Standing Up
We now know no confidence in this Government is growing in the breast of citizens of all political affliations. As that disaffection ripples through the layers of six degrees of separation, it is even nudging the polls, the pundits on Congressional staffs and the PR sniffers at the Pentagon and in the intelligence community. Seemingly stalled out in the Senate, the movement to have Congress awaken from its slumber and actively fracture the "unitary exectutive" is surfacing.
With thirty days to go before the wheels come off the Team Bush bus, the House has passed a non-binding resolution. This shot across the bow of the Administration has resulted in a Presidential press conference in which the President is seem starting to reveal himself -- an angry, frustrated and small-minded man who cannot grasp strategy. As his strategic thinkers are frozen out or fired, Bush is left with the results of the Libby trial resonating from the walls of the White House itself. The bane of Bush is when Congress decides to stand up.
Today, on President's Day, we must stand up and call forth the President we need from among those willing to run for the office. The candidates are not the key: We The People are.
Point of no confidence: March 21, 2007
Point of no return: January 10, 2007 -- Bush announces the surge
This is the seventh diary in a series to explore the growing state of no confidence in this Government and what we should do when that point is reached. The first diary started on December 29, 2006, and the last one will be Spring Equinox. I believe the Government will be in a crisis of no confidence by March 21, based on how similar events are to what I experienced in 1973 before Watergate heated up and Nixon fell from power.
This diary is 30 days from the balance point.
We cannot know what the current candidates would really be like as President. The office transforms the individual. Instead, we must call out for the President we know we need, and inspire those seeking the office to respond. In our republican democracy, we have to demand and enable leadership. We cannot be passive consumers of it. We have to demand that that leadership be constrained to seeking and using only the powers necessary to meet the objectives before us, and to return any powers granted them which are unnecessary -- not accumulate power for all conceivable threats, most of which will never occur, and will likely obscure from our vision the threats we will have to face.
We have had Presidents with this kind of foresight. Our first President had such an understanding of their position in the Constitutional order: George Washington.
Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct. And can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and at no distant period a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence. Who can doubt that in the course of time and things the fruits of such a plan would richly repay any temporary advantages which might be lost by a steady adherence to it? Can it be that Providence has not connected the permanent felicity of a nation with its virtue? The experiment, at least, is recommended by every sentiment which ennobles human nature. Alas! is it rendered impossible by its vices?
George Washington's Farewell Address
Washington warns us that knee-jerk hatred of other nations because they seem to interfere with our worst intentions, like France refusing to assist with Iraq or enable us to make it worse, weakens America in insidious ways:
In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur.
George Washington's Farewell Address
For nations such as Saudi Arabia where we override our own interests in favor of theirs, Washington warns:
So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and a disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld; and it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation) facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country without odium, sometimes even with popularity, gilding with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation....
George Washington's Farewell Address
So now our military is fighting in a civil war at the behest of Saudi Arabia and threatening war with their own enemy, trying to delude ourselves into thinking they are our enemy. We have no friends or enemies in other nations. Nations can always, in every moment, be either -- and often are both. Outside our borders, we must be wary and wise at all times, with all principalities. They will usually act in their own self-interest, even if we are under the illusion that we have their best interests at heart. Such a state is impossible -- always has been and always will be. If we lose sight of our own self-interest in the bargain, it is a bargain with the Devil.
Just as American industrialists kowtowed to Nazi Germany in the runup to World War II, and thereby jeopardized our nation and planted the seeds of the prohibition of hemp (now responsible for millions of citizens imprisoned and encumbered with a "criminal record" without good reason), such relationships allow us to be manipulated by these "friends" into situations in which we do not rightly belong.
