How We Failed OUR Democracy

Twenty years from now, we will take a look back at this period in American life with disbelief and regret. In a Kabuki dance, the American public failed the American government, and the political parties—Democrats and Republicans alike, failed the essence of our democracy. History will not be kind to our generation, where we allowed an attack on our homeland to be used as a pretext for an ill conceived war, the three branches of government colluded in the misuse of trust and power, and the fourth estate meekly enabled an administration to lie to the public and exploit frayed nerves into a war of choice and a conflict of calamity. It goes without saying the harshest judgment lies at the feet of the Bush administration. After September 11th, Bush had an opportunity to coalesce the country under one purpose. The attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon were not an attack on a political party nor on a religious faction, it was an attack on all of us. The banality of red state versus blue state disappeared for a day; the red blood of innocent victims was the state of our nation, and the blue color of sadness was the state of a collective loss of innocence. Instead, the images of lost lives, broken families, and charred out buildings was used as a blunt political tool--a day of tragedy morphed into 30 second political ads. A nation, unsettled and shaken to our core, was encouraged to go shopping and to buy stocks; devaluing the lost lives by placing primary importance on the valuations of Wall Street. Shortly thereafter, our collective anger and individual disquietude was manipulated by steady drumbeats on the path to war. Driven by an administration who viewed September 11th as an opportunity to initiate a war plan drawn up years before the first plane hit the first tower, we attacked a nation—based on a superfluous pretext—that neither attacked us nor posed a threat to our country. Unable to admit failure and transfixed on protecting a failed legacy, Bush imperils our soldiers as they stand grounded in the deserts of a broken civilization refereeing an Uncivil War; the red blood of our GI’s and innocent Iraqis the state of a shattered Iraqi nation. The Bush administration’s inept and aberrant designs notwithstanding, the Democratic Party’s feeble and duplicitous acts of civil subservience will not escape the reaches of historical memory. For every act of treacherous, there is an act of silence; for every deed of trickery, there is a deed of self-suppression. In choosing complicity over courage, they disserted their post as the guardians of our republic. Fearing being labeled cowards and libeled as unpatriotic, they chose to proudly forswear their solemn oath to protect the Constitution from external and internal enemies. Those that hand the keys to an inebriated driver stand just as guilty for the eventual repercussions that follow—action and inaction are one in the same when lives are lost as a consequence of both. They stand before us today, those that cast their vote—and their lot--with a dogmatic ideology and a misbegotten war. It is true that victory has a thousand fathers, and defeat is an orphan—but history will remember whose DNA is embedded in this war’s inception. In an unprecedented ceding of congressional oversight, the Democrat’s went along with the Republican rubber stamp’s imprimatur in signing a blank check to the executive war. George Bush today could attack another country without consulting congress based on that war resolution. These very Democratic malingerers stand before us today, so far doing NOTHING that would deem them worthy of the voters’ trust, a trust given not out of confidence but out of dejection in the Republicans’ performance. Some even speak of running for the presidency, which I’m sure they will be extolling the vices of this administration while ignoring their aiding and abetting that very administration. One who forfeited their congressional duties cannot be entrusted with the solemn duties of the presidency. Hillary Clinton, John Kerry, John Edwards, and all other Democratic member were presented with three years ago was the ability to displayed distinction and political courage, instead most chose weakness and political expediency. They stand complicit in this Iraqi fiasco; their vote is embedded in the DNA of this Iraqi debacle. The lack of fortitude does not end with the supposed loyal opposition. The fourth estate’s ceding of their duties was just as abhorrent. The fabric of our nation is woven with an informed citizenship, the threads of veracity and guardianship of our rights entrusted to the press. Where our elected officials fail us, our press is supposed to act as a lighthouse, guiding the ship of the state from the peril shores of dictatorial bureaucracy. Our republic is maintained through the notepads of the journalist, the microphone of the reporter, and the ink of the press. The press is supposed to be a vigilante, arousing public sentiment to overcome governmental corruption. Instead, the vigilante became the cheerleader; their notepads turned into an instrument of diction, their microphones morphed into an echo chamber, and their pen ran yellow—spreading lies from power instead of speaking truth to it. Perhaps this is what happens when a free press is consolidated into a conglomerate, where the policies of the government it is supposed to oversee affects the bottom dollar of the various media's parent company. When a newspaper or news show has to answer to Wall Street as much as it answers to Main Street, we have a recipe for a press devoid of valor and derelict in its duties. The sad truth is that we as a nation failed our nation; we are stuck in a war where all options are dire. We stay and feed the flames of a Civil War, our very presence feeding the flames of hatred that threatens to engulf the whole region. Pull-out and we leave behind women, children and men to be massacred by a virulent enmity unleashed by our occupation. While it is immoral to leave an iniquity created by our own malfeasance, staying there does nothing but extend the day of Sunni and Shiite reckoning. We are in effect acting as a balancing scale, the longer we stay the longer we give a chance for the Shia to train and arm themselves to a point where they will be able to slaughter Sunni into submission. We leave today, and we embolden the Sunni establishment, which still have the technical know-how and the military prowess, to slaughter tens of thousands of Shiites on their way back to a minority ruling class. We are at a Faustian fulcrum, where our action or inaction will become the catalyst for a Kabuki dance of two sects determined to settle old scores and set the table for a new sectarian dominance in Iraq. Meanwhile, our Kabuki dance continues, debating the meaning of Civil War; and a new catchword—“bipartisanship”—is bandied about to yet again fail our democracy.

