracy. Just the usual confluence of interest.
3) Had this country been ravaged by war, the way Europe was in the last century, our populace might be a little smarter. But we have not gone through the fire of war sufficiently to lose our faith in the Tooth Fairy. I don't know if any European country could ever again be taken over by a totalitarian. Might happen. But it's less likely there than here, because of what the people of Europe went through in WWI and WWII. The United States has never gone through that. Such a ravaging would be horrible, but it might finally free the American public from its illusions and delusions. Maybe.
Perhaps the Civil War should have done that. But it was too soon, before the real destructive engines of war existed.
*******
I must confess, I always thought our corporate masters were too smart to give us a peek behind the curtain. But with Bush, the peek has become a spectacle. It's as if those who rule us no longer care about hiding anything. The nature of our political economy is now right out there in full view, for anyone to see. And that does worry me. That our rulers are so full of contempt for us, and they don't care if we *know* they're full of contempt. It's a very short step from that to totalitarian tyranny.
-
@mr. Dufus...
[Read the article: Why Bush hasn't been impeached]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]who wrote:
Even though our reasons for going to war were false and the war is going very badly, I suspect that there are still many in this country who would say that we did something we needed to do when we deposed Saddam.
***********
maybe. But even the most superficial examination of recent history shows that Saddam would have been FAR less damaging to his own country, and to the Middle East generally (he was the perfect counterbalance to Iran, for instance), than we have been since we invaded Iraq.
There is NO WAY you can add up the numbers and make any kind of case that deposing Saddam was a good idea. No matter how much Christopher Hitchens keeps bleating otherwise.
We killed thousands of civilians, and created a situation that has killed untold thousands more. We have completely destabilized what was, by most standards, a relatively peaceful, functioning country (functioning on a Stalinist model, yes, but bombs were not exploding in the streets daily, and people were not dying by the thousands monthly..you get my drift).
The bleak fact is, deposing Saddam was one of the most idiotic things America has ever done, in a long history of idiotic foreign adventures that turned out badly.
(where did Osama come from? We made him, funding the mujahideen in Afghanistan, for those with short memories)
Bush and Cheney will not pay for their arrogance and their stupidity (and cupidity), but we will.
I defy anyone to prove, by statistic or logical argument, that invading Iraq was a good idea in any way, shape, or form, for America in general. It certainly hasn't done the Middle East an ounce of good. Oil companies, and the M/I complex? Yeah, it's been very good for them. But they're not America. Not quite yet, anyway.