An open memorandum

From: Impeachment Grunt
To: People

TRENDS IN FOIBLES AND FOLLIES

Date: 10 August 2007

BUSH IS AN IDIOT: From the very beginning of the 2000 campaign season people fell for the “Bush is an Idiot” canard. It was promulgated everywhere and especially in the Main Stream Media. Events have shown how foolish it was to underestimate Bush. Rampant and repeated Bushisms diverted attention from what was really happening. Bush and his supporters were more than happy for their opponents to be laughing at Bush. There was gaity even in defeat.

Bush is supported by quite a number of capable people. Malicious people, who are so foxily clever they can easily overcome those who can see the forest for the trees and who feel superior. Underestimating your enemy is the cardinal sin of warfare. It is matched only be overestimating yourself.

FEAR WILL SET YOU FREE: Not fear, but Truth sets you free. Way too many Americans subjected themselves to the horror of watching the attacks of 11 September 2001 on television over and over and over and over. Americans were subjected to a barbaric barrage of terror that only began with the terrorists responsible for the attacks. Surely, that was bad; but the more insidious damage was being perpetrated by the American media. Hours and hours of horrific images continued to be broadcast often containing only small amounts of readily apparent fact and huge amounts of emotion masquerading as reportage.

The harm continues to be promoted. If you go to the library, you will easily find many 9-11 videos, even in the children’s section. Why? I say it’s cruel. America suffered a terrible tragedy that day in September and we have yet to realize the full damage and all the implications (we may not even know half the truth of it). However, one thing is sure. Americans suffered a massive shock and it has affected their ability to view reality with the necessary detachment. It has produced a seemly incompatible response: the need to lash out and the need to feel protected. This has allowed the Bush administration to easily manipulate Americans by playing on their fears in the hope that they will somehow regain their sense of safety.

Thus, we have a war on Iraq and its subsequent occupation. And, a prospective war on Iran. We have candidates for the office of Unitary Executive of America bandying threats of nuclear holocaust at this country or that. We have people apparently happy to give up the Constitution of the United States along with the exercise of their unalienable rights on the merest chance that they will be safe. And, they are giving these things up to men and women who have proved incapable of responding to natural disasters. As if any administration that can’t respond properly and with alacrity to a hurricane, will be able to get it together enough to stop an attack of some sort (even if given advanced warning).

ANYBODY BUT BUSH: This failed strategy dominated the 2004 election. People focused so intently on replacing Bush with anyone, anyone at all, that the anti-Bush people (also predominately peace supporters) worked and voted for John Kerry, another war candidate. The result was that almost nobody had the foresight to remember that Bush has stolen the 2000 election and that stealing the 2004 election was not just a possibility; but almost certain and Bush “won” another election.

The election revealed the country as polarized by support or antipathy for Bush. And the divisions were hardening. However, because so many people voted for Kerry, the Bush operatives, especially in the media, were able to effectively argue that although half the country was anti-Bush, since they had voted for Kerry; they had also voted for war. Therefore, all Americans were for the war. It destroyed the peace movement until Cindy Sheehan resuccitated it in the summer of 2005.

HOME BY CHRISTMAS: The opposition to Bush has been bedeviled by a belief that this event or that act would topple the Bush regime. Somehow or other Bush would screw up and be forced from office one way or another. How possibly could he keep getting away with it? He couldn’t, could he? No. So the opposition continued to engage in short term thinking that brought us one more big march in Washington after another and a series of disappointing events that wrought paralyzing demoralization in their wake.

After the Supreme Court appointed Bush, Al Gore failed to do anything about it. He even failed to criticize the decision. His supporters were demoralized by this unwise attempt at nonpartisanship. The attacks on 11 September 2001 traumatized the country. Almost everyone was swept up in a spirit of unity. The few dissenters were extremely isolated and inactive.

Only the advent of war on Iraq galvanized the opposition. We witnessed the largest preemptive demonstrations against war the world has seen. Unfortunately, it was a foregone conclusion that Bush would ignore such a popular outpouring. The opposition melted away shortly after Bush invaded Iraq.

The 2004 election rekindled some hope and people erroneously place their faith in the electoral system. But, they supported a war candidate and did more harm than good. Kerry’s early concession and unwillingness to contest the election despite election irregularities in Ohio and other states, sent the opposition’s spirits in a nose dive.

They were revived by the 2006 election, but this time the Democrats played the Brutus. Nancy Pelosi took impeachment off the table and promised to cooperate with the Bush administration. Bringing our troops home and holding Bush accountable would have to wait yet again.

CITY ON A HILL: Most of the opposition repeatedly focused energy and resources on actions, mostly large events requiring the mobilization of thousands of people and many scarce resources, in Washington, D.C. As if Washington, D.C. is the lone center of power. There are many power centers throughout the country. It is significant that the peace movement was reinvigorated, not in Washington, D.C.; but in a ditch in Crawford, Texas. Geographic myopia has retarded local organizing and wasted local resources.

A corollary is a refusal to recognize that Bush is impervious to the types of pressure available to most Americans. Yes, Bush is the titular head of the executive branch; but there are two other branches and many different levels of government. All politics is local. It is the local politicians and party functionaries that remain, even now, vulnerable to the popular will.

