666 Days Left For The Devil Down In DC
It’s time for another party.
Last time we got together for a drink, we were celebrating a milestone — we’d broken a thousand days left in the Bush administration. It was the 999 party.
That was last April. About a hundred people showed up, including the Raging Grannies and some members of my Apostrophe Posse.
It felt great to be in the same room with like-minded people, even if what we had in common was despair. We were filled with anger at the damage Bush had done to our country and could not imagine that things could get worse.
But we also felt hopeful that the midterm elections might change things for the better. And we fantasized that we’d be getting together again before too long to celebrate an impeachment.
No such luck.
Instead, here we are with the devil’s own 666 days left until the Bush presidency ends. And things have, indeed, gotten worse. Since we last had a drink together, our nation has moved that much closer to ruin.
Since we last had a drink together, Bush has ordered a surge in Iraq, a purge at the Department of Justice and a funeral dirge on democracy as wire-tapping of Americans continues unabated.
Since we last had a drink together, New Orleans has not been rebuilt.
Since we last had a drink together, 2 million more Americans have lost their health insurance.
Since we last had a drink together, prisoners at Guantanamo have still not seen a lawyer.
Since we last had a drink together, our veterans’ health-care system has been rotting away to its moldy core.
Since we last had a drink together, fear, anger and contempt for America has spread worldwide and hardened to cement.
Since we last had a drink together, another $92.9 billion of our money has been spent in Iraq — and who knows where that money came from, really? We know where a lot of it went, though — to Dick Cheney’s Haliburton.
In the 333 days since we last had a drink together, another 819 American soldiers have died in Iraq.
And I STILL don’t know what we’re doing there.
The one thing that’s changed for the better since we last had a drink together is that far more Americans have seen the light. The vast majority now oppose the policies of this president.
Not that it matters. Not that he cares. He appears to be on some sort of incoherent mission, and who knows, really, what goal lies behind his empty, zealous slogans? Power for power’s sake, maybe? Hard to say. Perhaps even he doesn’t know.
As for the few remaining people who still think this president is doing a jim dandy, good gosh almighty, wooly bully job of running this country, I can’t imagine what he’d have to do to lose their support.
Have sex in the Oval Office with a consenting adult, maybe? Think that would do it?
I wish he would. Then maybe we could get on with an impeachment, even if it’s for the wrong reason.
But there appears to be no hope of that despite the many genuine impeachable offenses this president has committed. And that is the true obscenity of this presidency — that Congress continues to allow this bull to run amok in our china shop.
At this point, to paraphrase Douglas Cunningham (my conservative, formerly-a-Bush-fan-but-not-so much-now colleague here at the paper), we can only hope Bush doesn’t break anything else before his time is up in the White House.
So let’s meet again and drink a toast in hopes for ” what?”
Damage control, I guess. No more dropped pottery, maybe. A cleanup crew to sweep through Washington and collect for safekeeping what’s left of the fragile shards of our democracy until we can elect someone to glue it all back together again.
Let’s get together at 7 p.m. this Friday at the old Orange Inn bar (now called Limoncello) at 159 Main St. in Goshen.
If you plan to make it, please drop me an e-mail or call the number below so I can give Victor and Luigi down at Limoncello an idea how many to expect.
Meanwhile, who knows? Maybe I can convince Douglas to join us.
Beth’s column appears on Monday. Comment at bquinn@th-record.com.
Copyright 2007 Times Herald-Record
“So let’s meet again and drink a toast in hopes for ” what?”
Damage control, I guess. No more dropped pottery, maybe. A cleanup crew to sweep through Washington and collect for safekeeping what’s left of the fragile shards of our democracy until we can elect someone to glue it all back together again.”
And who would glue it back together, the Democrats? Don’t hold your breath.
Robot,
I think Jefferson knew that he was part of a dysfunctional elitist group…that’s why he called for each generation to sponsor its own revolution. Seems like we’re overdue.
You’re right…Democrats as a political party are not going to glue things back together. And, yes, Americans do seem to have a VERY short attention span. But about that drink and the getting together of like minded people….
We’re having that drink right now. Right here. Sharing our despair and helplessness. Right here, right now, we’re awake and paying attention. Are there enough of us here to actually make positive change? Or are we going to sink into our shared depression and rage and become immobilized? Are we going to be like the Farside cartoon of the goldfish that have just managed to get out of their burning fishbowl and proclaim “Well, thank God we all made it out in time…’Course, now er’re equally screwed.”? Are we just fish out of water?
Because our current system of representative government does not represent the people of this nation, nothing can be done to “glue it back together” until we the people take our government back. And the only way we can do that is through electoral and campaign finance reform. And for starters, the place that we the people can make immediate and meaningful change happen is at the State level. And the ball is already in motion. Go check out what is happening in your State. Visit commoncause.org, fairvote.org, and nationalpopularvote.com.
