And yet I'm not sure it's paranoia since the Christianists are definitely advancing and I am not a Christian.
The tipping point for me is Trent Lott's "nuclear option." Not only do I have the feeling that the New Orwellians will triumph in blowing up the Senate, but they will also be victorious at establishing the psychosemiotics, if you will, the terms of the event, and thus achieve a double win over cooler and saner (and wiser) minds. And they did it for Jesus. All of it. Selflessly. Let's not forget that. The Right has laid the gauntlet down: to oppose Bush is to oppose Faith.
Friends, my very sense of democracy has at its core an understanding of the noble tradition of the filibuster. In Congress, even with all the branches of the Federal government standing arrayed in lockstep against you and your small minority, even as they martial millions of dollars to smear you, employ every weapon in a prodigous arsenal against you, to trick the public into voting against their own rights as citizens; if you can find people with feelings so passionate about an issue that they will willingly talk until the end of time to protect and defend your shared position, and if you can line them up around the clock and spin out an eternity of speech, you can hold the floor forever and thus stop the juggernaut of government.
To me this is a very good thing.
It strikes me that, as a great factory goes, so goes our Republic: on the assembly line any worker, no matter how unimportant or unskilled, can stop the conveyor belt in an emergency. In an emergency we're all equal and anyone can pull the red handle and flat-out stop the whole operation - maybe from going down the drink. Call a halt, force a time-out, a recalibration.
In government, a minority opinion, no matter how small or isolated, must be able to throw the brakes on in this same way. It's absolutely essential. Because when the whole of us, the whole nation, goes mad together, there may be only a minority of one to stop the end of everything. I realize this may seem overwrought but it's how I feel. We must not tip into fascism, in spite of our collective pain and fear since nine-eleven. We must not shed our humanity in favor of nuclear war. Even if so many of us
apparently
really
really
want
to.
6 comments:
Paranoid
I hope not. If you are, I've got it too. Drop by my blog
http://politicsplusstuff.blogspot.com/
and browse back for my series of comments on the Dominionists.
By the way, since I am a Life Member of the NRA, retired military and a long time Democrat we may have a few things in common.
Damned Question Mark key and arrow keys have stopped working.
I guess that means I'll stop typing. But there was supposed to be a question mark after "paranoid."
Are they still trying to get the press to start calling it the 'Constitutional Option'? That one just floors me. But you have to admit, they are usually the masters of double-speak. I think that the only reason their attempt at framing isn't working this time (like it did, for example, when they got everyone to call the Estate Tax the 'Death Tax') is because a) Trent Lott coined the term 'Nuclear Option' in the first place, and b) saying 'Nuclear Option' just sounds really cool.
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