Remember when they were an opposition party? Remember when they were on our side? I’m sure most of you have noticed by now that they just aren’t anymore.
Published on Friday, October 5, 2007 by the Seattle Post-Intelligencer
The Democrats Who Enable Bush
by Helen ThomasPresident Bush has no better friends than the spineless Democratic congressional leadership and the party’s leading presidential candidates when it comes to his failing Iraq policy.
Those Democrats seem to have forgotten that the American people want U.S. troops out of Iraq, especially since Bush still cannot give a credible reason for attacking Iraq after nearly five years of war.
(SNIP)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is another Democratic leader who has empowered Bush’s war.
(SNIP)
So what are the leading Democratic White House hopefuls offering? It seems nothing but more war. So where do the voters go who are sick of the Iraqi debacle?
Read more at CommonDreams.org
So what’s a good democrat to do? Damned if I know! I see little to be optimistic about. For all of my political life I have looked to the democrats for sanity and decency (as in doing the right thing). They were once the party of the downtrodden, the working class, the average American. They were the party that supported human rights and social justice, the good, solid American patriots dedicated to the betterment of humankind and the improvement and elevation of all humanity.
They once stood between us and corporate amorality and corruption. Now all is compromised. Our government has been bought and paid for by the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Our country no longer belongs to us.
Not unless we take it back.
But will we?
It depends it seems to me, on whether or not enough of us wake up in time. Many here of course are painfully wide-awake and have been for a long time. But others, even in the ranks of democrats and those who fancy themselves progressives, are mesmerized by trivial nonsense, sports mania, entertainment, celebrity gossip or any of a thousand other distractions, including the shell game of modern electoral politics, to pay sufficient attention to what is really going on – a fascist/corporatist take over of America. People who still trust that electing more and better democrats will substantially change any of these unprecedented dynamics are fooling themselves. We are stuck with tyranny and perpetual war purely for profit – unless we take strong action to change it. We have to wake people up!
If we don’t somehow summon up the will and wisdom to resist these bastards, and resist much bigger and harder than we have up to this point, the America we all know and love will be lost and gone forever.
When I first started blogging a couple of years ago people gave me hell for claiming America was succumbing to a fascist takeover. A lot of people are still in denial but if you’re paying attention at all there is nothing the least bit funny about what’s going on in the USA.
Blackwater: Are you scared yet?
by Naomi Wolf
Thu Sep 27, 2007 at 02:05:53 PM PDTThe New York Times reported today that Blackwater, the infamous organization that has been accused of killing civilians in Iraq, “has been involved in a far higher rate of shootings while guarding American diplomats in Iraq than other security firms.” A mercenary firm in Iraq with an itchy trigger finger is bad enough. But it now appears that Blackwater’s activities may be massively expanded — and not in Iraq.
In little noticed news, Blackwater, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Arinc were recently awarded a collective $15 billion — yes, billion — from the Pentagon to conduct global counter-narcotics operations. This means that Blackwater can be deployed to engage with citizens on a whole new level of intimacy anywhere around the world — including here at home. What is scarier than scary is that Blackwater’s overall plans are to do more and more of its armed and dangerous ‘security’ operations on U.S. soil.
In my recently released book, The End of America, I describe the 10 steps that would-be tyrants use to close down a democracy and produce a “fascist shift.” The third of the ten steps is to ‘Develop a Paramilitary Force.’ Without a paramilitary force that is not answerable to the people’s representatives, democracy cannot be closed down; however, with such a force available to would-be despots, democracy can be drastically and quickly weakened.
From Naomi’s recent dailykos diary, Blackwater: Are you scared yet?
It’s been happening for a long time, there has been a fascist takeover in this country. The signs are sufficiently obvious – those who doubt it need to wake the fuck up! For decades our government has secretly been on a tear in the third world. Yes the government of the USA is the biggest terrorist organization on the planet.
Why has the United States government supported counterinsurgency in Colombia, Guatemala, El Salvador, and many other places around the world, at such a loss of human life to the populations of those nations? Why did it invade tiny Grenada and then Panama? Why did it support mercenary wars against progressive governments in Nicaragua, Mozambique, Angola, Ethiopia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, East Timor, Western Sahara, South Yemen, and elsewhere? Is it because our leaders want to save democracy? Are they concerned about the well-being of these defenseless peoples? Is our national security threatened? I shall try to show that the arguments given to justify U.S. policies are false ones. But this does not mean the policies themselves are senseless. American intervention may seem “wrongheaded” but, in fact, it is fairly consistent and horribly successful.
