In Some Ways, the Greatest Crime of All.

I'm getting way ahead of myself here, which is a bit ironic since I've been cautioning myself and others over the last week to not expect too much from the current confluence of scandals, but bear with me...

Let's all take a collective hit from the dream pipe and imagine the political climate in 2006 and 2007 after:

• Fitzgerald indictments lead to the wide-scale resignation of many senior-level White House officials.  Karl Rove, Scooter Libby and others attempt to take the fall for Bush and Cheney but the smell of blood is in the air.
  
• The once-iron wall guarded by Rove and other Republican operatives has crumbled and those who had once been scared into submission--including high-ranking military officers and Congressional members--begin to air their grievances, disagreements and attempt to distance themselves from the administration.  The Republican tent collapses (a tent that, after all, was built on the quest for power not on shared values), leaving the party's leaders exposed and blinking in the sun like cockroaches on a kitchen floor.

keep going, it gets good...

• Criminal charges against leaders in both houses of Congress and the White House finally convince the American people that this is the party of cronyism, greed, corruption, hypocrisy and criminality.
  
• Democrats launch an effective and compelling agenda, field attractive candidates in many races once thought to be out of play, and win decisive victories in 2006--regaining control of Congress.
  
• Evidence of fixing the case for invading Iraq at last hits, and hits big.  Armed with irrefutable documentation and witnesses, a Democratic-controlled Congress launches impeachment proceedings against George Bush and Dick Cheney.  Both are forced to resign and the lamest of lame duck White Houses limps to the 2008 Presidential elections.
  
• Democrats handily win Congressional and Presidential elections, securing a complete reversal of 2004.
  
• Unfortunately, the corporate-media is still full of shit.  Some things you just can't dream away.

Ah.... Now we can breath easy, right?  

Well, here's the kicker.  Let's say this dream becomes a reality... let's say sanity has returned, along with a semblance of our pride in being Americans.  What would the next four years of politics under Democratic tutelage look like?  It would look like a family from Biloxi trying to slowly but surely rebuild their home.  Before Katrina hit, they had been saving their money to send both kids to college.  Before Katrina hit, they had hopes of retiring by the age of 60 and spending their retirement traveling, babysitting their grandkids and volunteering.  But now the kids have to work after school, their grades will suffer.  Hopes of college depend on securing scholarships. Dreams of early retirement are gone.  All that remains is the labor of cleaning the debris that was once their home and, piece-by-piece, rebuilding their home.

The Republicans have done so much damage to this country over the last five years that it would take another four or five just to undo the destruction.  And, in some ways, this is the most angering thing of all to me:  That, even if we win the battle to save our country, the possibility of progress, all the things that could have been accomplished over the last half decade and the next will be gone... leaving us with the overwhelming task of recovery.