Democracy
Interrupted
Why we as a nation, have
been titrated, which is the gradual increasing of
dosage, pressure, and propaganda, till the desired
effect – an inured and compliant society – have
willingly bequeathed away our autonomy of
self-government, embraced the genesis of tyranny, and
begin our seemingly inexorable march towards
dictatorship.
By Frank J. Ranelli
07/25/07 "ICH"
-- -- If the past is prologue, then the
present may be prescient. Each day, many of us
awaken to a queasy feeling of unrest, knowing
that the rule of law is under assault. The
Constitution is in jeopardy and our unassailable
rights to an egalitarian society are quickly
being abolished. Television, newspapers, blogs,
and a litany of books are reminiscent in our
collective conscience that America has been
browbeaten into trading peace for war, liberties
for securities, sovereignty for safety, and
blood for oil.
Our reputation on the world’s stage is indelibly
stained by pernicious acts of imperialism,
hegemony, blind patriotism, and outright
incompetence by Washington’s power brokers and
their agents of avarice. Yet, beyond dystopian
polls and sparse demonstrations, Americans seems
unwilling to accept and are extraordinarily
unaware, that tyranny is taking root here in
America.
We have ran the gamut of – and sadly sanctioned
– some of the most unconceivable and heinous
measures in American history. The Military
Commissions Act, The Patriot Act, The Domestic
Wiretapping Program, ignored the Geneva
Conventions, revoked habeas corpus and engaged
in torture. We removed our selves from the
world’s courts, attacked and now occupy a
country that never posed a grave or imminent
danger to our own nation and then failed
to adequately care
for the pointlessly wounded soldiers, evident by
the Walter Reed Hospital debacle.
The Justice Department enacted by law and
created in1870, to make certain fair and
impartial administration of justice for all
Americans was carried out under the law, has
been purely politicized. It has been altered and
grotesquely mutated into a blanket of immunity
for loyalty and allegiance to an autocratic
president that has throttled our nation to the
point of snuffing out all legitimacy of our
national system of jurisprudence.
Alberto Gonzales, the empty suite at the head of
the Department of Justice, appointed by
President Bush and confirmed by the United
States Senate in 2005, not only repeated lies
with impunity, but also obediently abdicates his
sworn duty. He obsequiously yielded to Bush’s
wild assertions of executive privilege and
steadfastly refused to pursue Congress’ mandated
contempt citations for Harriet Miers and Josh
Bolton. Justice, by these lawless actions, is
not being served, but is abruptly being handed
its hat.
The commutation of I. Scooter Libby, an
obstructionist of the law and felon, reminds us
than justice is no longer in service in the
interest of integrity and impartiality. Justice
is now enslaved to the bidding of the Bush
Administration and serves only to provide
shelter and safe haven for loyal soldiers within
a rogue, Mafioso-style executive branch.
Pre-emptive war planning operatives, such as
John Yoo, David Addington, Paul Wolfowitz, the
infamous “Torture Memo”, the radical “Unitary
Executive Theory”, unconstitutional signing
statements, the shocking Abu
Ghraib torture
pictures, The Project for a New America
Century’s outlandish, 1998 white paper entitled,
Rebuilding America’s Defenses, all
signify we are on an inexorable march towards
dictatorship.
It should now be brutally apparent and
undoubtedly understood by all that the Bush
Administration is not merely above the law; it
is the law. Our seven-year autocracy has now
morphed into full despotism. Bush and his actors
of austerity, beyond all doubt, are desperados
who are unrestrained and unfettered, severing
all ties with restraint and decency, decorum and
sound judgment. The nascent Nixon enterprising
years of imperialism and lawlessness are feeble
by contrast.
We have rhetoric from armchair members of
Congress who assert, “This administration has
weakened America in a way that is frightful ”,
and then refuse to breathe life into the
comatose corpse of a once proud and functioning
democracy by taking impeachment, the people’s
remedy for the infringement of our independence,
“off the table.” Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid and
the rest of the Democrats are quite content to
allow Bush to self-destruct, in full view of the
nation, while the U.S wreaks havoc in the
Middle-East, in order to create what they
falsely believe will be a landslide election
weighted heavily for the Democrats by Bush's
massive blunders and political collapse.