The history of the United States has been one of territorial and economic expansionism, with the benefits going mostly to the U.S. business class in the form of growing investments and markets, access to rich natural resources and cheap labor, and the accumulation of enormous profits. The American people have had to pay the costs of empire, supporting a huge military establishment with their taxes, while suffering the loss of jobs, the neglect of domestic services, and the loss of tens of thousands of American lives in overseas military ventures.
The greatest costs, of course, have been borne by the peoples of the Third World who have endured poverty, pillage, disease, dispossession, exploitation, illiteracy, and the widespread destruction of their lands, cultures, and lives.
from the chapter Making the World Safe for Hypocrisy, from the book Dirty Truths by Michael Parenti
For decades we have trained torturers and terrorists at the School of the Americas at Fort Benning, Georgia and elsewhere to commit despicable deeds the likes of which no half-assed semi-decent American would approve. These people are monsters – and they are the inner circle of our government!
Our leaders are hypocrites, liars, and thieves. And the secret agenda they have supported for decades has been anti-human, anti-democratic, and anti-American.
The Rise of Fascism in America
by Gary Alan ScottFascism in America won’t come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street. It won’t come like a storm-but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place. All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns-plenty of bread and circuses. But “consent of the governed” will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among the elite, and a degree of debate will be permitted; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized-usually by “the people” themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by a thoroughly impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, left ignorant of current events by a corporate media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of “national security,” and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of “enemies” selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new “security structures” targeted at the populace. In time, this will be seen as “normal,” as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone. It will all seem normal.
–Chris Floyd, November 10, 2001 Moscow Times (English edition)
Since the 1970’s, American businesses have grown larger and more monopolistic, helped along by deregulation, the repeal of anti-trust laws, and a steady transformation from manufacturing to capital management (dare I say, “capital manipulation”?). As Paul Bigioni puts it in his excellent essay entitled “The Real Threat of Fascism“: “If we are to protect ourselves from the growing political influence of Big Business, then our antitrust laws must be reconceived in a way which recognizes the political danger of monopolistic conditions.”
We are a nation at peril, but we are not alone. Globalization, the polite term for the corporatist/fascist takeover of the planet, threatens the entire world, and must be resisted.
We have the brave monks of Burma to look to for inspiration. They face the same forces we face, the forces of black-hearted greed, and they face it peacefully and with extraordinary courage for they know they must. We also must resist the anti-democratic junta here in the USA in solidarity with the brave monks of Burma – and for the love of our own country and the world.
Corporate greed and American imperialism (a.k.a. globalization/corporatism/fascism) are behind the horrors in Burma and elsewhere in the world.
Fueling the military junta that has ruled for decades are Burma’s natural gas reserves, controlled by the Burmese regime in partnership with the U.S. multinational oil giant Chevron, the French oil company Total and a Thai oil firm. Offshore natural gas facilities deliver their extracted gas to Thailand through Burma’s Yadana pipeline. The pipeline was built with slave labor, forced into servitude by the Burmese military.
The original pipeline partner, Unocal, was sued by EarthRights International for the use of slave labor. As soon as the suit was settled out of court, Chevron bought Unocal.
Chevron’s role in propping up the brutal regime in Burma is clear. According to Marco Simons, U.S. legal director at EarthRights International: “Sanctions haven’t worked because gas is the lifeline of the regime. Before Yadana went online, Burma’s regime was facing severe shortages of currency. It’s really Yadana and gas projects that kept the military regime afloat to buy arms and ammunition and pay its soldiers.”
From Chevron’s Pipeline Is the Burmese Regime’s Lifeline by Amy Goodman
We need to bring our renegade government to heal and start acting like the decent world citizen our country was meant to be.
I’m not giving up the America I love without a fight! I hope there are millions and millions of Americans out there who feel that just as strongly as I do – for only that would give me faith in the future.
I cannot bear the thought of a future without a free and democratic America. I have no interest in a world like that, and I am very uncomfortable with how close we have come to it.
My point in sharing these thoughts with you is to encourage everyone to think outside the ‘electing democrats’ box. That’s fine and good as far as it goes. It just doesn’t go very far these days.
If the democrats were to suddenly wake up and do the right thing, they’d immediately defund the Iraq war, begin impeachment proceedings and file criminal charges against the entire Bush administration.
