Paging Mr. Smith1
by Michael LeStrange

Please lord,
don't let them do
to us
what we would do
to them
if only
they'd let us
    -American Prayer, circa 2002

What the frickin' hell is going on?

I don't know about you, but this is the point in the horror movie where I keep on asking myself "why don't they get the hell out of the house?" 

Let me just recount a few of the high points.

Yea, I think those are the highlights so far.

There's been a torrent of stuff over the past two years that it is like trying to drink from a fire hose.  Wait a minute.  Not a fire hose.  That's too damn small.  Not enough pressure or flow.  How about like trying to drink from one of the outlets of Hoover Dam.

Yea.  That's the image we need to have.  The Hoover Dam after swelling from the rains that have lasted for months.  Lot of pressure.  Lot of volume.

You know, I can almost forgive the Supreme Court of the United States acting in such a blatantly partisan fashion.  I hold no illusions that if the roles were reversed, the Democrats would have done the exact same thing.

But you know, that still doesn't make it right.  Still doesn't make it any easier to swallow.  For the first time in the history of the United States, we have had our President appointed.

And we just rolled over and let them see our soft underbelly.  Even gave our submissive whimper just to show how deeply impotent we are.  You know, if just ONE fucking Congressman or Senator had decided to, they could have stopped the entire madness.

The point is not that I think Bush shouldn't be President.

The point is that the whole spectacle eroded our Constitution and tradition of rule of law.

And we just rolled over and meekly mewed.

And things just kept getting better.  Our appointed president, who LOST the popular vote, was now pushing through an obscene tax cut.  Trickle down - with a vengeance!  The house was controlled by the Republicans, and the Senate was evenly divided.  Dick Cheney strode into the chambers like he was the CEO of the country.  Nobody's vote was more important than the big Dick.  No one.  The entire Senate literally fell over itself to carry out the commands of the appointed one through his terrible messenger, Dick Cheney.

I remember watching Cheney in those heady days.  He strode like a God through the hallowed halls of our most deliberative body of our legislative branch.  He appeared on the media's news shows and even talk shows.  The appointed administration was strangely acting as if they had won the election in a land slide.  Not a single humble soul could be found anywhere.  They ruled with an iron fist.  Skip the velvet glove.  The press marveled at the tight ship the President was running.  Just like a business, they cried out on bended knees.

Within seconds of being appointed, our Attorney General John Ashcroft had issued directives instructing government employees to find any reason to limit the flow of information out of the government.  Employees of the government get a bonus for inventing the best time delaying excuse for any FOIA request.  This is a direct violation of the letter of the law - much more a violation in spirit. 

Freedom of information?  What?  You'll take what we give you and you'll be damn happy for it, god damn it.

For some strange reason, rather than being humbled by being elected with less of the popular vote, they acted as if they had a mandate from the heavens.  Understandable if you believe god has appointed you to be President at this point in history2

Yep.  Rumsfeld and Cheney - together again.  It's truly surreal, but these guys were up to their old agenda - the reversal of the Freedom Of Information Act.  Back in the good ol' seventies, these guys were fighting the passage of FOIA tooth and nail.  They hated it.  Said it severely weakened the power of the Presidency.  Executive privilege and all that.

In the wake of 9/11, they put their finger in the pie and pulled out a plumb.  George Bush issued an executive order that effectively neutered the 1978 Presidential Records Act (PRA).  Strangely enough, George's father's records, who just happened to be Vice President at the time, would have been the first to be available to public scrutiny under the 1978 law.

Wasn't there this whole Iran-Contra thing going on back when he was Vice President?  Yea.  Something about secretly funding a war with profits made by selling our enemies weapons.  And we thought things were bad then.

Remember how that all turned out?  Seemed that both the President3 and the Vice President were about as clued in to what was going on as Kenneth Lay was at Enron.

So we rolled over again on that one.  After all, we're at WAR now, and we stand behind the President during war time.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.  Easy to do when you are trying to drink from an outlet of the Hoover dam after a heavy rain.  You gulp and you've just missed about a million gallons as they spill by...

"This is an impressive crowd. The haves and the have-mores. Some people call you the elite. I call you my base"
- George W. Bush, at the Al Smith Dinner

The nation was just choking down a 1,400,000,000,000 dollar tax cut that slithered though the congress under Cheney's tender guidance and was just starting to digest it when WHAM.   A bunch of lunatics fly planes into our collective soul.  Just when it seemed Bush '43 was weakened when Cheney's vote became as useless as a tit on a bore hog, some god damned lunatics single handedly blasted the last remaining supports of our constitution.  And suddenly the President was a player again.

