GG wrote:

"Go read every single one of those "more-radical-than-thou" sermonizers -- the ones who endlessly preach that anyone trying to change things without advocating what they deem to be some sufficiently revolutionary "anti-System solution" is a starry-eyed, Democrat-loving, status quo tool.

Tell me if a single one of them ever does anything beyond petulantly voicing that criticism, let alone ever advocates anything specific for what they think should or could be done (beyond platitutes such as "The people need to tear down these institutions").

During the Vietnam War over 40 years ago, Mario Savio of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement suggested one of the recourses that ordinary citizens may take in the face of implacable institutional corruption and criminality:

“There’s a time when the operation of the machine becomes so odious, makes you sick at heart, that you can't take part, you can’t even passively take part, and you’ve got to put your bodies upon the gears and upon the wheels, upon all the apparatus, and you’ve got to make it stop! And you’ve got to indicate to the people who run it, to the people who own it, unless you’re free, the machine will be prevented from working at all!”

What Savio was urging peace activists to do was not to take up arms in a violent attempt to seize control of industrial cogs in the war machine (such as the University of California of the time). He was pointing out that when legal protests fall on insufferably deaf ears, a person's moral convictions may demand nothing less than the end of passive complicity, regardless of the personal consequences.

What activists of the 60's knew was that peaceful demonstrations were not the cutting edges of opposition to the war, they were its safety net. The shock troops of the anti-war movement were those brave enough to risk real jail-time with acts of non-violent civil disobedience intended to disrupt industrial and political instruments of the war machine. They were prepared to make personal sacrifices unfamiliar to contempory Americans, few of whom have experienced any significant inconvenience, much less personal jeopardy, from the US military interventions their tax dollars support.

Thegris wrote:

"I am just so furious that Democrats are such willing partners in the Bush regime's worst crimes (torture, Iraq war, surveillance) that I can no longer call myself a Democrat. These collaborators disgust me, and I am looking for alternatives.

What if progressives supported Ron Paul?"

Just as the Neo-Con(federate)s were never truly conservative, they were never really Republicans either. They hijacked the Republican Party long enough to grab the keys to the White House, then set up a parallel Corporate Security State. Due to their own haste, ineptitude, arrogance, and/or laziness, they trampled on some inconvenient laws and Constitional prohibitions in the process, resulting in political and legal blowback.

Since it's Congress' duty to keep the Executive on a short leash, the Neo-Cons next move was to hijack the Democratic Party as well. They probably foresaw the necessity of neutralizing the ostensible opposition as a prerequisite for seizing Executive power in the first place, not to mention the practical purpose of immunizing themselves against prosecution and impeachment.

Once the Republican Party hemorrhages in the 2008 elections, the Neo-Con bacteriophages will most likely desert the carcass and make themselves at home in the already systemically infected Democratic Party. They probably expect the Fundamentalists to devour what's left of Republicanism and turn it into a marginalized Theocratic cult, content to have some raw meat tossed its way from time to time.

There will, however, be a window of opportunity for an upstart like Ron Paul to seize the reigns of the Republican Party. If rank Republicans start to panic as they watch the Neo-Cons bail-out while their own re-election prospects crumble, they may resort to desperate attempts to revitalize their Party. Compared to the rest of their oozing sores, Paul represents an antiseptically clean slate, a quixotic alternative to the corporacratic Bush/Clinton dynasties.

As many have observed, the Democratic Party is fatally corrupt, compromised, and complicit in the Neo-Con criminal enterprise. It's unlikely that Progressives can wrestle its soul back from the vulture capitalists, as after all, we have nothing but tough love to offer. Unless you want to indulge in yet another fit of Third Party futility, the upcoming collapse of the Republican Party appears to offer the best prospects for a rearguard counter-attack.

I always confused Chris Matthews with Tim Russert until I got the "Tweety" connection. I still think of them as the Tweedledum and Tweedledee of media lapdogs, but I'm wondering if anyone has any nuanced insights on the depths of their shallowness?

While it's hard to imagine a sloppier lapdog lovefest than Fox on Bush, it can definitely get much sicker than this. Coulter and Limbaugh have already bolted into Hillary's camp, popping the boil on the imminent neo-con bailout from the sinking Republican ship. HRC's already received the official backroom anointment from Murdock, Fox is just paying due respect to good ole fuck-buddy Bush.

L.W.M. wrote about: "The New Constitutional Order and the National Surveillance State"

Trenchant analysis, but "NSS" comes across as a rather bland anacronym. I like the sound of "Unitary Surveillance State of America". It has that tangy hint of Stalinism laced into the musky essense of Bush Regime patois.

In a previous post, I suggested mocking the Federal Government with the Stalinesque name Unitary Surveillance State of America. But now that Glenn has begun capitalizing Surveillance State in his essays, I'm starting to think it's not really a joke at all.