Until they do that we will know that they are not on our side and the answer to our exceedingly grave problems will not be solved at the ballot box.
We must find another way. And it begins with organized resistance.
Organize!
Then we strike! Then we march. Then we strike again and again and march again and again until we bring them to their knees and take our country back.
America belongs to the American people – NOT to American corporations, multinational corporations, the Pentagon, or Wall Street!
Informative links for the curious and concerned:
A Brief (But Creepy) History of America’s Creeping Fascism
Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps
Our Most Important Mission: Prevent War with Iran
Only a U.S. Withdrawal Will Stop Al Qaeda in Iraq
Wake up your friends and neighbors to what is really going on in the world. We have to stop lying down and taking shit off these fascist bastards! They will kill all life on this planet if we allow it.
History demands of us that we do our patriotic duty and take our country back from the anti-human, anti-democratic, anti-American forces that have seized her from her only rightful owners – the American people!
America
In the realm of political thought there has never been a more powerful idea than America. For the first time in history a nation was formed expressly to protect the liberty of its citizens, who were conceived as equals, from the predations of tyrants. The founders knew tyranny first hand and were determined to design a system that would preclude it from ever taking hold in the United States of America.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal. . . .”
Declaration of Independence, July 4, 1776
It was an audacious act to break away from England to form a country of equals who would rule themselves rather than be ruled by a sovereign. The world had never seen anything like it. A country devoted to liberty and equality was a novelty, one that spoke to the hopes and dreams of humanity, one that said life could be more than suffering, struggle, and the debasement of the masses.
If we love this country we will do the right thing – and take it back!
184 comments
Skip to comment form
Author
when we thought the Dems shared our values and would assume power to advocate for Americans and equity in the world.
the disruption is this feeling we’ve been left at the altar… who do we turn to now?
as i look around the room, i only see us.
we have to figure a way to stop this. it’s on us now.
and that’s gonna be a hard sell… that’s why dKos is stuck, i think. it’s just damned hard to believe
and how do we do it? what do we do? how do we start? start what…
all my hair would have been gone halfway through…
i always think that i need to know and understand the situation more to figure out how to fight it…but the more i know, the more hopeless i feel…
but you inspire me. i have to believe we can do this…
OPOL, you pretty much captured my level of frustration.
I won’t try to paraphrase his words since Glenn Greenwald already puts it so well:
(emphasis added)
The Democrats have inherited a climate that will give them a victory. They have not earned it, they have received a social promotion in the same way that Mister Bush was socially promoted in 2000 – albeit by the voters rather than a partisan GOP Supreme Court.
Instead of capitalizing on their gift, I see nothing but squandered opportunity by our Democratic
leaderselected officials. The only thing more infuriating than a wanton criminal is the person who has abilities to stop or impede the criminal from victimizing more people yet chooses not to involve him/herself. That is the (non)position I see so many key Democrats taking.Well done, thanks —
ps. If marching w/Ed wearing that t-shirt does not land you a no-fly or other Orwellian badge of good citizenship honor roll, I do not know what will.
Look at the image at the top right corner, the figure against the wall. I made an oil painting nearly 20 years ago of the that central figure in that exact pose against a graffiti smeared wall, dressed in shreds and flanked by casualties. My palette at the time was lurid spectrum from yellow to red.
I gave it to my brother on the occasion of his marriage five years later. He sincerely appreciated it. We talked about it. But that unframed painting never made it to display in his home.
Rather, it was removed to the basement where it remains to this day, propped on a specially purchased easel. And centered on a wall of the cathedral-height family room is a framed vignette of a youth in loin cloth and on his knees amidst lush foliage and flowers, calmly sipping from a pool of water like an animal.
to see it said better…
This is a most excellent tin-foil hat screed. It is obvious that you have spent many hours researching the various conspiratorial relationships you describe in loving detail.
I can just imagine your work area: walls covered with various newspaper clippings, lines drawn between them to connect all of those hidden dots. My compliments for your efforts.
There is, of course, a much more simple answer to your main question: Whatever happened to the Democrats? What happened is that they simply got their power back. They were never a party that opposed the Iraq war or the GWOT, they were only lying to the left-wing fringe groups to regain their former stature.
Now that they are there, as you point out, they have no intention of ending the war because, frankly, they never did. The Republican rubber stamp congress is now the Democrat rubber stamp congress with hopes of propelling Hillary into the White House.