"A New Kind Of War" was born.  Barely a month later, the Senate quickly passed the PATRIOT act.  Almost all of the members of Congress couldn't be bothered to actually read the act and figure out what it was going to do to our precious freedoms.  We're at war against a noun, and they'll be damned if they appear soft on terrorism.

America divided itself into two houses.  Those with us, and those against us.  Moral clarity was the talk of the day.  Suddenly there was talk of military tribunals, carpet bombing of Afghanistan and Usama Bin Laden's head on a stick.

The thing that pissed me off probably the most during those days is the complete feeling of helplessness in watching it all happen.  Kind of like watching a play.  You can always get up and walk out.  Maybe you can cause a scene and disrupt it.  But like  a deer in the headlights, all you can really do is helplessly watch as the car behind the oncoming light approaches at a healthy clip.

And the guys driving this train wreck have three DUIs between them.

I swear.  You couldn't have made this stuff up.

But it just kept getting better and better, despite our incredulity.  Following up the terrorist attack was something equally as terrifying.  Anthrax.

Jesus Christ!   Why did it have to be Anthrax?  Within weeks people were dying from this terrifying disease.  And where did they catch it?  From the US Mail!  Nothing more American than our mail system.  Like a double punch, we hung on every word about the progression of the events as we watched in horror.

Did terrorists send them?

Well, it seems to be a home grown terrorist.  Remember them?  The one's that aren't Arabs?  Yea.  One of them blew up the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City not a few years back.

How quickly we forget that 168 people died that day from terrorists from our own land.  God only knows how many directly injured and the widows, widowers and children who had lost their parent or parents.

And now there's a strong possibility that the idiot who mailed the Anthrax laced mail is an American citizen.  What we are pretty sure of is that the strain of Anthrax used came from the so-called Ames strain grown right here in the good old US of A.

We are faced with a limited set of possibilities.  Either

Either way, it spells disaster.  Does anyone else find it just completely mind boggling that we're being hit simultaneously with real live religious suicide bombers and Dr. Strangelove's evil twin at the same time?

Personally, I just can't believe this conjunction of pure insanities.

What are we going to do now?  Lock up all the white people so we can detain them indefinitely?

Whoops.  I forgot.  We only lock up foreigners in the US.

Then cracks burst open in Enron.  Turns out there were gaping holes in the corporation all along and sheer will alone held the company together.  Remember?  Huh?

This is the same Enron that was a huge contributor to the Bush campaign.  Kenneth Lay, Chairman of Enron, is one of the 474 people Bush names to advise his presidential transition team.  Long relationship with George W. Bush's political career.  Major contributor.  Yea.  That's right.  The same Enron that was helping Cheney come up with his energy plan.  The same Enron that had a subsidiary run by the current Secretary of the Army, Thomas White.

Remember how this administration was fighting the GAO over access to just the names of who they were talking to?  Yea, I'm starting to remember.  It was the first time in the history of the GAO that they had to sue the administration to get information they were entitled to.  Whoops.  There's Cheney's and Rumsfeld's favorite plum again.

The administration lost this argument, btw.  The judge said that the administration had essentially invented his theory of executive privilege and while it is their prerogative to theorize, the administration would have to hand over the files.

Delay, delay, delay.  Use lawyers as delaying tactics.  Use national security as a delaying tactics.  Just don't talk about anything.  Seems to be the common theme of this administration.  They are apparently too busy to take care of those pesky democratic principles upon which our unique form of government is based.

you'll take what we give you and you'll be happy for it

And we still don't know what the fuck went on.  No one has been charged from that cesspool of a company with ANYTHING.  We had congressional hearings that were an opportunity to educate us once again in the subtleties of the Fifth Amendment to the US Constitution.  Now I certainly don't fault any of the people testifying with taking the fifth.  The amendment is an important foundation to our constitution.  I don't cast any aspersions on those taking the fifth.  Shit, if I was in front of a bunch of angry Senators, I'd be taking the fifth myself.  A lynching mob is not really a friendly environment in which to make your case.

But I do fault the Senate panel for calling up these alleged jokers in the first place.  What did they think they were going to do?  Spill all the beans in some dramatic scene reminiscent of the finale "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington".  Political posturing in an (apparently) successful attempt to distract us from what is really going on.

But you know what?  The fifth amendment of the US constitution also says that "no person <shall> be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".  Now those who haven't really read anything about constitutional law take this to mean that "no citizen <shall> be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law".