The Bush Administration is pretending they know what patriotism means; that their course is America's course; and that Congress stirring to stand up against their reckless policies (which hurtle us toward tyranny at home and abroad) is "aiding the terrorists". The only thing that aides terrorists is inculcating fear in the heart of American citizens. In this cause, George Bush, Dick Cheney and Osama bin Ladin are united shoulder-to-shoulder -- whether by choice or not is irrelevant. No longer can we tolerate the power the Administration wields without limits. No longer can we allow them to use secrecy to hide their perfidy and betrayal of the Constitution. No longer can we allow fellow citizens blinded by their rhetoric to blithely pine over the words of this Administration without challenge.
Calling The President We Need, Instead Of The One We Have
We stand at the lowest ebb in our Constitutional system since Washington was President. It may not seem that dire. It may not seem that important. But the Bush Administration stands atop the shoulders of evil giants, built layer by layer by vested interests supposedly at the service of the People. Call them the Project For A New American Century. Call them the Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy. Call them by all the hydra heads by which they have appeared, especially in the last 150 years.
The 20th century is over. The 21st century is here. We will not be able to fight wars like we could before. Korzybski reminded us that World War I was a true inflection point for all of humanity. He named, and thereby gained a citizen's modicum of control over, the hydras he saw. Each generation faces a mutating, swirling mass of secret cabals, vested interests and political machinations which go under many names, like demons.
Standing Up
If our nation's ideals are not to perish, citizens must stand to post and stand to protest. We must remake this Government in order to Redress the Grievances of the People; to return proportion to the power alloted to each object of our common design. No one else will or can do it for us. It is the nature of hydras that cutting off one head causes others to grow, but the pruning must be constant or the heads will begin to roil our common weal and drain off all our shared resources for adventures of empire which can no longer succeed. As every human has the ability to record events with video, audio and text from anywhere in the world, wars cannot be fought "over there" any more. Thankfully, war is no longer necessary, except in dire circumstances which do not face us now.
Nothing we face now could not be handled, and handled better, with non-military means. Afganistan must end one day, and we need to decide what that end will look like. Iraq must end. We will not get our treasure as we wanted to, so we must stop funding it and resolve to transform our oil economy to an energy economy, cutting greenhouse gases and pollution (delicately balancing global warming with global dimming) in the bargain.
Our new economy awaits. It awaits our natural wisdom, at level of the People. Our Government needs that wisdom now. Our Government has been drained of its energy by complication and greed and depravity. It has been wounded by cruelties exacted on the majority of citizens for the benefit of fewer citizens. It needs the majority to step forth and limit itself to a balanced position, heeding the minories' urgent needs. The majority must demand safeguarding and expanding the minorities' liberties along with their own.
Our natural wisdom is to withhold our military until diplomacy demands it, and then only as long as diplomacy is furthered by it. Our natural wisdom is to embrace new technologies and transform our economy again, as we did in the 20th century. Our natural wisdom is that War Powers must return to a Constitutional ideal, not these "pragmatic solutions" to the desire of the Executive to use military force without effective, vigilant and vigorous oversight. The Legislature must transform its role from the sidelines to a player again. The Courts must struggle with issues and learn to set a legal course in the clutch of tough and important questions instead of being clogged with trivia.
Our natural wisdom stirs us to stand, and we now call for a President like Washington who will forever cede Executive powers for the future of the nation. Washington could have been king. He chose to promote himself to being a citizen, and strengthening forever (a true inflection point) the nation in which he could live free as a citizen. He knew public servants must understand the burden placed upon them to represent, protect and preserve the comity of the People. Nothing else matters any more. The dross is burned away and the pure metal shines forth, ready to be molded, hammered and shaped into a 21st century America.
Standing To Post
Those who stand to post are the public servants working in all three branches, and the fourth estate. They need the powers proportional to the object of their duties and no more, even a little less. Extraordinary circumstances cannot and should not be codified -- they should be exceptions which prove the rule, adjudicated with fairness and mercy. Citizens must be willing to bear reasonable risk in their individual lives in order to avoid the oppression and opportunities for political chicanery which leads to grievances and anger and despair.