Uncommon Sacrifice and Exceptional Valor

Of all the specious talking points which are spewed on any given talk shows by the Bush sycophants, the most injurious of them all—and most un-American—has to be the “we hit them there so they don’t hit us here” propaganda. It misses the point to argue that Iraq had nothing to do with 911, in order to grasp the true mendacity of that statement, all one has to do is turn on a television set to see the face of the dying men and women of our nation.

The cute game they play is one of word association: we hit them in Baghdad so they don’t hit us in Boston, we hit them in Mosul so they don’t his us in Missouri, we hit them in Hadithah so they don’t hit us in Houston. Besides the obvious malevolent statement of discounting Iraqi lives, the sheer audacity of these talking points is that it attempts to throw a veil over our eyes. The truth is that we are being hit everyday; as we commute to work, some GI’s mother in St. Louis just received word of her son’s violent death in Samara. As we sip a morning cup of coffee from Starbucks, a wife in Topeka just learned of her husband’s maiming by an IED in Tikrit. While we shop on black Friday, a child in Nashville just learned of his father’s passing in Najaf.

While death and carnage is shown everyday in Iraq, we somehow manage to go on with our lives. The faces of the fallen on television has become a fact of life to most of us, we have become desensitized to this war and it’s depravity. Today I saw a television show on Fox where three men were actually debating the value of this war on Wall Street. One actually said “Wall street likes that fact that we went over there…go big and get the job done, Wall Street likes decisiveness”. One’s man’s loss has always been another man’s gain, but one hopes that cynicism and greed have their bounds—apparently they does not.

Our nation has always been at its greatest when we pulled together for a common cause. World War II was exemplary of our shared sacrifice, when the nation gained and lost as a whole. A mother in Boston was just as worried about her son as a mother in Baltimore, a wife on Wall Street was just as fretful as a wife on Main Street. A soldier from a small town was looking forward to hugging his kids as much as a soldier from a big city. The burden was mutual, and victory was a collective mission. Unfortunately, after 911, we were told by our President to go shopping, to spend, to go on living like we have not been attacked. And so we glance occasionally at the death and horror of a tragic war, while continuing our daily life unencumbered by the burden of our nation’s bloodshed.

Of Flowers, Chocolates, and Broken Hope

For three years, Iraqis have been throwing flowers and candy thanks to a liberation bestowed to them by the imperialistic George Bush, yesterday they decided to purchase the diamond in a pursuit of an unholy matrimony of death and carnage. The grand experiment of democratizing a nation with howitzers and Abrhams has been blown to dust, the ashes of an ancient civilization swirling in the winds of the desert.

Children often play a game of what if, taking objects apart just to see what happens. Caught up in a world of conjecture without regard to consequence and uninhibited by the sagacity of reality, they often destroy valuable items for the sheer fulfillment of their intellectual curiosity. They have no use for adults who preach the value of discernment and wisdom, and tend to blame others once the folly of their actions is revealed.

