Dictatorship? Naw, It Could Never Happen Here.
One day in these interesting modern times would fill one volume of a history book, at least. Those of us who attempt to keep abreast of the news are hard put to ferret out the important stuff from the fluff and connect the facts to one another in some kind of a dot pattern that yields a coherent picture. But, I will try.
Rupert Murdoch has succeeded in gobbling up The Wall Street Journal. One more formerly objective, respectable publication to be reformated ala the New York Post.
The Supreme Court has handed down yet another corporate friendly, individual rights unfriendly decision that rewards Goodyear Tire Company for discrimination based on gender. And to heap insult upon injury, Goodyear has decided to sue the woman they underpaid for years, to cover their court costs. On top of that, congress has to prove that passing a Ledbetter law that protects the individual citizen from being persecuted by a corporate giant with billions of dollars at its disposal; that in so protecting a persecuted individual it does not somehow cause damage to the persecutor by shaving off a bit of some CEO’s huge salary, stock options and bonuses . So, what is likely to happen to Valerie Plame’s case if and when it reaches The Court? Just the kind of Court the right wing loves, one that pets the powerful and punishes the underprivileged, the victims of discrimination.
Meanwhile, in the House and Senate, work to finally investigate the corruption in the White House that has accumulated to gigantic proportions under a republican congress that had as its main objectives perpetuating one party rule and funneling wealth to the already obscenely wealthy, increasing corporate lobbying activity exponentially and depressing wages and the well-being of the middle class at an accelerated pace. Regardless of the fact that those aims involved supporting and refusing to investigate obvious corruption in, a White House that engages in fear-mongering, lying, waging illegal war, spying on Americans, torturing people, suspension of habeas corpus, damaging and/or destroying careers of any whistle-blower courageous enough to out them and even an entire government department (as in the case of Valerie Wilson), congressional republicans went along to get along with their agenda. It is probably not even possible to enumerate, much less investigate all of the secretive, constitution-damaging activities engaged in by this administration in its effort to incrementally transfer all power to the Executive Branch. Everything with these people is secret. Unless it will benefit them to declassify it.
Now Karl Rove is attempting to hold back the avalanche of Bush agenda-damaging, lie exposing information that is flooding out of even the few investigations that it is humanly possible for congressional committees to initiate. Attorney General Gonzales appears to be the point about which much of the conniving has centered and while his sycophantic visage fills our TV screens and continually disastrous Iraq war news penetrates through even lamestream media filters, republicans with consciences are one by one waking up and seeing what evil their actions hath wrought. And the ones without consciences are beginning to fear for their jobs.
Then there is the Pat Tillman case. Amazing how little all of the principals in the Bush administration know of what is going on in their areas of responsibility. Rumsfeld knew nothing about torture at Abu Ghraib or the staged rescue of Jessica Lynch and he knew nothing of the cover up of the evident murder of Corporal Pat Tillman. Even though the White House had been informed that the death of Tillman was not from enemy fire, Bush awarded the hero the silver star and used his death as a propaganda piece to support his illegal war. He says he did not get the message. He does not get a lot of messages.
Unless Rubert can provide him with more cover, can gobble up enough markets to effectively blanket large enough areas with White House talking points and the Court can stymie any recourse through the legal system , all this is bad for Bush politically.
And everything about this White House is politics. That is why Rove is so important. Nothing is for the national good, everything is politics and Karl is politics at its worst. So, how is he going to handle this mess? Well, there is September and they will use whatever spin Petraes is definitely going to put on the “progress” of the war, reality be damned. So what if the Sunnis just left Maliki’s cabinet again. So what if the political situation in Iraq couldn’t be worse or less effective. If, and he will, Petraes says there is enough proof that the surge is working, they will declare premature victory and push for another surge. What Karl and his troops have left, is using some quieted neighborhoods in Baghdad and sporadic drops in American deaths here or there to claim that everything in Iraq is looking so bright because of the surge that just a few more hundreds of dead Americans and who cares how many more dead Iraqis, will actually effect a political solution. Then they can build permanent bases in the new “democratic Iraq” with military stationed there in perpetuity and “legally” control and transfer oil revenues to their friends in the energy industry (See Cheney’s Energy Study Group maps), while the natives live in abject poverty. They hope to use and inflate some statistics and anecdotes to save their craven necks, to say, “Look, we told you so. Iraq is now a beacon of democracy in the Arabian Peninsula.” There is hardly a credibly knowledgeable person anywhere who believes in that scenario, but since when did the Bush administration take the advice of credible or knowledgeable people? September is meant to bring republicans back into the fold long enough to mindlessly slaughter more Americans and Iraqis in the service of a failed and ruinous Cheney/Bush agenda.
Of course, they have back up contingency plans to save their political necks, if they don’t have any for extricating us from their disastrous pre-emptive war. Those plans almost certainly involve some big scare tactic such as a really convincing attack attempt on the homeland. None of the ridiculously fabricated attempts so far have proven credible but they probably think bigger will be more successful. Americans are beginning to cynically expect a desperate attempt to scare people back to the “protective” fold with a front page picture of the defender of the homeland with his megaphone standing heroically astride another pile of rubble.
So, the dots connect to show a picture of a stubbornly arrogant administration desperately trying to save an Attorney General from impeachment because the Justice Department has been corrupted and reorganized into a sub-department of the Oval Office under Alberto and Bush wants to keep it that way. No other candidate could be found who would be such a willing, loyal-to-Bush participant in the destruction of our constitutional form of government. But, if Alberto is impeached, nothing can stop the full story of that and other scandals from spilling through TV screens into the living rooms of every American home. Gonzales can’t be replaced. But Bush may be forced to replace him or face the prospect of having no power of pardon to keep him from revealing what he knows. It is quite a conundrum for Bush.
The question is whether Gonzogate or perhaps the truth about the death of Pat Tillman brings Bushco to its knees before they can again wriggle out from under the mess by means of a short-term semi-convincing to some people, claim of progress on winning the trumped up bogus war against Al Qaeda in Iraq. Or before Rovepolitics can come up with some semi-believable threat to the homeland which will morph Bush into some semblance of a leader. Barring these events, there is always the backup plan of stealing another election for the republicans or the declaration of martial law and appointment of Bush as Emperor for Life. Democracies are easy to overthrow. People think it could never happen here. Think again. Think really hard.
The fate of the nation hangs in the balance.