The military is but one of these agencies engaged in our public service. We, and they, expect them to work diligently and honestly on the tasks which need to be done in our name and according to our wisdom. Public servants must also refuse to be delegated tasks which would require more power than is proportional to the purpose of their agency. All public servants must reawaken their zeal for the word of executing their duties and resist the temptation to acquire, wield and protect power. Those working in our service expect those who are not to be fired or limited to proper scope. Those working in our service expect us to allow reasonable taxes to be raised to meet the necessary challenges they face for us, and to be recognized as being worthy of respect and support when they are serving us well.
Standing To Protest
Those who stand to protest are the committed citizens, ever vigilant for the heavy tred of the Government into sanctuaries of citizenship into which sacred space no earthly power has the right to expect. Only Providence is ascribed to be the source of our liberties, and whatever that may be, it is no human organization, agency or Government.
We must call out for this President to come forth, and then we must elect the one who seems most able, but we must not let down our guard or stop our protests. We must use the examples we have seen in our lives and from our history which tell us the shape of who that person will be, and what they will be willing to do in the heat of a cusp -- on the tipping points that matter.
That For Which We Stand
No one of us has the power to force anyone to stand up. We can say what must be done, but free citizens must arrive at that decision on their own. The hardest part of this quest by so many of us for so many years to fight the evil in our breast on the hope the People will stand up is that last step -- that last moment. It is exactly because that last step cannot be controlled or forced that it has such power.
The President we call forth will also take those last steps themselves, and we cannot force them to choose the right way. We can only hold forth the image of what we expect and hope, as the Founders hoped, that those granted power by the People ultimately seek to become what the People expect and do what the People need. Such idealism is not easy, but ultimately it is what we expect, and must.
Ronald Reagan was a weak soul. "Trust, but verify" is the statement of weakness which exemplifies the passage in which we have been plunged for thirty-seven years. Strong leaders trust only, knowing only history will tell whether that trust furthered the Republic. Only taking actions which can be "verified" is a cautious, calculated and cunning path. It is the path of a fool. We can tell Reagan and both Bushes were, and are, weak because their followers chant the litany of their strength, knowing in their souls it is an illusion and fearing that knowledge coming forth. Now that knowledge is coming forth. Everyone in the nation feels it. Most citizens feel something must happen, that something must be done and that someone must step forth who will serve us truly and well.
A strong President would eschew signing statements and be faithful to the intent of Congress. A strong President would not allow bureaucratic ninjas to blind those responsible for our common weal and our common defense with fantasies of empire but would demand evidence and the rule of law in all actions. Such a President would serve Us, not avoid Us.
So we must, each of us, stand up and call out for such a President, and believe such a citizen is among us who can answer. So it has been before, in the penultimate moment before our Union was sundered or given over to the temptation to be ruled by a King, or an actor who could look like one. So it must be now.
Stand up. Call out. See the leaders we need and have faith they will come forth. In the end, the dream of America depends on this kind of miracle, one Providence may grant us if we can bring ourselves to trust that it can happen without demanding verification first. We The People are the source of strength, so now each and every one of us must be strong.
Stand up.
See you again in ten days as the countdown to no confidence continues.
The Series
Introduction to the series
T-80: Inflection Points & Catastrophes
Owning the key moments of our time
T-70: False Doctrines
Centralized Authority, Pre-emptive War
T-60: The Powell Doctrines
The Powell Memo, The Powell Doctrine, They3, People7, The Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy (VRWC), Overton hypercubes
T-50: Clean Out The Barn
T-40: Knowing The Right Path
Next: T-20: High Noon In America
Please feel free to use this as a common thread. Pimp your own diaries, links and ideas without shame, because I want to hear from you. Promote the words of others that our fellow citizens need to hear when the point of no confidence is reached. Identify inflection points, realized and gathering, that you see. This power is the power of the Internet, of this online community and of the People. Use it now as more and more citizens need real ideas and real debate. Prepare yourselves for the moment for which many of us have worked decades: a chance to finish the work left undone after the resignation of Nixon.