This administration has operated in much the same manner, playing a juvenile game of machismo—taunting whenever possible, dismissive in nature, and name calling at all times. The Middle East has been set afire by a pharisaic administration whose assurance in their moral righteousness was surpassed only by their disdain for alternative views. The awful reality is that there is no answer to the Iraq disaster, the Pandora ’s Box was opened by a neoconinc key, there is no way to close the lid back.

The sound bites of victory in Iraq, staying the course, stand up stand down, and the sheer depravity of waiting for the “recommendation” from the Iraq survey group is just a marketing strategy to blur the reality of failure. The circle has been drawn in the desert, the Shia and the Sunnis will slaughter each other until there is a clear loser. Funded by outside emissaries, they will be used as pawns to fight a geopolitical war. There will not be a clear victor, Iraq will become the next Lebanon, on a mind-blowing scale. In the end, Bush will transform the Middle East as he envisioned, much the same way a child transforms a vase while tossing it carelessly in the air. At least the flowers were saved, now if we only had chocolates.

From Picking Cotton to Picking Trends

The Shaming of the Dubya

The beauty of American democracy was displayed in its full glory on November 7th, when we the people intervened on behalf of our nation and overthrew a maladroit administration. The beauty of our system of government is not in the permanency of a governing philosophy, it is its agility to course correct when beset by a failed doctrine.

The radio waves and television stations are full of simpletons such as Limbaugh, Hannity, Krauthammer et al, who cheered on the sidelines for this inherently flawed administration’s incompetent Middle East grand design. Apparently shame having failed as an elixir to their inanity, they now spout unwanted advice of how to get out of a disaster that they helped to steer us into. This is akin to doctor, guilty of malpractice, approaching the same wounded patient with a machete; after bleeding our soldiers and treasury, please sirs and madams have the decency to shut up.

Over the past 6 years, we have been subjected to insults of cowardice and libeled as traitors for grasping the depth of this war’s injury to our nation and calling for those who were entrusted at the helm of the ship to be held accountable. As the nation slowly woke up to the calamity of the administration and their sycophant’s course of action, every image of 911 was conjured up in order to lull the public to slumber. There are those whose support of this historical hamartia is implausible; wed to Bush based on personal affinity and religious zeal, unabated injury to our nation will not prevent a quarter amongst us to inanely insist on supporting this executive chimera. Though the founding fathers were afraid to imperil the republic’s health at the hands of the “ignorant mass”, their abiding faith in the veracity of ideas to win out in the public arena led to inception of our democracy. Our democracy survives on the basis of at least 51% overcoming the inertia of group think and discerning substance from Fox news propaganda.

What we need now is sober judgment, the era of Play Station foreign policy has drawn nigh. History will hang this epic failure on the necks of the neocons such as Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, etc., and Bush will ultimately be remembered as the avant-garde Nero that he is. Nonetheless, the reward of victory is not a mandate to relish in power or to gloat at past failures. The Democrats have been handed a heavy responsibility, to save our soldiers from the horrors of IEDs and to minimize the loss of Iraqi lives. Lest we be fooled, there is no panacea to the blunder of Bush’s war. The outcomes vary from bleak to catastrophic, and the options are equally harrowing. The hope of the nation lies not in the idea of a miraculous turnaround; rather it lies in the expectations that in matters of war, decision are based on sound judgment instead of quixotic schemes. With the rejection of the extreme right wing’s doctrine, we resoundingly responded to Ben Franklin’s query—our republic, through the fog of lies and deception, we kept it.

The Reel McCain

There are figures in American politics that come along who transcend the constraints of an ideology and soar above the base political landscape; I thought John McCain was such a person—in 2000. What I see today is a politician much like the rest, who has managed to transform his refreshing ideas of the 2000 campaign into a trite façade of a so called straight shooter.

Turn on any television screen today, and most likely you will find McCain; extolling the virtues of “straight talk” and “moral character”. A closer examination of this supposed second coming of Teddy Roosevelt will reveal a politician much like the rest—calculating, poll driven, and bereft of political bravery. These are harsh words, and they are not meant to tear down his personal characteristics, rather they are aimed at the image he and his campaign are continuously molding in the public arena. With the help of the spineless media, he has somehow managed to portray himself as a man of principle.

