Letters to the Editor
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Pessimism vs defeatism
I hope my own posts haven't been interpreted as advocating defeatism. I think the degradations we are seeing now were made possible by a vast, slow restructuring of American society/political economy that is not often examined here. And that it will take decades of convulsion---convulsion, not voting, not letter-writing---to move us on to the next stage. (I don't believe there is ever any going back---even if a sort of "restoration" is achieved, it will only be a compromise. That's how these things work.) This is a revolution 50 years in the making.
Despite the obvious advantage to the Right that was 9/11, much of the administration's policies seem so flimsy to me that I can imagine a few choice SCOTUS decisions flipping the whole mess on its back: the administration has been out on a limb for several years now and has covered its vulnerabilities only by neutralizing the other branches of government.
Still, it's the complicity of various elites that has allowed the neocons to to take their gamble, and win. So far. Despite this complicity, the shortest path I see to a collapse of this administration and all it stands for is for it to take all the rope that has generously been provided it, and hang itself.
And even that won't lead to a restoration. I don't see the Constitution being restructured to be more modern/European, however obvious the advantages, without a civil war or occupation. Think the Marshall Plan in reverse.