He Must Go

Either Putsch goes, or America dies. There are no other options.

© Bryan Zepp Jamieson
12/25/05
http://www.mytown.ca/zepp

One of the biggest problems with fascism is that by working together to secure one another’s interests, the state and the corporations tend to gang up on the people. I saw a good example of this in this morning’s corporate newspaper, the NY Times, which, in an effort to restore credibility and sales, has decided it needs to act a bit more newspaperish.

On the domestic spying constitutional crisis that Putsch has brought about, they wrote, “As part of the program approved by President Bush for domestic surveillance without warrants, the N.S.A. has gained the cooperation of American telecommunications companies to obtain backdoor access to streams of domestic and international communications, the officials said.”

Corporations like to facilitate government control over consumers. And remember: to large, multi-national corporations, Americans are consumers. Not fellow citizens. Consumers. Spoiled consumers who have far too much power to sue, to buy things elsewhere, to make their own products, to sing their own songs and even tell the corporations to back off on the advertising. Corporations don’t much like consumers having that much power, and are more than willing to work with the government to try and erode those powers.

Corporations also have an intense curiosity about what consumers are thinking, for the simple reason that if they have perfect knowledge of consumers, they have a perfect ability to make consumers purchase their items at good profits.

Even the NY Times, while actually allowing this to be reported, was busily smearing its city’s transit workers and especially the union for a modest three day strike. Going on strike, in the eyes of the Times’ owners, is the same as supporting terrorism, bolshevikism, and probably encourages pedophilia. Strikes represent a usurpation of their power.

Fascism usually needs a charismatic leader. He doesn’t have to be a strong leader, but he does need to be able to make the right noises to keep the population convinced that he’s there to protect them against a wide array of potential foes: outside agitators and terrorists, trade unionists, intellectuals, homosexuals, and liberals. A faceless board of directors can’t lead; you need someone whose face is easily recognized.

George isn’t exactly the “strong leader” type, but he’s easily controlled, and perfectly willing to say any lie that will help his cause; and his cause is the corporate cause.

So here we have a full-blown constitutional crisis. The President has admitted to wiretapping people in the United States without a court order and without probable cause. Even as he admitted it, he lied about the scope (instead of dozens, it’s thousands, possibly even millions of people whose privacy has been compromised). He lied about his authorization, falsely claiming Congress granted him the power (Congress flatly refused him the power, not that it was theirs to give). He lied about the targets of these “investigations,” falsely claiming at first that they were only a few individual people acting as foreign agents.

And the biggest lie of all was that he had the right to not only perform these snoop jobs on people in the US, but had every intention of continuing to do so. He claimed he had that right.

That is a lie.

That is an impeachable action. It’s exactly the sort of situation the Founders had in mind when they put the mechanism for impeachment in the Constitution. It was meant to deal with corrupt, venal men who abused their office and who abrogated to themselves power that was not theirs, legally or morally.

Powers like spying on people on the off-chance that they could be up to no good. That’s police state crap.

It’s the sort of crap that corporations love, because a weak, frightened population makes for good consumers who don’t complain.

Don’t count on the media to help much in this case. Remember the New York Times, once a reputable and respected newspaper, deliberately sat on the story for a whole year, through a presidential election. They are owned by the same people who own the GOP and Putsch.

George W. Bush must be impeached. He has committed numerous felonies, he has lied to the American people, he has caused the deaths of tens of thousands of people and the maiming of hundreds of thousands more. And now, he has decided that his personal desire for power supercedes the constitution, and that he has the right to spy on anyone in the United States and for any reason, and that he does not need warrants or permission from Congress to do so. In an insulting gesture of contempt, he has sneered that this is all that stands between the American people, whom he sees as weak, timid, shivering and child-like, and the terrorist bogeyman that he and his cohorts have threatened us with for years.

It is the sneer of every tyrant: “I, and only I, can protect you from enemies within and without. Without me, you are weak, foolish, vulnerable. Only my strength and my leadership can protect you. Of course, you must give up a few things. Privacy. Due process. The right to dissent. In fact, children, just give me all your rights, and I’ll take good care of you.”

There is absolutely no doubt that this is what this rogue President feels. It is based on his grinning admission that he has conducted unauthorized wiretaps on persons in the United States, and his sneering taunt that people want to be protected from terrorism, and without it, terrorists will strike again.

It’s hard to imagine how anyone could support the man at this point. One right winger wrote me (actual quote) “[Y]ou are an and [sic] sob that worries more about the rights of terrorists then the killing of Americans.” I wrote back, “I'm more worried about the rights of Americans than I am about the killing of terrorists. Only a coward or a traitor proposes abandoning our rights for a ‘war’ against a basically non-existant [sic] threat of some rag-tag terrorists in the middle east.” How much cowardice does it take to throw away your rights, and the rights of everyone around you, for the false threats and even falser promises that this man makes in the name of national security? We have reached the point where supporting Putsch means selling out America.

He must go. Dick Cheney must go. Contact your Congressman and tell him you will stand for nothing less than the impeachment of both men.

And come next year, if it isn’t too late, throw the entire rotten, corrupt, corporate-owned bunch out, and start getting people in who will represent the American people, and not corporations.