A man savaged by the extreme conservative wing of the Republican Party in 2000, he now flirts incessantly with the sludge of the Republican Party. Much like a hooker who tries to appease her pimp, he overlooks the extreme right wing’s sickening foundation built on implicit racism and explicit exclusionary dogma. Nowhere is this more evident than his rapprochement to Jerry Falwell, a man McCain rightly rejected as a man of hatred and divisiveness. Realizing that the base of the Republican Party is infected with the same strain of hatred and divisiveness, he chose to cater to the germs instead of applying an antiseptic of honor. Today, he stands hand in hand with the same subspecies of the party who maligned him for adopting an “illegitimate black child”.

More damaging to the country was his so-called brave stance against Bush during the Torture Bill debate. One would have thought that a man who was indeed tortured for years at the hands of the Vietcong would be the most vehement protector of our nation’s honor and the belief that even those who are the most reprehensible amongst us deserve the civility of our justice system. Once we give in to the idea that there are some who don’t deserve justice, the delicate balance of our entire system tilts towards injustice. Instead of standing up to Bush, McCain instead provided covering fire for Bush to effectively legislate torture. In the end, Bush got exactly what he wanted in the Torture Bill; while McCain made pretend that he was a defender of our constitution while flicking on the switch to the shredder.

What we have before us is not the real McCain, rather it is the reel McCain—a made for TV phenomenon who charades as a truth teller on the evening news while cozying up to those who pull the levers of power during the day. Keep this in mind while he runs fervently to the right leading up to the primary, only to pivot and change into his “bring America together, I am a moderate” character. I would have voted for him once because I thought he provided a breath of fresh air—I realize now that he is as polluted as the rest of them.

A Minor Inconvenience with a major disaster

“Carmel Cappuccino extra caramel”

“Turn the AC up it’s a bit warm in here”

“I can’t believe I’ve been waiting in line for five minutes to buy groceries, this is an outrage!”

“Can you believe those thugs and criminals in New Orleans stealing and looting, they should be all locked up!!”

Such is a life of a suburban soldier, fighting traffic and wondering how they will be able to travel for their weekend getaway with gas being at an all time record and all. How easy it is to pass judgment when we are sitting in the lap of luxury? This outrage that is displayed daily on the news about the looters and “those people”, it revels the pure malevolent thoughts that those who are the haves hold over those who are the have nots. Further more, the ghost that haunts this country since its inception continues unabated. Don’t think for a second that racism is not involved in the tragedy in New Orleans. The constant images of a black youth taking a television-a television that is no longer useful to the person taking it nor the store where it belongs-draws more ire than the fact that people have been left to fend for themselves. Those who were elected to keep law and order long ago left before the first drop of rain, and yet they want to be indignant when they see the lawlessness they left behind.
There are thousands of people starving, dehydrating, dying; and yet for the past two days all that we have been bombarded with are images of black folks “looting”. Do you blame them, the forgotten masses, abandoned to survive as best they could, when they lash out? There are thousands upon thousands of people who were not able to evacuate New Orleans, so without other options they stayed and prayed for the mercy of God since the mercy of their elected officials was nowhere to be found. They survived, now they beg for the mercy of a nation and we instead flash daily images of looting, as if the material wealth of a city is more important than the human catastrophe unfolding before our very eyes. Four days since the hurricane passed, and people are still stranded by the thousands to sleep in the streets, to “loot” for precious water and food, babies left to survive in the heat of the south, old folks dying where they sit, and parents helpless to do much.
What would you do if faced with all this, would you be civilized, and would you be lawful where the law failed you? You, the same person who is ready to “kill someone” just because someone has 16 items in the fast lane. You wonder why there are so many black folks running around “looting” in New Orleans, when you should be wondering why there are so many black folks left behind in New Orleans. The greatest nation in the world, able to move mountains, unable or unwilling to move those trapped in a hell begotten city. The president reassures us that everything will be ok while he flies over the city in his air conditioned Air Force One a thousand feet in air; unable to see the human faces and feel the hearts of grieving parents, husband, wives and relatives. If you really think about it, that is the real tragedy of this story. But wait, no time for that, hey forgot to put extra caramel in your cappuccino!