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Edited on Wed Oct-26-05 07:07 PM by Plaid Adder
I am going to celebrate Fitzmas, and I will not apologize for it. And I am going to tell you why, because hey, I'm like that.
I will not deny that schadenfreude and vengeance are part of the emotional mix with which I look forward to find out the outcome of the Valerie Plame investigation. But the main reason that I look forward to these indictments with the joyful expectation of a child on Christmas Eve is that I hope, I pray, they will be the beginning of the end.
What depresses me most about the current political situation? More than anything, my despair about ever removing this corrupt, dangerous, ruthless and incompetent adminstration from power. This gang of thugs has captured the Republican Party, and the Republican Party has captured both houses of Congress, the Cabinet, and, increasingly, the judiciary. Meanwhile, the Democrats are acquiring the capacity to resist only belatedly and in small increments, after they have already been marginalized and emasculated by the Republican takeover of all the branches of government and the mainstream media.
What this has meant is that no matter how many crimes and misdemeanors Bush and his cabinet are responsible for, they will never be held accountable for them. The Republican Party, and more than that the Bush loyalists within the Republican Party, have effectively neutralized the system of checks and balances. That's why the second term has been so unbelievably awful. Bush and his cronies are unchecked, unbalanced, unrestrained by the actual machinery of government; they have been enabled by their loyalists to run amok, and they have 1) no self-restraint 2) no real commitment to the welfare of anyone but themselves and 3) no idea in the world of how to extricate themselves and/or the country from the spectacular messes that they have a fantastic talent for making.
One-party government has never been good for any country that had it, and we are not going to be the exception. Absolute power corrupts absolutely; well, in this case, absolute power has also led to absolute failure. The Bush crowd can seize power; they can hold power; they can extend their power; the only thing these people absolutely *cannot* do is succeed. At anything. Start a war on false pretenses, fine. Win it? What, you mean that doesn't happen automatically? You mean we need an actual *plan*? Shit, Karl, why wasn't I briefed? Gut incoming revenue through tax cuts for the wealthy, fine. Balance the budget? Do we need to balance the budget? Oil stocks are up, my portfolio's good, what's the fucking problem? Fill the ranks of the federal government with placeholding incompetent cronies whose only qualification is unquestioning loyalty to Bush and the neo-cons, yeah, we can do that. Protect the country from a cataclysmic disaster? Who knew that was part of the job description? Hey, Karl, how *does* one..uh...begin to look as if one cares about that sort of thing?
Here's what my question has been since 2004: How do we get these assholes out, before they have done so much damage that it is too late to matter? Do we know for sure that we will even have fair and honest elections in 2006 and 2008? No, we do not. Will we know this before 2006 and 2008? No, of course not; who in the government has the power and the desire to pull off some real election reform before it's too late? The Democrats don't have the power; the Republicans don't have the desire; and you know damn well they won't work together. So, what? Are we stuck with one-party Republican rule at the federal level, FOREVER?
And now along comes Fitzmas.
The special prosecutor is the one remaining mechanism of accountability which the Republicans have not managed to disable. Sure, they built this trap for Clinton in the 1990s. But you know why it worked? Because it was designed to make it possible to evict a sitting president whether or not your party controls Congress. When Clinton was in charge, they loved this feature. Well, my Republican friends, I hope, I pray, the world prays with me, that your little president trap is still in working order, because everything else that might save us from your idiot overlord and his monstrous henchmen is broken.
That is why I, for one, will celebrate Fitzmas. Not just because it means that I might get to see some of my country's worst enemies do the perp walk, though I admit that will be tasty. Because it will give me hope that there might be an end to one-party rule in this country. Because it will give me a reason to believe that our system is not yet so irretrievably corrupted that it cannot be reclaimed and restored. Because it will mean that there is a way out of here that does not involve bloodshed. I do not want a civil war in my lifetime. I do not want a mass uprising. I want these assholes out, and I want them kicked out in accordance with the laws of this country. I want the system to show that it can still heal itself, that it will in fact survive the depravity of the gang of thieves that has been working so hard to pervert and destroy it.
This is not just about partisanship or about payback. This is about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel. This is about proving that something can still be done, that in fact there *will* be limits set to what these bastards can do to us, that there will be an end to their regime. That's what Fitzmas means to me. And if and when it arrives, I will celebrate it with as much glee as my poor traumatized soul can muster after five years of this bullshit.
Yours in joyful anticipation,
The Plaid Adder
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