Wednesday, November 29, 2006
"What the American People Want" Thoughts on the 2006 Midterm Elections

For the past six years we have heard the phrase " The American People Want..." bouncing around the echo chamber , regurgitated ad nauseum from every corporate media whore, pundit, and neoconservative politician you could cram into a 24 hour cable news cycle. This November those same American people were given the oppurtunity to tell the government what they actually wanted. Despite the numerous and well documented incidents of gerrymandering, voter suppression, faulty voting machines, misinformation, fearmongering, and two billion dollars of disgusting attack ads, the will of the American people washed over these United States like a tsunami. It seemed for a few days that Karl Rove, George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and the rest of the neoconservatives would actually have to step out of the protection of the Fox News bubble and face reality. Despite W.'s assertions two days before that Donald Rumsfeld would never leave, W. flip flopped and gave Rummy the boot. I breathed a sigh of relief. My faith in the American people and the U.S. Constitution was restored. Maybe everything would be okay. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.
The campaign workers for losing GOP candidates had scarcely cleaned up their red white and blue signs from the roadside before the White House began spinning again like Linda Blairs' head in the Exorcist. More "stay the course" rhetoric. The talking point parrots began anew regurgitating faster than drunken frat boys at an all night kegger. Captain W. steared his hate boat right back towards the icebergs. Tony Snow continued his labelmaking. Iraq isn't a civil war he says. It's "sectarian strife". It became clear that these guys are not the least bit concerned with what "the American people want". What is not clear to me at this point is whether the other party, the Democrat's, will grow a spine and stand up for "what the American people want". When Ronald Reagan said "Man is not free unless government is limited...as government expands, liberty contracts." he was the leader of a party that defended the Constitution. Now his party has wandered into a murky zone of Orwellian doublespeak. The labels almost never match the contents. Violations of the Constitution occur on a daily basis. These are clearly dangerous times. Yesterday, Newt Gingrich, a front runner for the 2008 Republican party presidential nomination, spoke at a "free speech" event. In his speech he advocated rolling back the free exchange of ideas in order to protect us from the terrorist's. He went back to the bottomless well of of fear again and said we could "lose a city" if we continue to allow people to excercise their right to free speech. Most people agree, invading Iraq under false pretenses has converted the possibility of impending terrorist attacks into a veritable inevitability. We are being ruled by a man who ignored the memo entitled "Bin Laden determined to attack U.S.". Recently undercover agents were able to smuggle fake bombs through the security in 20 of 22 major U.S. airports.
It will happen. That is clear. What is not clear however is what the American people will want to do when it does. Will either party stand to defend the Constitution or will they both cower like they have for the past six years? More then fifty years ago a demon by the name of Adolf Hitler rose to power with the phrase "protect the homeland from terrorist's" after the Riechstag building in Berlin mysteriously burned down. Many of our grandparents (my grandfather included) went to Europe and kicked his facist ass. As for me I will honor my grandfathers memory and the ideals of our founding fathers of this great nation. Ben Franklin said "Anyone who sacrifices liberty for a little bit of safety, deserves niether". Alexander Hamilton said our goverment was designed to be run by criminals. Our Constitution is definitely being put to the test. At this point the outcome is not clear.