Letters to the Editor
-
Civil War--The Sequel?
How about this scenario: Democratic landslide in November, Cheney dies, Bush impeached. After the conviction, loyalist troops surround the White House. Unfortunately, the probability is not 0, except for the assumption that Democrats would have any kind of spine.
But what if we finally find our U.S. Grant? Then what?
-
President Hastert '07!
n/t
-
Impeachment Leads to President Cheney
Like the author, I think that the 2006 elections could return the Democrats to power in both houses of Congress. And because of lying us into a war and wire-tapping contrary to law, impeachment and conviction is a real possibility. But, it's not like what happened to Nixon -- there is no benign Gerald Ford waiting in the wings. Impeaching Bush would mean that Cheney assumes the presidency. And that would seem to be worse than having Bush as President. And impeaching both Bush AND Cheney presumably would lead to making a new Democratic Speaker of the House the new President. (President Pelosi -- ?) But, I'm not so sure that the American people would like a Democratic putsch even if they think that Bush and Cheney got what they deserve. Now THAT is a "constitutional crisis" worthy of the name.
-
The Bush family as Tsars
Tom Englehardt didn't go far enough when he posited a constitutional crisis in 2006 or 2007, he has laid the foundation points very well, but as wiser heads than mine have said recently, everything that Bush does is about increasing his own power. He has gutted the different bureaucracies of their most talented and (usually) apolitical hands and appointed cronies and hacks who are totally loyal to him alone.
He blithely signs new laws and at the same time negates them with "signing statements".
He unilaterally withdraws the United States from international treaties (on our behalf).
He decides before 9/11 that he is going to invade Iraq.
If we are naive enough to think that he will draw all this power toward himself and then go sweetly on his way in 2009, we deserve whatever he's got in mind - which is unlikely to be a Democratic president taking over and having these same almost unlimited powers.
Whether it's by voter-fraud (an oldie but goodie) curtesy of Diebold, or whether it's going to be by the invention of another "crisis" which he can use to bring about martial law and the suspension of the Constitution, I believe we are in the middle of a right-wing take-over of unprecedented (apart from Nazi Germany in the 30s) proportions.
Zieg Heil, Mein Fuhrer!
-
Problem Is, The Dems Have No Wellington
If the Democratic leadership has opposed Napoleon at Waterloo, Londoners would be eating pate and worshipping Jerry Lewis.
-
Re: Bush Family as Tsars
I have to say that I agree with Oldandintheway - there's no way people this extreme are going to let go of their power without a fight, no matter how dirty or illegal it is or how many people get hurt in the process. They've already proven themselves to be very dangerous people without any shred of conscience. It's going to be very ugly.
-
Wild Card: A Terrorist Attack
As an exercise in somewhat paranoid what ifs, I found this article amusing and disturbing. Amusing, in that it played to my outrage and loathing of this administration. Disturbing, in that it has a distinctly end of the world feel that I hope is not entirely warranted. As bad as this administration is, I can't imagine the entire Republican right wants to suspend checks and balances. I'm afraid if asked to give an example of the polarizing, paranoid, millenial tendencies of the web, I might single out this piece.
But to go a little further down that road, I found it rather strange that the author failed (for reasons of political correctness?) to point to an obvious 'wild card' for the coming year: a major terrorist attack. Consider the following:
1) Al Qaeda's modus operandi has always been to lie low, then strike again. Typically the distance between its carefully planned major operations is several years. (This is, of course, not counting the major splinter groups and new factions that have emerged).
2) The terrorists got what they wanted, politically, last time: a fragmented world, an isolated and wounded United States, and the semblance of a war between Christianity and Islam. Why not do it again?
3) If, therefore, al Qaeda did something as simple as derail a passenger train in the U.S. (not to mention something as devastating as a dirty bomb),it could easily count on more of the same--especially since the Bush administration would surely only use this event to gin up the Global War on Terror again --though the real moral, from my point of view, is their inefficiency in police action against al Qaeda.
4) Needless to say, a huge strike (such as an atomic attack on a U.S. city) could mean the end of the world as we know it: the repudiation of the constitution in the name of security, economic collapse, national trauma, international panic, etc.
Too gloomy to think about? Maybe. But I think we can't leave terrorism off the charts as a likely, and potentially quite lethal, threat to democracy in 2006--caught as we are between the murderous and the corrupt. And while we as citizens cannot do much to stop terrorists--that, alas, is a governmental function--we can try to do something about the corruption, and maybe prepare our body politic to respond more sanely to the violence that may come.
Best,
John
-
I'm Paranoid Myself
In a rather spectacular self-immolation, I accused the author of political correctness and then failed to notice that he actually had included terrorism as a wild card. Apologies all around, to the Gods: delete my post! Or damn it to the bottom with negative feedback.
-
Awful question...
Required reading for the year(s) ahead: "Anatomy of Fascism" written by Robert Paxton, a professor who has been teaching about the topic for 3 decades at Columbia.
We're not there yet, but alot of the precursors of fascism are in place: contempt for law (or the Constitution in this time and place), contempt for compromise, contempt for politics, a sense that government has failed, the primacy of the group over individual and universal rights, a sense of overwhelming crisis, rampant Nationalism, hatred and loathing of the left, an Authoritarian leader who has popular support, and a political language that is deeply violent in it's language and implications (read any Ann Coulter lately?).
Any of this sound familiar? Those last two (masses of supporters or "blackshirts", and a language of violence) lead to the last symptom of a true fascist system--violent suppression of political opponents and other scapegoats by individuals acting without official government direction. If popular violence against “enemies” doesn’t break out, then we’ll merely have an authoritarian regime rather than a fascist one.
I hope the question of what kind of "regime" we'll have in place can be avoided by a Democratic route this fall…