The Slide into Irrelevance

The slide into irrelevance

There was a fantastic coincidence of stuff in my email in-box a few days ago, about a week after the Senate passed renewal of the so-called Patriot Act*.

The first was an email from Harry Reid, subject: The Slide into Irrelevance. It started like this:

It was no surprise to me that the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee has once again caved to George Bush and refused to open an investigation into President Bush's domestic spying program. One is left to wonder what it would take to make this Republican Congress stop rubberstamping the Bush Administration and actually do real oversight.

There was another email from Howard Dean and Democrats.org, subject: Only One Shot. It went:

In the history of our nation, no group of lawmakers has dodged its responsibility to the American people more than the current Republican Congress.

Instead of doing the people's business, the Republican majority on Capitol Hill operates in a secretive culture of corruption that lets special interests and right-wing lobbyists write our laws in backrooms and behind closed doors. There's no accountability, no oversight, and the American people are paying the price for a Republican majority only concerned with expanding its political power.

and ended with a plea for money to help elect more Democrats this year.

The final one was included on Information Clearing House (http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article12240.htm) which I’m going to include in full:

Howard Dean Chairman Democratic National Committee

Dear Howard,

I'm writing to say goodbye. I'm off to join the Greens or Ralph Nader and the CUIP bunch, even the Libertarians-anybody who'll fight what's going on. It hurts badly, but I just can't stay with you anymore.

I thought I owed you an explanation because of our courtship during the presidential campaign. During that time I detected in you a fair measure of a quality that's been sadly lacking in Democrats for much too long, that being a willingness to grapple with an opposition that's fostering the ascendance of fascism. And wonder of wonders, you seemed willing to combat their effort with as much vigor as Democrats usually approach infighting among themselves. I was elated again when you were made leader of the Party. My hopes were rekindled, even if ever so slightly.

But at a moment in history when the separation of powers and genuine allegiance to a living Constitution were literally on the line in the Alito Supreme Court nomination, Senate Democrats morphed into a collective Neville Chamberlain and chose appeasement at the cost of personal freedom and recognition of the Constitution as a lawful constraint on executive power.

The failure to stave off Alito's nomination will likely prove critical in its acquiescence of real power to the executive branch, a branch of government now dominated by elements willing to implement policies demonstrably akin to some of the worst employed by the enemy during WWII and the Cold War. This loss of power seems likely to be rendered permanent under the authority of recently confirmed Chief Justice Roberts, especially as indicated by his vote in the Oregon Death With Dignity case.

Some of this administration's wholly self-authorized behavior includes interrogation and imprisonment policy that was found to constitute crimes against humanity at the Nuremburg Tribunals. And Alito's opinions regarding the unitary executive, along with scores of existing opinions authored and joined by Justices Scalia, Thomas and Anthony Kennedy, can be expected to herald further instances of the court 'legitimizing' ever more serious violations and shifts in real power.

This isn't simply a hard turn right, either, Howard. It's a historic, landmark departure toward a unitary executive corporatocracy. That sounds exactly like Mussolini's Italy to me.

Among other things, there's been a systematic erosion of the well-demarcated line that ostensibly separates the public and private sectors. Already real political power, until recently held exclusively by public governing bodies, is being exerted on a routine, daily basis by private corporations- entities that exist for the sole purpose of exacting a profit that's now become the responsibility of taxpayers to provide. Military and police powers embodied in the mercenary and penal operations of Blackwater Security and Wackenhut Corporation bear this out, as do many of the varied and highly questionable practices of Halliburton's wild child, Kellogg Brown and Root.

How could you possibly let this happen, Howard? How can there possibly be a debate on whether or not the president has power to conduct warrantless clandestine NSA surveillance on American citizens? Common Americans held in thrall by fear intentionally propagated by administration officials and corporate media may have some doubts, but Howard, you and I know full well that the American Revolution was fought in very large part to remove this misuse of power from the hands of our nation's original "unitary executive," formerly known as "king."

And Howard, it's not just warrantless surveillance. It's outrageous, paranoid intrusiveness joined with secretiveness and an utter dearth of accountability. It's Capitol Hill lobbyists composing the actual verbiage of critical legislation directly and positively impacting their clients. It's teetering health care stretched to its limits by insatiable dollar demands put on it by the insurance industry- a parasite intermediary that now dominates medical practice and altogether too often dictates life or death dispensation of treatment. It's corporate welfare and destruction of the middle class and the environment. It's the weaponization of space and the spurning of viable international treaties. It's the deterioration of domestic infrastructure and a failing educational system. It's an incessant pursuit of war and human exploitation.

You see what I'm getting at Howard? Simply put, it's evident that way too many Democrats care more about their political status and sinecures than they do the their personal honor-when it's called into play for upholding and defending the Constitution, genuinely serving the people of the United States and securing our freedoms.

Virtually all the serious Democratic presidential pretenders are in favor of the Bush Doctrine of Preemptive Warfare. That's just great. Among other things, it clearly indicates that just because Democrats don't have a current poster boy for corruption in the same league as Jack Abramoff, they've consciously opted to continue their dependence on the oceans of easy special interest money to which political survival holds them equally hostage.

So I'm out of here Howard, gone. Wish I could say it's been fun. Starting well before Bill Clinton the Democrats had become GOP Lite. Today the Republic is reeling toward a completely totalitarian fascist state. In truth we've become a foreign invader seeking conquest and empire, the mortal enemy of a peaceful Earth. So I'm off to find political leadership that's got some true moral integrity and courage fight left to fight with.

You were OK Howard; you had some of it personally, but most of your friends and colleagues.Hoo boy!

Seeya, J. L. Mann

PS. I sent copies of this letter to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. I also sent it to everyone I care about who has an email address.

John L. Mann - takedeadaim@hotmail.com

Our party is in the minority. It has three legitimate options to prevent rotten laws from being passed and rotten nominees from being confirmed: persuasion, compromise, and the filibuster. The majority party is in lock-step with Bush. They are blindly and enthusiastically racing to ruin this Republic and bring the world into another fools’ war.

So much for persuasion and compromise...

Our party cannot even hang together enough to filibuster a crummy unconstitutional piece of draconian legislation like the so-called Patriot Act.

Even our esteemed Senator Salazar has joined with the Republicans on this and many other things that make us better than the Republicans. Bankruptcy, Gonzales, Alito, Rice, Bolton Patriot Act, (Iran’s coming) - God, why do we even have Democrats? Why should we spend time and money to elect more of the same?

Reid’s “Slide into Irrelevance” and Dean’s “Only One Shot” raise good points. If our Democratic senators and congresspersons want to be relevant, they had better start acting for the common good, quit whining about ‘how we need to elect more Democrats’ before we’re allowed to do what is right, and, most of all, remember why we’re NOT Republicans and then hang together.

For my part, I’ll be damned if I contribute to another candidate for national office who can’t convince me that he stands for the separation of powers, the Bill of Rights, and something that looks like a sane foreign policy. I’m a Democrat –for now- but I’m quickly loosing patience with the ersatz Republicans I’ve helped put in office.

* Check out the Senate Congressional Record for March 1st, 2006.
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getpage.cgi?position=all&page=S1561&dbname=2006_record
Senator Feingold read from the Constitution, Senator Leahy spoke about what was still wrong with the Patriot Act, and then Senator Feingold read four of the 400 resolutions from city councils and county governments expressing grave concerns with the Patriot Act.