In calling the following report from today’s Wall Street Journal to my attention—
"Impeachment Proves Risky Political Issue," Jeanne Cummings, Wall Street Journal, March 6, 2006 (as posted to Truthout)
—a friend of mine noted that "This important article shows the huge disconnect between the U.S. populace and the elites who run the show and dominate the media, a small group that Jeff Faux calls the ‘governing class’." (Incidentally, for Faux’s blistering new study of the same, see The Global Class War: How America’s Bipartisan Elite Lost Our Future — and What It Will Take to Win It Back (Wiley, 2006).)
As my friend’s note continued, the Journal article
shows that whereas Clinton was impeached despite a large majority hostile to the idea, Bush is free from impeachment and even any significant discussion of the subject in the mainstream media, although a majority would favor impeachment if he lied us into a war. The rightwing and business class can “get” a Clinton, who they disfavor; and they can protect a Bush, who serves their spiritual and business needs — even in the face of both popular sentiment and massive law violations and criminal behavior.
I believe that my friend’s comments were dead-on. And myself would add only that, their great power aside (e.g., the Bush regime’s proclamation that the Government of Iran submit to it by renouncing Iran’s own right under the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons to engage in the nuclear fuel cycle for peaceful purposes—or else face sanctions, or military attack), the unfitness of the Americans to engage with the civilized world is never clearer than in reports such as this one in today’s Journal. Because what the report shows is that, as long as they invade other countries, rob their resources, threaten, kill, and torture foreign nationals, the managers of the American State are free to act in as criminal a fashion as they like. Hence, each of the articles of impeachment that dragged Clinton all the way to the Senate floor turned on lying under oath or obstruction of justice charges deriving from questions about his genitals. But as for lying about war and peace and American Power? Nothing.
No matter how many American citizens might like to redress things, still, they lack a political party to which they can appeal for change. Just as they lack the necessary media for communications with which to express their interests and desires, and raise each other’s consciousness accordingly.
Now. It seems increasingly unlikely that the rest of the world can count on the Americans to address, let along to settle and solve, the grave problems that their way of life poses not only to themselves. But—to the world.
This includes the impeachment of the Commander in Chief. A move which—however appealing it may sound—would do absolutely nothing to change The System, that American Way of Life, which undergirds it all.
So, what really are the alternatives? Which is to say: What are the real alternatives?
But we can’t vote out The System. Much less impeach the American Way of Life.
Still. I am open to suggestions.
Articles of Impeachment Against George W. Bush, Center for Constitutional Rights (Melville House Publishing, 2006)
"Excerpt: Articles of Impeachment," William Goodman, Center for Constitutional Rights, as posted to Alternet, March 6, 2006
"Impeaching George W. Bush," Onnesha Roychoudhuri, AlterNet, March 6, 2006"Impeach ‘Em All," ZNet, November 14, 2004
"Treason and the American President," ZNet, December 18, 2005
"A Failed State," ZNet, December 30, 2005
"Attacking Domestic Society I," ZNet, January 9, 2006
"A Loyalty Test," ZNet, January 11, 2006
"Attacking Domestic Society II," ZNet, January 20, 2006
"What Are the Alternatives?" ZNet, March 6, 2006
Postscript (March 17, 2006): Some very important material here on the depths to which the criminal spirit flows beneath the American Government:
"Reprogramming the Infinite Loop: The NSA Spying Debate," Elizabeth de la Vega, TomDispatch.com, March 17, 2006
And since we ourselves can’t vote the Military-Industrial Complex – slash – National Security State out of office—and by this stage in American history, any national election in which the liquidation of this complex of institutions isn’t an option must be regarded as worse than a sham—indeed, as a colossal subversion of the will of the people—perhaps the time has come for us to begin to appeal to those other forces around the world that might be able to come and help liberate us?
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