Hillary, of course, is already known to be a solid part of left-wing fringe so her position there is secured. She has no such need to pander to them as the Congress did. This frees her up to play the other end of the spectrum which is why she is trying to look as right of center as she can stomach. Trying to pick off a few Republican voters to secure her legacy.
If she makes it into the White House, though, you will have no fears as she will immediately revert to her true self. And she will be every bit as fascist as her husband was and as you claim Bush is. But at least she will be pushing the policies that the left-wing fringe are seeking.
God help us all if she ever gets into the White House, or any of the current Democrat hopefuls.
Adlai Stevenson, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, George McGovern, stop me when we get to a nominee who kowtowed to the Republicans, Jimmy Carter, Walter Mondale, Michael Dukakis, Bill Clinton…ok, I’m stopping myself right there.
Thank you for always bringing me hope when I most need it.
is the merger of government with corporate interests.
For the benefit of the corporations.
Can anyone deny with a straight face that this is what we have become?
I guess I will head over to Dkos and find out, lol.
But when even a Centrist like Armando starts calling people fascists….
Inaction is complicity! That’s the Dems we have. We put so much hope on them and that hope has been dashed. So, yes, it is all truly up to us.
Just as in Hitler’s regime, there were some Germans who saw what was happening, but there were too many that didn’t.
I fear we have the same thing going on in America. There are far too many Americans who are so disinvolved and, therefore, have no clue as to what happening right before their eyes.
The honorable, moral and ethical fibre in this country has been disintegrating for a long time now and has reached an all-time pinnacle of depravation and decay, thus, allowing all that has happened to happen. Afterall, the dollar has become the almighty God in this country.
Organize? YES!
is well told out of the “coffin boat Irish” town of Butte, Montana, which once was the largest “refugee” community of Irish, who went to work for the mines/railroads after the British expropriated their land and forced their exile.
There was the heart and soul of the democratic party, IMO – the poor but intelligent Irish from whom the Kennedys came.
I think you’ve probably read my tale about how my Dad worked together with the late hon. Sen. Mike Mansfield (also Irish, and interestingly illiterate until adulthood when his beloved wife Maureen taught him) to forestay the merger of the Burlington, Northern Pacific and Great Northern railroads in the early 60’s? Because the midway locomotive repair shops were (still are) located in Livingston, Montana, the question of legality of that merger was to be determined by the Montana state legislature. My Dad, another railroader named Warren McGee (still alive, clear-minded although legally blind, in Livingston still) and Mike Mansfield worked as a team to basically back down BIG OIL from sidelining the railroads, whicih were the heart of blue collar (read: Democrats) USA. They demonstrated to the legislature that the merger violated anti-trust legislation, and succeeded in placing a seven year moratorium on the merger question. In other words they bought the US another seven years.
My father was chairman of the Park County Democratic Party, and I think just about everyone was Irish. They were the voice of the working class, along with other minority white groups (e.g. Polish in St. Paul).
People don’t realize what a steep climb the Kennedy family made, being Irish. They were the first Irish ever to be admitted to Harvard, and the prejudice they had to overcome was enormous on behalf of the English-Americans. In the introductory pages of The Kennedys – An American Drama by Collier and Horowitz, the beginnings of Irish Democratic party organization are told:
The Irish were a scrappy people and knew their politics, banded together and fought hard, as the Montana coffin boat Irish did in the merger fight via the Democratic Party in the early ’60’s.
For a look at the early times of the Irish in the US (which informed the Kennedys) and the definite racism directed at them from the English, there are some highly instructive racist cartoons about the Irish from 19th century British press at this link.
I don’t know what happened to the Irish community in the US – probably told to death they were “homogenized” and suffered a kind of collective amnesia about how they got to the US, but the Irish remember: there was war with the British for 500 years because they stole most of the Irish land.
Maybe that collective amnesia cost us the Democratic Party?
is that the scales are beginning to fall from our eyes.
It started for me back the the Howard Dean for president movement. A lot of people got involved in the process that had never done so before.
Then came the blogs and we were all trying to figure out how to get Dems elected so we could “take our country back.” With the war, torture, Katrina, so many got involved and thought we could change things.
Then, the Dems got elected in 2006…we won, didn’t we? But still nothing’s changed.
So all of us that have gotten engaged are now beginning to see that electing Dems is not the answer. And finally, we are beginning to see what was probably there all along, but the idea that we lived in a democracy was blinding us to it.