Everytime you fly to Washington, D.C. you put money in Dick Cheney’s pocket. Jet travel uses enormous amounts of oil. While lobbying in the halls of Congress has some value, most demonstrations would enjoy more impact if conducted in the home communities. The Veterans for Peace are routinely denied places in local parades - not “patriotic”. The American Legion and the Chamber of Commerce often controls these venues. Why aren’t there any local alternatives?

PEACE FIRST: The first significant opposition to Bush did not result from the election fraud of 2000; but from the fear of an approaching war. It is only natural that the antiwar theme is the dominate strain in movement against Bush. However, world peace is not mentioned in the preambles of the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Moreover, being antiwar is not inherently anti-Bush. Therefore, the opposition to Bush and efforts to remove him from power coalesced only slowly.

The peace first strategy mimics the failed strategy of the Democratic Party - impeachment is a waste of time. It prevents us from spending time to accomplish things that really need to be done. Peace Only has failed to mobilize and utilize Americans across the political spectrum and has been too narrowly aligned with the Democratic Party. It has failed to capitalize on Americans love of the Constitution. And, it many ways, has been extremely counterproductive, understandable as it may be.

Gandhi, after all, did not develop the tactics of nonviolent resistance in order to promote world peace. He did so to right the wrong of apartheid as practiced against the Indians in South Africa. Later he used it to advance Indian independence. Though nonviolence can be applied to peace between nation; it is important to remember that Gandhi was a justice man first.

So was Martin Luther King, Jr. He sat in the Birmingham jail to achieve civil rights, not peace among nations. He, too, was a justice man first. His opposition to the Vietnam War came later.

THE DEMOCRATS WILL SAVE US: True, some Democrats might; but the Democratic Party as a whole is to enmeshed in corporate America to contemplate a serious challenge to corporate interests. Al Gore demurred to cause a ruckus about the results of the election in 2000. John Kerry sat on his campaign war chest and allowed the Green Party and the Libertarians to challenge the results of the 2004 election. Nancy Pelosi ascended to the Speakership and immediately took impeachment off the table. One has to wonder if the Democratic Party aren’t really just Republican-Lites. John Conyers supports impeachment before the Democrats win a majority, but not after. Really.

NOW PLAY NICE TOGETHER: After the Democratic success in the 2006 midterm elections, the Party leadership immediately betrayed the electorate. The election, you see, wasn’t a reaction against the corruption, incompetence and greed of the Bush administration; it was about having the opportunity to work with the administration. Partisanship, meaning bringing our troops home and holding the Bush administration accountable, was at an end. Pelosi’s ascension signaled a new era of “cooperation and bipartisanship” despite the mountains of evidence that showed the Bush administration has no one wit of cooperative, nonpartisan spirit.

LET’S JUST GO SHOPPING: Flying in the face of reality, despite clear evidence of lawbreaking, Americans engaged in a retreat from the facts. Americans have alternately totally ignored bad news, rationalized bad news or misinterpreted bad news.

There is no “liberal bias” in the media. The media is a servant of corporate interests and regurgitates Bush administration talking points as fact. Yet, Americans still take their local papers and tune in to the thoroughly corporatized television news. The fact that the sanitized media remains big business shows that Americans continue to consume fake news and have bought many of the myths exposed in print and on video.

The Democratic politicians are too busy hustling after big money donation to run their campaigns that they can not be bothered to engage seriously in the day to day operation of the government. Democrats have studiously avoided using the mechanisms of government, the Constitution, parliamentary procedure, etc. to combat the increasing audacious and out of control executive. They stand mute for the most outrageous assaults on our constitutional system and then tell the people they have better things to do. If the Bush administration is a master of the art of misdirection, the Democrats are its toadies sucking up by clumsy imitation.

Business, the techniques and ethos of business, is the only standard by which we measure success. Americans want tax cuts and small government. The want to live in the country, but they the amenities of urban life. They want to live the American Dream, but only the good life part, and not the hard work. Americans are a bundle of contradictions, each in his or her own way; yet all are quick to believe others are wholly evil, selfish, or ignorant. Americans want their cake and eat it too.

They desperately want to see themselves as part of the middle class, but are they. Most Americans can’t shake the secret, hidden fear that they aren’t - or won’t be soon. It doesn’t help when millionaires claim, they too, are “middle class”.

They have not responded appropriately to the challenges of the times. They have been slow to recognize threat after threat, and hence provide intelligently for the future. Yet, when an emergency does occur, Americans cry out to their government for succor. Why? Through their own inaction and ignorance or by actively pursuing goals they would destroy the mechanisms of government; they have missappropriated the resources needed to respond to emergancies; or, they have destroyed the required capacities. Americans have build a house without plumbing, heat or even a roof.

How? They haven’t bothered to learn their system of government. They are ignorant of the facts of the basic founding documents. They haven’t bothered to involve themselves in the processes of choosing elected officials. They have neglected to hold government officials of any sort accountable. They have allowed the spirit of democracy to atrophy. The People don’t rule in America any longer. This is not a democracy. It is at best a kakistocracy, the rule of the worst.

Semper pacificus,

Daniel I. Fearn