Thirty plus years after Nixon's failed coup
d'état, George W. Bush has taken the idea of a
tyrannical, presidential despot, at the helm of
the Executive Branch, to dizzying heights and
abject lows in America in the 21st century. Bush
has now fully entrenched himself – in a twisted,
extravagant, bravado-ridden version of Richard
Nixon – by stonewalling every action Congress
takes, as a totalitarian ruler, more bellicose
and bombastic than his previous six years of
pompous swagger and reckless governing.
The juxtaposition of these two loggerheads – an
ineffectual Congress and an imperial President –
leads to the will of the people being usurped,
subjugated, and silenced. The People no longer
have a voice in this government, for it is no
longer our government as much as it is no longer
a democracy. What America has become is an
autocracy operated by lobbyists,
mega-corporations, the military-industrial
complex, and the whores in Washington that these
power brokers, in a very fascist way, have
bought politicians’ loyalty, acquiescence, and
obedience. Contrary to the revisionist history
so may of us are indoctrinated with, and
unswervingly clutch to without reason or true
examination of the facts, is our nation is run
by an oligarchy.
Our will as a nation is not being done for a
very simple reason. We, as a nation, have been
titrated – the gradual increasing of dosages,
pressure, and propaganda – till the desired
effect, an inured and complicit society,
have willingly
bequeathed away our autonomy of self-government.
We have bestowed our birthright to despotic
rulers who do not find fear in – or seek shelter
from – the near unanimous disapproval of the
people they suppress and subdue .
They seek not the consent of the people for they
seek only allegiance and adherence to their own
reprehensible, egocentric, and depraved pursuits
for power, money, and authoritarian control.
Never in America's past has an assault on the
truth and freedom been waged so viciously nor
have the American people been so reprehensibly
divided and utterly deceived by men we never
truly elected in the first place.
What is prescient about
the present is the deafening silence in which we
fail to speak out, take action, or demand
accountability. George Bush and Dick Cheney are the
epitome of, the embodiment of, the exact
personification of, what the founders feared in an
autocratic oppressor, the rise of a despot to the
presidency, and how that despot would come to exist.
The framers of the Constitution gave us all the
tools we need, without the shedding of blood, to
ensure the rights and freedoms of the people
remained intact and attempts at tyranny or
oppression were rejected and ultimately beaten back.
We have to begin to
change the framing of peoples’ mind first, and
then explain the actions that need to be taken.
No matter what or how somber the facts are, if
the framing, the paradigm within which people
operate is not changed, then no transformation
will take place.
The only proper instrument for accountability and
transformation – when a president becomes despotic
in his actions – is impeachment, trial, and removal
for failure to respect and honor the Constitution
and faithfully execute the laws of the land.
Impeachment is a just and necessary remedy and we
must immediately diverge away from the idea that it
takes away from other work Congress should and can
be doing. When you have a president who openly
flouts and disobeys the law, intentionally attempts
to erase the separation of powers of our tripartite
government and assume dictatorial powers, no
legitimate work, which will stand as the rule of law
for all men, can be realized.
Here is the
straightforward reason why impeachment is a
mandate to return to a working democracy: No
matter what legislation Congress passes, Bush
will veto it, ignore it, or add a dubious
“signing statement”, making unilateral claims he
may disregard it or claim the bill is
"unconstitutional", plainly bypassing the
judicial process of the Supreme Court, as well.
As many historians have appropriately point out,
not even King George III of England had or
assumed these kinds of authoritarian powers.
The fabric of democracy is feeling the strain and we
must unburden our country, through impeachment, from
a despotic president and a dangerous vice-president
who uses fear and subjugation to rule by and not the
rule of law to govern our nation by. There can and
must be far more significant consequences for all of
these abuses of power and executive anarchy, or the
actions of Bush and Cheney will simply become
historical precedence for future abuses by future
presidents, whether a republican or a democrat.
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