Chris Floyd - Clowntime is Over: The Last Stand of the American Republic

Clowntime is Over: The Last Stand of the American Republic

Wednesday, 28 December 2005

So now, at last, the crisis is upon us. Now the cards are finally on the table, laid out so starkly that even the Big Media sycophants and Beltway bootlickers can no longer ignore them. Now the choice for the American Establishment is clear, and inescapable: do you hold for the Republic, or for autocracy?

There is no third way here, no other option, no wiggle room, no ambiguity. The much-belated exposure of George W. Bush's warrantless spy program has forced the Bush-Cheney Regime to openly declare what they have long implied -- and enacted -- in secret: that the president is above the law, a military autocrat with unlimited powers, beyond the restraint or supervision of any other institution or branch of government. Outed as rank deceivers, perverters of the law and rapists of the Constitution, the Bush gang has decided that their best defense -- their only defense, really -- is a belligerent offense. "Yeah, we broke the law," they now say; "so what? We'll break it again whenever we want to, because law don't stick to our Big Boss Man. What are you going to do about it, chump?"

That is the essence, the substance and pretty much the style of the entire Bushist response to the domestic spying scandal. They are scarcely bothering to gussy it up with the usual rhetorical circumlocutions. The attack is being led by the fat, sneering coward, Dick Cheney, who has crawled out of his luxurious hidey-holes to re-animate the rotting husk of Richard Nixon and send it tottering back onto the national stage. Through the facade of Cheney's pig-squint and peevish snarl, we can see the long-dead Nixonian visage, his grave-green, worm-filled jowls muttering once more the lunatic mantra he brought to the Oval Office: "If the president does it, it can't be illegal." This is what we've come to, this is American leadership today: ugly, stupid men mouthing the witless drivel of failed, dead, discredited, would-be petty tyrants.

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How will the Establishment deal with this direct challenge? The past few years give little grounds for hope: the Democrats spineless, conflicted, co-opted and corrupt; the Republicans slavish, bellicose, cruel and criminal; the media timorous, witless, corporate-controlled; big business absolutely rolling in gravy from the autocrat's larder; academia cowed, silenced, ignored, demonized; the military acquiescent in criminal aggression, top-heavy with time-servers currying autocratic favor. Only the courts provide some stray sparks of hope, although they too are now loaded with political sycophants, corporate bagmen and knuckle-dragging throwbacks produced by the Right's decades-long devolution of American jurisprudence. Prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald and Elliot Spitzer "keep hope alive," but their efforts will mean little in a system where lawlessness at the top has been countenanced by the rest of the Establishment. And in any case, the outcome of their work lies ultimately with the Supreme Court -- the same court that shredded the Constitution in awarding power to Bush in the first place, and which is now led by a Bushist apparatchik.

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The next few weeks will show us if there is still some hope of restoring the Republic through the old institutions, or if we will have to follow the course laid out by Bob Dylan some 40 years ago: "Strike another match, go start anew." Who knows? Maybe we can make a better republic next time: one not born of blood, greed and fury -- those all-too-common elements of human organization -- but made from a new compound of mercy, justice, communion and liberty. Still imperfect, of course, still corrupt -- because that's our intractable human nature -- but with our worst instincts restrained by enlightened, ever-evolving law, and the predatory ambitions of the rich and powerful reined by elaborate checks and balances.

http://www.chris-floyd.com/

FrankLee for posting!

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Throw Diebold and ES&S election theft machines into 'Boston Harbor' NOW!

way to go, Chris! :applause: :woohoo: :applause:

From the day after the 2000 election, when the votes still weren't tallied, I have lived with this fear. How do I protect my loved ones and my country in a fighting war? Should we flee to Canada across the river? Is there any point in sending money to political groups, or is it a total waste of time and scarce resources?

And while the country still burns with democracy, it is a dull and flickering ember.

while revolution is like 52 pickup. Lots of unnecessary death, destruction and waste.

We have at most one half of one party trying to represent us part of the time, and that's not enought to stop the slide toward a one party sham democracy.

I'm too old to get excited about a revolution, but if there is one, I doubt that it will be violent--it will be more like what happened at the end of the Soviet Union. The assholes kept giving orders, but people stopped obeying them.

most excellent use of adjectives in describing Cheney, and I believe your general analysis hits the nail on the head.



:kick:

I have passed this piece all over my mailing lists, and have received a lot of positive comment.

It's really, really important.

What Floyd doesn't say, though, is that a mass movement of citizens could influence the "American Establishment" that it is in the establishment's best interest to stop Bush. Perhaps there should be focused protests aimed at the Establishment.

will they fold to the emperor's wishes as the Roman Senate did?

The question that follows that is an ugly one, but is one that is going to be on the table whether we like it or not:

Should we engage in resistance to tyranny, or should we leave this country as millions before us have done throughout history when they left their native countries to avoid persecution or death?

There's also an excellent take on Putin currently on his front page.