My State of Oregon has a public hearing on the “Compact for Agreement Among the States to Elect the President by National Popular Vote” this Wednesday. This legislation will eliminate the Electoral College and the fiascos of Florida and Ohio. There are 47 States that have filed or already passed exactly the same legislation. We already have vote by mail so we are a step ahead of many other States. We are also working on Instant Runoff Voting and Open Primaries.
So what are you doing TODAY to sustain our hope that we can “glue it back together” again? What are you going to tomorrow and the day after that?
Raise hell! Make it loud! And don’t forget to have that drink and a laugh together!
Right on Rebel!
And here is one more for you all:
Fair Elections Now Act
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2007/03/26/a_chance_for_fair_elections.php
“level the financial playing field for all Senate candidates, and to get candidates off the never-ending fundraising treadmill.”
Support petition here:
http://ga3.org/campaign/fairelectionsnow
If you can’t beat’em, ORGANIZE!
Bush may be acting in what he believes to be the best long-term interests of the human race, though he cannot be stupid enough to believe he is acting in the best interests of humans alive today.
Bush’s fundamental problem is that he holds economic and political views the same way he holds religious and moral views — as set in stone with no questions and no gray areas.
The best way to avoid people like Bush from attaining great power is to first reform the educational system so that children learn early on to believe in science and in scientific experimentation and so that adolescents learn about different ways of thinking, including different secular philosophies and different religious philosophies. World history and American history are a complete waste of time if the student does not have the proper philosophical context in which to place them.
And I would add that I suspect that Ms. Quinn was being facetious when she suggested that would solve our problems would be the discovery of Mr. Bush in an adulterous affair. I would guess that anyone still supporting Bush would still support him even if a videotape were discovered of him engaging in forcible rape of small children of both genders and then killing them and eating them.
“Do you guys think that Bush might be acting in what he believes to be the best interest of the human race?
Do you believe he is a Christian?”
I’m not sure. Part of me thinks he really believes what he is doing is right. And he seems to believe he is a Christian (whether he is or not I leave to Christians to decide :). There is a certain conviction that comes across when he stumbles through his speeches. He may just be a pawn of neocon thinkers much wiser than himself.
Whatever his motivation he is seriously deluded. To me it really comes down to, do you see yourself as separate from everyone/everything or do you see the universe as one. He sees himself as separate. That makes it ok to win for his kind and let others in the world and let the planet itself suffer and be destroyed.
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Unethical Robot March 26th, 2007 4:13 pm
“Do you guys think that Bush might be acting in what he believes to be the best interest of the human race?”
Do you think that Hitler might have been acting in what he believed to be the best interest of the human race?
“Do you believe he is a Christian?”
Would a christian lie and cheat so he could hold the highest elected office in the land? Would a christian lie to go to war and cause the death of hundreds of thousands of Americans and Iraqis. Would a christian condone the torture of other human beings?
Why do you want to know?
Lobo Gris
I think he thinks he is acting in the best interest of the part of the human race he values. But even in that he is seriously deluded. Soon there will be no where to hide. He is making enemies everywhere.
Who cares what Bush thinks or what motivates him? I personally so not have the mind reading skills to figure that out. All I know is that his policies are killing America and the world as we the people would like to have seen it. All I know is that the immoral and evil acts of this administration have to stop! I don’t care what they think or feel about what they have done. I don’t care to understand their rationalizations or if they can sleep at night. All I know is that I NEVER want to see a repeat of the past 6 years. I want to see fundamental positive change in the way American government works FOR THE PEOPLE!
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Rebel Farmer March 26th, 2007 5:40 pm
“Who cares what Bush thinks or what motivates him? I personally so not have the mind reading skills to figure that out. All I know is that his policies are killing America and the world as we the people would like to have seen it. All I know is that the immoral and evil acts of this administration have to stop! I don’t care what they think or feel about what they have done. I don’t care to understand their rationalizations or if they can sleep at night. All I know is that I NEVER want to see a repeat of the past 6 years. I want to see fundamental positive change in the way American government works FOR THE PEOPLE!”
I’m with you Rebel, don’t know if the point got across but I was trying to say the same thing in a more oblique way. Anyway your post left them no doubt. LOL
Lobo Gris
Steve,
LOVED YOUR RESPONSE!!!!
I got the same request from MoveOn to send my representative a thank you note. I haven’t done it yet. I’ll use yours. GREAT!
Thanks
Google “Security and Prosperity Partnership,” and check all the links, not just the one for the U.S. gov./info.
If you don’t know about this, prepare for a PUNCH IN THE GUT.
The Iraq War, among other events and issues, makes for such a nice smokescreen.
Condi attended the 2-year anniversary in Canada on March 23, with the new conservative Mexican president and Canadian prime minister in attendance.
I wish I could still drink. I’ve been following your periodic columns and have enjoyed the idea of good, raucous, debate and defamation sitting around a table and drinking. There’s nothing better than good drink and conversation.