That is NOT what the amendment says.  Any person means any person.  Not just those lucky enough to be an American citizen.  No exceptions.

But then, we're at war.  And during war, as we have constantly proved in the past, we do really wacky things like lock up all the Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps.  Sure we'll apologize when it's safe 50 years from now.  You may even get a few token bucks as "compensation".

Oh wait a minute.  We've rounded up about 3,000 foreigners already.   We haven't started rounding up American citizens yet for being Arab.

Oh wait a minute.  We've got two American citizens being held for what seems like it's going to be forever.

Because this "war on terrorism" can never really end.  After all.  Who really thinks we're going to be rid of terrorism any time in the foreseeable future?

No one.  So as far as I can tell, John Ashcroft thinks he can hold these two American citizens forever.

Let them rot in prison, I guess.

So where is the transparency in our government?  The entire reason we have a constitution is so that idiots who happen to be in power can't just willy-nilly decide that they can lock up anyone the want and let them rot in prison.  We have this little thing called due-process.

Oh, I forgot.  We're at war with a noun, and those being held - at least the two we know about - are considered enemy combatants.  I don't know about you, but that scares the fuck out of me.  Far more than any terrorists or Anthrax does.  Why?  Because my very own country is now holding its own citizens without  even being charged, or without a trial, or without lawyers.

God only knows what's happening to these guys.

Accountability

How fucking appropriate.  Accountability is what everything seems to be about over the last two years.  Or I should probably say the lack of Accountability.

After the dust cloud has started to thin out a bit from all the major corporate implosions, we find that the entire country was fucked over by one of the "Big Five" accountants.

That's right.  Accountants.  It's like they turned out to be truly evil minions of wicked CEOs and CFOs.  But unlike your ordinary garden variety minions, when they reach critical numbers they become something like Accountants from Hell.  Hell's Accountants.  Like Hell's Angels, but riding sensible motor scooters instead of Harley Hogs.  Not just minions but full blown Demons of the highest order.

It's like these guys were a global conspiracy to liposuck out the entire sum of our retirement money.  But thank god they self disintegrated, because they were almost out the door with the last bag of money when the market finally figured out what was going on.

I swear you couldn't have made this stuff up.

So very glad we caught the last dollar or two as they fell out of the dump trucks trundling off into the sunset in the Cayman islands.

It's absolutely hilarious to see this administration wagging its finger at corporate America, calling for more transparency.  See the joke?  This is the same administration who's trademark is secrecy.  The same administration that believes that, like a corporate boardroom, the government is theirs to run.  The American populace, like stock holders, are not entitled to disclosure about how the decisions are made, or who helped make those decisions, or even what the implications of those decisions are.  They simply tell us what they are going to do and we ratify it.  The same administration going out of its way to prevent anyone from getting their FOIA requests fulfilled.

The country is being screwed over by yet another wicked accountancy scandal.  But this time, it's the accounting of our own government to ourselves.  We're screwing ourselves over big time.

you'll take what we give you and you'll be damn happy for it.

So is it any wonder that corporate America is just laughing all the way to the bank?  This is what happens in a corporation.  It's a top down organization.  If the shareholders have any sway, it's because they fight for it.

Still think that running the government like a business is such a brilliant idea?

Make no mistake about it.  I'm a capitalist.  I've owned my own business and paid employees.  Kept customers happy and finally sold it for a tidy profit.  I believe in the free market.

But let's face it.  I was a tyrant of my own domain - i.e. my business.  I was a benevolent tyrant, but I owned it.  Well, me and my partner both owned it, but I had a pretty free hand.  He supplied the sanity, I supplied the insanity.

But it was ours, and we made all the real decisions.  Not our employees.

And this is why the corporate model makes a lousy model for government.  It's top down, and damn little disclosure.  Damn little input from the bottom.  Nobody owns the government.  We all do.  That makes it common property.  Common property is very hard to manage democratically.  It's pretty much devastating to apply the libertarian concept of ownership to it.

You end up with people who think they own the government.  It becomes a corporate boardroom with firmly closed doors.  Decisions made in secret, presented to you as the only rational option.  Decisions that you can't find out how they were made.  Decisions that you have to live with because they already made them for you.  Decisions you have no idea at all if they are good or bad.