So now, the question of the day is, what do we do as we begin to open our eyes to the reality? I don’t know. I think that if we were to ever find the means to seriously threaten the corprotocracy, we’d find out just how much deadly force they are willing to exert in their interests. Its not that I’m afraid, just that we haven’t really threatened them yet and the physical powers of force are lined up on their side.
One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is how many people all over the globe saw all this long before we did. Can we use the blogoshpere to begin to unite the way the global corprotocracy has? I think it might take that and some serious consideration of the principles of non-violent resistance to actually begin the changes we want to see.
OPOL, I find the entire Military Industrial Congressional Complex part of your post to be rather conspiratorial in nature. Could you say more about what you mean by that?
There is, of course, a much more simple answer to your main question: Whatever happened to the Democrats? What happened is that they simply got their power back. They were never a party that opposed the Iraq war or the GWOT, they were only lying to the left-wing fringe groups to regain their former stature.
Now that they are there, as you point out, they have no intention of ending the war because, frankly, they never did. The Republican rubber stamp congress is now the Democrat rubber stamp congress with hopes of propelling Hillary into the White House.
Hillary, of course, is already known to be a solid part of left-wing fringe so her position there is secured. She has no such need to pander to them as the Congress did. This frees her up to play the other end of the spectrum which is why she is trying to look as right of center as she can stomach. Trying to pick off a few Republican voters to secure her legacy.
If she makes it into the White House, though, the left-wing will have no fears as she will immediately revert to her true self. And she will be every bit as fascist as her husband was and as you claim Bush is. But at least she will be pushing the policies that the left-wing fringe are seeking.
God help us all if she ever gets into the White House, or any of the current Democrat hopefuls.
She used to cause great hilarity here as we watched Scotty’s armpits darken visibly when she set her sights on him.
I lost my TU “status” elsewhere btw. Words can barely express how much of a fuck I don’t give about that….
Well done!;-)
In it, D’Angelo schools his corner boys how to play chess. They catch on quick that he’s trying to teach them something more than chess. But the lesson is for us too, I think…
The King Stay The King. We’re just now learning that “The King” is not our president or any other elected official. They are merely the “queen” – the “go get shit done piece.” The “stash” is whatever resource the King wants to exploit and use “muscle” to protect. And we’re the “pawns” who “get capped quick” in the game.
Let me give you 2 obvious problems, but hell knows, I could probably come up with a dozen if it was worth my time.
1. Remember that old Life cereal commercial where you’ve got three kids sitting at the breakfast table and two of the kids repeat “I’m not going to try it (the Life cereal), you try it” and they finally con Mikey into trying it?
Welcome to most of our society. I’m not going to sacrifice shit for anything that doesn’t directly benefit me and mine. I’ll be content to sit at my PC and shoot my mouth off! How brave of you.
2. Why, the Dems have dkos, that wonderful money making machine that demands absolute loyalty or that little twerp daddy kos will ban you from his site. And you fucking sheep buy into it. Fucking idiots!
Shall I continue or have I given you enough to respond to? Bunch of worthless PUSSIES!
POPAL, I read a blog about air traffic controllers called The Main Bang (You’d enjoy it as it’s full of righteous, fact-based FAA bashing by a very witty blogger, John Carr). Today he recommended a new blog, and it’s visually stunning and right up your alley.
…Che Guevara from your graphical repetoire, One Pissed Off Liberal. He doesn’t belong up there with the Dalai Lama and Fr. Berrigan.
Che’s cold-blooded murder by the CIA 40 years ago this coming Tuesday is certainly worthy of excoriation. But Che himself, not the Alberto Korda icon you and most of the world displays but the real Che is hardly someone those who oppose authoritarianism and corporatism should want to imitate.
Che was a Marxist-Leninist totalitarian, pro-Soviet at a time early in the Cuban Revolution when many of the rebels who helped in the overthrew of Batista wanted a democratic socialism. Che personally presided over the Revolution’s first firing squads. The cultlike adoration of him that has arisen since his murder in Bolivia should be repulsive to anyone who hates fascism or totalitarianism of any kind.
Not sure if you will catch this since I’m late. I go away for one weekend and you finally make your triumphant return from the icy grip of death with two great essays….Sigh. Glad you’re back though!
I love that first image. I hope to see it in poster form one day. I have space (very appropriately) next to my periodic table and protest poster just waiting for it :p