An unholy alliance of radical ideologues and industrialists, have fundamentally changed the rules of the American political game. It's as if in the middle of a football game, one team were to shoot the other's quarterback between the eyes, pull down the goalposts with bulldozers and chains, and leave town with the ball. Yet, it seems as if the mainstream Democratic Party "leadership" hasn't received the memo.
I don't believe this to be the case. Indeed, the mainstream Democratic leadership across the nation is very cognizant that the rules of the old game no longer apply. However, in order to maintain their nominal positions of authority, power, and privilege within their once great party, they continue to move forward in stunned silence, in a grotesque pantomime of business as usual.
Deathly afraid to let their constituents, peers, and partisans catch a pungent whiff of their ever growing fear, they are craven, scrambling to find their way in the dark, desperate, not that they have misplaced their maps and charts, but that indeed the old maps are now more than useless. They, and we, are in new, dangerous, and uncharted territory, and our "leaders" haven't a clue how to get us back home.
Mutiny, they fear, is never more than a moment's notice away in as ragtag a crew as the Democratic Party. Far better to pretend nothing has changed, and retain at least a token measure of internal control and status, then to admit the breadth of their miscalculation, and accept the depth of their complicity in allowing the undoing of our Republic to continue. It is not just the Republican Party perpetrating this new nightmare. The leadership of the Democratic Party bears much responsibility, not just from the Clintons, Liebermans, and other contemptible neo-Quislings, but from most of the other mainstream Democratic leaders across the nation, closer to a Chamberlain in their fear, cowardice, and naiveté.
Make no mistake. We have killers occupying the White House. They will not relinquish power by our asking nicely, or by our playing along as if nothing has fundamentally changed. They advocate torture and murder as policy. They undermine Democracy and rights to speech at home and abroad. They continually and increasingly imperil the security and stability of our nation and the world, and they steal and rig elections to stay in power. And they do all of these things out of a blatant contempt for American values and ideals, and an intentional will to undo all that our Fathers and Mothers have fought and died for, over the last 230 years. And they will continue.
Why do you think California recently certified Diebold voting devices, against all recommendations, and in the face of stunning security and accuracy testing failures?
In order to "win" the Presidency, you virtually must carry the state of California.
Near as I can tell, this silent coup d'état is about one of two issues, or some combination thereof.
Issue one - the true and terribly undemocratic aims of the Neo-conservative movement - to establish American hegemony, empire, call it what you will - economic, military, and cultural dominance across the world. Neo-conservatism is based on the philosophical worldview of Leo Strauss. Straussian philosophy, (a philosophy in many ways similar to Islamic fundamentalism, such as wahabbism,) blames modernity, and western liberal democracy for the moral and cultural degradation of man.
Strauss argues that liberal society leads to nihilism, and suggests that an elite, a vanguard of intellectuals manufacture a common enemy to unite society. Indeed, he recommends that it is moral and necessary to overtly lie to the public, in order to keep them in line, and properly occupied. This is the true goal of the Neoconservative movement, and it is undemocratic and un-American to its core.
The second issue driving this radical departure from the unspoken rules of the old political game is Peak Oil.
I'm not going to go into a detailed analysis of Peak Oil here. For more information, start here:
http://www.43rdstateblues.com/...
Whether the neocon agenda is a response to the impending energy crisis, or whether the energy moguls and ideologues just happen to make convenient bedfellows, I don't know.
What I do know is this. Their agenda - torture, recrimination, stifling of speech, undermining Democracy at home and abroad, jingoism, anti-science, oppression, environmental degradation, deceit, and yes, death, are dangerous, destructive, and anathema to the values we once and hopefully still hold dear as Americans, and as Democrats.
"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the American flag."
We as Democrats, as Americans, as lovers of Democracy, Peace, and Freedom, can not afford to continue blithely pretending as if everything is as it once was, and the old political gamesmanship is still effective, relevant, moral, or acceptable.
Too much is at stake to again play the Dick Morris game. Too much is at stake to nominate another John Kerry, or a Hillary Clinton. Too much is at stake to purge Progressives and other non-centrists from the party. And FAR too much is at stake to let the do nothings, the wine-and-cheese-ers, and the Party hacks and flacks run the show any longer.
They haven't got a clue, and they haven't got the vision and intestinal fortitude to admit that they, and we, are far, far off course in uncharted territory.
Part 2 - HERE