Abuse Of Power Comes As No Surprise

Everyone of us has to start pulling more weight in this democracy.  Our Senators and Congressmen seem to be a bunch of spineless wimps.  Our hero worship of the Corporate CEO has given way to the tremendous stink of their feet of clay.  Accountants!  My god, accountants!  Even the accountants have turned out to be just the same greed twisted toads that we all are.  Why, oh why did it have to be accountants?

It's at times of danger and terror that we need real leaders.  We need real discussion about the incredible issues of our time.  The absolute last thing we need to do is shuttle over the event horizon of this yawning black hole in a reptilian mind driven drunken rage.   In secret meetings, of course.

I'm not saying that we have to have a messy, stupid popular uprising.  No.  What I'm asking is that we just collectively grow a spine and start standing erect - ethically speaking.  I don't think we all have to collectively become superman.  I would just be happy if the human race joined the ethical class of vertebrates.  We just simply need to grow a spine so we're not such a pushover.  So we can actually see what's ahead of us from a higher vantage point that we get when we start asking questions.

We're the most powerful nation on the earth.  Even though our economy is in the toilet, it's still the envy of the world.  We have the potential to do so much good for the world.

And quite frankly, we seem to be led by a bunch of bozos who have correctly gauged that the American populous is not just a bunch of wimps.  We're a bunch of spineless wimps.

We have a bunch of spineless wimps for our national journalists.  It's clear that we can't trust these guys and gals to do anything close to real reporting.  They have been effectively turned into mouth pieces for their masters - i.e. the handful of corporations that own all the media in this country.  Media whores.  Think they're going to tell you anything of value that's going on in these incredible times?  Think they're going to ask the tough questions of our politicians?  They're looking out for number 1!  They have precious access to our politicians, and they'd lose that access if they pissed them off.

you'll take what we give you and you'll be damn happy for it

But you just got to ask what is the point of access if you don't tell us anything interesting?  Anything useful?  My god!  It's not just so you can have wine and cheese with the fat cats!  You reporters are supposed to have access so you can ask the hard questions!  Point out the interesting facts!

Oh yea.  I forgot.  You have wine and cheese so you can get their message out.  You have access so that they can tell us just what they want us to know.

And nothing more.

We're being railroaded into a war with Iraq.  So far, this administration hasn't even asked if anyone in this country wants to put potentially hundreds of thousands of people into a full blown war.  And why?  Because he has weapons of mass destruction?  Why haven't we invaded Libya then?  Syria?  China?  What the hell do we think we're doing?

Maybe we should be going to war with Iraq, but so far they have only handed out the most miniscule of justifications.  Our economy is in the toilet and we're about to have a full scale war in the world's gas station!  Doesn't this strike anyone as completely insane?  Doesn't this administration understand what will happen to our economy when the price of oil spikes up to sixty dollars a barrel?  I mean, come on!  Even a kindergartener can figure this one out.

Is it really worth destroying our economy to effect a regime change in Iraq?  I just don't think we should be doing anything really stupid right now, and my god we should at least be debating it.

But no.  What we have is our valiant press endlessly reporting the party line.  We have an attempt by the Senate to find out what the reasons are for going to war with Iraq.  But it all ends up the same.

We have to avenge Bush '41, after all.  It's God's will.

War With Iraq Is Inevitable

And we have no fucking choice.  The decision has been made by this administration, and nobody is going to change their mind.  They have even said so.

After all.  If we back down now, then we'll be humiliated on the national arena!  We'll lose face. What a frickin' Catch-22!

Hey, I have a suggestion.  Don't go strutting about telling everybody you're going to do something when you don't have the backing of the rest of your constituency.  Or at least until you've asked them if they want to do this.

But no!  This administration has been shouting from the rooftops that they're going to kick Saddam's butt out of Baghdad.   And they're now using that as an reason that we have to go to war.

Again, I swear you just can't make this stuff up.  If we survive the next two years, there's going to be some incredible stories to tell about this period in history.

Anyways the point is if we don't start evolving a spine quickly, we will have no choice but to keep rolling over and mewing meekly. And quite frankly, I don't think that we will survive as a country without developing a spine mighty darn fast.

I'm not such a pessimist to think that the sky is falling and we are all doomed.  But I am incredibly worried about how we're going to get through this without a shit load of dead bodies and a perhaps critically wounded American economy - much less the world's economy.

What about you?  Going to take what they give us and just be happy with what we've got?  Or are you going to start growing those ethical vertebrae and start helping the rest of us stand erect?

Footnotes:

1. As in Jimmy Stewart's character of the same name in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

2. It's at least a consistent belief

3. Ronald Reagan for all you youngsters

August 5, 2002