Most all of the above posts have pretty much said it all, as have you. There doesn’t seem like we can do anything else but sit this one out and hope the world is still around when this cabal of criminals and nutcases finally leave D.C.
So someone please have a Guiness on my behalf. I’ll be there in spirit - if not in person.
Hope and reassurance are to be found in a consideration that even theologians and cosmologists can agree upon:
Though princple is eternal, all else
is temporary.
Thus, despite their illusions to the contrary, you may be certain that all those bastards are biodegradable.
For me there is great benefit in trying to understand the motivation of people like George Bush and the Neocons, for both selfish and altruistic reasons. Selfishly, it’s part of my personal healing process. It helps me get to peace with what has occurred over the last six years. It certainly does not mean that I want to change things any less: quite the opposite.
If we don’t understand our mistakes we are doomed to repeat them. Immediate changes in our government and election system to empower the people are definitely needed, as Rebel and others at Commondreams have suggested. But will this really solve the underlying problem? And changes in our educational system as Kivals suggested will help to broaden people’s minds and improve things in the long term. But are we sure we have hit the nail on the head about what needs to be taught? This is where I see the benefit of examining the motivation of Bush and the Neocons. It is to be sure that we learn what we need to learn from this horrible experience, and put effective measures in place to help prevent this from happening in the future.
As we sit at our bar, sharing a drink in spirit, one question I have been asking myself is how could a man like this come to power and stay in power for so long? There is something much deeper going on in this country in addition to a broken political and education system. Many have touched on it in various places on this website. Yet I feel a need to understand this deeply and didn’t want to just let it go. I couldn’t sleep last night – it was really nagging at me. Perhaps the issue has come to a head for me because I just watched the movie Fast Food Nation last night and found it immensely disturbing. The movie is not just about the business ethics of the fast food industry. It also speaks reams about American capitalist culture and our class system of elites and non-elites.
I was drawn to reread Moyer’s recent article: A Time For Anger, A Call To Action,
http://www.commondreams.org/views07/0322-24.htm It is worth mentioning the story he tells of how Bush and the Neocons came to power:
“Beginning a quarter of a century ago a movement of corporate, political, and religious fundamentalists gained ascendancy over politics and made inequality their goal. They launched a crusade to dismantle the political institutions, the legal and statutory canons, and the intellectual and cultural frameworks that have held private power. And they had the money to back up their ambition.”
“The long-range strategy was to cut workforces and their wages, scour the globe in search of cheap labor, trash the social contract and the safety net that was supposed to protect people from hardships beyond their control, deny ordinary citizens the power to sue rich corporations for malfeasance and malpractice, and eliminate the ability of government to restrain what editorialists for the Wall Street Journal admiringly call “the animal spirits of business.”
“What has been happening to working people is not the result of Adam Smith’s invisible hand but the direct consequence of corporate activism, intellectual propaganda, the rise of a religious literalism opposed to any civil and human right that threaten its paternalism, and a string of political decisions favoring the interests of wealthy elites who bought the political system right out from under us.”
And here for me at least he describes the key issue that our society needs to re-examine:
“In one way or another, this is the oldest story in America: the struggle to determine whether “We, the People” is a spiritual idea embedded in a political reality - one nation, indivisible - or merely a charade masquerading as piety and manipulated by the powerful and privileged to sustain their own way of life at the expense of others.”
This is what we must ask each other and this is what we must teach each other, what we must teach our children. This is the guiding question that will lead us down a path of effective change. If we reform the political and electoral system does that automatically mean that the majority of Americans will bring to power those who support the common good, the values that our nation was founded upon? Or has our culture fundamentally shifted its’ values such that a “winner take all”, “survival of the fittest” society is acceptable, and even desirable? It’s clear that Commondreams readers support the former. But do the majority of Americans today? Like the cattle in Fast Food Nation, will Americans be too fearful or simply unwilling to leave the comforting “known” of their hideous pen, even when the fence that has confined them has been battered down and freedom beckons? That’s the question that has been biting at my subconscious like a gadfly. Please forgive for my long-winded post.
I loved the last two posts. The quote from Pike is so profound I am in awe.
But getting back to the question of whether Americans are even able to recognize, want, or will elect representatives that will work for the common good…This I don’t have an answer for. But we have to start somewhere. We will only have a chance to find out if we get meaningful election and campaign finance reform. Until every vote counts, we will never know if the American people really want a democracy that benefits EVERYONE. Only then will we find out if we are truely a nation that lifts everyone into the boat of equality and social responsibility. Only then will we find out if the majority of the American people really want the protections of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
I think it’s worth a shot. It would be interesting to see how a true democracy might work in these modern times.
Definitely worth a shot - I’m totally on board.
A better way to run elections, combining paper ballots, VotePad for the disabled and appropriate use of optical scanners and the web for transparent counting:
http://www.marcbaber.com/ElectionReform.htm