Personally, this has been a good day and a good weekend. We walked through the woods as a family. I rode my bike 31 miles. There was a huge book festival within walking distance, which pleased the wife. I even shook hands with a personal hero.
Politically it has been the worst time of my life. (Note to the author of this site. Intent follows the bullet.)
Rumors are swirling throughout Left Blogistan that the Bush Administration is about to conduct a coup against Iraq, a near-nuclear attack against Iran, and that it's going to get a rubber stamp from the supposedly Democratic Congress.
So where are our country's supposed leaders? Well, Hillary Clinton has a new stump speech. Barack Obama is giving the Iran War rhetorical cover. John Edwards is not a public official. The rest of the pygmies are wandering about the landscape, and can be ignored.
What these people should be doing, right now, today, is laying down markers. Tell Bush that if he stages a coup that our obligation to Iraq is over. Remind Bush that unprovoked attacks on sovereign states are war crimes, that there is no immunity, no statute of limitations, that he and his will be held accountable, that they will be killed, all of them, if they step over the line and become monsters.
Americans are frankly disgusted with this Congress because it seems to lack the votes to confront the President in any meaningful way. Democrats ran around in 2006 saying "vote for us and we'll do something" but they have been unable to do anything because they are not unified. George W. Bush still has a working majority within the Congress, Democratic Party leaders refuse to admit it, the rest of us see through it, and we're pissed.
Republicans are absolutely thrilled by this, believing they can leave everything FUBAR, stonewall a Democratic President for four years, then come riding back into town on white chargers. The war, they think, can go on forever.
That's not how it works, kids.
Actions have consequences. The economic shell game is ending, and we're
all going to pay for that. We, the people of the United States, have
made ourselves complicit in every war crime George W. Bush commits or has committed, and we're all going to pay for that.
When leaders fail, the people suffer. The economy is already rolling over -- that much was obvious as my family strolled the mall together -- and there doesn't seem to be a bottom to it. Why should China support endless war when there are better customers elsewhere? You think the dollar is cheap now -- wait until they drop the props out from under it.
America's leadership of the world will pass to other hands, and it won't come back. We are handing ourselves the fate of the Argentines, and it's a fate we deserve.
All of us.
Governments can err, presidents do make mistakes, but the immortal Dante tells us that Divine justice weighs the sins of the cold-blooded and the sins of the warm-hearted on different scales.
Better the occasional faults of a government that lives in a spirit of charity than the consistent omissions of a government frozen in the ice of its own indifference.
There is a mysterious cycle in human events. To some generations much is given. Of other generations much is expected. This generation of Americans has a rendezvous with destiny.
In this world of ours in other lands, there are some people, who, in times past, have lived and fought for freedom, and seem to have grown too weary to carry on the fight. They have sold their heritage of freedom for the illusion of a living. They have yielded their democracy.
Someone else will have to save us. We, the people have failed. And if that doesn't depress you wait a few weeks.
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